GHS holds materials related not only to Georgia, but also to Georgians who served on the world stage. Frederick Mingledorff, one of 320,000 Georgians who served in World War II, was a U.S. Marine and participated in some of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific Theater. As a 19-year-old amphibious tractor driver, PFC Mingledorff ferried troops to the landing beaches at Roi-Namur during the Kwajalein operation. Under intense enemy fire Fred “learned for the first time what it meant to really be afraid.” During the invasion of Guam he picked up this Japanese “Good Luck Flag” (which Fred is holding in a wartime photograph below) and a wrist watch belonging to a dead Japanese soldier. Fred contracted malaria in Guam and was evacuated to a hospital at Pearl Harbor. It was a fortuitous illness for Fred: months later at Iwo Jima his entire unit was virtually wiped out.