Unselfish Death

On the southern slope of a hill on furnace-hot Peleliu, two hospital corpsmen came upon a badly wounded marine, a young Southerner. They lifted him on a stretcher and started toward the beach through the machine-gun fire that corpsmen often brave to rescue fallen comrades.

One of the corpsmen dropped. He had been shot between the eyes. The other corpsman, Chief Pharmacist's Mate Reeder Parker of Lexington, Ala., told the rest of the story to New York Timesman George Home: The wounded marine . . . was heart broken: "I'm sorry he got it trying to get me back. It's no use taking me because I'm dying anyhow." The wounded man and the young corps man could go no farther without help. Parker sat down beside the marine, whose life was ebbing. The marine prayed for the man who had died for him, and for Parker.

"Take off my watch," he told Reeder Parker, "I want you to give it to a friend of mine, a marine, too." He painfully printed on a white cigaret package the name of a 7th Regiment private first class.

Then he gave Parker his plastic cigaret case, on which had been scratched some girls' names and addresses -- "really good ones," he said. Then he died.

"He was the bravest man I ever saw," said Corpsman Parker. "He prayed for someone else when he was dying."

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