35 years ago today - Feb 28, 1984

At a BYU devotional speech Paul H. Dunn tells the audience, "I pitched against Willie Mays as he broke into baseball and I was leaving the scene." He also tells of his WWII experiences landing on Iwo Jima: "We jump in the water, the water's chest high. You gotta hold your rifle over your head. If the muzzle drops in the water-that's salt water-it would blow up when you fire. Did you ever try to run in water up to your chest, loaded down? You don't move very fast. And the enemy starts to pick you up. You're pushing with the butt of your rifle the dead bodies and wounded bodies of your friends and associates you've been training with. The coral is so sharp it cuts the boots off your feet and your feet are starting to bleed like mincemeat, and you're trying to get ashore. I was one of the first ashore that morning. And I dug my first foxhole with my fingernails and I crawled in it. And just as I crawled into that mucky hole an ambu gun opens up that shoots about 700 rounds a minute and it went down my right arm and took off my identification bracelet." The official history of his battalion says there was no combat action when they landed and that Dunn's boat was caught on a coral reef and didn't land until the next day, after the beach had been secured.