This presentation of, in their own words, is dedicated to the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

In the late 1930s, the world was at the doorstep of dramatic change.

For the young men of the U.S. Marine Corps, this change would mean nearly five years of incredible hardship and brutal combat.

Victor Croyzat, retired Marine Corps colonel, was one of those young men.

After a brief period of training and conditioning, he was shipped off with thousands of other men

to the then-obscure island of Guadalcanal.

As the furthest westward extension of the Japanese Empire, the island represented one of the last chances for the United States to turn back the Japanese in the Pacific.

And so it was, in August of 1942, along seven months after the horrible events in Honolulu, the American Pacific

fleet landed 19,000 Marines on Guadalcanal, and then engaged the Japanese Navy in some of the

most devastating naval battles of World War II.

Victor Croyzat was then a second lieutenant watching the sea battles from the island.

It had been a long trip from the college campus to this far-flung battlefield.

How I got in the Marine Corps? The short answer to how I got the Marine Corps was that I was born in Tripoli,

Livia. Being born in Tripoli naturally, either that or the halls of Montezuma,

I'd be in the Marine Corps automatically. But that's not the real truth, because at the time,

I had in the foggiest notion of what the Marine Corps was, and neither did my parents.

The truth is, I came into the Marine Corps because there was a war going on in Europe.

My father being a very serious reader of the news emanating from Europe, was convinced that

it was just a matter of time until we got in it.

I was graduating from the University of Syracuse, 1940, with a reserve commission in the Army,

so that in the event anything happened, I was bound to be called up.

And at the same time, I'd received a fellowship to do graduate work,

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