NASHVILLE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and other officials are paying tribute to a U.S. Marine from Marion County who is coming home nearly 75 years after dying amid furious fighting at the bloody Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Marine Cpl. Henry Andregg Jr. of Whitwell, Tenn., was 22 when he was killed in November 1943 during the U.S. invasion of the remote Gilbert Islands.
Interred for decades in an unidentified grave at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, his remains were identified in May 2017 through modern DNA analysis.
He is scheduled for burial Friday at the Chattanooga National Cemetery. And Haslam has declared a day of mourning Friday, ordering flags at half-staff from sunrise to sunset to honor what his office calls the corporal’s “ultimate sacrifice” for his country.
Marine Cpl. Henry Andregg Jr.Some 74 years ago, Andregg was assigned to Company C, 2nd Amphibious Tractor Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, which participated in the invasion of the Gilbert Islands, located in the central Pacific some 2,400 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor.