Jack Humphreys McCall, Sr.

orporal Jack H. McCall, Sr. (1922-1997) served as a Marine artilleryman with the USMC 9th Defense Battalion. The "Fightin´ 9th"  was molded into a battalion at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in early 1942. While there, my dad and his buddies guarded a captured Nazi U-boat crew. Then, my dad and the Ninth Defense received their baptism by fire on Guadalcanal and nearby New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. My dad and his buddies had to fight Japanese naval bombardments, air raids, and snipers, but on the 4th of July 1943, they set an as-yet-unbroken records for shooting down an entire Japanese bomber squadron with just 88 shells. In 1944, Jack and the 9th Defense helped liberate Guam, the first U.S. possession to be freed from Japan after a brutal occupation. We are so proud of our dad and his service. He died at 75 on May 31, 1997, a Marine to the end.