This episode is sponsored by 511, a company that I've used for well over a decade and continue to use to this day.
And 511 is offering you guys, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a discount on every purchase you make with them.
Before we get to that code, I want to highlight a couple of products that, again, I personally use today.
One of the most impressive products they just released is their Rush Backpack 2.0.
Now, for many of you, whether you're going to the fire station, the police station, whether you're traveling with your family,
whether you're taking training courses, we have to fly, we have to drive, we have to take trains.
And I have to say, I own multiple backpacks, many of 511's different ones.
But as far as a daypack, this one was the most impressive.
There are so many different compartments. The way it sits on your back is incredibly comfortable.
If you are a concealed carry person, there's also a spot for a weapon.
So they've thought of multiple, multiple things that a man or woman would have to do on a daily basis.
That is in addition to all of the products that I talk about a lot.
Their uniforms fit for men or fit for women in the first responder professions.
The footwear that they offer, whether it's the Norris sneaker or the Atlas system that is designed for foot health
and therefore knees and back and hips and shoulders and neck.
As a civilian, I live in a lot of their clothes as well.
Their jeans stretch, you can actually squat down in them.
We live in Florida here, so I wear a lot of their shorts, which again, very, very lightweight material.
You can get it wet and it will dry almost immediately.
And then moving to the fitness and tactical space, I used to have just a regular weight vest.
Recently, I switched to a 511 vest and actually bought ballistic plates as well.
My thinking was simply, if I'm going to have a vest, why not have one that protects me as well?
And that tack vest is trusted by law enforcement all around the country.
So I mentioned they were going to offer you a discount code.
So if you go to 511tactical.com and enter the code SHIELD15, S-H-I-E-L-D-1-5,
you'll get 15% off not just that one purchase, but every time you visit their store.
And if you want to learn more about 511, their mission, their products,
then listen to episode 338 of the Behind the Shield podcast with the CEO and founder, Francisco Morales.
Welcome to episode 561 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show Frank Wright.
Now, it's not often that you get to speak to a veteran from the World War II era,
but it's even less likely you'll get to speak to one of the Marines that stood on Iwo Jima.
So Frank's story is incredible from his hilarious enlistment story
where he wasn't heavy enough to make the grade, so he improvised,
through to some of his incredible deployments, having to fight with bayonets and knives in Guam,
being shot multiple times on Iwo Jima, his incredible mental health story, and so much more.
So I urge you to listen from beginning to end to hear the perspective of a true warrior of World War II.
Before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week,
please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and leave a rating.
Each five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of 561 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories,
so I can get them to every single person who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Frank Wright. Enjoy.
So Frank, I just want to start by saying thank you so much for coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you. My pleasure to do this and give me a little bit more exposure to get rid of my, not get rid, to sell my book.
Absolutely. Well, there's so much I want to ask you about because being a soldier from the World War II generation and reading your book,
I see so many parallels with the issues that modern day soldiers, firefighters, police officers deal with, you know, in 2022.
So for everyone listening, where are we finding you geographically today?
I'm in Ludai, California. And I'm, do you want further information on that?
Just whatever you'd like to say. I'll start with the beginning in a moment.
About 35 miles south of Sacramento. And it's just parallel to about San Francisco.
So and it's a small town. I don't know exactly how, what the population is, but it's a very nice town.
And it's what brought me here in this particular area was nearly all of the houses in the area had such pretty lawns.
And real green and very manicured. So we liked that.
So we moved up from Sacramento, from Stockton to get into the Lodai area.
And then that gave us a start on a long term. I have lived in Lodai off and on for about all 50, 60 years.
So it's it's been a long haul for me to be in one spot like this,
because I was used to moving around for a while with my wife.
Now they were five years and then we finally we moved into into the California area.
And we just stayed down here. It was just too wet for me up in Oregon.
You know, so so I would love to start at the very beginning because you talked about traveling.
Obviously, you've literally traveled around the world through through the military and then after.
So tell me where you were born and then tell me about your family, what your mom and dad did and how many siblings you had.
Well, I was born in 1925.
And I had two other brothers, two brothers with me.
There were three and three boys in our family. My dad was on worked on WPA.
He did two jobs, worked with the post office and working on the state capitol as a tool shaker.
So and my mother worked for Gus Blass's.
I think it was called Gus Blass Department Store.
And I was a school kid and we had no transportation.
We didn't have any automobiles until Arkansas gave the first World War veterans a bonus.
And then he purchased a car at that time with that with that bonus.
The the state of Arkansas gave all the veterans on it, which was many years ago.
I don't know exactly when it was, but I know I was probably four years old at that time.
And I went to school with at Little Rock Eastside Junior High School.
No, first I went to grade school was it at Peabody and then went from there after sixth grade, went to Eastside Junior High.
And then from there, I went to Little Rock Senior High.
And that was the became a little famous when the Little Rock Senior High became integrated with the African Americans there.
And but they were they were not school was not integrated at the time that I was going there.
But I stayed in high school until I was in the 10th grade, I think it was.
I was 16.
And World War Three, World War Two, just not there yet.
I hope not.
World War Two.
The I was in that was in 1941.
I was in the I was the 11th grade at that time.
I had not graduated high school from senior high on it.
Actually, I was on I was making airplanes, model airplanes for five and nine store in Little Rock.
And I'd make an airplane.
They give me the airplane to to make.
I would make the airplane and then I would give it back to them and they would give me one for making it.
So that's how I got my stuff.
I worked for it on it.
And I was making airplanes at that time for for the department store.
And I heard the the information on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
And of course, I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was, but I knew that it was part of the United States.
So I started getting the fever to join up with the service on it and so I can get out of the area on it.
And that's how I started into the to get into the Marine Corps.
So I went to the Navy and I was too light.
I went to the Marines and I was too light and wasn't old enough.
So I was supposed to be 17 at that time, but I couldn't I couldn't make the grade.
But my my mother's sister was a Northern Republic and she knew how to get around that.
And she made out a delayed birth certificate and gave me a different birth date.
So I joined Marine Corps using my younger brother's birth date.
And then that made me just barely 17.
So I took the his birth date all through the Marine Corps until I got set filed up for some Social Security.
And when I became 65 and signed up for Social Security, he asked me when I was born.
And so I was said, well, I gave him my real birth date.
And he said, well, the records show that you were born in December, not July.
I said, well, I lied about my age.
So I said, well, that's all right. I'll just change it here.
A lot of servicemen did that.
And I had been carrying my brother's birth date for many years until I had to say until I got up and filed up and had them corrected.
So Social Security.
They they went. I went from there.
And I went for seven other people, kids that were just 17.
And we took the oath for the Marine Corps in January the 21st, 1942.
Which was just several and about three or four weeks after Pearl Harbor.
Well, you talked about being too light just to interject for a moment.
When you were referring to that, your physical weight was below the standard that they want.
So tell me the story about how you overcame the weight challenge.
Well, the first thing he did is I want to know if I was how old I was.
And I told him this was the recruit recruiting sergeant.
And so I told him that I was 17.
And he said, well, you don't look it.
He says, but you'll get on the scales.
And so I was I remember what the date the weight was supposed to be.
But I was about five pounds underneath the standard weight of going in.
And so I went home and started eating bananas.
And finally, I just took some bananas and stuffed them in my back pocket, my front pocket, all over.
And then I made the grade by putting five pounds of bananas on my head, some of my socks.
