A named wrap-brooch Navy/Marine Purple heart to Pfc. Abel Aragon, 60mm mortarman, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, 3rd Marine Division. Aragon won the Navy Cross for heroic actions on W-day +1. Acting as a rifleman with a nine-man assault team to take a Japanese occupied ridge near Chonito ridge, him and only two other Marines made it to the crest. Pfc Aragon and one other Marine were able to hold the crest of the hill for 4 hours under intense machine gun fire and grenade attacks. Aragon’s fellow Marine, Sgt. Charles Bomar was killed as he tried to move from the foxhole they were defending. Aragon was wounded in the hip within a short time after Bomar’s death, a wound that would plague him for the rest of his life. He held the Japanese off for another 2 hours after being wounded until relief showed up. He was presented the Navy Cross by Marine Corps General Graves B Erskine. Following the liberation of Guam Aragon participated in the Iwo Jima campaign with elements of the 3rd Division.
The Purple Heart is the Navy/Marine type with wrap brooch as manufactured by the US Mint. The engraving is privately done. Condition is excellent.
Abel Aragon has a tragic postwar history and according to his daughter suffered severely from PTSD. Information regarding circumstances of his postwar life and death are readily available online.
