STILLWATER, Okla. — Wally Reynolds doesn’t talk much about the war.

“Most of my friends don’t even know I was in the Marine Corps,” he said.

Reynolds served in the South Pacific with the Second Marine Division during World War II. Before the war, Reynolds had been working for Alcoa Inc., an aluminum company that made cylinders for airplanes. When war broke out, like many other men of his age, he enlisted.

“Like all good citizens, I wanted to get into it in a hurry,” he said.

During the war, Reynolds served as a wire chief, meaning he and his crew laid the wire that connected the unit’s field telephones. When the unit was in the field, he said, each of the artillery crews was connected by field telephone.

The work was stressful, he said. Anytime a line went out, he would go to repair it. But, he said, whenever he went to repair a line, he never knew what would be waiting for him at the other end. Because he had to carry heavy telephone equipment, he could only carry a light carbine, he said, so venturing out alone wasn’t safe. He always took two riflemen with him for security, he said.

“It wasn’t so funny when a line went off,” he said. “It was kind of scary work.”

Reynolds’ first invasion was at the island of Funafuti, in the Ellice Islands, now called Tuvalu. Most of the islands the Marines invaded held special strategic importance — they had airports. Funafuti was no different, Reynolds said.

The invasion at Funafuti was relatively easy, Reynolds said, apart from some Japanese bombing after the Marines had secured the island’s airport.

“Otherwise, the invasion itself didn’t cost too many lives,” he said.

But the invasion that came later was different, he said. The Marine invasion of the island of Tarawa began in November 1943. Before the invasion started, American ships bombarded Japanese defenses along the coast. Battleships, cruisers and destroyers shelled the coast for two hours. Planes pelted the island with bombs until it looked like not a single tree was left standing, he said.

“It was almost like the Fourth of July,” Reynolds said.

After the shelling ended, Marines went in on PT boats, Reynolds said. The tide was too low, he said, so the boats got stuck on the shoals in front of the island. Marines had to jump into shoulder-deep water and wade toward shore, he said.

What came next was a nightmarish situation, he said. Japanese machine guns and mortars came alive, killing where they stood. Wave after wave of Marines hit the shore, only to be cut down.

“The boats were blown to hell,” he said. “Marines were getting shot like crazy.”

After two days, the bodies of so many Marines had piled up in the surf that the PT boats couldn’t get through. The next wave went in on amphibious tracked vehicles.

“There were bodies all over the place,” he said. “The carnage on the shore was so fantastic you couldn’t get in.”

Eventually, Reynolds said, the Marines managed to secure a beach head, allowing Reynolds and his crew to bring their equipment in. American forces eventually secured the airport, bringing in antiaircraft guns to ward off Japanese bombing.

Original video footage from the battle can be seen in the short war propaganda documentary “With the Marines at Tarawa.” The film featured an unprecedented amount of footage of carnage from the battle.

Thinking back on the battle, Reynolds said, he’s still shocked by how his expectations differed from the outcome. After the initial shelling at Tarawa, he said, it looked to be a simple invasion.

“It looked easy,” he said. “Nothing’s the same as it should be.”