WW2 history published in Lockhart and Luling newpapers
I am honored to include on my website a small portion of the wartime diary of Loy F. Peterson. Loy was the pilot of Satan’s Lady, a most lucky B17. Loy flew 33 missions in her before returning to the States in late June, 1944. The aircraft survived the war, and even more remarkably, never had a wound or death among her crews on the 130 plus missions.
I am deeply indebted to Loy’s son, Roger Sykes, for allowing me the time to read through this awesome document.
Seaman 2nd Class Charles L. Saunders October 16, 1923 – December 7, 1941
Charles Louis Saunders (Sonny Boy) lost his life on December 7, 1941, but his miraculous journey to return to Texas has continued.
Sonny Boy was born to Mortimer Alvin and Melina Falke Saunders on October 16, 1923. He was a very caring, kind, and playful child growing up. In fact, his desire to join the navy just one month after his seventeenth birthday on November 23, 1940, exuberates these characteristics. He had a desire to serve his country but an even greater desire to help his family.
Sonny Boy was the sixth child born to his parents and one of four boys. His oldest brother Adam died at just thirteen months of age. His older sisters were Lillie Mae Saunders Franklin, Mary Alice Saunders Frankland, and Sadie Lee Saunders Dailey. His older brother was Sidney (Buddy) Edward Saunders. Born after Sonny Boy was his sister Anna Belle Saunders VonFeldt and brother Mortimer Virgil Saunders.
Times were difficult growing up as Mortimer Alvin (Sonny Boy’s father) worked in construction and in the rice fields to support his family while Melina (Sonny Boy’s mother) raised children.
Sonny Boy’s strong compassion for giving to others is remembered in a story told by his younger sister Anna Belle. He would do without so she could have shoes to make the daily walk to school. He could not bear to see his little sister struggle in any manner.
Sonny Boy served as a Seaman, Second Class on the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor on Ford Island in Hawaii. He was one of 429 sailors and marines who were killed when
the USS Oklahoma was moored in the December 7 attack by Japanese forces.
There were 390 servicemen, including Sonny Boy, recovered from the ship by divers and salvaging crews as the USS Oklahoma was prepared for righting and was refloated. This salvaging occurred from July 15, 1942 through May 10, 1944. They were initially buried at the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemetaries. In September 1947, the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the original burial sites and moved the remains to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory in efforts to confirm identifications and return these men to their families. Congress and veteran organizations placed a great deal of pressure on the military in 1947 to find a permanent burial site. That permanent burial site was at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific also known as the Punchbowl and the first interment was made on January 4, 1949. The 390 unknown members of the USS Oklahoma were buried in 61 caskets in 45 mass grave locations.
Medals and ribbons are awarded to servicemen who give their life during their service. Sonny Boy was awarded a Purple Heart for Military Merit and three ribbons for American Defense, American Campaign, and Asiatic Pacific Campaign.
These awards were almost a lost memory. After the funeral of Melina Falke Saunders (Sonny Boy’s mother) family members were cleaning out the family home preparing items for an auction. Someone happened to open a sewing machine where an old dusty box was found. In the box were Sonny Boy’s awards.
Anna Belle, the last living sibling of Sonny Boy, had a strong passion for bringing her brother home and laying him to rest at the gravesite their parents prepared for him at the Fairview Cemetery in Winnie, Texas. Records indicate Mortimer Alvin (Sonny Boy’s father) ordered Sonny Boy’s headstone on September 30, 1964.
Up until the last day of her life (July 19, 2019), Anna Belle (Sonny Boy’s sister) never lost hope that her brother would be brought back home to Texas. It was written in her obituary that her advocacy to bring her brother home after all these years will be continued by all who survive her.
This passion became reality in 2015 when a niece (Neica Franklin Bertrand) of Sonny Boy’s was contacted by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). They had tracked her down through her mother’s death records (Lillie Mae Saunders Franklin). In 2015 the DPAA was given authorization to exhume the unknown remains of the servicemen associated with the USS Oklahoma and reexamine them using advanced forensic technology.
It was at that point the military connected with Anna Belle. She worked tirelessly with them by gathering and providing DNA of family members to make a positive identity of Sonny Boy’s remains. She attended the Family Update provided by the DPAA in Denver, Colorado on May 16, 2015, and continued frequent contact as the efforts continued. She always felt a responsibility for Sonny Boy’s death because of his desire to make life better for his parents and younger siblings during their hard times and enlisted to make this happen.
On February 11, 2021, the DPAA notified Sonny Boy’s relatives that the remains of Seaman Second Class Charles Louis Saunders, missing from World War II, had been identified. Laboratory analysis and the totality of circumstantial evidence available identified Sonny Boy’s remains. Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis and mitochondrial and autosomal DNA analysis.
Sonny Boy’s service and death are memorialized in several locations. His name is on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl where a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate his remains have been identified.
The USS Oklahoma Memorial, dedicated on December 7, 2007, on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor is next to the former birth of the USS Oklahoma. The memorial’s black granite walls suggest the once formidable hull of the ship. Each member has a white marble standard engraved with their name that symbolizes an individual in pristine white dress uniform, inspired from the naval tradition of “manning the rails”.
Sonny Boy’s journey began with a dedication to his family and his country. His family is sure that his service included laughter and adventure and for that we are thankful. It is more than likely he perished while helping others. But most of all we, the many nieces and nephews, of this genuine hero are grateful to welcome him back to Texas on December 7, 2021, eighty years after his death where he will be buried next to his parents.
The above story was published by the news staff of The Examiner, a lBeaumont publication, on November 11, 2021. While serving as a visiting Senior District Judge in Liberty County, I had the privilege of meeting Jackie Waller, Assistant Court Administrator for the 75th Judicial District Court. Sonny Boy Saunders was her father’s (Virgil Saunders) older brother.
Attached is wikipedia summary of BB37’s life:
USS Oklahoma (BB-37) was a Nevada-class battleship built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation for the United States Navy, notable for being the first American class of oil-burning dreadnoughts. Commissioned in 1916, the ship served in World War I as a part of Battleship Division Six, protecting Allied convoys on their way across the Atlantic. After the war, she served in both the United States Battle Fleet and Scouting Fleet. Oklahoma was modernized between 1927 and 1929. In 1936, she rescued American citizens and refugees from the Spanish Civil War. On returning to the West Coast in August of the same year, Oklahoma spent the rest of her service in the Pacific.
On 7 December 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, several torpedoes from torpedo bombers hit the Oklahoma‘s hull and the ship capsized. A total of 429 crew died; survivors jumped off the ship 50 feet (15 m) into burning oil on water or crawled across mooring lines that connected Oklahoma and Maryland. Some sailors inside escaped when rescuers drilled holes and opened hatches to rescue them. The ship was salvaged in 1943. Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty. Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hulk sank in a storm while being towed from Oahu, Hawaii, to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay in 1947.
Below are a collection of photos and story of the ill-fated battleship. The narrative and most of the pictures are taken from Ms. Marie Hughes’ incredible compilation of history and family stories, which was prepared in anticipation of the re-burial of Sonny Boy in 2021 at the Fairview Cemetery, Winnie, Texas. The narrative by Ms. Hughes shows the daily and hourly movements and fate of the mighty ship.
With the advent of DNA testing, and at the family’s urging, testing on the unknown sailors and marines recovered from the capsized ship and later buried at The Punchbowl on Oahu, began. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Laboratory used dental records, skeletal remains (which clearly showed Sonny Boy’s bone spur) and DNA to confirm his identification.
Much thanks to again to Jackie Waller for this incredibly poignant slice of history.
A PROUD MARINE TANKER AND VETERAN
1922 – 2005
By TODD A. BLOMERTH
I moved to Lockhart in late 1981. Soon I started hearing about a fellow named Spike Strawn. He and his son Fla owned S&S Fertilizer with an office in a small building on Highway 183 about where the McDonald’s is now. S&S also had a crop-dusting service. Word was that you didn’t want to get crosswise with Spike, as he was someone who didn’t put up with a lot of guff or suffer fools lightly. He was a proud United States Marine who’d fought for our country during World War II, and his training, background, and combat experience made him a fearsome adversary.
When I finally met Spike, I concluded that everything I’d heard was true. Rawboned, tough as shoe leather, and plain spoken to be sure. But there was another side to Spike Strawn. He wasn’t some caricature. He was complex, highly intelligent, often thoughtful man. Sure, he’d let you know when he thought your thinking wasn’t on course. But he was a loving father and grandfather, a raconteur, and, if he decided you were okay, your best friend.
In short, Spike was a living, breathing example of someone whose family had survived the Great Depression, who went through four major island landings in the Pacific against America’s most ferocious and merciless foe, and who’d proved to himself and others that he had what it took. Spike had grit.
Cecil DeFla “Spike” Strawn was born on 4 January 1922 in Lytton Springs, Texas, the third of eight children of Littleton Lawson “Dill” Strawn and Beatrice Lillie (Ward) Strawn. Besides farming, Dill did whatever it took to put food on the family’s table. Dill was a gifted mechanic and could fabricate parts for just about anything. When he wasn’t farming, he worked for various oil companies in the area. Dill also played semi-pro baseball for company teams. Beatrice took care of the growing family. She gardened, canned, cooked, and ensured that Jenella, Helen Louise, Spike, Doyle Ray, Marjorie, Juanita, Herschel and Pat were clothed and clean. The 20s and 30s were lean times, and everyone in the family was expected to contribute to keeping food on the family table.
Schooling started in Lytton Springs. The place had become an oil boom town in the mid-1920s. At that time, it boasted four grocery stores, a confectionary, a barbershop, and Masonic Lodge, as well as several churches. Life was precarious. Spike would often walk to school, sometimes barefoot, even in the winter. In the second grade, he contracted pneumonia and stayed in bed for almost two months. There were no antibiotics. As he recalled in 1995, “they rubbed you with liniment and hoped for the best.” He survived, but a chest x-ray taken when he enlisted in the Marines showed his right lung stopped growing as a result of the disease. It never slowed him down. In the sixth grade, his class had to submit to a series of twenty-one shots because of a rabid dog, which Dill eventually shot.
In high school, Spike played six-man football and basketball. The oil boom was dead by this time, and Lytton Springs suffered mightily. He landed a job earning seven and a half cents an hour picking and sorting tomatoes. A long day would net him 60 to 80 cents, which was substantially more than many grown men were making. Later, he pulled corn and picked cotton. At one point, he earned 40 cents cutting and shucking corn for his uncle. At the end of the week, he’d have $2.50 – a princely sum.
Entertainment was simple. Square dances (without instruments, and only with singing), or catching a ride into Lockhart to see a movie. His best friend was his cousin, Frank Coopwood, Jr. The price of an evening in the county seat: 15 cents for the show, 10 cents for a hamburger, and 5 cents for a Coke.
War news had become commonplace in the late 1930s. Hitler’s Germany had bluffed France and England and recovered Sudetenland, stolen Czechoslovakia, and absorbed Austria. Franco’s Nationalists, with the aid of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy was quickly putting finished to Republican Spain. China was under the boot heel of the Japanese military, which had killed over 200,000 civilians in what was rightfully called “the Rape of Nanking.”
Most Americans were adamant that their country shouldn’t involve itself in another world conflict. Over intense opposition, the first peacetime draft was enacted in mid-1940. Then in late 1940, the National Guard was nationalized for one year. The country slowly awoke to the reality that “the Arsenal of Democracy” needed to do much more than talk about helping its oldest ally, Britain. Any doubts as to the extent of the conflagration were put to rest when Germany turned on a fellow aggressor and attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941.
Meanwhile, the United States imposed an embargo on steel and oil heading toward Japan. It was the last straw to the militarists controlling the Empire’s government. Already badly and surprising beaten when the Japanese Army made a move against the Soviets in Siberia and Mongolia, it turned its interests south, toward British and Dutch colonies… and the American Philippine Commonwealth.
Then came the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. America was “all in.” Less than a year later, on 3 November 1942, Cecil DeFla Strawn enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. After a night in San Antonio’s Crockett Hotel, he and 98 other men from the area were loaded on a train for San Diego, California. Three long days later, they marched two miles to Camp Pendleton, had their heads shaved, and met the drill instructor. The DI quickly assured them that the training base’s colonel was “Big Jesus,” that the DI was “Little Jesus,” and that **** flowed downhill. Weeks of boot camp ensued, and then more training on the rifle range.
Spike asked to become a tanker, and surprisingly, the Marines agreed. Because the USMC didn’t have its own armored school, he spent several months at the Army’s Armored School at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Dill Strawn, determined to see his son, rode a packed train from Texas, standing up the entire way, and spent four days at Fort Knox, sleeping surreptitiously in the barracks with the Marine trainees.
As soon as he returned to California, Spike and his fellow tankers were shipped to Hawaii and became part of a replacement detail. On the Big Island, he and three others were assigned to the 22nd Marine Regiment. He was about to enter the war. The 22nd Marines and its men soon learned they were to be part of a landing force in the Marshall Islands. Spike’s life would never be the same.
On 16 January 1944, Spike and the 2nd Separate Tank Company of the 22nd Marine Regiment boarded the USS President Monroe. After a brief stop at Pearl Harbor (after training on Maui and the Big Island) Spike noted in his pocket notebook that on 23 January he “left Pearl Harbor for the Marshall Islands.” Ten days later, Spike “witnessed my first air and naval bombardment in Marshall Islands.”
The 22nd Marines was part of a large American force attacking the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands in the advance toward the Japanese home islands. Initially held in reserve during the landing on Kwajalein, the 22nd struck Engebi, and after fierce fighting, secured the island. Spike’s notes of 19 February 1944 state: “Landed on next island [Eniwetok] after Army 106th Regiment failed. Much more opposition than expected. So far in all operations 2nd Sep[arate] Tank Co. has lost three tanks and 7 or 8 men.” Over 800 Japanese were killed on Eniwetok.
The baptism under fire continued. The island fighting was extremely vicious. The Japanese rarely surrendered. After three days and nights without rest, what Spike describes as “the last island” in Eniwetok Atoll [probably Parry Island] was attacked. The Americans did a better job of softening up Parry than had been done on Eniwetok. After two days, only 105 Japanese of the 1100 defenders survived to be captured. Spike’s tank company lost ten more men killed.
Finally, Spike’s company was put ashore on a small deserted island in the Kwajalein Atoll chain supposedly for “garrison duty” – and immediately forgotten. With little food, the men resorted to stunning fish with hand grenades. Three weeks later, someone finally remembered the bedraggled bunch and pulled them off the island.
Spike’s mail caught up with him. He discovered that his cousin and best friend, Frank Coopwood, Jr. had been killed in the mountains of central Italy on 23 December 1943 while fighting with the 36th “Texas” Division.
USS Comet AP-166, USS West Point AP-23, LST866, CVE 99 USS Admiralty Islands – some of the ships Spike traveled on in the Pacific
In 1995, Spike recorded some recollections of his time in the Marines. One incident of the Marshall Islands stood out. One of the 22nd’s mortar platoons had an undersized and very young Marine. The kid was deeply loved and treated as if he was the platoon’s mascot. During some point in the fighting, Spike recalls the platoon coming off the line, and everyone in it was “bawling like a baby.” The young marine had been killed by a Japanese flamethrower.
After Kwajalein and Eniwetok, the 22nd Marines was shipped to Guadalcanal. for refitting and training for the next landing. Many of the 22nd’s marines had trained in 1942-1943 in American Samoa. Over a thousand men were discovered to be infected with filariasis, a nasty tropical roundworm. Most had to be evacuated.
