Left to Right- " Greek" Matthews
Joe Ashkar, Jack Fallon. Maui 1944
My Dad, Jack Fallon, was a private first class in the Marine
Corps in the Pacific Theatre during WWII.
He served while his unit was on Roi- Namur and Saipan- Tinian. After learning of his experiences, I’ve
lovingly nick- named my Dad- a very lucky man.
He came home.
It is a very rainy Memorial Day weekend here in the north
east this year. The kind of day you want
to curl up under the comforter and close your eyes, listen to the rain pounding
on the roof top. While resting in that
in-between stage of consciousness, the name Joe Ashkar came into my mind. He was a recruit that my dad met at boot
camp. They were in training together at
Parris Island, Camp Lejeune and Camp Pendleton.
The two became good friends, in the short time that they spent together.
Dad and Joe had a few escapades together- one Christmas they
were invited to a southern family home for Christmas dinner. Dad was from Kingston New York and Joe was
from Watertown New York. There they
were, an Irish Catholic, tall, dark haired and fair skinned and Joe, short of
stature and dark of skin. Dad recalled
that he and Joe were worried at first, as they were in North Carolina in the
1940’s. However, their worries were for naught. Joe was accustomed to explaining that he was
dark skinned because he was of Syrian descent.
While at Camp Pendleton, the two friends had many a drunken
escapade on leave in Los Angeles. They would hitch-hike into the city and
explore all that the exotic neighborhoods in the city of the Angels had to
offer.
While at Camp Pendleton, Dad had an offer to join a
Transport Quartermaster unit- thus leaving his rifleman infantry unit. In June of 1944- Dad’s quartermaster unit
help combat load supplies on the Navy ship that was also transporting his friends
and his former unit to the island of Saipan.
In his memoir- my dad wrote:
“On my first trip around our secure area on Saipan I came
upon a Japanese bicycle in good working condition. I took it back to our area
near the dump site. Every now and then I would take a ride. When I heard that my old rifle company, I
company, had been pulled back for some rest from the fighting, I road over to
see some of my old friends. It was then
that I learned that my good friend, Joe Ashkar, had been killed. During some
heavy fighting, Joe took over the manning of a machine gun when the gunner was
killed. Joe was a rifle man, not a member of a machines gun crew, but he took
the machine gun over anyway, firing continuously until he was shot fatally. Speedway Tkacs told me that before we left
Maui that Ashkar had received a “Dear John” letter from his steady girlfriend
back in Watertown, N.Y. A “ Dear John”
letter was one in which a girlfriend or spouse sends a letter to a loved one
telling him that she had fallen in love with another man and therefore their
relationship was over”.
In memory of Joe Ashkar.