So I really started my career with that on my line.
I did too.
And that was the first lie I had ever made.
See, it's interesting is when I went to become a firefighter, we had to declare, you know, the things that we'd done in the past that may be deemed unethical, whatever it is.
And so thinking the honesty was what they were looking for.
I said, well, a long time ago, I did this and, you know, and I was immediately disqualified.
So I learned in the fire service that to become a firefighter, you didn't talk about any of the bad stuff you ever did.
You basically lied about it, pretended you were a choir boy.
And I got the job first time I started lying.
So I can totally understand.
I want to tell you a little bit about that in a way. A friend of mine did about the same thing, except he was over in Denmark and he had not integrated over to the United States yet.
But there were two lines in Denmark that was going to be one line was going to the gas chambers.
And the other line was going into the concentration camp in another area.
And they were the lines were only about seven feet apart.
And he wanted to go into the other one because he says, I heard that the that this line that we're in going to the gas chambers.
So he talked his brother, he talked his friend to change the lines.
And he says, No, I don't want to. They might they might shoot me if I try to.
He said, Well, I'm going to change.
So he changed over to the one that was going to concentration camp.
And his friend went to the gas chambers.
When he got over there into the line, they asked him what kind of a occupation did you have?
And are you have an occupation that's worthy of you to come to the United States?
He says, Yes, I was a qualified bridge builder.
They wanted to have a lot of bridges made and stuff like that, you know, for their military.
He says, Now is the bridge builder for the superintendent on that.
So what's your degree?
And he told him some fictitious degree.
He got in by saying that and he that he was a bridge builder.
He came to the United States.
He said that's what he was. And he got a job in California to building bridges.
And he didn't he had never built one at all.
But that was his qualifications that we went to this town and start building bridges on it.
So I don't know what but he lied about coming in from his two.
It's not mine, but that's his story.
And he still he was until about four or five years ago on and he was still doing bridges.
So I built a lot of bridges.
Yeah, I'd be scared of driving that town if he didn't know how to build them though.
But a lot of people do did that a lot of guys came came into the service and just did everything they could to get in the past examination.
Of course, most of them were out of jobs, didn't have an education, and they needed people in the service.
And they took anybody in that time. If you could breathe, they say you're coming in.
Absolutely. Well, I want to get to your journey through the training because obviously you ended up in a very unique group of Marines in the end.
Before we do, though, you just you mentioned something that was interesting to me that your dad was a World War One veteran.
So you ended up seeing combat. You ended up struggling with the physical and mental health elements of that.
Did you ever see any of that exhibited by your father when you were young?
My dad was over in France on and he was a bugler.
He played the bugle. And at that time, that's where most of the military reacted.
They got up with the bugle and they went to bed with the bugle.
They got paid by the bugle. They got they went to eat by the bugle.
They went to attack by the bugle. So it was everything was transferred.
Now, of course, it's a lot different. But that was his thing.
And I have plenty of pictures of him at that time. His brother was in World War One as well.
And he was a real educated man. So he had some kind of a I don't never did know what my uncle that would be my uncle.
I thought he did. So but they lived in in Arkansas.
That's where I was born in Arkansas.
He saw action, but I don't know. I don't know what what part of the country he was in on it.
And, of course, I was in, of course, Europe area.
And I never did know too much about the war in Europe.
Everything was crammed in my vocabulary was the South Pacific.
And so he understood what the PTSD was.
But at the time, it was called combat fatigue.
They didn't pick up the term PTSD until probably in the 50s, I would imagine.
And it was still you're still combat fatigue on it and still use use that word at that time.
But it was I think there was a story with in Patton's army and his about a kid that couldn't take it any longer.
Patton asked him how much how what was wrong with him. He said that I that he had combat fatigue.
And so he slept him. In fact, that was that was one of his main things that they when they did a life story on Patton about him hitting this kid.
It had combat fatigue because he said nobody has combat fatigue in my army.
So they were still using it at that time overseas as well.
Yeah. Well, it's been amazing when you look back, you've got so many terms, you know, soldiers heart, shell shock, thousand yard stare.
I mean, these this same symptom has existed for hundreds of years.
The name changed. Yeah, that's true.
And it could I can I can see it. And it did.
It happened to me. No, right. And they did not diagnose it.
At first, after I got out.
But there's a big story in my book in regards to how when I came back from Iwo Jima, they diagnosed me at that time.
I was shot all through my chest and my arm and was in surgery.
And I got in an altercation with the surgeon because they were going to cut my arm off.
So I I slugged him and knocked him off his surgical tray off and everything.
And he got mad at me. And so he diagnosed me as combat fatigue.
When then he let me go.
And when I got and I got into San Diego, I think the hospital, they still had me down as combat fatigue and put me in the nut board.
And they didn't take care of my wounds properly.
And I had to find someone to change my bandages.
It was quite a story on in my book on that. But I was really worried at the time.
I bet that might that might help. I mean, hurt me in getting a.
Purple heart on if they saw my record and said combat fatigue on I had already been wounded one someplace else.
So two different areas.
Anyway, read my book. You get the big story.
Yeah, no, there's this so much description of so many of the battles that you were in.
So I want to get to that journey now, if that's OK.
So talk to me. You are a very small framed, brave 16 and a half year old boy who finds himself in the Marines.
So walk me through the initial boot camp and then the the Raider selection and then what that looked like for you.
On January the 21st, 1942.
There is seven Arkansas boys.
They had taken the oath.
And we were put on a train.
To go to boot camp, boot camp was in San Diego.
Marine Corps recruit depot on it.
And when we got there, we had three Marines waiting for us at the station.
I said, they had already picked up some from.
Other trains that were from other states.
And they were waiting for us.
And as I said, when I got there on it, I was the one of the kids.
What is the carrier or the transfer papers?
And he handed all the papers over to this to the sergeant.
And I said that he was the devil.
And he had two other helpers on the coast. We were now being called everything in a book.
Besides young men going into the service.
And you cannot do that now on it in boot camp.
But you're not supposed to do that when you're now.
Anyway, I was in a platoon. I had a sergeant or the head DI, drill instructor, and two corporals that were assistant DI's.
And I was in platoon 150.
I stayed in that for, I think it was eight weeks at that time.
But I'm not positive. It was between eight or ten.
But we got our indoctrination, I guess, with what the Marine Corps was all about and how we reacted to those above us.
And with them, I think they called it God in country and family, Marine Corps.
Anyway, we went through that training.
And I remember one incident that I had.
I was in what they called the feather merchant area, which was smaller Marines in company.
Because there were some of them in there. There were six of them.
Six foot seven. Another one was six three, I think it was, something like that.
They were in the head and we were in the back. We were the short guys.
In fact, there's one kid who was a lot smaller than I was.
And I don't know how he got in, but I think it was because he came in from Chicago.
But they were counting the cadence and they were marching along and he and the sergeant said platoons, oh.
And so we stopped.
And I was about 30 inches from my chest to the man in front of me.
And the sergeant came over and he whacked me on top of the head with his swaggering stick.
And he said, boy, what's your name? I told him private rights or.
He said, well, right, you're all wrong. He said, just 40 inches back to breast.
So I got my first whack with the swagger stick for not being the proper number of inches between the two of us.
But that was about it for me as I was a very good and studious Marine.
And I learned a lot and I was.