Not all deaths were combat related. Spike vividly recalled the death of a tanker. During one operation, the Navy “got scared” and let off the marine tanks from its landing craft in “about 80 feet of water.” A marine named Drumgould was in the gunner’s seat when the thirty-three-ton Sherman drove off the ramp and immediately sank. Somehow, Drumgould pushed through an eight-inch opening, and made it to the water’s surface. His ears, nose and mouth bled from the pressure change. The tank driver was trapped when the Sherman settled, blocking his way out. He died, and Spike recalled Dromgould, haunted by the event, “walking, walking all night long.”
The regiment’s strength was rebuilt, and along with the 4th Marines and an Army regiment, formed into the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade. The newly rebuilt regiment trained intensely. The next stop – the island of Guam.
On 22 July 1944, the Americans began the attack to retake Guam, lost to the Japanese shortly after Pearl Harbor. Guam and nearby Saipan and Tinian could hold airfields within range of the Japanese home islands for the new B-29 bombers. The 1st Provisional Brigade landing was met by ferocious resistance. A beachhead was secured, and then the marines withstood repeated attempts to push them back into the sea. As the tanks landed, Spike spied seven dead marines lying behind a coconut log. All had been killed by a sniper. Spike’s platoon leader, a young lieutenant from Cuero, had predicted he wouldn’t survive. He was right. Within days of the landing, the young officer was killed.
Japanese light tanks were no match for the American’s Shermans. But the Americans’ armor took many losses from suicidal attacks with satchel charges. At night, Spike and other tankers withdrew into the marines’ defensive lines to avoid the enemy’s intense shelling, and sneak attacks.
The island was officially declared “secured” on August 10. By that time, over 11,000 Japanese had been killed. Several thousand fled into the mountainous terrain. . As the mopping up continued, his tank company was tasked with guarding a hospital on the north end of the island. Security was relaxed – there seemed little risk. A young private in the company named Parsons joined a volleyball game nearby – and was shot dead by a sniper. Parsons was one of at least fifteen in the company killed.
The 22nd Marines shipped back to Guadalcanal to refit. Everyone anticipated that the closer to Japan the landings became, the more ferocious the resistance would become. While on Guadalcanal, the 22nd Marines became part of the newly formed 6th Marine Division. Spike’s tank company was designated B Company, 6th Tank Battalion, 22nd Marines.
The next landing – Okinawa. Sixty-six miles long and seven miles wide, it was the largest of the Ryukyu Islands and was considered one of Japan’s home islands. Seven American divisions – four Army and three Marine – landed on 1 April 1945 in the largest amphibious landing of the Pacific War. Nearly 200,000 soldiers and marines,supported by the US Navy’s hundreds of warships, splashed ashore and found virtually no resistance.
Where was the enemy? Soon, the Americans found out.
Okinawa was soon split in two. The Sixth Marine Division swung north. Resistance grew worse as the division advanced. Soon, the remaining Japanese were isolated and destroyed. As noted in Spike’s notes the northern portion of the island was secured by April 22.
A page of Spike’s notes of the fighting in northern Okinawa
The Sixth Marine Division was ordered south. There, over 100,000 Japanese soldiers, marines, naval personnel, along with conscripted Okinawan labor units had turned the island’s southern mountains into an almost impenetrable fortress. The Americans’ naval and air superiority seemed to have little effect against an enemy using an enormous array of tunnels, caves and ingenious defenses commanded by the brilliant General Mitsuru Ushijima. Spike’s notebook entries rarely contain personal reflections. However, the futility of the battle becomes vivid in entry after entry of tanks destroyed, men killed, horrible weather, and combat exhaustion.
One can’t read these shorthand versions of hell, without being moved. Spike speaks of fifty days of rain, of mosquitoes, of casualty figures that beggar the imagination.
Shuri Castle, the Gorge, Tombstone Ridge, Dead Horse Gulch, Naha, Kakazu Ridge, the Pinnacle, Wana Draw. These became names synonymous with misery and death. Rains began, and the front lines began to appear like something out of World War I trench warfare.
Some of the journal entries during and after Okinawa
The enemy was often unseen, hidden in caves and spider holes. High points were taken and lost. Tanks were destroyed by artillery or mines. The killing seemed to go on forever. The horrific battle in Okinawa’s “Death Valley,” resulted in death to hundreds, perhaps thousands of Japanese. “There were 500 to 700 bodies, all over the place,” Spike remembered.
Finally, the weight of American force pushed the remaining Japanese into a smaller and smaller area. By the end of May 1945, over 50,000 Japanese had been killed – yet the battle was far from over. The 6th Marine Division were loaded on ships and made another amphibious landing, helping seal the doom of the remaining defenders
Suddenly, it was over. The cost was dear. Over 12,000 soldiers, sailors and marines died in the fighting and defending against kamikaze air attacks. It is estimated that over 110,000 Japanese died, either in the fighting or by suicide. Sadly, Okinawan civilian losses were huge – well over 100,000. Adding to that, the islanders had been told repeatedly that Americans would rape the women and kill the men. Those Okinawans not used as slave labor and killed during the fighting, had to be convinced that what had been told them was a lie. “The civilians just knew we were going to kill or rape them, because that is what they’d been told.” Instead, Americans went out of their way to assure of the opposite. GIs and marines handed out water, food, and medical supplies to everyone in need.
Like thousands of other fighting men, Spike was diagnosed with “combat fatigue.” He shipped home to USNH San Leandro, dealing with what we now call PTSD. Finally, in December 1945, Sergeant Spike Strawn was honorably discharged from the United States Marines. He’d lost over thirty pounds while in combat and was suffering from malaria. Of his 1022 days in the Marine Corps, 137 had been in some of the worst combat experienced in World War II.
With millions of others, Spike returned home. After blowing of steam “honky-tonking” for about six months, he married and began a family. The drought of the early 1950s made him re-think farming. Like his father Dill, Spike did what was necessary to ensure his family’s well-being. He became a feed salesman for Capitol Feed at one dollar an hour. It wasn’t unusual to work seventy to eighty hours a week. Eventually, Spike started his own fertilizer company, which he operated until he retired.
In 1994, Spike and his buddy Fred Hinnenkamp, flew to the Pacific and revisited some of the areas he’d trained in or fought in. I wonder what memories, good and bad, the trip brought to his mind.
Spike Strawn’s proudest achievement was that “he helped raise three good kids.”
I visited Spike at his apartment a year before he died. He showed me a large United States Marine Corps blanket covering his bed. I believe his second proudest achievement was serving his country in the USMC.
Semper Fideles, Sergeant Strawn.
By Todd A. Blomerth
It is July of 1944. You are the parents of six sons. The oldest five are in the Armed Forces of the United States. Four are overseas in combat zone assignments. A fifth will soon be there. The only son left at home, Michael is a young boy. You proudly display five Blue Stars in your front window. You’ve seen Gold Stars appear in your neighbors’ windows and seen the grieving parents attempt to deal with the death of a child. Every day the war drags on, the chances become greater that you too will lose a child to war.
Minor, your oldest, is with the 36th Infantry (“Texas”) Division which has been badly bloodied in Italy. Arthur (“Jack”) witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor and is with the Army Air Force somewhere in the Pacific Theater. Risdon (“Buck”) is serving as a Military Policeman, somewhere in Italy. Douglas (“Tinker””) is a crewman on a B17 bomber somewhere in Europe. Harvey (“Salty”) has recently joined the Navy as a 17-year-old and will soon see combat as a sailor in the Pacific.
The daily life of Risdon Hendricks and his wife Sidney Frances (Pierce) Hendricks must have at times been excruciating. Thankfully, their boys all came home. It nearly wasn’t so.
Tinker Hendricks enlisted in the Army Air Force right after his eighteenth birthday. Soon he was at Sheppard Army Field, outside of Wichita Falls, Texas beginning his training as a bomber crew member. He completed his training as B17 aircrew man at Avon Park Army Air Field. The B17, dubbed “Flying Fortress,” was a high altitude, four-engine, heavy strategic bomber. The crew consisted of ten men: flight commander, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, radio operator, flight engineer and upper turret gunner, two waist gunners, tail gunner and ball-turret gunner. By the summer of 1943, the “G” model was replacing older models. The aircraft bristled with firepower, having thirteen heavy machineguns. Despite its name, unless escorted to the target by fighters such as the P51 Mustang, it was no match against enemy air attacks. Even with fighter support, anti-aircraft or “flak” guns remained deadly.
On May 10, 1944, the crew members of a brand-new B17-G received their orders for overseas. The ten men, four officers and six sergeants, were to proceed from Grenier Field, New Hampshire to England via the North Atlantic Route. And so began Sergeant Douglas W. “Tinker” Hendricks’ combat tour as a waist gunner on a Flying Fortress.
Tinker later wrote: We were assigned to a new B17G at Hunter Field, Georgia…From Hunter Field we flew to Fort Dix NJ to Grenier, to Bermuda to Marrakech [Morocco] to Tunis to Gioia Italy to Tortorello [Tortorella] Italy attached to the 97th Bomb Group (H) AAF-342 Bomb Squadron.
It took the crew ten days to make the Atlantic and Mediterranean crossing. The 342nd had seen combat since 1942. (Memphis Belle was part of the squadron when based in England). By 1944 the 342nd was part of the newly formed 15th Air Force, flying missions against the Axis from Italy.
As can be seen from his mission reports, it didn’t take long for the crew to see action over enemy territory. Because of the squadron’s location, their missions were long. The heavily defended Ploesti oil refineries in Romania – 7 hours and 45 minutes. Vienna, Austria – 6 hours and 35 minutes. By July 16th, Tinker’s crew had flown eleven combat missions.
On July 19, 1944, Tinker’s bomber, commanded by First Lieutenant David Haas, took off from Amendola, Italy with a full bomb load. Part of a large formation, its mission was to bomb a ball bearing factory on the north side of Munich. The normal ten-man crew was supplemented with a photographer. The crew consisted of Lt. David Haas (command pilot), Lt. David Hersha (co-pilot), Lt. Frank Coleman (navigator), Lt. Peter Parialo (bombardier), Tech Sergeant James Loomis (radio operator), Tech Sergeant Harold Little (engineer-armorer), Staff Sergeant Arthur Manosh (left waist gunner), Staff Sergeant Douglas Hendricks (right waist gunner), Sergeant Edward Williams (ball turret gunner), Staff Sergeant George Bernall (tail gunner), and Staff Sergeant Donald Black (photographer/gunner). Lt. Parialo, the bombardier, was not part of the aircraft’s regular crew, having been assigned the duties for the one mission.
The escorting fighters kept any German fighters at bay. They were no help against German anti-aircraft. As the formation approached the target, the flak became heavier and heavier. Just after the formation released its ordnance from approximately 25,000 feet, Tinker’s B17 took a direct hit on its right inboard engine. The wounded aircraft lagged back and dropped in elevation as Lt. Haas struggled to control it. Less than a minute later, he would be dead.
After the war, Sergeant Little was interviewed. He wrote that the last time he saw 1st Lieut. Haas, the pilot was in the cockpit, and that he could not have bailed out. “According the words of the top turret gunner, the last burst of flak hit the pilot, which caused severe injury and [sic] going down with the ship.”
Lt. Parialo, the fill-in bombardier, was interviewed after the war. His recollection was vivid:
Staff Sergeant Black remembers the event a bit differently:
The post-mission interviews tell the chilling story. As shown in the typewritten comments of another aircraft’s crewman: “After it dropped about 5000 feet, it blew up.”
The final tally – seven survived. Four did not. Lt. Haas clearly died when the aircraft blew up. Loomis and Williams may have jumped and couldn’t or didn’t activate their parachutes. Staff Sergeant Manosh was captured, and quite possibly murdered.
Tinker was captured and shipped to Stalag Luft 4, a prisoner of war camp for Allied airmen. The subsequent months were anything but pleasant.
Stalag Luft 4 was located in northern Prussia It held over eight thousand downed airmen. Survival was bleak. The prisoners’ day to day existence was challenged by the weather off the Baltic Sea. By 1944, average Germans were suffering from the Allies’ continuous bombings. While Germany to a large extent attempted to honor the Geneva Convention on captured prisoners, the reality of life in Germany guaranteed that the Allied airmen in Stalag Luft 4 lived a life of deprivation. Inadequate heath and washing facilities, unheated and overcrowded barracks, open air latrines and poor quality food were the order of the day. The prisoners lost weight at an alarming rate. What correspondence allowed was heavily censored. Tinker and the other prisoners of war were not allowed to mention anything remotely disparaging about their condition and treatment.
Delivery of Red Cross parcels was spotty due to the Axis’ damaged rail system. They were a godsend for nutrition and morale. American parcels contained, among other things, Spam, powdered milk, sugar, coffee, tuna, soap, cigarettes, and soup concentrate. Often, the parcels were stolen or pilfered by camp guards.
In early 1945, the Soviet advance threatened the German homeland. Rather than releasing the prisoners, the Germans decided to march the Stalag’s POWs west. The result was a grueling 500 mile trek through one of the worst winters in European history. Dubbed the ‘Black March,’ it lasted eighty-six days. The POWs walked up to twenty miles daily, usually sleeping in the open, with little food or water. Collaboration with Germans was forbidden, but often the POWs were able to trade jewelry, watches and cigarettes for food from farmers. Water often came from ditches or snowmelt. Everyone was lice infested. Most suffered from dysentery, which they treated by eating charcoal. Pellagra, typhus, tuberculosis, trench foot, diphtheria and pneumonia were rampant.
POWs from several camps in the east arrived at Stalag XI-B near Fallingbostel around April 3, 1945. With the Americans and British encroaching from the west, the Germans decided the haggard and unhealthy men were to be moved again – this time to the east. Because of the POWs’ deteriorating condition (and their guards’ awareness that their roles would soon be reversed) they moved only four to five miles a day. Finally, on the morning of May 2, 1945, British forces liberated them.
The men were immediately checked medically, given new clothing, and placed in decent surroundings. With adequate food and medical care, they began to gain weight. Their war now really was over.
Important to the families were the telegrams announcing sons, husbands, and brothers were on their way back to the beloved United States of America.
Tinker’s survival was remarkable. Also remarkable was his mother’s correspondence with Sgt. Little’s wife, one which has survived over seventy years. Mrs. Hendricks’ missive, in beautiful cursive, shows her concern, and also shows an amazingly accurate recitation of the Stalag Luft 4 POWs’ trek across Nazi Germany.
After the war, Tinker married Beverly Davenport from Prairie Lea. They had one child, Shirley. After Beverly’s untimely death, he married Dorothy Valla. They had two children, Russell and Mark. Tinker worked for Mobil Oil and later for a perforating company. Douglas ‘Tinker’ Hendricks passed away in 2009.
Tinker inside a B17 at an air show in San Marcos. I wonder what was going through his mind.
Like so many of our fighting men of that era, Tinker considered his experience just part of ‘doing his duty.’ His life after World War II was that of a hard working American. He married, raised a family, and had grandchildren. His was a good and productive life. Tinker was proud of his service, but at the same time, didn’t consider it any more that part of his obligation as an American. He kept contact with some of his crew members, exchanging information on families and jobs. There was no bragging or complaining.
He truly was a wonderful example of the Greatest Generation.
