the war

The next chapter. Amazing to read... Iwo Jima, Okinawa. What a chapter of his life.

U.S. Marine Corps
WW II


When I was in my second year at Stroudsburg I got one of those greetings from the president of United States. I was once again a “selective volunteer.” The school had recruiters from all services on campus and it was easy for me to make a decision. If I waited to be drafted I would go in the army, but if I enlisted I had my choice. To add to that the school would give me full academic credit for the year I was in at that time. This meant that after serving I would be junior in college. I had to get one of my parents signature so I called pop and he came down and signed my enlistment papers for the Marine Corps.

Remember, our country had just been attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor.

In March of the next year, two months after I enlisted I went on a train to Paris Island for basic training. we arrived early in the morning and first went to the mess hall and had lima beans, bread and coffee.

After breakfast we went to a huge building where we were given medical shots and very detailed physical examination. Unfortunately I was wearing “saddle shoes” and my new sergeant picked me out and nicknamed me “college.” It stuck with me for the next twelve weeks. Whenever we did something new he would always say, “Show us how to do this, college.” As an example, I had never seen a marine backpack before and he brought it out, unassembled, threw it on the ground and said, show us how to put it together, college. There were two large packs, eight straps and an ammunition belt. He must have had a sense of humor.

Boot camp was a nightmare. we were never allowed to walk anywhere, we had to run. Even in the barracks if we went to the “head” we had to run. Going to the mess hall and coming back, we had to run. Even on Sunday when we went to church, we had to run. We had a couple people who wanted to go to church, so we all had to go.

One time the sergeant came into the barracks in the afternoon and saw a cigarette butt on the floor by one of the bunks. He was livid, we had to fall-out on the compound in full combat uniform, full packs, then we marched twenty miles carrying the butt on a stretcher and dug a grave for that butt and gave it a funeral ceremony with a complete service. I had to do the eulogy and there was no laughing. We then marched back to the barracks arriving just in time for reveille. We then proceeded to do a regular day. No marine in our platoon had trouble sleeping that night.

That sergeant, Sergeant Crow had been on Guadal-canal and I not only respected him, I was “scared to death” of him. The first day we met him he looked at us said, look at the garbage they sent me. Then he said, for the duration, I am your father, your mother and your god. That would scare any seventeen year old. By the way, he was called a drill instructor -MY D.I.

The people in our platoon were mostly from Brooklyn ,and north Carolina. I had never met people like these people but we became dependent upon each other, in the Marine Corps tradition. We had guys who had not finished school and I was assigned to help some of them write letters home and read their mail to them, when they got some mail. Some of them got a lot of mail and I got an education from reading some of the mail. Many of these letters were from their wives and sweethearts and they were a lot older than me. I learned a lot about married life and sex that I had never even thought about. WOW !

Every marine in boot camp had to write home every Saturday afternoon. It was required. On the letter, instead of a stamp we just wrote “FRANKED” and then it didn’t require a stamp. Thank you Ben Franklin.

We spent about three days each week on the rifle range and fired every weapon the marine corps used, including hand-grenades. We had to pass tests on the M-1 and carbine. On the other days we made beach landings on an island just off the coast.We came back to the barracks wet , cold and hungry. I haven’t mentioned close order drill which is a unique form of marching in the corps and our seargent wanted it to be perfect. Sometimes we did close order drill until guys were fainting from exhaustion and we had to walk over them, he wanted us to be Marines.

I graduated from boot camp and was sent to Camp LeJune to fleet marine school. Those are the people who are trained to make beach landings on invasions. When I graduated from that school I was on a train for California.

We left San Francisco on a beautiful sunny morning on a troop transport. Really crowded with marines. The food was okay but we couldn’t take showers so we began to smell pretty bad. The bunks were eight high and I was on the fourth one up. At night everyone snored but it didn’t bother me because we were right over the engine room and they were loud. Eight days later we arrived at Pearl Harbor. I was amazed at all ships that had been sunk and they made sure we saw what had happened on December 7th. This was two years later and they hadn’t yet been able to clean it up. We were there only five days so we didn’t see much of the Hawaiian Islands. At this time we got our mail from home and it was good to hear from everyone until the last letter which I saved for last because it was from Peggy, the girl I went around with in college. It started like this, Dear Tom, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to invite you to my wedding. What a kick in the butt.

I’m sure you wonder why I ever started smoking cigarettes. Well, periodically our D.I. would give us a smoke break. Those that didn’t smoke were given other details like picking up litter, including cigarette butts. It didn’t take much time for me to figure-out that if I smoked I was given a ten minute rest instead of work detail, so I started to smoke. Dumb,Dumb,Dumb.