I knew that what they were teaching us was something that was needed in their training.
And I paid very good attention to it. And I carried that training clear through my Marine Corps tour for four years.
And I thought I had blessed those kids that were tolerated, tolerable to me.
And I went up through boot camp. My first duty station was up in the posted in Tongue Point, Oregon,
which is right in Astoria, Oregon, which is the mouth of the Columbia River. I stayed there on guard duty.
We guarded the mountain that we were, the large mountain I called the mountain, right there near the mouth of the Columbia.
And because they had ammunition stored in the area and we were guarding all day and all night.
And then we got liberty every once in a while. And I was transferred, a temporary transfer over to, well, that's another story.
While we were stationed in Tongue Point, the Japanese had, they shelled the, I think it was the oil fields in Southern California.
And then they finally went on up the coastline, on up to, from California up to the Columbia River. And they were heading for Portland and Seattle, where they were building warships.
There was two submarines that came in on the river by following the minefield. The fishermen were out fishing.
And then they come in, when they would come in, they'd raise the, they'd pull the mines off the side and to let the fishermen in. And the Japanese came up right behind them and came in on the Columbia River.
And they stayed there a couple of nights first. And then they finally, they shelled the military base, which was the first time any foreign country had ever shelled a military base in World War I or II, as far as that goes.
Anyway, they came in and shelled Fort Stevens and didn't do any damage. They knocked down a couple of outdoor movies, I think it was, or something like that.
But they didn't do very much harm. But they scared the hell out of everybody up there. They thought that was the first wave coming in and going in to Astoria.
Anyway, we got the alert sign, alert that we were on liberty at the time that they shelled Fort Stevens, which was only about six or eight miles from Tung Point there.
And we tried to help them out, but they, I explained it pretty well, more thorough than that in my book.
But then after they were finally, I think they were sunk, it might have been on the Oregon coast, but I'm not positive.
Anyway, about two, three weeks or so after that, they transferred me and I think it was six other Marines to Cord Angeles, Washington,
to teach them how to fire the 20 millimeter ammunition, 20 millimeter, they called it machine gun at that time.
And we stayed up there for about two weeks, I guess, and then they shipped us back to Tung Point and we were kind of like a special forces for planning a,
to put the 20 millimeters all over the mountain up there, the ammunition hill. We stayed there on that and I had an accident falling off one of the cliffs up there.
And I was in the hospital for a little bit, a couple of weeks or so. And then about that time, the Marine Corps was forming a new special forces called Marauders.
And they had some trouble getting enough people to volunteer for it. They sent individuals to different posts around the West Coast to join up.
And they took the best that were in their mind, Marines that would qualify as a Raider on it. And they had their eye on young kids,
but they were in their fit and had a good record. And I had shot expert rifle and expert pistol.
And I had machine gun and bayonet training, had 20 millimeter training. And so I shot really a good, my score was 3.55 out of 4.
Anyway, and so they said, well, you would qualify if you want to go. So I told them I wanted to go and I wanted to fight.
So he said, well, you have to be down there within two weeks. So I got two weeks to make my mind up and then go.
One of the reasons was because I had good training and had good reports from my boot camp and my training and my training,
but my good conduct with the Navy on Tongue Point Island, Tongue Point Station there. But I was transferred from there to,
I think it was Camp Hill June, which was in San Diego area on it. I think that's where we first started from.
And then we went into Camp Pendleton area. And we were in Camp Pendleton on October 1943 and stayed in Camp Pendleton.
And James Roosevelt, Jimmy Roosevelt, major at first, but he came in as Colonel.
And he was president's son of the president of the United States at the time. And he was my commanding officer.
And he came in in November of 1943 on it. And I actually was in Raiders about two weeks before he was signed up as our commanding officer.
And with that, I was signed as squad leader from the Raiders. And I stayed in there from October until February.
I think it was February. Anyway, we left for overseas on February 11. I think that was 1943. The other was 1942.
Anyway, I can't remember right now. My memory is not very good.
I think it's incredible considering. I really do. I want to get on one thing before we talk about your overseas deployments, which I thought was fascinating.
Talk to me about the hand-to-hand combat training that you did, because seeing words like Judo in the 1940s seems very progressive to me.
Yes. We were taught in the Raiders, we were taught the art of self-defense. And the things that we were taught were to kill someone.
It wasn't for anything. And if we were going to get in a fight with the enemy, we weren't going to get in there just to wound him or to may man. It was to kill him.
So everything, we had terminated with the IA killing someone. And we had several trainees that had been over to England with the special forces over in England be trained on the art of self-defense over there.
Which was a little bit different than the art of defense in the United States.
But anyway, those trainees happened to be in our fourth Raiders, which was nice. So we got a lot of personal stuff because they were so close to us in our own platoon.
We fought the battle in San Clemente. I think we took and captured San Clemente many times on our training.
At the Nautilus, we trained on the Nautilus, and I think it was the submarine, and the USS Waters, and I think it was the USS Bent. It seemed like there was another submarine also down there, but I can't remember that.
But the Salt and Nautilus was what I'm finding. We'd come into the coast with a submarine, and we had to get up at nighttime, and we had to surface and then pull out our rubber boats and get on the rubber boats and paddle into the beach.
And then we would deploy out from the beach into different areas and finally be driven into the ones that had beach houses down there.
So we captured them, and it was hard. It was really hard training. Very hard training.
There's two or three steps above what the normal Marines were getting at the time.
I can only imagine as well. When we think of submarines, we think of them today with all the advanced equipment.
But I've seen some of the World War II era submarines, and just to get in one of those and be under the water seems like it took an amazing amount of courage.
Well, yeah. And it's very close quarters.
I had one of my bunks had torpedoes right underneath where we were sleeping on it, and the sailors were very eager to teach us Marines different things about the torpedoes. And one of them was the torpedo juice that they had on it.
That's 190 proof alcohol. They'd have a canteen full of that. And then I wish you would rob from torpedoes around there.
And then they'd make us drink it if we wanted to go to chow or something like that. We had to take a taste of it or something.
So you just don't take a swig of 190 proof alcohol without it burning.
But there's a lot of stuff going on. People had claustrophobia often.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, that's because of that. And you can hear different sounds that you just don't hear all the time. But of course they do. The Navy does. But the Marines didn't.
But it's the training is real hard.
And of course, they train now with the same thing, except they carry it a little bit further than that.
It's a different type of training. The Special Forces now are well trained on.
They have all this electronic stuff that goes along with it. And they've got to carry that on their back. They've even got their own drones, I think they call them, military drones.
They have to carry those. Everything has to be carried on it like that. But now, you ride a helicopter someplace to your destination on it.
And before, we were trained to walk. And we walked to our destination. We walked to the different places on it. We walked to go get the child.
A lot of times I had to walk 25 miles just to get breakfast. That was just not one time, but several times we had to do that.
And of course, Jimmy Roosevelt was right along with us on it. He wasn't riding on a Jeep or anything like that. He walked right with us on it.
He got the same blisters that we got. I'm just trying to think a while ago about this one. I think it was Baroko that we attacked on it.
And the rubber boats and even the six-man boat, eight-man boat on it, the winds blew us off course.
And they were out of 15 miles off the landing area. They were supposed to land. The wind blew them off course, and they land about 14 to 15 miles away from the real landing zone.
And they had to, those that were in those two or three boats, had to walk through the jungle to get back up to the landing zone.
