Two snapshots from a serviceman's WWII photo album, annotated 'Tarawa - 1944.' At top, a young serviceman rests on a coral rubble barricade along the beach of Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Below, viewed from a ship's deck, a partially swamped amphibious tracked landing vehicle sits stranded in the shallow lagoon, prompting the handwritten note, 'didn't make it to shore.' Tarawa, particularly Betio Island, was the site of a costly November 1943 U.S. Marine Corps amphibious assault in which many landing craft grounded on the surrounding reef; images such as these, taken during the subsequent occupation, document both the human presence and the material losses left behind after the battle. Project: 218307