A soldier remembered Japanese kamikaze pilots diving on American ships, another the sight of a Filipino girl hit by a grenade. Still another found the foxhole where he crouched for two nights under fire.

Fifty years ago they were young soldiers storming the beaches of the Philippine island of Leyte.Tuesday, as they gathered for the 50th anniversary of the Leyte Landings, grey-haired men in their 70s and 80s clung to their memories as they searched for echoes of the past.

Thursday, veterans, servicemen, officials and diplomats from 12 nations will mark the anniversary of the U.S.-led Allied invasion leading to the liberation of the Philippines.

In San Pablo village in Leyte, 200 miles south of Manila, retired schoolteacher Orlando Garcia, 73, stood over his former foxhole, a pit littered with broken trees, rotting banana leaves and rocks. His eyes welling with tears, he prayed for his buddies who did not come home.

"All this time I wanted to go back," the former 24th Army combat engineer from Taos, N.M., said. "All these years I was traumatized by the memory of my life hanging on a thread. How did I ever get home when there was a lot of shooting all over the place?"

Garcia was part of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's force of 174,000 men that landed on Leyte on Oct. 20, 1944.

In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, involving hundreds of warships and aircraft on both sides, the Japanese lost 26 ships and the Allied forces six.

Former U.S. navy signalman Ed Riddett, 68, said he could not forget the Japanese suicide pilots attacking the U.S. warships. "I saw 85 men die in one second when a kamikaze went down on a ship at the dock," he said.

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Jerry Kosner, 78, of Wellsprings, Ill., brought with him bags of bubble gum and candy for Filipino children.

Arriving on the third wave with MacArthur in 1944, the former army medic said one of the first casualties he picked up was a 6-year-old girl hit by shrapnel in the face.

"She was crying for her mother. I ran to her. . . . She was scared. She was also telling me she wanted a bubble gum.

"What I'm coming back for is for the memory of that little girl. I am bringing 50 pounds of candies, and I'm going to throw it to the children . . . that's my memory."

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