Memorial Day Dedication to Joe Ashkar

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.