Images 5

The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Head to head: Dick Varone, left, from Troy talks with Altamont’s Porter Bidleman who served in the Navy during World War II. Varone said, when his priest talked about purgatory and hell, he would tell him, ‘I’ve already been there. I was at Iwo Jima.’ Varone was a forward observer with the Fifth Division of Marines. “They’d send me up to the front. I was a radioman. When a machine-gun nest held us up, I would radio back so the flame-throwers could burn them out.”