I met Jack Wilson when Patti and I moved to Lockhart over 35 years ago. I am not sure I have ever met another person who has exhibited such a great enjoyment of life. He is absolutely convinced (and most convincing) that “there is a God,” that but for God’s intervention he would not have survived to tell the stories he recounts, and most of all, and that he has been richly blessed by God. He will not hesitate to tell anyone who will listen that his life has been a whole lot of fun. Sure, there have been some tough times. But nothing has changed Jack Wilson’s belief that it has been one heck of a ride.
Jack was the youngest child of Clarrissa (Dennis) and James Floyd Wilson. His older sisters were Claudia Roberta, Martha Mae, and Julia Clarrissa. Jack’s mom was of a pioneer family from Moran, in Shackleford County, and his father was from Orange, in far East Texas. Jack’s mother and father met and married in Carrizo Springs in 1911. By 1917, the Wilson family had moved to Lockhart. James was an auto mechanic, and a gifted one, all his life. He worked for Citizens Autos in 1917, and later for Lockhart Motor Company. Jack was born in Lockhart in 1922. His nickname – Jack – was given him by a coach in high school who didn’t like his given name. He has gone by Forrest or Jack ever since.
Jack’s childhood was by his account a very happy one. “I really had a wonderful family,” he says. Sadly, in 1936 his mother died of what was described as pellagra. Normally describing a niacin deficiency, it probably was an indicator of a more serious disorder. Regardless, Clarrissa, who was deeply loved and admired, was gone. Later, James remarried to Esther Chapman. She was a stern but loving step-mom. “We were poor as hell,” Jack recalls. James Wilson worked six days a week, often twelve hours a day, to put food on the family table. But Sunday was the Lord’s Day, and the Wilson family was in very regular attendance at Lockhart’s First Presbyterian Church.
Jack attended Lockhart schools. His chums included Bobby Balser, Herb Reid, and Mack Connolly. He played football in high school. “We weren’t all that good,” Jack says, “but we sure had a lot of fun trying.” He had a burning desire to attend Texas A&M, but in June of 1941 the United States was still in the throes of the Depression. Fortunately, his sister Claudia had married a Former Student who was a successful engineer, and the couple gave Jack $1000. “I knew that would get me through an entire year,” Jack recalls. “After that I figured I’d find a way to finish up.” A fish in the Corps of Cadets, he was assigned to G Company – Infantry, in the new Quadrangle near Duncan Dining Hall (its twelve dormitories are still Corps housing). Mack Connolly’s mother drove Jack and Mack to college. They were to graduate with the Class of 1945. Neither made it. Mack would eventually drop out, become an artillery officer, and be killed in combat in Germany three weeks before the end of the war. Jack ran out of money after the first year, hitched a ride to Waco, and went to work helping build Waco Army Air Field (later James Connolly Air Force Base). He received his draft notice while working there, so decided he wanted to be an Army Air Corps pilot. First he had to pass the written test – and he didn’t! He heard the Naval Air Corps written test was easier, so he took that, passing with a 90. The grueling physical exam was a breeze to a young man who’d known nothing but hard work. When he found he was officially a Naval Aviation Cadet, ‘I thought I had gone to heaven,” he recalls. “I was in the naval air corps, and I had never been in an airplane!”
Things just kept getting better. Jack was inducted and sent to Schreiner Institute (now Schreiner University) in Kerrville where he took ground school classes, and soloed in a Piper Cub after 8 hours of dual instruction. From there, he entrained for California. He and other air cadets on the train thought the worst when the train passed along the misery of Ft. Ord. Once again, Jack’s guardian angel was with him. The cadets wound up housed in one of the most luxurious hotels of its time. Hotel Del Monte, in Monterey, California had been requisitioned by the Navy. Instead of tents, the aviation cadets were ensconced in fancy hotel rooms. “The place even had a heated swimming pool.” Granted, there was a lot of spit and polish, military routine, and schooling, but mostly “they were trying to make gentlemen out of us,” he remembers. “And it was near the Pebble Beach Golf Course. It was high kicking.”
Hutchinson, Kansas was no Monterey, but here, Jack learned to fly the Stearman PT-17 “Kaydet” biplane. Then it was south to Pensacola, Florida for advanced training in a Vultee “Vibrator.” At Pensacola, he transitioned into the SNJ or AT-6 “Texan.” While at Naval Air Station Green Cove Springs, he was given a choice of staying in naval aviation, or transferring to the US Marines. Jack joined the US Marines. “I always wanted to be a Marine,” he says. “They were the toughest.” And besides, the transition might get him into the war faster.
He was then introduced to America’s early Marine and aircraft carrier-based workhorse, the Grumman F4F Wildcat. It was a tough bird, but could be tricky to fly. 27 cranks were required to retract the landing gear. In addition, the landing gear was narrow, which could give a pilot nightmares if there were crosswinds – it was easy to ground loop. However, with 1200 horsepower, it was a joy for a young man wanting to fly a mean combat aircraft.
While manuever flying with Wildcats over Pensacola, his four plane formation was “attacked” by Army Air Force P-47s. “They came screaming through us, and the war was on.” The chase plane instructor’s screamed radio messages to resume the formation were gleefully ignored, as mock dog fights erupted. Jack laughs as he recalls that “this was the closest I got to the war!” Another time, his flight took off for training from one of the auxiliary fields near Pensacola. When they landed, he saw all sorts of reporters and photographers standing around, waiting for several groups of pilots to enter the hangars. “I thought they wanted to interview me,” he says. Not hardly. They clustered around another tall Marine. “Who is that?” he asked his buddies. “That’s Ted Williams.” Jack asked, “Who is Ted Williams?” The response: “You dumb ——, he’s the greatest baseball player in history.” Later, Jack and his buddies got to meet the Red Sox hero. Turning down a chance to fly night fighters (“I hated night flying”) he jumped at an assignment to a training squadron in Cherry Point, North Carolina.
Jack transitioned to one of the greatest fighters of World War II – the Vought F4U Corsair. This gull-winged fighter was (and is) a thing of beauty. Although the Navy flew it off carriers in World War II and in Korea, its true home was with the Marine Corps. Powered by a 2000 horsepower Pratt and Whitney R2800 Double Wasp radial engine, it had an outstanding career as a combat aircraft. If there is any doubt as to Jack’s love for this aircraft, ask to see the ring he wears, and which he and daughter Stephanie designed – the outline of the F4U is a prominent feature.
He and other pilot trainees were hot to get into the war. But no matter how hard he tried, something would always derail his attempts. While training on the Corsair, he received his next set of orders – not overseas, but to Floyd Bennett Field in New York. For the next 15 months, Jack flew single engine aircraft – mostly fighters and torpedo bombers – from factories to various airfields all over the United States. He felt God’s saving grace on many occasions. One in particular: horrible weather at Jackson, Mississippi had all aircraft grounded until 4 p.m. when the tower claimed the weather was clearing, and gave Jack clearance for Ft. Worth. He had allowed a sailor to hitch a ride in the belly of the torpedo bomber he was ferrying. As he climbed into the clouds, lightning and turbulence increased. With nightfall approaching and flying conditions incredibly dangerous, he and another aircraft were dead reckoning, without radio contact. It looked like the end. “I knew I had to get that plane on the ground, but I had no idea where I was,” he says. “I looked down, and there was a tiny part in the clouds, so I spun down and darned if I hadn’t shown up in Ft. Worth! God had literally saved my life.” After landing safely, the sailor emerged badly shaken from the belly of the plane and said he would “find another ride.” He also stole Jack’s expensive Parker pen!
The war ended, and Jack was transferred to Quantico, Virginia for advanced officer classes. One day, he glanced down at the newspaper’s daily horoscope. “I NEVER read those damned things,” he says. But this day he did. The horoscope said, “You will take a long trip over water in three days.” Coincidence? Of course, but the following morning he got orders sending him to Asia. From San Francisco, he boarded a “slow boat to China.” Traveling at 8 knots per hour, it took 30 days to arrive at the Chinese mainland, where he became part of Operation Beleaguer. Thousands of young Americans had trained intensively for the invasion of Japan. When Japan surrendered, there were over 500,000 Japanese and Korean troops in Northern China needing repatriating. Also, the US had, somewhat reluctantly provided support to the Nationalists in the fight against Japan, as well as in the decade long civil war against Mao Zedong’s communists. American Marines were landed to maintain some sort of stability, to fill the vacuum created by the surrender, and to allow the US recognized Nationalist Chinese to re-occupy many cities. American marines landing at Tientsin (Tianjin) were met with a tumultuous welcome. The First Marine Air Wing took over airfields in and around Peiping (Beijing). The early euphoria exhibited by most Chinese masked a very unsettled landscape of warring parties. It quickly became obvious that warlords, communists, Nationalists and others were going to make the American presence on the mainland of China an increasingly dangerous mission. In the words of Marine Brigadier General R.G. Owens, Jr.:
On both political and moral grounds, it was impossible for the United States to take a decisive military role in another nation’s civil war, and the average Marine on postwar duty in China found himself an uneasy spectator or sometimes an unwilling participant in a war which he little understood and could not prevent. A steady procession of “incidents” involving Marine guards and raiding Communists continued until the last Marine cleared Tsingtao in the spring of 1949.
Jack’s involvement was mercifully short. In unarmed F4U Corsairs, he and others flew reconnaissance missions from dusty, hot airfields. “All I remember was that there were a hell of a lot of communists swarming all over the hills.” Within two months, he was ordered home. Thankfully, the return trip to the USA was on a C-54 transport. Shortly before leaving, he got into a poker game with his last twenty dollars, walking away with a large pot. “I bought Chinese silks for my step-mother and all my sisters,” he told me. Arriving in San Francisco, he entrained for San Diego and discharge. Once there he pleaded with the Marines to allow him to stay in. He loved his military flying experience and wanted to make a career of it. “Hell no,” he was told. “We’ve got thousands [of young pilots] like you. You can’t stay in.” So he didn’t. Jack returned to Lockhart and went to work for Stripling Blake Lumber Company. Jack married Fayrene Bolton in 1949. She was a West Texas girl who had attended West Texas State, and landed a job with a federal old age pension office in Lockhart. They would have two children, Stephen Floyd and Stephanie Ann (Riggin).
Soon after they married, Jack was called back to active service because of the outbreak of war in Korea. He was given the opportunity to learn another type of aviation skill – flying helicopters. After some initial uneasiness, he learned the intricacies of rotor flying near Santa Ana, California. In 1952, Fayrene gave birth to their son Stephen – now an innovative and successful architect. Jack spent a peripatetic two years on active duty. Three things stand out of his time:
He got to meet Igor Sikorsky, the Russian-American designer of the first viable American helicopter. He recalls this genius as a person who had a photographic memory, and who wasn’t’ afraid to ask aviators what could be done to make his designs better.
His “overseas” duty – again, the Good Lord kept him from harm’s way – as rather than the dangers of Korea, he spent several months in Hawaii, assisting in training and military exercises.
Finally, he recalls participation in an atomic bomb test. Beginning in early 1951, the United States detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert, often within eyesight and seismic shock range of Las Vegas. It is hard to believe now, but in some early tests, American soldiers were used as guinea pigs to check ‘survivability.’ In several, helicopters were used to transport troops into nearby areas shortly after detonations. He was sitting as co-pilot in a helicopter when a ‘low yield’ atomic bomb detonated some 15 miles away, before he could turn to avoid looking at it (which he shouldn’t have been doing anyway) – or as he says, “that damned thing went off at the count of three [instead of at the zero count].” Temporarily blinded, he speaks in awe of the brilliance of the explosion that seemed “far brighter than the sun.”
Jack was finally discharged in 1954. The Marine Corps decided this time that it wanted him to make a career of it. He refused, saying, “I wanted to stay in after the last war and you wouldn’t let me. Now I’ve got a family, so to heck with that.” Daughter Stephanie came along in 1955.
In 1970, Jack and George Cardwell purchased Stripling Blake’s Lockhart operation. George retired in1980, and Jack bought out his partner. This thriving business, now Wilson Riggin Lumber Company, is owned and operated by his daughter and son-in-law Mark Riggin. They have followed Jack’s example, giving back to their community in countless ways.
Among many other achievements, Jack has been a Boy Scout scoutmaster, avid fisherman and golfer, and remains a devout Presbyterian. He helped start the “Fun-tier Days” which is now Lockhart’s annual Chisholm Trail Roundup. In 1977, he was honored as Lockhart’s Most Worthy Citizen. His artistic, whimsical and humorous flair helped create the often hilariously and ingeniously designed Chisholm Trail parade floats for which the lumber company is famous.
His beloved Fayrene passed away twenty eight years ago. A few years later, Jack married Kathy Harrell. He has been doubly blessed by the two beautiful women he has been privileged to be with. He lives in a house that he helped design (and which son Steve helped adapt) in 1970s on Merritt Drive. Jack’s days continue to be busy. He spends most of each day at the nursing home with his wife Cathy, taking breaks to ensure Mark and Stephanie are properly running the lumber company. Until very recently, he ensured the esperanzas and other flowers in First Presbyterian’s planters were the envy of anyone with a garden.
As he says, “It’s been a heck of a ride.”
POSTSCRIPT: I wrote this story in July of 2016. My friend Jack Wilson died on June 6, 2019 at the age of 97. I think he would have approved of his death coming on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. He was a hell of an hombre. TAB
A CALDWELL COUNTY FARMER AND WARRIOR
WILLIAM MCGREGOR “BILL” TAYLOR
1921-1997
RECIPIENT OF TWO SILVER STARS, A BRONZE STAR, AND THREE PURPLE HEARTS
By Todd Blomerth
In 1945, William McGregor “Bill” Taylor finally made it home from the war in Europe, but not in the way he had hoped. Severely wounded on December 9, 1944, he spent nine months in hospitals in France, England, and finally at Wm. C. Borden General Hospital in Chickasha, Oklahoma, recovering from shrapnel wounds. For the rest of his life, his body bore evidence of what he endured, including small bits of shrapnel that would occasionally come to the surface of his skin.
Bill Taylor died in 1997. His is a story of survival, almost from the day he was born. He was one of the greatest of the Greatest Generation.
Born in 1921, Bill was the eighth and last child of John Hugh Taylor and Emma (Williams) Taylor. His oldest sister, Ella, died in 1910. She was followed by Luke (1902-1946), Bauzzle Turner (1905-1959), Martha Ann (Dinges) (1907-1971), Pearl Ether (1909-1976), Myrtle Ollie (Mercer) (1913-1972), and Jess Willard (1913-1946).
The family farmed and ranched outside of McMahan. Tragedy struck early. When he was nine, Bill’s father died of a stroke. His mother died two years later. Now married, older sister Myrtle Mercer took him in to raise and for several years, Bill attended the tiny Oak Forest School, outside of Gonzales, Texas. He never finished high school. He returned to McMahan, but “got tired of milking cows,” so, at sixteen, he enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Bill was assigned to a CCC company stationed at Glorieta, New Mexico. For a year, he and other young men worked on public works projects, and were required to send most of their pay home to help support their families.
Returning home to McMahan, he worked on the family farm. Perhaps 
encouraged by older brother Bauzzle, on September 10, 1940, he enlisted at Lockhart in the Texas National Guard’s Company F, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th “Texas” Infantry Division.
To say that the United States was unprepared for World War II is a huge understatement. The pre-war Guard units were poorly equipped and undermanned. That didn’t prevent the Texas Division’s men from feeling greatly honored to be a part of the historic military unit. In the years to come, the 36th Infantry Division’s combat record would more than justify its members’ pride.