And before they even fired a shot, but that was that far off on it. So all of this hiking and stuff, it came, it was needed.
Especially if you're in the jungle like we were on it. But it's a different thing now, and it's a lot different than just regular boot camp.
But you do get training in boot camp. And I, the first bayonet training I had on boot camp in San Diego came in handy when we landed on Guam.
And I was in bayonet fights on Guam, and several different bonsai attacks on it that we had. And I thanked my old sergeant for his training at that time.
I learned a few more of my own, but it was a training that you think, you think it's hard on you at that time, but boy, I tell you, you use your training.
Well, I think that's a really important perspective to hear from someone from your generation. Firstly, it's interesting with the technology, because what really amazes me about the World War II and World War I era is you didn't have GPS, you didn't have computers, you didn't have drones and planes in the sky with radar.
So as you mentioned, once you land, that's where you are, and you might have to hike to where you're supposed to be. You've got no way of really knowing where the enemy are.
So that in itself is incredible. But in the fire service, something that I've talked about a lot is I was very fortunate to get some really, really good, incredibly hard training early in my career, just by chance, the departments I went to.
And I feel that really set the bar for the standards of my firefighting career. Not saying I was a great firefighter, but I was definitely held to a high standard.
So talk to me about when you first deployed, your first combat, and there you are as a young boy from the US, how that high level of training as a raider carried over to your first combat mission.
Well, first thing is the training that we had in San Diego, the fourth raiders were the, I'll call it the guinea pig, for determining what a raider should be trained at.
When we left in 1943 on the 311th, they named the course that we had to take on it, they named that as a combat course, and every Marine that went overseas had to go through combat course on it.
And that was called, and I think it still is, that plus other things that they had to learn, of course, the type of the enemy that they had to face.
So when we left, we left, of course, as I say, in February, and we went to New Hebrides Island, San Clemente, New Caledonia, and we were training all the way over there on board ship.
We arrived there, we were trained on New Caledonia and New Hebrides, then we got word that we were going to be transferred over to a little place called Guadalcanal.
And our company and our platoon were transferred over there, and we were set up to patrol on Guadalcanal, Henderson Airfield that there was, and around the, some town, I don't know which one, I wasn't very, too much active on that,
because we were in as a backup and clean-up, mop-up, of what you want to say, on Guadalcanal.
We were looking for stragglers, we were looking for holdouts, and we were shelled by hand grenades.
I think we had two, two people were wounded in our company from there, but we got into the, we got in a little action on Guadalcanal.
And during this, during our period of going out in the jungle and searching for these holdouts, the Seabees had landed and were building the tent camps for the Marines that were following behind, behind our companies,
because they were going to use Guadalcanal as a jumping-off place for all of the South Pacific and North Pacific area.
And I got a chance to fire, and I was scared all the way through. When you hear, you're out in the jungle and you hear something firing going on, you don't know if it's at you or what.
You get scared. But the proper platoon sergeant, I think we just had a sergeant platoon, we had a platoon sergeant there,
and he would always holler out, you know, about that it was two miles out, two miles over, or whatever it was, to calm us down on it.
But we were scared. But that was my first exposure to someone firing at us.
After we got through those areas around Henderson Field, we went to the area where we were to stay and be as our final camp, camp month there on the canal.
The CBs are great people. They have the best food in the Pacific.
And we used to go and stand in their chow line at Hyper, so many miles just to go on their chow line just to get something to eat, besides canned dog food, as we said.
That's where, that's where spam.
And after we got there, then finally the, most of the Japanese had been captured or killed. We were still, but we still had perimeter guard duty all the time, and we were scared that they were coming in on us.
We were still always worried about that, about them sneaking in back behind us.
The Japanese had figured out the area that our planes were coming over, and they set up a lot of radio stations along in those areas in the Solomons.
The Solomons is a bunch of small islands, and all connected to in the Solomons as they were.
New Georgia was the largest one. There's Baroko, there's Rice Anchorage, and, but we were stationed in Grotta Canal, which is one of the largest of the Solomons.
We went to, our area was into, for Baroko. We went into Baroko.
Well, we were still with, we were still using the rubber boats at that time for our attack force. And which they found out that the fact that rubber, by going into rubber boats, with rubber boats, they make an island, had been, had used them almost exclusively, and it didn't work out.
And Colonel Carlson even wrote a battle report about the motors that were, the outboard motors that were on the little eight-man boats that we were using on it.
So we were using, at that time, they were changing over from rubber boats, part rubber boats, and we weren't using the submarine. We were using the, happened to be one of the USS Waters, and we had been, we had trained on that one time on San Diego.
And we landed on Baroko, and the guys that were in the smaller boats got blown off course again, and their outboard motor got grounded out, so they had to take the oars and pull themselves in on that with the oars.
And they were off course. We came in, and the Japs had their radio stations and stuff further in than we had anticipated.
And we were shot at, and we lost a lot of men at that time on it. But not on my company. My company was up on the other side of the, supposedly radio stations.
But we started walking in there, and we walked into a trap on it.
Had to go through the coconut field farm over there, and the Japs were all over the foliage and the trees and stuff on it. And they had machine guns that were, and small pill boxes that they had built out of the downed trees.
And we were trapped. I was using a.55 caliber anti-tank boys and a tank rifle at the time, and we were stationed along the field, along the road heading into that area that the guys were in.
That the guys were trapped. They had called for help, and we went out, we went in there with them, and we got stuck in this trap as well. They were pretty well organized on it.
And had a lot of corpsmen in there, taking care of the kids as they were shot. Father Redmond was our pastor of all the denominations, I would say.
And he was reading rights to everybody that he would see that they were dead. And the mortars that we took, knee mortars we took, were not very accurate to the point that we couldn't see them.
So if we didn't know exactly where they were, they were very well camouflaged. So we found out. I was carrying a sidearm and a Thompson submachine gun at the time.
So we couldn't pick out one person, or one area that the Gems were hiding.
We just took the submachine gun and just sprayed the whole top of the tree, just hoping that one of the bullets would get one. And we did. That's one way we got out of some problems that we had up there.
But they were, we didn't know for sure if we got them or not, because they were tied into the trees. And they wouldn't fall. So we had a lot of wasted ammo on that, one of that reasons.
But finally we broke out of that particular situation and made it around them, came in from behind them. And at that time we found the radio station, destroyed all the radio stations that we could come to.
And then come back to the main road. And we had some of the kids were transported out of the area by a three airplane.
I don't remember who it was. I had, at that time, before we left, brought a canal. I had malaria and I was in the field hospital.
And I heard that they were, my company and guys were going to leave for an operation. So I snuck out of the field hospital and met my squad at the ship and came in.
Well it just so happened that Jimmy Roosevelt, our commanding officer, he got malaria as well at that own water canal.
The water canal was sort of gone wet with swamps and little back streams and stuff like that and mosquitoes. And I don't know how many, I wouldn't even guess if it was 40% or 50% or something like that.
The Marines got malaria off of them. But anyway, our commanding officer, Roosevelt, he got it as well. He was in the field hospital when we left.
When we got back from, when we finally got off of Baroco, part of the guys went around to Rice Anchorage and I was in one of the companies that went over there to destroy some radio equipment.
And we went by, by native boats and they rode us across the way for that.
They came back to Baroco, got aboard our ship, came back to Guadalcanal and Jimmy Roosevelt had been transferred out of his field hospital back to the United States.
