On 30 July 1944, Pvt Joseph Ozbourn’s platoon had been assigned ‘mop up duty,’ clearing the last of the Japanese holdouts from the pillboxes and dugouts along a tree line on Tinian. Ozbourn was moving forward to lob an armed grenade into one of these, when a sudden blast in the entryway knocked him backward, severely wounding him and the four other Marines around him. Unable to toss the grenade into the hostile position, and with no place to throw it without endangering his companions, Ozbourn fell on the missile, shielding his comrades from the blast.