Bill and older brother Bauzzle in 1940 Company F roster. Company F, 141st Infantry, drilled in Lockhart. Luke was also a member. Company I, 141st Infantry, drilled in Luling. Lockhart also was home to the Regimental Medical Detachment.
Realizing that the United States would soon be drawn into the world conflict that had begun in China in 1937 and in Poland in 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt nationalized all National Guard units in late November, 1940. Bill had been in Company F for less than three months. Farmers and shopkeepers who were accustomed to weekend drills and two week summer camps found themselves in a full-time military force desperately in need of training, leadership and equipment. Early in 1941, the Division, with ranks swelling 
Bill, a Texan in the harsh winter snow of Massachusetts – early 1943
with new enlistees and draftees, began training at Camp Bowie, outside of Brownwood, Texas. Bill and his buddies endured rather Spartan conditions at the unfinished post. Training accelerated, and the Division participated in pre-war maneuvers in Louisiana and the Carolinas. The Division moved to Camp Blanding, Florida, and then to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. Finally, in late March and early April 1943, the Division loaded on ships. Bill Taylor arrived in North Africa on April 13, 1943.
The Texas boys were eager for action. What they got was more training, and occasionally, guarding thousands of Italian and German prisoners of war. The Allies invaded the island of Sicily in July 1943, but the 36th Division remained in North Africa.
On September 9, 1943, F Company, 141st Infantry Regiment, saw its first action. It was very nearly its last. The Italians had suddenly surrendered to the Allies, and some Allied commanders expected little opposition to the landings near Salerno, Italy. The American and British divisions were put onto beaches split by a river. There was insufficient pre-landing bombardment. Unknown to the Allies, German troops had quietly moved
into the surrendering Italians’ defensive positions. The 36th and 45th Divisions were nearly pushed off the beachheads by the well-entrenched enemy. Bill saw many men die that day. The 36th Infantry Division lost 250 mean killed in one day.
Destroyers and cruisers moved dangerously close to the shore and fired at almost pointblank range at the enemy. Overcoming the horrific enemy counterattacks, the 36th pushed ashore, and very slowly began the northward push toward Rome. The ‘soft underbelly of Europe’ turned out to be anything but. Mountains succeeded mountains and the Allies advanced against a well trained enemy. Rain, mud, cold, artillery barrages, snipers, and incomprehensible orders to take hills that hid German fortifications were the order of the day. The results were predictable. Young men were wounded and killed. Somehow, Bill survived bloody battles that drained the Texas Division of many good men. San Pietro, Mt. Lungo, Cassino and the Rapido River became synonymous with often unnecessary suffering.
The battered 36th Division was pulled off the front line in March 1944 to reequip and replace men lost. Meanwhile, in a badly executed attempt at an end-run around the Germans, Americans landed a force on the beaches at Anzio, sixty miles from Rome. Again, the Germans were nearly successful in pushing this force into the sea. The 36th Division went back into action, shoring up the beachhead, on May 22, 1944. The men of the 36th were instrumental in the Anzio breakout. The 141st Infantry Regiment captured the town of Velletri. The German defenses began to crumble and Rome was captured on June 6, 1944.
The Bronze Star is awarded for acts of valor in combat. Somewhere during the fighting in Italy, Bill was awarded a Bronze Star. While his platoon was retreating under withering fire from enemy tanks, “Sgt. Taylor improvised a litter with poles and blankets and aided by a buddy ran through the fire to rescue their wounded lieutenant.”
The Silver Star is this country’s third highest combat decoration for gallantry in action. Only the Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor stand above it. Sergeant Bill Taylor earned two Silver Stars.
The first was during the break-out from Anzio toward Rome. The Gonzales, Texas newspaper later described what happened:
[Sgt. Taylor] attacked a tank which was holding up the movement of his company from a road junction…, and while the tank’s guns tore limbs from the trees over his head, he slammed a bazooka shell into the enemy vehicle and knocked it out. “We fired simultaneously,” recalled Sgt. Taylor. “I had to peer through the foliage of the broken tree limbs which were covering me to get a look at that smoking tank.” His squad arose and finished off the Nazis and took 18 prisoners and the company resumed their advance on Rome. Sgt. Taylor was decorated with the Silver Star for bravery and resourcefulness.
The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed while serving with the U.S. military. Sergeant Bill Taylor was awarded three Purple Heart decorations.
The first Purple Heart came during combat somewhere north of Rome, Italy. On June 17, 1944 a mortar shell exploded in a tree burst, and shrapnel struck him under his left arm. Fortunately, the wound was not serious, and Bill remained with Company F, where he was now a platoon sergeant.
The exhausted 36th Infantry Division was again taken out of the front line in Italy to prepare for another beach attack. Troubled by the slow movement against the Germans in the tangle of hedgerows after the Normandy Invasion, Allied commanders landed it as part of a large military force in Southern France. Thankfully, this seaborne attack went smoothly. Soon, Bill and Company F were pushing northward as the Allies tried unsuccessfully to surround and capture the thousands of enemy soldiers retreating toward the mountainous regions near the German border.
The weather turned cold and wet. The enemy retreat slowed. The Allies’ supply lines stretched thin. I’m sure the ‘old hands’ who’d been in 141st Infantry Regiment wondered constantly whether the war would ever end, and whether they’d live to see that day. As the Allies closed on the Rhineland, the terrain became a huge factor.
Bill’s second Purple Heart resulted from more serious wounds. On October 4, 1944, he and his men were returning from a successful reconnaissance mission when an enemy shell landed nearby. Its shrapnel shredded the shoulder of Bill’s field jacket and some pierced his throat. He was patched up at an aid station, where he recruited his commanding officer’s help to avoid being evacuated to a hospital.
Reading combat reports and histories of late 1944, I was struck with the descriptions of the 36th Infantry Division as being “tired and undermanned.” Clearly, attrition had begun to affect the unit’s readiness. Needing an additional four thousand men, it never got them. The reality of American combat in Europe at this time was that there weren’t enough properly trained soldiers in the pipeline to replace the large number of those wounded or killed.
By late October, the Division was down to two-thirds its authorized strength, and part of a slow moving offensive in the gloomy Vosges Mountains. Nearing the German border, the enemy became more and more desperate. Hitler ordered his generals to strike back at the advancing Allies, in part to keep attention away from the thousands of soldiers massing in the Ardennes for what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The fighting was vicious, and often hand-to-hand.
Near the French town of Saint Die-des-Vosges, near the German border, on November 1, 1944, Technical Sergeant Bill Taylor earned his second Silver Star. The citation speaks for itself:
William M. Taylor, technical sergeant, Company F, 141st Infantry Regiment, for gallantry in action on 1 November 1944 in France. During an attack against an enemy-held hill, Sgt. Taylor located the hostile machine gun which was delaying the advance of his platoon and immediately opened fire on the enemy weapon. After several anti-tank grenades had failed to dislodge it, he called for a friendly tank which was supporting the attack and directed it in knocking out the machine gun emplacement. Then, advancing directly in the face of heavy small arms fire, he led his platoon in an assault against the hostile force and with machine guns and tank fire, killed 12 of the enemy soldiers, captured 14 and completely routed the remainder of the hostile troops. By his personal courage and aggressive leadership, he enabled his unit to seize its objective. His gallant reflects great credit upon himself and the armed forces of the United States.
Bill’s modest version was that “swapping machine gun and small arms fire was getting us nowhere and looked like it would prove costly in the long run. So we had the tank blast their positions while we rushed up the hill and wiped them out. Thanks to the bravery of the men, it worked OK.”
Bill’s luck ran out on December 9, 1944 near the town of Riquewihr. Fanatical fighting erupted as the 141st took two small hills, and were then counter-attacked. The battle raged for hours, and Company F fought off a determined enemy in the Bois De Kientzheim. Severely wounded by mortar shrapnel, Bill was evacuated to a hospital in Paris. He later told his wife Jimmie that while in Paris, he stayed awake all night, quietly loosening bloody bandages. He knew they were to be changed the next morning, and the pain would be excruciating.
Bill was moved to the 187th General Hospital in England, and finally to the United States. In all, he spent nearly nine months recovering from his wounds.
Technical Sergeant Bill Taylor’s discharge record with dates of wounds, and list of awards and decorations
Bill put the war’s miseries behind him. He farmed and ranched. In 1949, he married Jimmie Secrest in Uvalde, Texas. She comes from a ranching family with roots in Gillespie and Uvalde Counties. Jimmie recalls their wedding day laughingly. They almost didn’t make it to the Justice of the Peace. Rain began filling a low water crossing. Desperate to get to the judge’s office in Uvalde from her grandmother’s house on the Nueces River, before the water closed the road, the couple eased into the crossing, only to have their car stall in the rising water. Jimmie punched the starter button to jump the car ahead, while Bill got out and pushed. Finally out of the water, they looked back to see a relative frantically waving to get their attention. Bill had forgotten their wedding license. Back through the water he trudged. Despite the rocky start, the two had a wonderful marriage. They were blessed with two children; John Wayne, who is married to Diana Lynn, and Peggy June, who is married to Weston Voigt. The family members were faithful members of McMahan Baptist Church.
Jimmie, along with her best friend, Bobbie Dan Gideon, retired from the Lockhart State Bank. Bill farmed and ranched all his life. He also raised watermelons. He suffered from heart disease, and also underwent two hip replacements. He suffered a series of heart attacks, and died at St. David’s Hospital in January 1997. He was seventy-six years old. He is buried in the Jeffrey Cemetery.
Did Bill suffer from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of what he endured? No doubt he did, but showed little outward sign of it. Jimmie’s only recollection along that line was of the time, when firecrackers went off on the Courthouse Square, Bill instinctively threw himself to the ground. He didn’t talk much about his ordeal. He was quiet, almost bashful at times. Jeffrey Van Horn remembers him fondly. Before Bill and Jimmie build their own house between Lockhart and McMahan, the couple lived for a dozen years on the Van Horn property near Tilmon. “You couldn’t ask for a nicer man,” recalls Jeff. “He and Jimmie were good friends with my mother and father.”
In 1983, there was a reunion of some of the men who served in Company F. Bill’s former company commander, Bill McFadden attended, and later wrote a letter to Bill. Nearly forty years later, McFadden remembered that “the only time that I ever cried in WWII was when I helped you on a stretcher at Riquewihr.”
Bill’s Company Commander’s letter in 1983
What praise! His words speak more clearly of Bill’s courage and leadership than any military commendation.
Grandson John Paul Taylor’s shadowbox for Bill’s decorations that he made for Jimmie
Various newpaper clippings from Lockhart and Gonzales regarding Bill
THE ALEUTIAN CAMPAIGN
PART ONE
By Todd Blomerth
(These three articles were published in the Lockhart Post Register and the Luling Newsboy Signal in August/September 2011)
If you haven’t noticed, I love military history. And I have a great interest in World War II, what led up to it, and how we as Americans, with our Allies, were able to overcome two truly evil empires bent on world domination. D-Day, Guadalcanal, the Battle of the Bulge and Iwo Jima are familiar places or events in the lives of the Greatest Generation. I am about to tell the tale of one of the more obscure episodes in World War II, and one that is still not very well understood by many people – the series of sea and air actions, and island landings that happened on American soil in the Territory of Alaska. And believe it or not, this little known campaign in one of the most hostile climates in the world was decisive in the outcome of the United States’ war with the Japanese Empire.
In 1941, Alaska was about as remote a location as you could find. The US had acquired Alaska in 1867 from the Russian Empire for 7.2 million dollars, or about two cents an acre. Even so, Secretary of State William Seward, who negotiated the purchase, was publicly blasted by some for wasting taxpayers’ money on a chunk of frozen land. Apart from Inuit, Aleut, and other indigenous peoples, the only people living in this vast piece of real estate two and half times larger than Texas were a few Russian settlers, trappers, hunters, commercial fishermen, and loggers. Alaska was only ‘discovered’ by most Americans in 1896 when the Klondike Gold Rush brought hordes of gold seekers flocking to the southern end of the territory in search of riches.. When the gold played out, so did the interest in Alaska, and the territory once again reverted to a state of quiet isolation.
After the Japanese humiliated the Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War a few years later, many American military planners realized that sooner or later, the United States might end up fighting a war with the militaristic Japanese Empire. With that in mind, Alaska’s strategic importance began to be seen by the US military. In 1935, General Billy Mitchell, the leading military aviation pioneer of his time, told Congress, “I believe that in the future, whoever holds Alaska will hold the world. I think it is the most important strategic place in the world.” To the Americans, the islands appeared as possible jumping off points for Japanese attacks on the American West Coast. Alaska was closer to Japan than New York. If the Japanese took Hawaii, its forces would still be 2,400 miles from the U.S. mainland. If Alaska was conquered, bombers could reach Seattle and its huge Boeing plant in three hours.
The Japanese were not unmindful of Alaska’s importance either. Stretching 1,200 miles from the western end of the Alaskan Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands represented potentially valuable real estate to Japan. It too was aware of the islands’ value as bases to attack the heart of the United States. Likewise, the Empire knew that in the event of a war the Americans could use the islands as a staging point against their Kurile and home islands.
Both sides had a stake in controlling shipping and air lanes between American and Russian Asia as well. When America’s massive Lend Lease assistance to the Soviet Union required shipping of aircraft and other war supplies through Siberia, this would become even more apparent.
Supplying remote outposts was nothing new to the Japanese. The Japanese had been fighting in China and Manchuria since 1931. But once Japan ensured that the Soviet Union would not attack it or its conquered territory in Manchuria, it had turned most of its military attention southward, toward the oil and resource rich lands of Southern Asia. American planners were caught flat footed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, and the Philippines, and were scrambling to assemble its armed forces to respond to the seemingly invincible Japanese war machine. Lying between 51 degrees and 55 degrees in latitude, the thinly populated Aleutian chain would be very hard to defend. The islands’ distance from the Alaskan mainland was a serious challenge. There were no highways into the area. To get there from the US contiguous states, you either flew (a risky proposition) or took a steamship. In the late 1920s, President Herbert Hoover had ordered a study of the feasibility of constructing of a road from the Lower 48 States into Alaska, but the plan was shelved because of the high cost, and a route was never even surveyed (The famous Al Can Highway, built primarily by African American service troops, wasn’t completed until late in 1942). And once ‘in’ Alaska, you were still perhaps a thousand miles or more from your ultimate destination on Attu or Kiska or one of the other islands. Attu, the further west of the island chain, was in the Eastern Hemisphere and five time zones back from the Alaska territory’s capital at Juneau! Imagine the distance from Atlanta to San Diego and you get some idea of the distances involved.
The 1,200 Miles of the Aleutian Island Chain Were Misery For The Troops Assigned There For Both Sides
Weather conditions were also particularly harsh. The Japan Current moved up from the south where it slammed into dry, cold air from Siberia. It made for ice free oceans, but also for some of the worst weather in the world. 140 mile an hour gales were common. Fog was omnipresent. There were as few as 10 clear days in a year on many of the Aleutian Islands. Pilots dealt with ceilings that went from 500 feet to zero in a matter of minutes. Cold and wet weather was made worse by howling winds that blew down tents, flipped over airplanes, and made men go mad. An Air Force historian noted that, “oil becomes like jelly, hydraulic systems freeze, and rubber becomes brittle and fractures” under such conditions.