They blew him out. But when I got back I was still shaking and I think part of it was from the fright and the other part was from the malaria but they diagnosed it as AWL.
But they wiped that off because they knew that I had snuck aboard the ship to get into combat, real tight combat, which I was crazy about.
Anyway, but I went back into the field hospital. The field hospital, I stayed in for a while and I think it was at that time that first and second raters had wiped out most of the Japanese force
around the island on the person and the third, and the third raters were coming in from some place up, I don't remember where they were from.
And the fourth raters were coming back to their regular camp on it so they had all four raider companies that was overseas were all on Guadalcanal.
That was a design thing because that's when they wanted to break up the raiders.
The raiders were a smaller outfit and were trained for hit and run, a lot of night fighting and stuff and they wanted to get rid of those tactics and have a lot more larger type of action.
So most of the raiders of the third, of the fourth raters were reassigned to, I think it was the fourth division and the sixth division, as well as the first and second raters.
They were in that. I was still in the hospital and I got discharged out of the hospital on December, on December the 25th.
And I went to a reserve unit and from there I went into the third division, the 21st Marines, assigned as a squad leader.
That's one of the reasons that most of the fourth raters had been assigned to the fourth division and I didn't go in with the fourth division at that time because I had already been discharged out of the hospital.
And to a reserve unit to wait to go into the third division, as the third division and the 21st Marines were being formed at that time too.
So I went in from the third division. Now the Baroko was the first really fighting for the fourth raters.
We had been trained all this time. We really only trained and only fought one big battle over there.
We were in the tail end of the type of action that they needed at that time.
And the third division then, we had a different course as far as I was concerned. I had a different commander and a different company. The 21st Marines, I was still the squad leader and still responsible for the seven men.
We were trained much differently than the raider training on it. And the reason was that we were being trained for a larger island that were going to come in and we were not going to be going in on a small unit like the battalion.
We had two divisions that were going to be going at the same time.
And so the third and fourth and part of the fifth, the second and third division and part of the fourth division I think it was, were being trained to go to Guam and Tinian and Saipan.
Really it was a Saipan first. And Saipan then it would be Tinian, then it would be Guam on it.
But the third division was kind of reserved, on a reserve until the third and fourth had attacked and partly secured Saipan.
And then they went on over to Tinian, which was a smaller island and that was situated between Saipan and Guam.
And then Guam, I don't know too much about Saipan, but Guam, that was our main objective on it.
So we came in on, at first, we came in on small boats on it and LSTs, which was the landing ship tank, I think they called it.
Then they transferred us over to, I would say maybe a half mile away from the landing zone and into Amtrak.
And the reason for the transfer from the boats to the Amtrak was because Guam had so much coral along this landing zone and they would just creep over the coral on it.
A regular boat would be going to it, it would tear the bottom up, so we transferred over. And we came in on Amtrak, we landed.
I think it was on open rice field that our company was going through. I remember they had a big water buffalo out there in the middle of the rice paddies eating while we were shooting.
They had hand grenades and mortars and stuff like that going over it. It didn't bother them a bit when they came through there.
We had a comparative light landing, but it was quite noisy with the mortar that they were shooting on it.
They still scared us. You're scared, but you don't show it. It's a different type of scare.
Worried, I guess, maybe, but you get more worried about, am I going to be one of the guys that's going to get hit.
We came on in and we had, right at the end of the rice field, there was an incline.
We went up that incline on it, and right at the top of the incline, we were met with tanks and ground troops there. And we fought ourselves right to the top of that incline.
That took most of the day going across the rice paddy and over that incline. So we dug in right there.
We had two companies that were attacked there. But one of the main objectives that we were supposed to go to was the concentration camp that the Japanese had on the island.
When the Japanese attacked the Guam in 1941, they took all kinds of Marines, Navy, and Corpsmen on it.
They put them in the concentration camp, just to get in them a little bit. And Peacock was charged with taking and going right on through that incline around to the concentration camp or internment camp, what do you want to call it,
and released all of the, rescued all of the prisoners that they had taken at that time on it.
And then, which it did, I was not involved in that, going my company apart. I think there was a platoon that went with the Peacock on my part, possibly heard that.
Anyway, we started digging in there. We dug in, and I took Nellie all day coming through there. And then, the, where it was digging, David Foxhole was there.
And about that, in the afternoon, that evening, rather, just before dark, we heard all kinds of information, tanks and mortars, guys hollering and yelling and screaming.
And then we had what they call a von Zye attack. And there was about two or three hundred Japs came out of the brush and attacked us on it.
And we were told to stay in our foxholes on it, don't get out because of you. And to stay in the foxhole release, we've got some kind of protection.
But you can't stay in your foxhole when you've got mortars coming in there. It's just no way.
So they ran down, they were coming down the hill on it to try to drive us off the island.
And that's where my bayonet practice came into hand. There on a, I shot what I had and,
and it was harder on the first time. That was the first time our company had ever been set aside for that von Zye attack.
But we killed a lot of them and the tanks and drove the tanks, most of the tanks back up in the back of the hills there.
So they didn't push us off the island like their plans were.
The next day, after counting all the noses that were still alive, started up toward the coastline, toward Argana and Agate.
And we bought the pill boxes and stuff all the way up the island up there until we got to Agate, which was about the third or fourth day.
And then the headquarters company came in right behind us and stayed in on the beach side.
And we were going up on that inland, just kind of looking over the beach.
We got up there until on all kinds of pill boxes we had to go through.
And then that night we dug in again, we were digging in, and that night we heard just all these tanks coming down the road where we were.
And they had about 400 Japs following in behind the tanks, and they were heading for the headquarters company that was down below us on the lower end of the incline.
And they started fighting and stuff, and I had, I got up out of my foxhole and I shot one clip of eight as it came down, running down the hill on toward me.
That change got me another clip and stuck it in there, and got it in there just in time.
I got that out, I shot eight more.
And I was unable to reload because I couldn't find another clip out of my bandolier, so I started using my bayonet.
And some of them were jumping over, others that were down already.
And then Jeff got, he came in, he was a good size man, and I stabbed him, and he started fighting with me.
And I started backing up and stumbled over the little berm that I had put around my foxhole that I was digging.
And I looked back and I started falling, and just as I started falling down he jabbed me in the stomach.
And I fell down on my back in the foxhole.
And he was standing right above the foxhole, and he was getting ready to jump down.
And the guy from the next foxhole over this area, he shot the guy in the back, or he stabbed him.
One of the two, I don't know how, but he fell.
He fell down on top of me in the foxhole.
As I fell down in the foxhole, my hand hit my gung-ho knife, and he fell on top of me, and I grabbed that knife.
My hand was on it, and I grabbed it.
And I shoved it through his neck and his throat, and I killed him there, laying on top of me.
And then the American tanks came in then to join the fight from below.
And they had been stationed down below the headquarters company, and they came in up the hill.
And they chased the Japs back into their holding grounds, up further on back and back.
And I stayed in the foxhole with this guy on me, because I didn't know how deep that stomach groin was.
So I held on to it, and he just bled all over me.
But anyway, we got—so the next morning, we had the corpsmen.
The corpsmen came up from the headquarters company, and they started counting noses on us to see who the people were and how bad they were.
They pulled a guy off of me, and they thought I was done for, but it was just his blood, not mine.
