Before America knew him as Oliver Wendell Douglas, Eddie Albert was a lieutenant junior grade on a Higgins boat at Tarawa.
November 1943. Betio. The reef stopped the landing craft hundreds of yards out, so Marines had to wade in under machine-gun fire. Albert’s job was salvage. Pick up reusable gear after the troops were ashore.
He looked at the water and changed the job.
Wounded men were waist-deep on the reef, the tide coming in, guns sweeping the lagoon. He took the boat back in. Then again. Then again. On one run the deck sat so low under the weight of the men that it was under the waterline. On another he found a handful of Marines who had lost their rifles in the surf. He offered to pull them out. They said no. Just bring us something to fight with. He went back for rifles. When he returned, they were dead.
He later said that day mattered more to him than anything he did on a soundstage.
The Bronze Star with the Combat “V” was real. The ceremony was not until 1997. The Navy had filed the record under his birth name, Edward Albert Heimberger, and nobody could match it to the actor.
Green Acres made him famous. Tarawa is what he kept.