And there were more problems still. The frigid Alaskan soil could not sustain enough agriculture to support a large number of troops. Everything would have to be shipped from the Lower 48, but resupply ships only arrived intermittently. America was scrambling to build the infrastructure to fight a two front war, and supplying England and the Soviet Union with enough materiel aid to keep them from collapsing from the German onslaught. And those ships that did sail had few radio homing devices or radar to assist in navigation, and relied on highly inaccurate sea charts that the Russians had assembled in 1864. Aviators assigned to the territory had to use Rand McNally road maps. There were no highways of any consequence in the entirety of the Alaskan mainland – even between Anchorage and Fairbanks, the two largest ‘cities.’ Bush pilots landed on glaciers, ice or if equipped with floats, in rivers and lakes. Airfields were almost non-existent. There were none in the Aleutians. There were no trees because winds prevented them from taking root. Beneath everything lay the muskeg – “a thin elastic crust of matted dead grasses something like celery, overlying a topsoil of dark volcanic ash which became quicksand whenever it was wet, which was to say all the time.”
Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
In June of 1940, Colonel Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. was assigned by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall to command a newly created Alaskan Defense Command. The hard-bitten, plain speaking son of Confederate general, Buckner had graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1908. He was a flight instructor during World War I. In the 1930s he was an instructor at West Point, where he earned the reputation as a hard task master. Although controversial, his leadership would eventually assure the United States’ mastery of the region.
(Next – Creating something from nothing, interservice rivalry, and the bombing of Dutch Harbor).
PART TWO
“This Was Nobody’s Favorite War”
The attack on Pearl Harbor devastated the American Pacific Fleet. Other attacks against American military installations in the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific severely limited the US’ ability to strike back at the Japanese Empire. A devastating first strike was a crucial element of Japan’s war strategy. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s foremost naval strategist, had travelled extensively in America in the 1920s. He knew America’s industrial and military potential and realized that war would wake a ‘slumbering giant’ that would eventually overwhelm Japan with its superior productive capacity. Yamamoto felt that Japan’s only route to victory lay through crushing America’s will to fight by completely destroying the US Pacific Fleet and then quickly negotiating a favorable peace. However, due to a stroke of luck, none of the fleet’s priceless aircraft carriers had been at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Realizing that an attack and occupation of at least some of the Aleutian chain would provoke an American response that would given Japan another opportunity to destroy America’s precious aircraft carriers, Yamamoto ordered landings on Attu and Kiska, two of the furthest western islands in the chain, as well as an air assault on bases in and around Dutch Harbor on Umnak and Unalaska. Dutch Harbor Naval Base and Fort Mears were the main fortified naval and army bases in the Aleutians, and also served a supply points for the remainder of American forces in the area. By mid-1942, and through sheer force of will, newly promoted Alaskan theater commander, General Simon Bolivar Buckner had substantially improved Alaska’s defenses. But this improvement was relative. There were still only 45,000 soldiers to defend all of Alaska, and almost all were on the mainland, with only around 13,000 personnel at Dutch Harbor and the newly constructed airfield at Fort Glenn on nearby Umnak Island. And many of these men were in construction rather than combat units. The only other military presence in the Aleutians was a few weather stations.
USS Louisville – A Cruiser in the Small American Fleet
The US Navy was supposed to provide a defensive perimeter for Dutch Harbor to compensate for its light ground defenses, but the Navy was hampered by a lack of modern warships, which had to cover an enormous area – often without radar. A few older cruisers, destroyers, and obsolete S class submarines were assigned to the theater under Rear Admiral Robert Theobald, who was given the impossible task of establishing an airtight naval perimeter around the islands.
Further complicating matters, command authority in the North Pacific Area was divided and cumbersome. Upon reaching Alaska, Theobald became commander of the naval and air forces, while authority over the ground forces remained with Buckner. The two were ordered to operate a joint command with “mutual cooperation,” but they answered to different bosses and did not get along with each other.
Under Theobald was General William Butler, the commander of the Eleventh Air Force. His tiny air force consisted of a few obsolescent fighters and badly equipped B-17s and B-24s, as well as a number of PBY Catalina flying boats. One of the unit’s few bright spots was Colonel William O. “Eric” Eareckson, an incredible aviator and fearless maverick, who often became a one-man war against the Japanese. When not taking extraordinary chances with the enemy and weather, he instilled rigorous training and tactics. He was held in awe by his young aviators. His efforts also kept many of them alive in an environment where over two-thirds of aircraft losses were due to weather –not to the enemy.
To destroy the US will to fight in the Pacific, Yamamoto devised a complex strategy. Part of his forces would overrun several of the Aleutian Islands and attack the US base at Dutch Harbor. This would dilute American strength in and around Midway, and allow the Japanese, with their superior naval strength, to destroy America’s remaining carriers, and also occupy the strategically important island. The Alaskan portion of his plan was criticized by some as a dilution of the forces needed to win the all-important battle against the American fleet around Midway. The debate continued until Jimmy Doolittle and his squadron of B-25 bombers achieved a stunning surprise attack against Tokyo in early 1942 by launching off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet after sneaking to within striking distance of the Japanese capital. The attack caused little damage to Japan, but the psychological impact was huge. The Japanese did not know how the bombers got to Japan but many assumed that they may have come from secret airbases in the Aleutians. Fear of additional attacks against the Home Islands led to the quick approval of Yamamoto’s invasion plan. On May 5, 1942, the Japanese Navy Order Eighteen authorized an invasion and occupation of the Aleutians. The Aleutian operation would go forward, siphoning many ships north, including the aircraft carriers Junyo and Ryujo that might have otherwise later turned the tide at the Battle of Midway.
The first phase of the invasion involved a surprise air strike against the islands. However, the Japanese would find American air defenses to be stronger than they had anticipated for several reasons.
In late 1941, Buckner began to secretly use funds earmarked for other purposes to build airbases at Dutch Harbor and on other Aleutian Islands. Buckner hand picked engineers to build airfields in the awfulness of the muskeg and sent them construction supplies in crates labeled as “fishery equipment.” Construction was possible only using experimental Marston steel landing mats. Japanese intelligence had no way of discovering these airfields since Buckner’s superiors were equally in the dark. Reliance on long-range I class submarines for visual reconnaissance of the defenses was a poor substitute for good aerial reconnaissance and spies – and the Japanese had none of those resources in the area. Then, on May 15th, the Americans partially broke the Japanese naval code. Intercepts revealed the Japanese invasion plan and the timing of the first attack against Dutch Harbor. American aircraft patrols were stepped up as a result, and spotted the Japanese fleet far at sea. The Americans around Dutch Harbor were ready. Anti-aircraft crews, largely made up of National Guard units from the lower 48 state, were well trained. At 0540 on June 3, 1942 radar picked up incoming aircraft launched from the Japanese aircraft carriers. A few minutes later, anti-aircraft guns opened up as Japanese fighters strafed the airfield and Japanese bombers released their lethal loads from 9000 feet. But the actual damage done was very small. Men were killed when a barracks was hit, but for the most part, the US forward facilities were left undamaged. The Japanese returned the following day, with much the same results. Some aircraft were caught on the ground, one ship badly damaged, fuel depots set afire, and a small number of soldiers killed. The weather proved to be an intractable foe–the Japanese could not see what they were bombing. Fog prevented American defenders from seeing incoming Japanese planes but also kept pilots from seeing their targets. Sometimes visibility was so poor that planes could not take off at all. The initial assault was postponed for several hours to allow for “better” weather, when pilots could at least see the end of the carrier deck. Cloud cover and fog made accuracy impossible. The second attack saw more breaks in cloud cover, but weather still played a huge factor.
Bad weather also hampered the American defenders. The US fleet trying to prevent the attack groped around in fog four hundred miles south of the enemy fleet, never making contact with the attackers. The weather allowed the Japanese fleet to escape undetected and unharmed. Airplanes were lost or damaged, but primarily as a result of howling winds and horrible visibility. As Brian Garfield noted in his book The Thousand Mile War, “It was not Japanese cleverness, and not American blundering, that kept the opposing forces from joining in battle; it was the power of Aleutian nature.”
There was one unexpected consequence of the attack. Pilot Tadayashi Koga shot down an American PBY patrol boat and in the process received damage to his A6M “Zero”, Japan’s nimble and fast fighter. He crash landed on nearby Akutan Island, and was killed. But his aircraft was virtually undamaged. It was found by American forces some weeks later, recovered, taken apart and studied. The knowledge learned about the aircraft proved invaluable in designing aircraft that would come to outperform the Zero.
Defending Dutch Harbor
Japanese Bombing of Dutch Harbor
.
The Occupation of Attu and Kiska
In the Central Pacific, the Japanese suffered a stunning defeat at Midway. Over 3000 Japanese sailors and aviators were killed and several of Japan’s most powerful aircraft carriers were sunk. Japan’s knock-out blow against the American fleet had backfired. It was a bitter pill to swallow for the proud Yamamoto. With his defeat at Midway, Yamamoto felt that any further effort in the Aleutians was a waste of time. He was convinced otherwise by his staff, which urged him to continue with the occupation of at least some of the island chain The American fleet was looking for the Japanese in the Bering Sea when a Japanese landing force hit the beaches on Kiska, and 350 miles further west, on Attu at 0120 hrs on June 7, 1942. The only defenders were ten men at a weather station who were captured fairly quickly. A few hours later, the Kiska landing occurred, again with no opposition.
Chichagof Harbor – Attu, Before the Attack
The Captured Weather Detachment on Kiska-The Men
Would Spend the Rest of the War in Japanese Prison Camps
Headquarters initially intended for the invaders to advance up the island chain, eventually attacking the Alaskan mainland. In the US, the Aleutian attacks and landings focused the attention of all branches of the military. Newly arrived aviators wanted to show that air power could effect Japanese submission; the Army wanted to show it had the combat skills to hurl the Japanese off American soil; the Navy was embarrassed because of its total failure to locate and destroy the Japanese fleet and prevent the invasions; and President Roosevelt was embarrassed by the occupation of American soil. Suddenly Alaska was on the minds of everyone in the command structure – and there was an immediate influx of men and materiel to counter the invasion.
The Japanese initially planned to evacuate Attu and Kiska in late 1942. It was later decided by the Japanese that they would stay indefinitely. “There is considerable conjecture [wrote one officer] about the Japanese need for such a God-forsaken hole. The general consensus seems to be that they need a submarine operating base…from which easy raids on our lend-lease shipping to the USSR can be carried out.”
It would take 10 months for the Americans to build enough strength to attempt ousting the invaders, and in that period, the number of men in the Alaskan theater grew to over 300,000. Increasing naval strength choked the flow of provisions to the invaders, making their lives increasingly unpleasant. In August of 1942, the American counterattack begin with an unopposed landing on Adak, 400 miles west of Dutch Harbor and within bombing range of Kiska and Attu Airbases continued to be built, in horrific conditions. The Japanese defenders received little additional support meanwhile due to the decline of Japanese military fortunes elsewhere. Bombing raids and reconnaissance missions over Attu and Kiska grew in size and accuracy. “For the next six months [writes Garfield] this was the strategy of the Aleutian Campaign: a nerve-racking, corrosive harassment of the enemy on Kiska.”
Believing Attu to be untenable, the Japanese commander evacuated the island’s defenders to Kiska in December of 1942. When an expected attack didn’t occur, the island was re-occupied by over 2500 men. Had the Americans been more alert, they could have occupied the island without firing a shot. Because of the lack of vigilance, horrific weather, and bad communications, as well as a change in the Japanese naval code that limited the code breakers’ best attempts, the Americans missed a huge opportunity. It would cost them dearly.
NEXT – The Retaking of Attu and Kiska, and a Postscript. 
PART THREE
“The Theater of Military Frustration”
Famed naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison’s description of the Aleutian Campaign as “The theater of military frustration” is about as apt as any phrase can be. For both the Americans and Japanese, the remainder of 1942 and early 1943 was a period of feints and jabs, none with any knockout force, often totally missing the mark because of the horrific weather and unforgiving seas. The frustration engendered by protracted inactivity was demoralizing to both sides. American sailors and soldiers had cause to wonder why they were not fighting in a more active theater. For the Japanese, there was the inevitable sense of being left to their doom as higher-ups dealt with more pressing matters elsewhere.
The end of the Japanese occupation of American soil was slow in coming. In August 1942, an American force landed on Adak, four hundred miles west of any US base and 250 miles from Kiska. The Japanese were caught by surprise. In fact, American engineers and Seabees constructed an entire airfield with auxiliary buildings before the Japanese even knew they were there. Kiska started experiencing regular attacks from US bombers – and because of the limited number of pilots and the miserable weather, the Japanese couldn’t figure out how the Americans were able to step up their bombing campaign, which began causing greater damage and more deaths. By the time they finally found the new airbase, they had so few serviceable aircraft left that the Japanese could do nothing about it.
Because of setbacks elsewhere, Japan’s military resources and men were stretched thin – there would be little help for their forces in the Aleutians. Besides, the Japanese plan called for an evacuation during the winter anyway. Sensing the Americans would not occupy Attu, the Japanese evacuated its garrison to Sitka to concentrate their forces. The anticipated attack on Sitka never happened, but the Americans occupied several other smaller islands in the chain. After the Sitka evacuation, the Japanese high command re-assessed the strategic importance of the Aleutian Islands – perhaps the Americans could attack Japan from the north after all. The Japanese quietly reoccupied Attu. Sitka’s fortifications were strengthened. Evacuation plans were scrubbed by October 1942 and instead decided to expand their presence in the islands by occupying more of the Aleutian chain. However, by this point further invasions were no longer possible because of American air superiority. In early December, a convoy of troops sent to make new landings was diverted to the relative safety of Kiska instead.
The tide was turning decisively against the Japanese – by the end of 1942, there were over 150,000 US troops in Alaska, and Dutch Harbor was handing nearly 400,000 tons of shipping a month. Alaskan oil and coal production boomed. And in November the 1671 mile wonder called the Al-Can Highway was completed. The Lend-Lease route to the Soviets through Siberia was opened for business. But pressing series of major campaigns being waged against the Axis powers elsewhere meant that plans to kick the Japanese out of the Aleutians took a back seat to operations in the South Pacific and in North Africa. As always, the weather discouraged offensive operations as well, and the winter of 1942-43 was another horrific reminder of the nightmare involved in trying to carry out any major operation. In Fairbanks, -67 degree weather meant that aircraft engines had to be thawed out with blow torches! Fighters landing in the fog at Adak crashed into parked B-24s. Boats capsized. Hospital and mess tents were destroyed. The mostly Mexican-American Texans of the 176th Engineers– who had never even seen snow before – were continually blown off their feet by sudden winds called williwaws as they tried to complete the facilities at Adak.
General Buckner’s antipathy toward Admiral Theobald and his perceived reluctance to risk his few ships to the weather or Japanese finally came to a head. On January 4th, Buckner’s hostility contributed to Theobald’s replacement by Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid. Kinkaid and Buckner were kindred spirits who shared an offensive mindset – the inter-service rivalries died, and morale improved. There was a sense that there was some purpose in living in the frozen hell of the Aleutians – to kill Japanese. Kinkaid’s arrival marked the start of a new aggressiveness. On January 5, 1943, Americans landed unopposed on Amchitka, a mere 40 miles from Sitka. By January 28th, a new airfield had been completed there. Kiska became the object of sometimes hourly bombing raids.