And they pulled me out on it.
As I had fallen backwards, he stabbed at me.
He stuck me in the stomach, and it went kind of sideways.
It didn't go straight in, so it went along under the stand in there, and just stuck the capillaries and things.
But anyway, they pulled me up and wiped me off, and got me.
And then they put bandages on me, put some sulfur on me, and they taped me up.
And they said, everybody stay here.
Just go to stay here.
Go into the headquarters company.
Well, I just wanted to stay with my men, so it's only three of us left.
Me and my VA armament and my scout.
So I just stayed with them.
And I bundled up my stomach and held on to it and restarted on up further and up through Ghana and Haggard.
I came across a lot of JAP officers had committed harry-carry in the temps.
They didn't want to be captured, I guess, in the...
So then I was bleeding that night a little bit, so one of the corpsmen came up from the headquarters company.
As I sat in that, I met that same corpsman in San Diego at the Ring Raider Association meeting down there.
He was one of the guys that came up and taped me.
He came up and they wiped all the blood off on it and re-applied sulfur.
I think they called it sulfur or sulfide.
Sulfur, I think it was.
And then he taped it.
He pulled the stent together and taped it.
And by that time it didn't look too bad by the time he had gone through that.
Got into...
And we started going on further on up the island and I found that one of my real good friends, Lieutenant Leonard,
had been killed by leading a charge on one of the pill boxes there.
And he and Lieutenant Holmgren, Holmgren, were buddies with me on the water canal.
They were in the Raiders.
So anyway, we went on up through there and we stayed on Guam for, on that end for three more days.
Going up there and finally we got into, oh, my scout, I think it was Navarro, found two cases of sake.
And the sake is rice wine.
Yeah, it's good.
I lived in Japan for a while so I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, it...
We got that and then, but we couldn't drink it all.
We couldn't drink the thing.
So it was all unopened.
So we found a good spot and we dug a hole and buried it.
And we knew where it was going to be.
So we decided amongst ourselves to leave it there, not drink it, and didn't have time or had other things to do.
We went to, I don't remember the little town, right?
We stayed there for the fourth, fifth night, sixth night, and then we moved inward.
And by that time we had pretty well got to Guam situated because all of the main Japanese area, attack force had been,
had already been wiped out or chased back way on the other side.
I don't remember where it was that we were stationed or posted there.
But I'm going to pull back a little bit and say, when we were on board ship coming to Guam,
they took all our money away and gave us what they call Hawaiian dollars.
Now Hawaiian dollar is regular five, ten, and twenty dollar bills with the word Hawaii stamped on the face of it.
We were, that was the only legal tender on Guam was those Hawaiian dollars.
Now the reason was that when the Japs conquered in 1941, the paymaster for all of the islands in the Pacific were captured as well.
Many millions of dollars in United States money were captured as well.
And the US government did not want us poor Marines to recapture that money and send it home.
So we couldn't use it on the islands.
So that was, of course the only tender that we could use was the Hawaiian dollars.
And another thing that they told us on that ship at that time,
to watch out for airplanes that are civilian type airplanes that are crashed out there and to find out what they were still looking for was Amelia Earhart.
Yeah, they were, and her plane was at that time supposed to have been downed in some of the islands around there.
But it turned out that they weren't.
Amelia Earhart actually was on a small island and was captured by a Japanese trawler and was brought to Guam and through Saipan.
And was seen on Saipan and so was Amelia Earhart on it.
But they were told at the time to keep looking for civilian airplanes that had crashed in the islands there.
But I have a letter. I won't go into that. That's secret.
Anyway, we got there on Guam and we started our training again.
So after all that, I used to hitchhike all over Guam to the Seabees and get their food.
Get the best food in the military.
Real egg.
Well, what's interesting, I actually got married to my first wife in Guam.
So it's crazy to talk to you and there you were fighting for your life, you know, some 55 years prior and I was standing in the chapel, you know,
marrying this American girl on this beautiful tropical island where now the Japanese that were our friends again were coming on vacation.
So long as you bring that in, I'll tell you, on last year I got a call from the Justice Department in San Jose from the Superior Court on it.
The judge could come over and visit with me and talk about his parents were in and that concentration camp on Guam.
Really?
And he was and his parents were released by part of my company that was owned there and the same as Joe Gogo, Justice Gogo, I think they call it.
Anyway, and in San Jose he was going to be the president, the United States was going to assign him as the ambassador to Guam.
Anyway, he came over and visited with me and he thanked me and he brought the flag, the Guam Romanian flag over with him and a bunch of souvenirs and he gave them to me.
And I signed the Romanian flag and they were going to have a parade on Guam and wanted me to be one of the grand marshals for the parade over there.
Because every year, I don't remember what month, I think it was July, but every year that they have a parade to celebrate the Americans on Guam.
It was quite interesting to talk to him. I did Christmas cards and Valentine cards and stuff like that from the judge. I had to thank him because if it wasn't for saving his parents, he wouldn't be here.
Absolutely.
So that was rather, that was, as long as you brought the American wedding thing, I thought maybe I'd throw that in there. But they were, Guam is a great place.
It's beautiful.
It's a great place. I have a picture, I think it's someplace in there, I have a picture of the last PBY that left Guam before it was captured by the Japanese in 1941.
They had one, the last PBY that left was full. I have a picture. And one of the ladies' parents that my wife had gone to school with in Westport, Oregon, her mother's parents were on that plane.
As it left, they are there now. So that was fun.
That's amazing. So I mean, you've obviously told us a lot about the time in Guam, the book details a lot more of the different moments that you have when it came to combat.
I would love to just bring you into Iwajima so then we can then transition to your transition out of the military. But obviously that's a very famous conflict, a very different landscape than the jungles that you're used to in Guam.
So talk to me about the Iwajima attack and then we'll work on from there.
On Guam, we were training again for a different kind of action than we had been faced before.
We were in Guadalcanal, we were in deep jungle and then on over to Guam, we're in farmland and jungle and then we were training for hills and caves and stuff like that, which we had never been trained before.
And so we all felt that it was going to be different on it.
But anyway, in February 1945, we left Guam as a unit. The 4th and 5th Division left Guadalcanal, Guam and Saipan.
The 21st Marines, which I was a member of the 21st Marines, of the 3rd Division were backup reserve for the landing on Iwajima.
We were, they, the generals, that will put me in the right connection I think, the generals thought that, we were thinking that we were going to have a heavy casualty going on Iwajima.
And they wanted a regiment on the water, they called them floating reserve, because to put forth another regiment, they wanted them right then.
They didn't want to wait to come from Saipan or something, another couple of days or something, they wanted a reserve, they want them now.
So they had the 21st Marines in the harbor waiting to go ashore.
On February the 19th, the 3rd and 4th Division landed on Iwajima.
On that date, we were 50 miles away from Iwajima heading toward, when I said we, the 21st Marines, 50 miles away from the Iwajima harbor where we were supposed to be.
And we got word aboard ship at that time that there was hardly any action at all on landing Iwajima.
And that they had expected a heavy casualty load at that time, and it didn't happen.
And then until after the 3rd, the 4th and 5th Division, the 5th Division went straight for Mount Siribachi.
And they went above the, sorry, up the mountain. Mount Siribachi is an extinct volcano, and it has lava holes, lava caves, and all that, all the way up the mountain, to the top of the mountain.
