Numerous people stood along the route, some carrying American flags, others with flags on their T-shirts. In Billy Brandenburg’s hometown of New Miami, many people, and a lot of American flags — including small ones stuck into the ground — lined the roadways.
Many people were at the country cemetery, including color guards, a bagpipe brigade, Boy Scouts, veterans, family and various people who never knew Brandenburg but wanted to honor his sacrifice. As they watched, a Marine presented the folded American flag that had draped the coffin to Patricia Moore, daughter of Brandenburg’s late sister, Mae Black, who had donated a DNA sample about eight years ago to help identify the Marine’s body.
Presenting the flag, the Marine told Moore he was giving it to her on behalf of the president of the United States, the Marine Corps, “and a grateful nation.”
Bagpipes played Amazing Grace, and later the Marine Corps Hymn, and a woman sang a soulful version of Amazing Grace before the flag was taken from the coffin.
Deidra Thieken and her father, Earl McWorter, both of Hamilton, were among several who waited for the procession in Hamilton at the western edge of the Black Street Bridge.
“I am grateful and glad that they’re doing something like this to commemorate this person,” Thieken said, “because so many men died where he was, as I read in the paper.”
“Least I can do,” McWorter said, explaining why he waited.
Along Main Street in Hamilton, in front of the Secretly Shabby shop, an outdoor display blackboard next to a bicycle that was decorated in patriotic colors carried the message, “R.I.P. PFC William E. Brandenburg. Thank You for Your Service.”
Like many Marines and other military of that era and later, Brandenburg had fibbed about his age to be able to fight. He was 16 when he enlisted, after his family said he begged his mother for weeks to be able to go.
He was killed on the third day of a vicious several-day battle against Japanese forces on the island of Betio, in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The battle killed 1,000 U.S. Marines and sailors, and wounded more than 2,000 others. It also “virtually annihilated” large numbers of Japanese forces, according to a news release from from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).
Brandenburg’s unidentified body was buried in one of several battlefield cemeteries on the island, his later renamed Cemetery 26. After the war, a military operation recovered his remains among many others, but his body could not be identified. His and other bodies later were buried in a Honolulu military cemetery before being exhumed and identified.
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