A family remembers Uncle Tony, a World War II hero reluctant to call himself one

On a Saturday night in December 1995, my Uncle Tony and I were in his spacious backyard in a small town outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. I was visiting from Long Island for the weekend, and we were admiring the fig trees he was so proud of — a vestige of his Italian-American upbringing in Richmond Hills, Queens.

Suddenly, he said, "When I die, I want you to do the eulogy."

I was taken aback. He was 72, but showed no signs of illness. "What are you talking about, Uncle Tony?"

"You're the writer," he insisted, "so when I die, I want you to give the eulogy. And when you're done, I want everybody in the place bawling. If not, I'm going to climb out of that box and kick your ass."

I laughed it off, but almost a year later to the day, my uncle Anthony Comentale died of a heart attack. I returned to North Carolina to say goodbye and to honor his request in front of a packed funeral home in Burgaw, the small town he'd called home since the early 1950s.

In my eulogy, I tried to tell the story of Uncle Tony, our family's World War II hero, who had been badly wounded at the Battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945. It wasn't an easy task because, while Uncle Tony was outgoing and brash, he kept his war medals in his closet and usually managed to change the subject when asked about his military service.

So I talked about his generosity and focused on the night my mom and dad were married. Their car broke down as they were about to leave for their honeymoon, Uncle Tony took his car keys and handed them to my dad — no questions, no "bring it back in one piece." Just "Take it."

As I spoke, I noticed that several of Uncle Tony's bowling buddies in the front row were sobbing. Mission accomplished, Uncle Tony.

'Willing and proud'

He was born in September 1923, part of a large, extended family that included my mother, Dolores Andreola. In genealogy terms, she was his niece. But because they were only a few years apart in age, they were more like cousins. He grew up in a crowded apartment on 101st Avenue in Richmond Hill with his parents (my great-grandmother and father), and older siblings who toiled in Manhattan's Garment District.

In 1942, flush with patriotic enthusiasm and outrage over Pearl Harbor, he joined the Marines. "Every healthy young man was expected to join the military, and we were willing and proud to do so," recalls 90-year-old Walter Scherr of Fort Salonga, who, while he didn't know Uncle Tony, was just a year younger and grew up in nearby Ozone Park. "My friends and I were ready to sign up and fight . . . the Japanese or the Germans, we didn't care."

My uncle was sent to basic training in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. There he met a girl, and got married. Two months later, in March 1943, he was shipped out to Camp Pendleton in California for six weeks of training as a Para- Marine. It was said that only the fittest, toughest recruits were accepted for the Marines' airborne unit. But years later, Uncle Tony dismissed the idea that he'd volunteered to jump out of planes because he was an elite warrior. Instead, he offered this honest explanation: "They paid better."

In late 1944, however, the Marine paratroopers were disbanded and his unit was integrated into 4th Marines, one of three divisions gearing up for the invasion of Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic island about 700 miles from Japan. The island was needed as a forward air base for the planned invasion of Japan. The Japanese knew it and put up a tremendous resistance.

"The Battle of Iwo Jima was a ferocious fight," said historian Nick Schlosser of the Marine Corps History Division in Quantico, Virginia. A total of 23,157 Marines were killed or wounded in the battle, 715 of them from Uncle Tony's unit: 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment. "To give a sense of the scale of these losses," Schlosser says, "a typical Marine battalion at the time numbered about 996 Marines, meaning that almost three-quarters of your uncle's unit was wounded or killed in the battle."

After Iwo Jima

On Feb. 21, 1945, the third day of the invasion, his regiment advanced on Japanese forces concealed in well-defended positions. My uncle, a private first class, was hit in the head by an enemy bullet. In the official casualty report, his wound was described as "serious." He was transported to the hospital ship USS Solace and eventually to the States, where he was treated at Navy hospitals in California and Oregon.

It took the Marines five weeks to pacify Iwo Jima. While more than 6,000 died, it's estimated that about the same number of airmen's lives were saved because they were able to use Iwo Jima as an emergency landing base. (One of them was Bernie Greene of Merrick, now 92, whose B-29 that was damaged during a raid over the Japanese city of Kobe in May 1945 was able to land on the island's airstrip).

Recovered from his wound and honorably discharged, Uncle Tony — who was awarded a Purple Heart — tried to settle back in New York, where his family still lived. Eventually, he returned to North Carolina, and in 1954, opened a gas station in Burgaw that he would later expand into a successful auto parts store. But he remained humbled by what he had experienced as a 21-year-old Marine.

His first marriage didn't work out; his second one did. Caroline — a witty North Carolinian who could match my uncle, gibe for gibe. They raised three boys and a girl and he stayed close to a daughter from his first marriage.

When I was a teenager growing up in Malverne, I spent a week each summer with Uncle Tony, Caroline and my cousins in Burgaw. My parents were happy to get a moody adolescent out of the house, and they entrusted Tony with their son the way he had entrusted them with his car.

By the mid-1990s, many others would follow my uncle's path from New York, as Wilmington and nearby Wrightsville Beach became popular locations for Northern transplants.

"The place is crawling with Yankees," he complained to me in his distinctly New York accent, during that visit in 1995.

I rolled my eyes. "You know, Uncle Tony," I said, "after you go, they ought to put a historic marker in front of your house. 'Here lived the first guy to move from New York to North Carolina.' "

He laughed and said, "Just don't go putting up some B.S. plaque about me being a war hero."

RUNNING 26 MILES FOR UNCLE TONY

To honor my uncle, Pfc. Anthony Comentale, and to commemorate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, where he was wounded, I ran the 39th annual Marine Corps Marathon in Washington on Oct. 26.

He would have thought I was a lunatic for running 26.2 miles, but as a former Marine, he would have been proud to know that after the race, I hung out with Marines who had been seriously wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were running the marathon and accompanying 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) race as members of Team Semper Fi, which helps injured Marines and sailors participate in sports as part of their therapy and recovery.

I knew about them from Alex Hetherington, a former Marine officer, whose wife, Karen, is a case manager at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for the Semper Fi Fund, the nonprofit organization that supports the team. With their help, I met with three Team Semper Fi runners after the marathon. I asked them to take a photograph with me in front of the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, also known as the Iwo Jima memorial.

We wove our way through the barriers and fencing designed for security and to corral the marathon's 30,000 finishers, and arrived at the famous sculpture near the finish line in Arlington, Virginia. They smiled for the picture, but I was beginning to think the young men were humoring this Long Islander who had been chatting incessantly about his uncle, the World War II hero.

Then, one of the Marines, Brian McPherson, 27, of Athens, Ohio, who was wounded by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2008, turned, shook my hand and said, "Thank you for your family's service."

Uncle Tony would have been proud.