And the 4th Divisions were assigned the first airport, first airfield, which was the closest one toward Mount Siribachi.
They started and started toward, now I can't remember if that was north or south on the other end, toward the other airfields.
But the 5th Division started, the 28th Marines of the 5th Division started up the mountain on it, and the 4th Division started, I don't know if that was the direction or not.
And to drive the Japanese from there, and that cut off the Japanese between the two, between the airfield and the Mount Siribachi.
Part of the 4th came in on the other side of the island to meet the 4th Division on it.
During that day of the 5th, of the, February the 19th, the 21st Marines came in on the USS Jackson.
They came in into Iwo Jima Harbor, and at that time all hell broke out of the mountain, and they figured that, the Japanese figured that they were all on shore,
and in the places that they had marked, the Japanese had just about every square inch of that landing zone on it marked, and their mortars kept firing, the mortars as it came as the rest of the units were coming in.
And I'll tell you right now, the CBs, this is the first battle that the CBs have ever been with the landing force that came in on the initial.
Normally, the CBs were, came in maybe the next day or so, after it had been more secured, landing zone would be more secured.
But this time they came in right with the, with the 4th Division on it, most of them on it.
The Japs had mortars all over that place, all over the lower end of this Mount Siribachi, and they shelled all of those square inches I would say, along that island.
And it was, you just couldn't imagine the number of people that were killed right there, thousands right there on the beach, on the landing beach of the 4th and 5th.
And it seems like the limbs were one of the biggest things, on arm, leg, knees, legs were just scattered all over the place, heads were just scattered all over the place on it.
Because the 4th Division were chasing the main group north, or if it's north, I don't remember if it's north or south on the land, I just don't remember that.
And the 5th Division was doing the same over there, they were shoving off of the, over toward the, through the 4th Division on it.
They were splitting up the Japanese on it, and they had a, the 28th Marines had a real tough time going up that hill.
And I talked to one of the, one of the pilots from one of the aircraft carriers that was on Iwo Jima,
and he said that when they made their final, when they made their pass over the landing zone, that it looked like a bunch of ants, just full of dead bodies and stuff.
And then we stayed there, that was the 19th, the evening of the 19th on it, and we were called, the 21st was on floating reserve, and we were called on the next day, the 20th.
I can't remember the commander's general name, can't remember who it was. He gave the, gave the word to depart from the ship and get on your, get on the, on the LCIs and the LDC.
He gave the word to go over the side. So we went over the side and climbed down the ropes onto our, on our perspective landing barge, landing craft,
and started a rendezvous around the ship. Our ship was USS Jackson, and we waited. And we circled our ship for six hours, trying to get organized to go ashore.
And surf was up, he said six foot surfs, but I don't know about how they judged that, but anyway, we're waiting for the beachmaster to give us the word that they had room for us.
They didn't have room for us on the landing zone. All the tanks, they were disabled, all the, all the, the LCIs, landing ships, infantry, were crashed, blown up,
blown up, side, had just all kinds of equipment. Men were, were lined around like in pieces all over.
They had graveyard people with gunny sacks picking up the arms and legs and whatever. And they said that we couldn't land.
The beach, the beach captain told us that he wasn't going to allow us to land. So our general says, go back aboard ship.
So after we've been floating around on the ship, round and round and round the ship for six hours, and it's hard to surf, and we got back, had to go back and climbed up the ladder,
that rope ladder again, hit back aboard ship. We got aboard ship and that was with the 21st Marines on the 20th.
And the ship's cook had sandwiches and coffee all ready for us. And we hit and they gave us that. We had no wounded or anything coming back aboard ship. We were full of force.
For the 20th and the night of the 20th. Morning of the 21st, we had, we got the word to debark from the ship again.
So we got off the ship and headed in toward the night. Me and my crew were on a Amtrak on it. And we came in and we landed on part of the yellow beach on it.
And right by the, oh I can't remember that name.
Well, it's where the Japanese shipped out their salt and stuff off of the island on it. And it's, anyway, I never can remember that name or that harbor.
Anyway, we came in and as we came in, we were supposed to meet the 4th Division at 10 o'clock that morning on the 21st.
We were held up. The 4th Division had pushed the Japanese off of airfield number one and pushed them, I'm going to get south or north, I'm going to push them away from it toward the other end of the island I'll put, because I can't remember the direction.
We hit the beach and the Amtrak crawled up on the beach about 20 yards.
And we got, they opened fire on us from the rock curry there. And machine gun on us as well as the rest of them.
And we jumped off of the Amtrak and we had seven men at that time. And I lost two of them.
Me and my other guys went off on one side of the port side and two of my men got off on the starboard side with their bunch on it.
The starboard side, that's where the, I forgot that name again now, I'll put that back. Anyway, a machine gun or a station was up there and killed two of my guys there on it.
As more of them. We lost a lot of men coming in on that particular area. And we were pinned down as we came in on the 4th Division.
But that time had gone clear through airfield, whatever one, and we were waiting at the beginning of, on the morning of the 21st, that's when we were supposed to meet the 4th Division and relieve them.
Because they had been fighting for two days, the 19th and 20th. And so, but we couldn't make it because we were held down as well.
And we were supposed to be there at 10 o'clock. Well, we couldn't make it. We stayed there that night in that area and we finally bumped up to machine guns at the quarry, I remember that now, at the run quarry.
And we were supposed to meet them then the following day. And we got pinned down. Well, it so happened that the 4th Division had been waiting for us at the beginning of Airfield Number 2.
And that's where we were supposed to relieve them on it.
Someone told a runner or a radio or what told the commanding officer of the 4th Division, over on by, near one, that the, the Japanese were farming in Airfield Number 2
and was working their way around between us and the 4th Division.
The 21st Marines were sitting in regiment with radio, was by the rock quarry there by the beach.
And the Japanese were going to work around and come in behind the 4th Division.
Well, it sure had happened that they didn't realize that we were coming in from the, from the beach at that time.
And, but the Japs were trying to sneak in behind the 4th Division and they couldn't make it.
Because when we were, when they came up between us, then we pinned them down.
So now we had a whole bunch of Japs between us and so they did, yeah, the 4th Division just turned around and started shooting them.
We shot them from behind, so we wiped the whole bunch out right there at the beginning on it.
We finally went up to, got them, we went to, through, met the 4th Division at the beginning of the Airfield Number 2.
We fought, we went through them and left them at the beginning of the Airfield.
And the 21st Marines started, regiment started to take Airfield Number 2.
All those Japanese that they had chased from Airfield Number 2, which was right down by the Mount Siribachi,
they were all, all holed up there on Airfield Number 2 and we ran into them like that.
And we had one hell of a fight there.
And they turned the mortars that were on wheels toward us and fired those right down, you know, 4 or 5 feet up off the ground.
As if they were rifles and they ended up, and as I say, blameless or flu.
But we finally got through that bunch on it.
On the 2nd, we fought all day, we fought all night.
On the 2nd day, I think it was the 2nd day, I got hit in the head with a piece of, either by a shell or by a bullet, I don't know which,
hit my helmet and knocked me out, knocked my helmet off, could have been a hole in it.
And I was out and we got, the rest of the 21st kept going through and my guys, I lost all of them there, all but two on that fight.
And we got, I was out and some guy from the 4th Division came up behind me and shook my back.
I think he was trying to get my knife, is what he was trying to do.
But anyway, and that woke me up.
