With the Fourth of July this week, ABC15 thought this was the perfect time to celebrate and honor one of the more than 400,000 veterans who call Arizona home.
We recently received an e-mail from ABC15 viewer, Dave, in Mesa, who told us about a War World II veteran named James Peyton who was celebrating his 99th birthday on June 6, which also happens to be D-Day.
A standing ovation, a salute, and a serenade: it was a 99th birthday fit for a hero, an American hero.
P.F.C. James Peyton served in the U.S. Marines during World War II.
"I got a pretty good group there," explains Peyton. "I got the microphone and couldn't remember things - just blanks."
Peyton explains his memory, at times, may be fuzzy, but it was clear during our interview that there are certain things that time will never taint nor take out of focus.
"I was very patriotic. And when we had problems, I wanted to get in and fight the enemy. It's all I could think about. I was only 16 at the time."
That was the first time Peyton ran away from his Oregon home, hitchhiking more than a thousand miles to get down to San Diego to enlist in the Marines.
"I'd get off the highway and get into the vineyards and lay down and go to sleep in the wintertime. About sunup, I'd get up and start walking again."
Peyton would get turned away twice because of his age before being allowed to join.
At age 18, he was finally accepted, enrolled, and entered boot camp.
"It was a happy day for me."
But Peyton's journey up the ranks was anything but smooth sailing.
"I was the smallest in the squadron...I'd clean up cigarette butts, scrub the toilets... I always was assigned to that by the squad leader."
Small in stature but standing tall in his bravery, Peyton made the life-changing decision to stand up for himself.
"I really laid into him. I was poking him in the chest and [saying] I'm tired of all these bad details! I got every one of them and you're the one assigning them. And it's going to stop right now...Somebody in the crowd yelled, 'He's sure tough!' And that stuck. It was my nickname all throughout the Marines...The next day I was a squad leader and they worked for me!"
Peyton says he learned to be patient and not back down to bullies - and there would be other life lessons along the way, especially when confronted by the enemy.
"We ended up in Saipan and ended up at Pearl Harbor where they were staging it...They knew it was going to be tough. And it was."
While Peyton was in Saipan, his Second Lieutenant was killed by enemy fire. Peyton's bravery, once again came in handy.
"The next day, I expected another Second Lieutenant to come, but none came."
Peyton described to ABC15's Nick Ciletti what the fear was like when he took over as lead.
"I was always scared. If you say you aren't scared, you're crazy. When someone fires at you and they're only four feet away, which happened to me, and you have bullets going between your legs, you have to be scared."
Eighty years later, his home in East Mesa is full of photos, awards, and distant memories, documenting a time in our history, chronicling "The Greatest Generation."
But Peyton doesn't consider himself to be a hero.
"I just did what they told me to do," he explains. "That's all."
We thank Peyton and all the other brave men and women who have served our country!