General Hidichiro Higuchi, commander of Japan’s North Pacific ground forces, demanded additional reinforcements and naval cooperation to stop the American advances. The Japanese navy demurred, and instead of sinking American tonnage, used its submarines to bring supplies to other island outposts. With woefully inadequate equipment and suffering round-the-clock bombing, Higuchi’s men could never finish airfields on either Kiska or Attu. The Japanese defenders’ last hope for relief vanished on February 5, 1943 when Higuchi was instructed to ‘hold the western Aleutians at all costs’ with his available force. Slim chance – he had 8000 troops on Kiska and 1000 on Attu, and none were first-line troops. He possessed no artillery other than mortars. He had no tanks.
Meanwhile, Kinkaid created an effective blockade intent on starving the Japanese garrisons. More and more, supply convoys were either sunk or driven back. By early March 1943, the American air forces had sunk over forty Japanese ships. The stranglehold by the Americans was tightening. In response, the Japanese tried a desperate gambit that led to what became known as the Battle of the Komandorski Islands. A convoy of troops and supplies escorted by eight cruisers attempted to run the American naval gauntlet. If successful, the Japanese perhaps could hold Attu and Kiska and even mount and offensive against Kinkaid’s forces. In the ensuing battle, the blockading American fleet was outnumbered two to one. The flagship Salt Lake City, an older cruiser, was heavily damaged in a running daylight battle. Gutsy American destroyers, in an attempt to protect it, made a suicide charge with torpedoes against the Japanese cruisers – and the Japanese withdrew! Afraid that American aircraft would soon be approaching to assist, the last supply fleet turned back. “Admiral Kinkaid’s ridiculous little blockade [wrote Brian Garfield in The Thousand Mile War] had achieved complete success: [it] ended Japanese navy supremacy in the North Pacific and brought the end of the Aleutian Campaign in sight.”
Now it was time to bring combat troops for the invasion of the two islands. The first to be hit would be Attu. If Attu fell, Kiska would hopefully wither on the vine. Common sense would have suggested assembling a large unit trained in cold weather combat and amphibious landings, but common sense did not prevail. Ground troops under Buckner’s command were scattered all over Alaska. None were of division strength. Instead, the 7th Mechanized Infantry Division was transferred from scheduled service in the North Africa Theater. There was one small problem – it was training in southern California for desert warfare. With no training in cold weather warfare, and with little or no appropriate clothing or equipment, the division was sent north in April 1943. Its men were predominantly Hispanics, Mormons, Indians, and cowboys from Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas. It had absolutely no amphibious training. The lunacy of the division’s selection was compounded by a timeline that gave it only three months to prepare until the landing on Attu.
American intelligence said there were only 500 Japanese troops on Attu (its forces had been reinforced actually numbered over 2500). The Alaskan command told the 7th Division’s commander, Major General Albert Brown, that a single regiment could take the island in three days. Brown responded that suggestion was nuts – the island’s terrain alone would require a full week just to cross it. His pessimism was dismissed.
Despite these obstacles, Brown tried to make the best of a bad situation, effecting two landings on May 11, 1943. The Northern Landing Force came ashore near Holtz Bay; the Southern Landing Force at Massacre Bay. A Scout Battalion, led by Captain William Willoughby, was offloaded from submarines on Beach Scarlet, to prevent the Japanese from moving west and prolonging the fight. There was to be a quick link-up of the forces. The plan was to force the Japanese back toward Chichagof Harbor, where they could be killed or captured. It was supposed to be over quickly.
The Northern Force’s landing started uneventfully, but surprise was lost when Japanese sentries spotted the forces through the fog. Artillery fire halted the American advance. At Massacre Bay, the Americans were able to move inland for about a mile before encountering fierce Japanese resistance. Japanese machine gunners, dug in on ridge lines and hidden by the ever-present fog, poured fired down on the advancing troops, killing many, including the Southern Force’s commander. The attack bogged down, with men freezing in the snow, or suffering frostbite, and equipment stuck in the muskeg. For five days, the green American troops at Massacre Bay got nowhere. Because tractors couldn’t move in the muck of snow and muskeg, a huge traffic jam grew at the water’s edge. Everything had to be hand carried. Artillery pieces would fire from the water’s edge, driving the gun into the muck – to be dug out after each shell was fired. Despite having warned of a difficult landing, General Brown was relieved of command.
The Northern Force had better luck, and was aided by a naval bombardment from the battleships Pennsylvania and Idaho and several cruisers. It was still very slow going, marked by extreme acts of bravery on the part of the advancing Americans. One example was Private Joe P. Martinez, of Taos, New Mexico. An automatic rifleman in Company K of the 32nd Infantry, he singled-handedly walked into enemy fire armed only with a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), and killed five Japanese soldiers. He reached the crest of a contested ridge before he collapsed with a mortal wound. His stalled company cleared the remaining Japanese off the ridgeline. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The scouts under Willoughby had better luck until they too found themselves bogged down on a wind-blown open ridge in a stand-off with Japanese infantry.
Finally, after four days, the Japanese force in front of the Northern attackers abandoned Holtz Bay, and soon after Willoughby’s scout force broke through. Of the 420 men he started with, only 165 were still able to fight – some had been killed, but most suffered from exhaustion, frostbite, and gangrene. Amputations became commonplace.
By day seven, the Americans had over 12,000 men on the island. They had suffered over 1100 casualties, of which 500 were from exposure. They were up against the remaining 2000 Japanese, who were skillfully withdrawing into more defensible positions. After holding off the Southern Force for eight days, the enemy made an orderly withdrawal toward heights protecting Chichagof Bay.
Even as they inflicted fearsome casualties, the Japanese were going through a hell of their own. Although better equipped for the weather, they were exhausted from the constant skirmishing, artillery bombardment, and lack of food. An unknown Japanese NCO’s diary of May 20th reads, “The hours are long. Could do any type of hard work if I could only get two rice-balls a day. I haven’t slept for the past eight days. We received fierce naval gun fire.” Eventually the Japanese perimeter shrunk back toward Chichagof Bay. A last ditch attempt by the Japanese air forces flying from the Kurile Islands to assist their comrades proved disastrous when nine of sixteen bombers were shot down. It was the last outside assistance Japanese defenders received. Finally, on May 28, 1943, a key ridgeline called the Fish Hook fell. Rather than slaughter the remaining defenders, the Americans attempted to persuade them to surrender since Japanese were down to 800 able bodied soldiers, but Japan’s unbending Bushido warrior code, which equated surrender with cowardice, rendered this effort fruitless. The last desperate act by the Japanese was at hand. But first, the 400 wounded soldiers in the field hospital were killed by fellow Japanese, either by grenades or with morphine.
A diary from a medical officer, Nebu Tasuguchi records some of their horrific end. MAY 29, 1943 TODAY AT 2000 WE ASSEMBLED IN FRONT OF HQS. THE FIELD HOSPITAL TOOK PART TOO. THE LAST ASSAULT IS TO BE CARRIED OUT. ALL THE PATIENTS IN THE HOSPITAL WERE TO COMMIT SUICIDE. ONLY 33 YEARS OF LIVING AND I AM TO DIE HERE. I HAVE NO REGRETS. BANZAI TO THE EM-PEROR…. AT 1800 TOOK CARE OF ALL THE PATIENTS WITH GRENADES.
The Japanese commander, Colonel Yatsuyo Yamasaki, led the remaining men, many without weapons, on a sneak attack on the American perimeter. The suicidal charge was totally unexpected. Crazed attackers overran a command post and charged into a medical clearing station, killing most of the patients. Grabbing cooks, litter bearers, road builders and anyone else who could fire an M-1, the Americans re-assembled. “The 50th Engineers [writes Brian Garfield] rushing forward to man the lines, met the charge head-on with bayonets and clubbed rifles.” The onslaught failed. Colonel Yamasaki died in a final futile charge. The next day, the surviving 500 Japanese committed mass suicide by exploding grenades against their chests. The agony of Attu was over.
What was supposed to be a three day walk-over had taken three weeks. Twenty eight Japanese were taken prisoner. Well over 2500 Japanese were killed – the exact number is not known. The Americans suffered 549 combat deaths, and over 1000 wounded, or evacuated because of frostbite, exposure or combat fatigue. Garfield notes that “In proportion to the numbers of troops engaged, [Attu] would rank as the second most costly American battle in the Pacific Theater-second only to Iwo Jima.”
American commanders were shocked at the cost. If Attu was this pricey, what would Kiska be like? The invasion planners reassessed the support the next invasion would require. The blockade of Kiska tightened until it became impenetrable. Bombers flew an average of five missions a day against the island’s defenses. Radar equipped PV-1 Ventura bombers were able to bomb through the clouds and fog.
Round the clock bombing kept Japanese defenders in a labyrinth of sophisticated caves and tunnels, except when attempting to repair bomb damage. Food became even scarcer. Whenever stray American bombs detonated in the harbor, Japanese would rush to scoop up dead fish, which they called “Roosevelt rations.”
Increased radio traffic convinced the defenders that the assault on Kiska was imminent. The huge Japanese submarines based in the Kuriles, called I-boats, were ordered to evacuate the island, but the Americans quickly sunk three of the eight I-boats before they could escape. In desperation, Admiral Shiro Kawase assembled a small flotilla of cruisers and destroyers, and made a run to save the defenders. The blockading American fleet involved itself in the folly later known as the “Battle of the Pips”, firing countless rounds into an open sea in response to false radar images, and then had to re-fuel. On July 28th, 1943, Kiwase’s small flotilla slid into Kiska undetected and evacuated all 5183 men in less than an hour. “Kawase had brought off one of the war’s most imaginative and daring maneuvers [writes Garfield] without a single casualty.”
Amazingly, the Americans remained unaware of the evacuation. For three weeks the Americans kept pummeling Sitka. Pilots reported no anti-aircraft bursts, nor any repairs to recent bombings. Higher-ups took no chances, choosing to believe the Japanese had merely retreated further inland to caves and redoubts. On August 15th, 34,426 American and Canadian troops landed on Sitka – and were met by a few stray dogs. The only casualties were caused by friendly fire. The Japanese had had the last laugh. They had tied up over 300,000 Allied soldiers and sailors, as well as a fleet of ships, to attack a deserted island. General Buckner wryly noted, “To attract maximum attention, it’s hard to find anything more effect that a great big, juicy, expensive mistake.” But it was still a retreat, still a defeat of Imperial Japan’s ambitions. 439 days of warfare for a cold and miserable part of the United States was over. Bombing runs to Japan’s Kurile Islands began – more for harassment that anything else. General Buckner wanted to plan an invasion of Japan from the north – and while that idea was shelved, fear of its possibility kept over 40,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors and 500 aircraft defending those approaches as the war crept toward Japan’s main islands from the south.
(Much information for these articles was gleaned from The Thousand Mile War, by Brian Garfield, as well as naval and other histories)
ROBERT “BOB” PEEBLES
A Peaceful Man Who Has Witnessed the Horrors of War
By Todd Blomerth
Bob Peebles was born on January 19, 1922, in the small town of Alvin, Texas. His father worked for Gulf States Utilities, and the Peebles family lived and around the Alvin area all his early years. Bob was the youngest of three children. His brother Howard (now deceased) was ten years older. Marjorie (Wyatt), who now lives in Edna, was four years older. Bob attributes much of his success academically to Marjorie. “She became my ‘teacher,’” he tells me. “We would walk home from school. Starting when I was in the first grade, Marjorie would then sit behind an apple crate on the screened porch, and make me learn reading, arithmetic and writing. She was relentless.” Bob’s grandfather had passed down many classics, so Marjorie used some as her primers. He still remembers with clarity certain portions of stories by Charles Dickens, because they were found on pages holding his grandmother’s pressed flowers, and “we were told to be very careful with those flowers.”
Bob attended Alvin High School, and was voted ‘most popular boy’ in 1938 and “Best All Around” student in 1939. He played baseball and basketball, but his favorite sport was football. He graduated in 1939 and then enrolled at the University of Texas taking pre-med courses and playing freshman football. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he rushed to enlist in the U.S. Navy. Although he “hadn’t been within five miles of an airplane,” he signed up for naval aviation training – and flunked the physical! He had varicose veins in and around his knees from playing football. Disheartened, he hunted down a physician to fix the supposed ‘disability,’ had minor surgery, and finally, on May 1, 1942, passed the physical. He was now officially a naval aviation cadet. For the next year, Bob moved through the various phases of aviation training starting in Luscombe single engine trainers, then graduating to PT-17 Stearman “Kaydets” (nicknamed “the Yellow Peril”), to Vultee “Vibrators,” and finally to the SNJ “Texans.” His class ranking allowed him the choice of Navy or Marine Corps aviation, so he chose the Corps. Part of Flight Class 9A (42-C), he received his aviator’s wings and commission as a 2nd lieutenant at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. On the way to combat aircraft, he took a short detour, flying C-47 cargo aircraft. He credits his time in that beloved aircraft’s cockpit for allowing him to hone his navigation skills. Apart from occasional ‘radio ranges’ there were few electronic aids in those days; no GPS, FM radios, or omni-directional beacons. Dead reckoning was a skill that would prove invaluable in the Pacific theater.
During flight training, Bob met Lesley Valentine Strandtman, whose family lived outside of Lockhart, Texas. Strandtman was a Fightin’ Texas Aggie and member of the Aggie Band. The two put college rivalries aside and became good friends. Besides a life-long friendship, Valentine’s younger sister, Adeline (“Addie”) Marie would eventually become Bob’s wife in 1946.
Bob’s next duty station was Cherry Point, N.C. After a short time there, he was ordered to El Toro Naval Air Station, California where he transitioned into the Grumman F4F Wildcat, one of the first modern fighters able to take on the more nimble Japanese fighters. It still had some primitive mechanisms, such as having to retract landing gear by 27 hand cranks!
Lieutenant Peebles was assigned to Marine Corps VMF 114, a fighter squadron that was equipped with one of the premier American fight aircraft of World War II – the Vought F4U Corsair. The Japanese would soon describe the aircraft as “Whistling Death.” The new squadron’s top three officers were veteran combat pilots; 
the rest of the pilots were newly minted. VMF 114 was shipped to Hawaii where it continued training. The U.S. Navy had turned back a Japanese invasion of Midway Island in June 1942. The island’s location in the Northern Pacific was of strategic importance. As a result, combat units continued to defend the tiny patch of land. In December 1943, VMF 114 was shipped to Midway Island for three months. Then it was back to Oahu to prepare for shipment to Espiritu Santo, a staging area for the Americans’ advances against the Japanese. After additional flight and survival training. VMF 114 moved into its first combat area. Flying from the Green Island group near Papua New Guinea, the squadron suffered its first losses. The Japanese had created a huge base at Rabaul on the island of New Britain. By 1943 there were over 100,000 enemy stationed there. Although Rabaul would be ‘bypassed,’ American air and naval forces kept up unremitting attacks on it and on another enemy base at Kavieng. The Americans did not dare allow an exceeding well trained and increasingly desperate enemy any opportunity at disrupting our advances elsewhere. Weather, combat and air accidents resulted in VMF 114’s loss of nine pilots. The reality of war was now sinking in.
Over many beers during R&R in Sydney, Australia, the men designed their squadron’s new “Death Dealers” logo.
VMF 114 then was thrown into the maelstrom of the American landings in the Palau Islands.