Marines sing a lot when they have nothing special to do or when they are being moved from place to place. Two of the songs that I remember some of the words to but I can’t write the music. These are love songs for the girls that sent “dear john” letters to marines.

“Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is in the station-
I Love You”.

“Bless them all, bless them all, the small the short and the tall,
There’ll be no promotions this side of the oceans,
So cheer up my lads, BLESS THEM ALL”.

We left not knowing where we were going and a few days later we crossed the equator. It was very hot but each morning we had to go up on deck and do calisthenics. One morning when I came out on the deck I was overwhelmed with the view. As far as I could see in any direction were ships. There must have been two-hundred. Battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and right in the middle of all this were troop ships of which we were one. Then I realized we were going north. I never heard of it before but we were told in our briefing, Siapan. That didn’t sound bad until they explained that it was a Japanese stronghold and we were going in to take it so our B-29 aircraft could reach to Japan and make it back. Didn’t mean anything to me. I was too young to realize what was going on. You can read about it history books so I will not go into detail.

We landed at dawn and spent the day trying to get up the beach a half mile. I was so afraid that day that I wet my pants when we came off the Higgins boat to land on the beach. I wasn’t the only one. That morning I got hit on the back of my neck with a piece of shrapnel but it was superficial and I was back on the line within a half hour. When it turned dark that night each person was alone and hoping to make it through the night. I cried myself to sleep but managed to get through the night.

I must mention that coming off that ship we had to climb over the side and down into landing barge carrying a sixty pound pack, rifle and ammunition. I DON’T like high places. Those ships are big and that’s not water down there, it’s landing barges, and they are not soft but made of steel. About sixty feet down and moving up and down on six to eight foot waves.

It was a very bad battle but we managed to secure the island and enough area so that the C-B’s could start building the runways for those large bombers. I never got to see one at that time but did later.

Three weeks later we were relieved by an army company and we were back on the ship to Midway, a very small island, for a rest leave. For about two months we had very little to do except calisthenics in the morning and resting. They even had movies at night.

We also got mail from home at this time. Another “Dear Tom” letter. My friend that I had baby-sat for was going to get married and I was happy for her. I wrote and told her so. Thirty years later I introduced her to Eddie and they became friends. In fact she and her husband went to dinner with us and we went dancing together. Of course, anyone would become friends with Eddie.

We stayed on that island for about three months then one day we got back on a ship headed for where, we didn’t know. Three weeks at sea where we were briefed about where we were going and what we were up against. Never heard the name before but I remember it now as if it were carved in my head. Iwo Jima.

We were the second wave of marines to land and it was awesome. It looked like a mountain in the middle of the ocean. The island was black volcanic dust and the Japanese were dug in to stay forever.

You have probably seen the picture of the marines raising the flag at the top of the mountain. I was about a mile north of that and didn’t really care about them raising a flag because I was more interested in surviving. I took another small hit, this time in my knee but I was back on the line in thirty minutes. Many marines got wounded but the wounds were not reported if you could go back to duty. Five weeks in hell is enough for anyone so they put us back on the ship. At the time I remember thinking that this no more than an exchange of bodies for land. Our general “Howling mad Smith” made a statement which was in the newspaper back home, “Marines are expendable”. I don’t think it did anything for my mothers moral. We must have done something right because this time we were sent to Hawaii. I thought I was on my way home.

No such luck, I was on my way to Okinawa. After another week at sea we tied-up with another large convoy and headed northwest. We were briefed about the landing and one of the things we were alerted about was all of the poisonous snakes on this island. There were some but most of them were hiding. Another thing we were told about were the Kamikaze planes we would be facing. They didn’t hide! Literally hundreds of them diving at the ships. Many of them hit ships but I was already on the beach when our ship was hit.

I want to say something here about different wars. When I was in combat I always knew who the enemy was and there were none or very few women and children around. We were fighting men. I have talked a lot with friends who were in Viet Nam and they had it much worse because they often didn’t know who they were fighting. There were women and children who sometimes were the ones that killed Americans. In my opinion after reflecting on the whole thing, my war was a totally different thing compared to what they went through. That didn’t make it any easier for me when I was over there. Again, I guess everything is relative.

When we were south of the equator there were many mosquitoes and this is where I contacted malaria. I didn’t get sick until we were on Okinawa. One night I got hit in the left rib with a Japanese twenty-five caliber bullet. It broke my rib but didn’t penetrate more than half inch. Once again I was lucky but I was put in the sick-bay for a couple days and while I was there I started running a high fever. They thought at first that I had an infection but some smart doctor figured-out that I had malaria. It got worse every day and I was evacuated to Hawaii and finally put on a ship going to San Diego and to the naval hospital.