"There was nobody better than Earl," he said. It was January 31, 1944, the Battle for Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. When troops arrived, Fida had been 20 years old for three days.

Kwajalein consists of a group of 90 coral islets that surround the third largest lagoon in the world. The total land area is 6.2 square miles and the atoll is 78 miles long. The islets of ...