General Douglas MacArthur’s advance into the Philippine Islands in 1944 initially required that his eastern flank be protected. The Palau Islands, some 800 miles to the east had several islands that were heavily fortified, and a plan had been in place to attack and neutralize the Japanese there. However, the American landings in the Philippines were moving ahead of schedule. Certain U.S. commanders expressed extreme doubts as to the need to invade the Palau Islands insisting that, given the circumstances, they could be bypassed and isolated. However, invasion plans were already laid on, and the Marines’ 1st Division and Army regimental combat teams were tasked with taking the Palau group’s Peleliu Island. It would set in motion a horrific battle, which to this day is still cloaked with controversy. Echelons of VMF 114 began flying northward to provide close air support on 9 September 1944. Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Emirau, Pityiliu, and Owl Island were rest and refueling points enroute. After an inadequate pre-landing naval bombardment, young Americans hit Peleliu’s beaches on September 15, 1944. They immediately found themselves in a living hell.
How does one begin to describe the protracted hell of Peleliu? 
Consider this: Peleliu was defended by nearly 11,000 Japanese troops. The enemy had rethought how to confront Americans in island fighting, and no longer would expend its men on massive suicide attacks. The plan was to make the Americans pay for every inch taken. The Palaus had been in Japanese hands since the end of World War I. Peleliu’s six square miles held a defensive system where virtually every square yard was covered by interlocking fields of fire. The island’s mountain range, the Umurbrogol, contained over 500 natural and man-made caves, as well as the command center. All beaches were mined, with extensive anti-tank traps and obstacles. All caves were connected with tunnels, and heavy artillery was hidden behind sliding steel doors. Caves and defensive bunkers were virtually invisible, concealed behind rock and vegetation. The Japanese even had a miniature railroad to move some artillery from firing point to firing point.
The Marine’s commander predicted the island would be taken in four days. It would take two months, and decimate the 1st Marine Division.
The squadron landed on Peleliu on September 26 (D+9) as the land battle raged less than two miles away. As Bud Daniel writes in A Cowboy Down: A WWII Marine Fighter Pilot’s Story: “All 24 Corsairs arrived in good shape. The howitzers were firing their large shells toward the caves on Bloody Nose Ridge. Marine infantry was busy fighting the ten thousand Japanese that were holed up in these caves. Peleliu looked to us like it was on a planet in another universe. Almost all of the trees had been blown to shred or splintered into pieces. The surface, nothing but coral rock, was also blown apart. We had been warned of snipers and we could hear large shells blasting, creating massive holes and generating lots of smoke. In the distance stretcher-bearers were trying to bring dead and wounded Marines down the coral precipices. It was a horrible battle and we were on the perimeter 1500 yards from the action. What I’m describing was continuous round the clock horror.” El Paso’s Tom Lea, an artist with Life magazine, was a changed man after witnessing Peleliu’s carnage. “The Two thousand Yard Stare,” is one of his most famous paintings. It captures a young Marine’s mental state as he prepares to go back into battle, after seeing many of his compatriots die:
The Two Thousand Yard Stare, by Tom Lea
The squadron’s pilots would load up with bombs or napalm, take off, often not even retracting their Corsairs’ landing gear, as some targets were fifteen seconds away. They would return to the airfield, reload, and fly another mission. For the next six months, VMF 114 labored tirelessly to support Marines and soldiers trying to root out the well-hidden and ferocious enemy. When time and circumstances allowed, “barge runs” were made in and around neighboring islands. Other Palau islands were also well defended. The carnage on Peleliu caused the U.S. to re-think invading most of them. But the Japanese on Koror, Babelthuap, Ngesebus, and Anguar were bombed and strafed continuously, to ensure no reinforcements would slip into Peleliu, and no aircraft could lift off. It was dangerous work for Bob’s squadron. The grind of battle, tension of close air support and enemy anti-aircraft artillery, long combat air patrols providing ‘cover’ for the invasion fleet, and stifling heat and humidity (Peleliu lies just seven degrees north of the equator), took its toll. Occasional beer runs to rear areas like Hollandia helped some, but not much. VFM 114 also flew long-range bombing missions – some as far as Yap Island, another enemy stronghold.
All the pilots suffered ‘gray-outs’ from the g-forces of dive bombing. Low flying attacks attracted flak, and on several occasions, Bob’s aircraft was holed by anti-aircraft shrapnel. On one occasion, Bob got shot up on a barge run over Babelthuap. Suddenly, his cockpit filled with smoke. American DUMBO aircraft (sea rescue float planes) were staged under air routes and pilots knew that if captured by the Japanese, they would be tortured and killed. Bob unbuckled his safety harness, threw back the cockpit canopy, and turned for friendly waters. As he prepared to bail out, the smoke cleared. He sat back down, hoping to make it home, It was a long thirty minutes of flying back to Peleliu, with Bob wondering when the engine would seize up. It didn’t. It turned out that shrapnel had struck his radio equipment. When his canopy was opened, the fire went out.
Others were not so lucky. The squadron’s revered commander, Major Robert “Cowboy” Stout died on March 4, 1945 on a strafing and bombing run over Koror. His death devastated the squadron.
The squadron rotated back to the United States in late March of 1945. Captain Peebles was then placed at Page Field, where he taught new pilots gunnery and rocketry at Parris Island. The war ended in August, and Bob was given a choice of staying in the military. His response was affirmative. The Marine Corps told him to go home, and he would be called in six months. As six months rolled around, he still hadn’t received his call back, so he decided he had better do something else with his life, so he re-enrolled at the University of Texas, and signed up to play football. Within a week, the Marine Corps called to invite him back into the service. “I was so sore from football practice,” he told me, “that I was never so happy to get a call in my life.”
Bob’s military career ‘took off’ after World War II. He married Adeline in Lockhart, Texas at the First Christian Church. They would have five children, Robert Jr., Bonnie, Sarah, Jo Leslie, and Patty. 
Fortunately, Addie proved to be a wonderful military spouse, as the growing family would move with Bob to his various military assignments. In 1950, North Korea invaded the south. Captain (and later Major) Bob Peebles was shipped to Japan, and then to South Korea, and became the Executive Officer of a radar squadron. Then he returned to Cherry Point, N.C. The next years were fulfilling. As a major, he was appointed to the Joint Landing Force Board at Camp Lejeune, where future amphibious operations were studied. Then it was back to Korea in 
1954. Duty stations included Kaneohe Marine Air Station in Hawaii. In 1959, he became squadron commander of VMF 232, flying F8 Crusaders. In 1967, Colonel Peebles served in Viet Nam as air officer attached to amphibious operations.
Bob retired in 1969, and in 1973 he and Addie moved to Caldwell County. They settled on some of the Strandtman land outside of Lockhart, living there until Addie passed away in 1999. Bob now lives in Bastrop with youngest daughter Patty. He is proud of his service to his country, but not one to brag.
The Distinguished Flying Cross is awarded to someone who “distinguishes himself or herself by heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight.” He received that honor for airstrikes in the Rabaul, Kavieng, and Palau Islands areas during World War II. The Legion of Merit is awarded for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements.” He was honored with this award for service during the Vietnam conflict. When asked about his Bronze Star with V device, which is only awarded for combat heroism or for someone “exposed to personal hazard during direct participation in combat operations,” he only laughs and says, “I guess I got that for bravery.” The reality is more vivid: He was the acting commanding officer of a Ground Control Intercept unit near the North Korean port of Hungnam in December 1950. The Americans were in a fighting retreat from the Chosin Reservoir area in the bitter winter, as hordes of communist Chinese tried to surround them. Those who survived the near-debacle were evacuated through Hungnam, along with tens of thousands of Korean refugees. Captain Peebles evacuated the over two hundred men in his squadron on an LST just before the port facilities were destroyed as the enemy entered the area.
Destruction of Hungnam Harbor
Colonel Bob Peebles typifies the best of the “Greatest Generation.” If you see him, be sure to tell him thanks for his service to our country.
1943
2016
CURTIS OWEN
A MEDIC FROM MCMAHAN AND THE “UTTER CHAOS OF WAR”
By Todd Blomerth
Imagine yourself as a visitor to Carlsbad Caverns National Park seventy-five years ago, on a tour requiring a long walk down into its vastness. Upon arriving in the Big Room, one of its largest galleries, imagine being seating at a huge formation dubbed the ‘Rock of Ages’ as Park Rangers extinguish all lights, and a recording of the hymn of that name is played. You realize what total darkness really is. Feel yourself blinking as the lights come on, expecting to laugh as you savor a new experience that will help your mile-long trek back to the surface as the tour ends. Then try to imagine your thoughts as a somber Park Ranger announces that he has just received the news that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. Imagine the screams of a fellow tourist before she passes out – her son is stationed at the huge Navy base there. Imagine your world changing forever. Private Curtis Owen of McMahan, Texas experienced that on December 7, 1941.
Born in 1919, Curtis was the third of four boys born to Odus and Elizabeth (Handley) Owen. He attended school in McMahan until the ninth grade. His last two years (high school went to the 11th grade in those days) were completed in Lockhart in 1938. Growing up in the Depression, the family kept food on the table farming cotton with mules and horses. Given the cost of horse feed, he often wondered “who was working for whom.”
By 1940, it was becoming obvious to many that America would end up in another war, in all likelihood against Germany. Young men were required to register for the draft in September of that year. As a 
farmer, Curtis could have claimed a deferment. He chose not to. Despite a farm accident in 1938 that caused the loss of a finger, he also obtained a waiver and, at the suggestion of his family physician, Dr. Joe Coopwood, enlisted in the National Guard’s 36th (“Texas”) Infantry Division’s 141st Infantry Regiment’s Medical Detachment, of Lockhart.
Almost immediately after enlisting, Private Owen became part of America’s belated awakening to our country’s dangers. Along with other National Guard units, the 36th Division was mobilized to national service, on November 25, 1940. It is hard to conceptualize today just how unprepared for war our country was. Worldwide, nations had been at war all through the 1930s. For years Americans refused to acknowledge the reality that, like it or not, ultimately our country would have to fight. Training facilities were non-existent. With obsolete equipment and a poor organizational setup, and the total unpreparedness of military officials everywhere, the Division’s attempt to mobilize quickly went FUBAR, or “fouled up beyond all recognition.” The Lockhart Medical Detachment and the Lockhart infantry unit, Company F, were first housed in tents on a drill field where Lockhart’s American Legion Hall is now located. The Medical Detachment’s commander, Major Abner Ross MD, recruited a local cook, and his men ate at their camp. Company F’s men were not so lucky, having to march to the Carter Hotel on the downtown square three times a day for their meals.
In March of 1942 the division’s many units, coming from armories from El Paso to Texarkana, were united at Camp Bowie, near Brownwood. Located in old cotton fields, the camp’s water and gas lines still lay exposed. Men were housed in 5-man tents. For the next six months “we played like we were at war,” said Curtis. Maneuvers in Louisiana showed how unprepared our military was. Trucks were painted white and designated as “tanks.” Bombing raids on the infantry were made with sacks of flour. In November of 1941, Curtis was selected to attend Surgical Technician schooling at Ft. Bliss’ Wm. Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso. He learned about plasma, sulfa drugs, and emergency care for the wounded. During a weekend break, his class was bused to Carlsbad Caverns. It was on that tour that he found out his country was at war. On December 20, 1941, he graduated tied for first in his class.
The 36th Division trained at Camp Bowie, in the Louisiana Maneuvers, at Camp Blanding, Florida, in the Carolina Maneuvers, and finally at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. Then its men and equipment were loaded onto ships at New York and sent to Oran, Algeria, in April 1943. Dr. Coopwood, now a major, was the141st’s regimental surgeon. More training ensued, some for amphibious landings, in the squalor and heat of North Africa. By 1943 Private Owen had become Staff Sergeant Owen, and was the senior NCO of the 141st’s 2nd Battalion medical aid station. Thomas William Hazen, a subordinate who became a close friend described Curtis like this: ‘Sgt. Owen, the steady one, who tried to keep this motley group in order, was known as “Colonel.” His Texas drawl was so pronounced I think it sometimes made him laugh with the rest of us.’
The British and Americans invaded Sicily on July 9, 1943. The 36th stayed in Africa. Would the Texans ever get into the war? All too soon, they did. The 36th Infantry Division was bloodied – and badly – on September 9, 1943 in the Allied landings at Salerno, Italy. The Italians had just surrendered. However, the Germans were aware that it was going to happen, and took over defensive positions. They were waiting when the landing occurred. It was a near disaster, and a foretaste of the debacle called the Italian Campaign. After securing the beaches, bitter fighting continued until the Germans retreated into the mountains north of Naples. The 36th was pulled out of the line to rest and refit in October, and then put back in November, replacing a badly battered 3rd Infantry Division. It fought northward, was pulled off the front line again and then moved by ship to assist in the breakout from the disastrous Anzio beachhead. In July 1944, it was pulled out of the line again, and took part in the landings in Southern France the following month. It raced north in an attempt to cut off retreating Germans. In October 1944, the point system allowed Curtis to come back home for a thirty day leave, which only started once he got to the US. The leave kept him out of the war for nearly five months, because of the transportation difficulties in getting to and from the European Theater of Operations. During this interlude, he married. Curtis and his family were (and continue to be) members of Bethel Primitive Baptist church. At a church conference, he met his future wife, Edith Morrow. Born in Cuero, Edith was raised in the South Texas town of Sebastian, where her father farmed. Curtis and Edith dated until the war separated them. While on leave, Curtis traveled to Sebastian and asked for Edith’s hand in marriage on a Sunday. They were married three days later on 
December 13, 1944. Curtis’ parents did not attend the small wedding – he had borrowed the family’s only vehicle and wartime rationing made travel problematic. McMahan is a close-knit community, and many families are interwoven. He says jokingly, “I had to leave home to keep from marrying a cousin!” He rejoined his unit in March of 1945 as it fought through the Siegfried Line. He was in the Brandenburg Alps, at Kufstein, Austria when Germany surrendered in May 1945.
Curtis looks back on his service in World War II with the eyes of a historian. He sees and interprets much of what he endured as part of the big picture. Nevertheless, I asked him of certain instances in his service remain seared in his memory. He paused, and then shared with me some of them.
The Allied landing at Salerno, Italy on September 9, 1943 – His medical detachment rode into the beach on a British landing boat. When the bow ramp dropped, he and everyone on the landing craft were near-casualties. A German machine gunner sprayed bullets at them. Fortunately, the enemy gunner was entrenched too low, and when he depressed his weapon, his rounds struck sand dunes at his front instead of young Americans. Curtis hit the ground, only to feel something kicking him in the side. Rolling over, he looked up at a British MP yelling at him, “Son, get up and off this beach. The bullets won’t kill you unless they hit you.” He got off the beach, but not far that day.
The “utter chaos” (Curtis used that term a lot in his discussions about the war) of Salerno, where the 36th and 45th Infantry Divisions were nearly pushed into the sea – US Navy destroyers cruised close to shore, depressing their guns to drive off the advancing German tanks. The aid station was set up at water’s edge because of the fierce resistance to the landing. The badly wounded were turned over to Navy corpsmen at the beach and evacuated to waiting ships, all the while under fire. Then it was up the ‘soft underbelly of Europe,’ where in Curtis’ words, “there was just one mountain after another.” Mignano, Altavilla, Mt. Rotundo, San Pietro, Sanmucro, and the Rapido River became bywords for misery and death.
The constant replacement of his men – “Each line company was assigned three medics,” he told me. “I lost many of them. Some were killed. Some were wounded.” Many times infantrymen were pulled out of companies and made stretcher-bearers. Toward the end of the war, personnel shortages were so critical that prisoners in army guardhouses were returned to the line, if they agreed to behave. The Medical Detachments got some of them too. They usually did a good job.
