‘I thought it was everybody’s turn;’ St. Louis-area WWII vet remembers his call to serve and the vicious fighting at Iwo Jima

By CNN

Published November 24, 2019 2:41 PM

ST. LOUIS, MO (KMOV) — Some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting in the Pacific in World War II took place in the five-week battle for Iwo Jima.

Early in 1945, Brentwood native and Marine radio man Ken Luttrell was in the first wave of Marines to land on the island.

He left on a gurney, barely surviving a shell fragment that entered one side of his face and exited the other.

He spent the next year going from surgery to surgery, but he never forgot the day the Japanese surrendered.

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