The necessity of finding a place for medical facilities – “We were usually around one mile from the front lines,” he said, “which was well in range of artillery.” If lucky, they found suitable structure where medics and doctors could work in blackout conditions. But weren’t structures also artillery registration points – in other words, targets? “Well, yes, but that was a chance we had to take so we could work on the wounded.” Until prodded, Curtis said nothing of his Purple Heart – he took shrapnel in a hand in late 1943. The picture below, taken from Hazen’s book, “Medicos Up Front – With the 36th Texas Infantry Division,” shows the 2nd Battalion’s aid station in November and December 1943.
For 43 days, in mud, rain and snow, and with mortar barrages which missed (but barely) Sgt. Owen’s men struggled to save lives. Hazen describes their existence:
The Aid Station was located on a mountain trail impossible to reach by jeep and several hundred yards from a point where a jeep could get in. there is where we established our collecting point to be used sparingly during daylight. (light discipline was strict). At night a jeep would bring water and food to the collecting point and then take the dead in body bags (mattress sacks) back to Graves Registration for burial. In order to evacuate the severely wounded promptly in daytime, our drivers had to chance being observed. …One canteen of water was each one’s ration for the day and it was used for drinking and cleanliness. Our clothing could not be changed for 43 days.
The death of Lockhart’s Dr. Joe Coopwood – Major Coopwood was not required to visit aid stations, but he did, and regularly. He was at the 2nd battalion’s Aid Station the day before he died. His last words to Sergeant Owen as he left were, “I’ll see you day after tomorrow.” It didn’t happen. The 141st’s regimental surgeon was killed at regimental headquarters by long-range artillery the following day. “He was like a father to us. His death really affected me. I knew he was different from other doctors. Before going to medical school he had attended VMI. He was a soldier’s soldier.”
The horrific blunder of the Rapido River crossings of January 20 and 21, 1944 – The 36th’s commander, General Fred Walker, told higher authorities that attacking across a river into the main German defensive positions would be suicide. Despite this, he was ordered to move two of his regiments across the swift moving stream and then attack the entrenched enemy. The two attempts turned into a slaughter, as men and rubber boats were riddled with artillery and machinegun fire. Although a toehold was made, the survivors had to retreat. Of the 6000 men involved, over 2000 were wounded, killed or captured The Germans suffered less than 300 casualties. Three days later, a four-hour truce was called, so the Americans could recover their dead. Sergeant Owen was ordered to dispatch two medics with a white flag, where a truce had been arranged. “I recall the silence,” he said. Almost continuous artillery fire had, for a brief moment in time, ceased. “After four hours, the truce was over with, and things started back up again.” Curtis understates his own involvement. Hazen remembers that ‘[a]s might well be expected, Sgt. Owen told the captain that he could ask none of us to go unless he himself went also. [The detachment commander] said that he would not permit the sergeant to go for he felt that these two men might not come back. The captain could ill afford to lose the services of Sgt. Owen.” He would later receive a commendation for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” for his work evacuating the wounded the following month.
The horrors of Kaufering, one of the many Dachau sub-camps – Although Nazi extermination camps were in Poland and elsewhere, Germany was home to over 20,000 labor, transit, and concentration
camps between 1933 and 1945. The camps in Germany used Jews, Gypsies, political and social undesirables, and Russian POWs, as forced labor. Hundreds of thousands vanished due to starvation, disease, and outright murder. Like other Allied units, the 36th came upon the horrors of unbelievable inhumanity. Beginning in 1943, Kaufering’s inmates – mostly Jews – were forced to excavate underground facilities for fighter aircraft production. As the Allies approached in late April 1945, the SS forcibly evacuated surviving inmates and murdered those too ill to move. Curtis and thousands of other GIs witnessed these horrors. Of his experience, Curtis says little, just shaking his head.
Starving displaced persons and freed inmates from concentration camps – After Dachau, the Division was on K rations. The GIs did not have spare food to distribute to the thousands of displaced persons and camp survivors that were, seemingly, everywhere. Sergeant Owen, the erstwhile farmer, knew something about places where these unfortunates might find some stored foods. He “suggested” to some that they look in Germans’ cellars. Many did, finding stores of potatoes, which they were able to boil and eat. They also discovered schnapps and wines, and some got quite drunk very quickly.
German autobahns filled with enemy soldiers marching to surrender in late April and early May – The average soldier knew their country was defeated. Only fanatical SS units thought otherwise. SS men hung or shot “defeatists.” Curtis recalls one group explaining that they had to kill several SS men so they could surrender.
The countenance of captured Nazi SS soldiers: “I only saw a few,” he tells me. “But the ones I did see had dead eyes.”
The emotional and psychological costs of war: War became unreal. “If you thought about it too much you would go stark raving mad,” he recalled. “You see so much suffering your mind goes blank.” But not perfectly. By the end of the war, if he saw someone badly wounded, “I had to get up and leave.” The war’s horrors stayed with him afterward. When asked, Curtis acknowledged quietly it took a toll on him. As we talked, Edith nodded. Although not discussed, she too witnessed Curtis’ suffering in those years. He told me the hours spent alone as a farmer helped put the demons to rest. There is no doubt that a strong and loving wife and family, and a deep Christian faith helped as well.
After Germany’s surrender in May, 1945 hundreds of thousands of 
GIs spent months awaiting transportation home. Most finally went by ship. Tech Sergeant Curtis Owen (he had been promoted) got lucky and hopped a ride on a four engine bomber. With fueling stops at Marseilles, Casablanca, the Azores, St. John, and Presque Island, it reached Boston. Then it was by train to San Antonio. He arrived home on August 1, 1945. At last, his war was over.
Ed Horne, the local Farmall dealer, knew Curtis was a returning veteran, and put his name at the top of the list for a new two row tractor. He continued to farm for sixty years.
Curtis and Edith celebrated 71 years together recently. They have been blessed with three children (Diane Ross, Beverly Coates, and Tom Hazen Owen), seven grandchildren, and fifteen great grandchildren. Curtis and Edit h now reside at the Golden Age Home. Their warmth and kindness are infectious. They and their family have done much to enrich Caldwell County. Drop by some time.
Curtis and Edith Owen and Their Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren
ADDENDUM 11-15-17
I wrote this story in February of 2016. I visited with Curtis today at a local nursing facility. He recently fell and broke his pelvis. He was recovering nicely. His bride of 72 years had recently passed away. Curtis continued, at the age of 98, to be mentally sharp as a tack. We discussed world affairs, and Curtis expanded a bit on the effects of the war on him. “There were a lot of funerals i didn’t attend [after the war]. I’d seen too much.”
THE BATTLE FOR IWO JIMA – PART THREE
Attrition and Its Consequences
Press coverage of the raging battle on Iwo Jima reached a crescendo with the raising of the flags on Mt. Suribachi. The Marines’ bravery despite a ferocious enemy and having suffered horrific casualties was first page, ‘above the fold’ news across the country. But unfortunately, many reporters saw the symbolism of the flag raising as a convenient end point to their narrative of the battle. The island’s conquest seemed assured. There were other stories to cover. Vanishing news coverage did a disservice to the sacrifices that thousands of unsung American heroes would make over the next month.
At the end of the first five days the US forces had pushed across Airfield One and toward Airfield Two. However, Japanese resistance had just begun.
Advance Toward the North and East
Historically, Japanese troops penned up would, rather than surrender, make banzai charges. If successful, the charges would overrun American positions, but if not it usually led to the wholesale slaughter of the Japanese attackers. Kuribayashi forbade these types of attacks, and instead ordered his troops to remain under cover and to sell their lives with the highest cost to the attackers. By waging night attacks on Marine foxholes, using the elaborate tunnel network to infiltrate behind the American lines to attack advancing Marines from behind, and employing well-sited machine gun, artillery, and mortar positions to unleash murder cross fire took thousands of Marines’ lives.
The Marines’ small arm fire proved ineffective against these positions and tactics. The attackers soon discovered that flamethrowers, satchel charges, gasoline, and grenades were the most effective ways to kill the hidden defenders. Marines with flamethrowers packed 68 pounds of highly flammable gasoline in pressurized backpacks, would shoot a stream of flame into suspected enemy areas. These Marines had an even shorter life expectancy than the riflemen.
Marine artillery units quickly deployed and fired from presumably secured areas, with forward observers like Luling resident Alton Rodenberg stationed on the slopes of Mt. Suribachi. Naval artillery was called in from battleships and cruisers offshore. The Marines landed Sherman medium tanks fitted with flamethrowers. The “Ronson” or “Zippo” tanks (named after cigarette lighter brands), were particularly effective. Navy and Marine aviators, flying off aircraft carriers, unloaded rockets, and napalm that allowed a slow and painful advance toward the northern tip of the island, where Kuribayashi’s headquarters were presumed to be.
From the beginning, the war in the Pacific had been typified by its unprecedented brutality, but napalm and flamethrowers and white phosphorus grenades incinerating human flesh brought war’s inhumanity to a new level. But Marines who had seen their buddies slaughtered on landing beaches or blown up by mortars, or shot in the back by snipers saw these weapons as indispensable equalizers against a hidden and ruthless enemy.
USMC Photographer Douglas Page Shot of Flamethrower in Action Marine with Flamethrower
Japanese Cave Complex on the North End of the Island-Photo by Douglas Page
In the midst of the carnage, the Navy was on the receiving end of kamikaze attacks. The USS Saratoga was struck by two suicide dive bombers, putting it out of action for the rest of the war. The escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea was struck as well. It blew up, capsized and sank, taking hundreds of her crew to the bottom with her. It was a harbinger of what was to occur a month later during the invasion of Okinawa, where more kamikazes would kill thousands more sailors.
Kuribayashi’s war of attrition seemed to be working according to plan. Marine units were held up and drained of manpower. Companies were commanded by captains, then lieutenants, then sergeants –there seemed to be no end in sight as the slaughter continued.
Japanese defenders retreated into increasingly rugged terrain. Their lairs were often immune from heavy bombardments attempting to ‘soften up’ an area before infantry advances. When the bombardment stopped and Marines advanced, the Japanese returned through their tunnel network into their pillboxes and machine gun emplacements to unleash withering fire on the attackers. Although still under constant fire, a group of 14 small unarmed aircraft used the airfield as a staging ground for round-the-clock artillery spotting, which proved invaluable.
USMC Photographer Douglas Page Photo of Fighting in the Rugged Terrain
Heat and Rugged Terrain Made a Horrible Combination – by Douglas Page USMC
The three invading American divisions pushed north across the island. The 4th Division fought a battle of attrition against Hill 382, ‘The Amphitheater’, ‘Turkey Knob’ and an area aptly dubbed ‘The Meatgrinder.’ The 5th Marine Division attacked the Nishi Ridge, Hills 362A and362B and ‘The Gorge’, and the Third Division attacked across the unfinished third airfield and into an eerie killing ground that became known as ‘Cushman’s Pocket’.
A retired Marine officer remembers: “At one point we had 60,000 men occupying less than three-and-a-half square miles of broken terrain.” It produced a schizophrenic scenario. A command post a kilometer from Japanese lines, artillery still firing in the area near the landing beaches, and Seabees using heavy equipment to repair the airfields for the arrival of the B-29s. And all the while, the men in combat had to keep going – until they were killed or wounded. As James Bradley puts it: “Their daily routine – impossibly dull and impossibly terrifying – was turning them into human robots. Each day was the same: a morning artillery bombardment, then a crawling, slow advance over exposed terrain, then an afternoon bombardment, then another advance. At dusk the boys scuttled into shell holes or ravines for shelter. The next morning, it all started over again.”
In the first nine days attacking north, the Marines advanced a total of 4000 yards – and suffered over 7000 casualties. Medical attention for the Americans was as good as it got in the Pacific – with Marines taken to aid stations, hospitals, hospital ships, and the more seriously wounded on to Guam for care from physicians like Lockhart resident Dr. Philip Wales. But the problem was getting the wounded out of the combat zone. The Japanese had no compunctions about killing corpsmen, stretcher bearers, or the wounded themselves. Twenty-three doctors and 827 corpsmen were wounded or lost their lives on the island.
By March 4th, thirteen days after the landing, the first crippled B-29 landed on the re-constructed Airfield Number 1 and a large portion of Kuribayashi’s defenses had been taken. But the cost was so staggering, and the need for replacements so desperate, that the next day, March 5th, a ‘stand down’ order was issued to give depleted front line units some time to catch their collective breaths – and receive badly needed reinforcements. Then the fighting continued. Finally, on March 11th, the Japanese forces were split in two, with Kuribayashi’s main force in the north backed against the sea at Kitano Point.
On March 14th, the island was declared “secured” by Admiral Chester Nimitz. “Who does the admiral think he is kidding?” scoffed one Marine. “We’re still getting killed.” The fighting continued unabated in the center of the island, but on March 16th, the Japanese pocket on the eastern side of the island was finally wiped out. Further north the 5th Division fought toward Kuribayashi’s headquarters in what became as “Death Valley.” This was an exceptionally deadly labyrinth of caves, bluffs, cliffs, and sulfurous emissions from the volcanic rock. The end was near for Kuribayashi, who radioed Tokyo, on March 22nd, “We are still fighting. The strength under my command is now about four hundred. Tanks are attacking us. The enemy suggested we surrender through a loudspeaker, but our officers and men just laughed and paid no attention.” On the night of March 25th, what appeared to be last of the organized resistance ended. But not quite. Three hundred of Kuribayashi’s men infiltrated American lines and attacked unsuspecting airmen and reserve troops near the airfield. The enemy’s last gasp took another 100 American lives before the Japanese were wiped out. Kuribayashi presumably took his own life. His body was never found.
Colonel Joseph Alexander USMC (Ret) states, “In its 36 days of combat on Iwo Jima, the V Amphibious Corps [the Marines fighting onshore and the Navy offshore] killed approximately 22,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors. The cost was staggering. The assault units of the corps—Marines and organic Navy personnel—sustained 24,053 casualties, by far the highest single-action losses in Marine Corps history. Of these, a total of 6,140 died. Roughly one Marine or corpsman became a casualty for every three who landed on Iwo Jima.” Twenty-seven men received the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima – half of them posthumously. Americans were shocked at the cost. There were more Marine casualties than Japanese.
But the Army Air Force got its emergency landing field. By war’s end, a total of 2,251 B-29s had made forced landings on the island. Those planes carried 24,761 crewmen, many of whom would have perished at sea without Iwo Jima as a safe haven. Said one B-29 pilot, “Whenever I land on this island I thank God for the men who fought for it.”
In the word of Admiral Chester Nimitz, on Iwo Jima, “uncommon valor was a common virtue.” In its aftermath, many Marines have stated simply, “I know when I die I am going to heaven, because I’ve already been in hell.”
Iwo Jima taught the Japanese America’s resolve to take the war to the Japanese heartland. General Douglas MacArthur’s troops were retaking the Philippines, and the invasion of Okinawa was next. But the tenacious defense by the Japanese, and the very real fear that the American losses at Iwo Jima (and soon after on Okinawa) were a foretaste of what would lay in store in the event of an invasion of the main Japanese islands confirmed to many, including President Truman, that the atomic bomb, recently perfected and soon to be tested in the New Mexico desert, was the only way to force an end to the war.
Much information for this article has been gleaned from CLOSING IN: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima by Colonel Joseph H. Alexander U.S. Marine Corps (Ret), and Flags of Our Fathers, by James Bradley.