And then from then on, I was working with the 4th Division, because my 3rd Division had already, the 21st Division had already gone through the rest of them.
And I finally, he asked me where I was from and I told him I was, he said, well, they're way up ahead of us on it, they've already gone through.
So we got on up there.
It took us five days to go through Airfield Number 2, at day and night, day and night.
We were air dropped food, corsiers I think they were, I think they were corsiers that did that.
And we got over to, on the other side of Airfield Number 2, and by that time I had found another helmet.
And I was pretty well, with a headache and all.
And got over there on the other side of Airfield Number 2, and they have a sulfur plant and a sulfur field over there.
The Japs had used the sulfur for other reasons, other things I guess, and then they went to,
they used to go out through the, to the quarry, and that's where they shipped it from, that's where we came in.
We got over there on that side, I asked if anybody knew where the 21st Greens were, and he says, well, we saw two guys that he thought that they were, they were strangers.
So I went over there and that was my, B.A. Arvin and my scout, and then that was me.
So there was only three of us left out of the seven.
They were, we had no more company at quite the amount, and just the three.
So we stayed down there, there were secrets, 27th or 28th in that area, 27th I think it was.
Some general came by, and the three were huddled in one big, small cell, and asked us where we were from, and I said that we were the 21st Marine, 3rd Division,
and he says, well, they're not here, and I don't know where they are, but you're going to be in the 4th Division now.
And so we finished up, he says, we've got to take those two radio stations out and go through Moriyama Airfield Village, Yodamama Village.
So we went to, followed him up through the, he and his, I think he was a gunner soldier.
Anyway, he was out there with them, and they were gathering up men that had just gone through the 2nd Airfield.
And we took off from there, and we followed the 4th Division then, the three of us, over to Moriyama Village,
into the Moriyama Village, which is on the side of Airfield Number 2, then went from there to the radio station, knocked it out,
and then we started running over from Airfield Number, from Hale 362.
I think that was on the, that was on the, I think it was 27th, 28th, 27th, I think it was.
And it took us two days to get through those, and then we headed toward 362. We got pinned down on 362 for two days.
Now, 362 was one day. And we left that morning on the 1st of March. I'm getting the dates, lost the dates sometimes.
1st of March. And it took us two days. And then we went over to Hill 382.
Now, Hill 382 is the second highest peak on Iwo Jina. And Mount Siravansin was the highest peak. And 382 was designated, and it was the second highest on it.
And they wanted us to have high ground. So we tried to get over high ground. They had only one place that we could go through on 382,
was up between two big rocks and stone caves. And then we got into where there was a, we'd get up over, started to go over the hill,
and then the Japanese had two pill boxes up there. And they were knocking us down every time on it.
And there was hand grenades and mortars. They'd pull us, knock us down again, and we'd go back down and reorganize and go up again.
But kept that up for two days. And finally on March the 3rd, they sent us up, and they used my scout as the first one,
he was the first one to go up over the hill between these two big rocks that we were, that's how we were going to take it.
And he went up over the hill, and he got up there and went around, and he went on down. Then I followed the scout.
And I got up there on top of the hill. I looked around like that, and then the machine gun opened up from the shell, one of the pill boxes.
It sprayed in my chest, so that was a Nambu 25, sprayed in my chest and arm. And I fell down and then I was bleeding like a stuck pig.
Corpsman and my VAR man came up, got a hold of my feet, and they pulled me back down into a big shell hole.
And then Corpsman started treating me. Then McCoy, the airman came up, he went out, got about the same stuff,
and he went right over to that pill box and cleaned the pill box out, and he killed me.
He had four people in there and he had two machine guns on it, and he got them, cleaned them all out.
I was in the shell hole, they were still operating, not operating, they were still fixing me up.
And then pretty soon McCoy came down and he was bleeding all over his back on it.
They threw a hand grenade right behind him and threw up the rocks and stuff, and the pieces of shell and rock, stones,
went all through his back. He was just peckered with holes all through his back and he was bleeding.
He came down to the shell hole with me and I stayed there. The corpsman had put a tag on me with where I was shot
and what I was doing there and what treatment he did, and he put that all on a tag and he pinned it to my blouse, upper blouse by my neck.
And pretty soon the machine, the mortar started falling in the shell hole where we were on it.
He says, Can you walk right? I said, Sure now I can. He says, Well, let's go.
We couldn't get anybody, any stretcher bearers up there because it was too dangerous right then at that time.
They were shooting one out of the stretcher bearers and then they wouldn't have anybody to carry you anyway.
So we decided, we started back. I grabbed a hold of his arm and he gave one of the guys his BAR,
because they didn't want to take that kind of firepower away from their front.
He had BAR and I gave my rifle to, I think it was, to him for protection.
So we started walking back and we were about a mile and a half, maybe a mile from the beach where we were to be evacuated off of the island.
We were walking together along the side of airfield number two.
And the guys were still mopping up there and a B-29 came down.
He was just trying to land right there on it. And all those other bitches are big when they're 15, 20 feet off the ground.
They are big. And he was looking for a place to land, but there was just no place to land there on number two.
So he kept on going and he got into airfield number one.
Number one was, by that time the CBs had finished their tractor work and had been cleaning up a good landing site for them.
And the Corsairs and fighter planes had landed down there already and had a good laying field.
I knew that they landed there pretty good.
And then the B-29, the Corsairs took off for another run someplace and then the B-29 came in and landed.
I think I was the first B-29 to land or A-WO and that's what we were fighting for. We were fighting to get those fields clear enough so that they could...
so that the fighters could escort the 29s when they were flying over to Japan and bomb them.
So they were using the airfields already for that purpose and saving them.
I stayed with McCoy there. When we got over to airfield number one, the evacuation or the wounded were just off to the side of airfield number one.
And they were waiting for a pickup from different kinds of transportation going out to the hospital ships.
They stayed on the hospital, they stayed there. I stayed there with McCoy.
I was laying on my stomach and here's...I was laying on my back and here's laying on the stomach.
We were having a cigarette and talking and visiting.
I turned up and looked at McCoy and he says, I'm going to take off. He says, this man has got the ambulatories.
I said, okay, so I shook hands and thanked him for being with each other and company.
And he walked off and walked all over and went to his LST.
Got on that the last I saw McCoy on it. I think he got through the war okay.
I had asked him how Navarro, our scout, he said he didn't know for sure. He says, the last I saw he was shooting and running towards a couple of pill boxes out there.
He said he didn't know. By that time I had been hit. So I don't know what happened to Navarro.
McCoy and I were the only ones out of KCUT that we ever found.
Until we got, until I got to the Stockton Marine Corps club and met Ted Salzberg and he was on even the same company.
And he thought he was the last one on it because he hadn't met anybody at all. And maybe I hadn't seen him either.
Met a lot of them out there but wounded it and I couldn't tell.
So they transferred me over to that and then I stayed on that, went over on the hospital ship.
And went from there to Saipan and picked up another bunch of going there, going towards the states.
And left Saipan, went to the Johnson Island, which is out near Pearl Harbor, the Oregon Islands.
And landed there with an FBI and a corpsman came on board the plane and sprayed us with DDT.
They didn't want us to spread any bugs on their beautiful island.
Yeah, so we got there, they cleaned us off there, took us over to the hospital, I can't remember the name.
I think it was Army Hospital. And I stayed there for a couple of days and a doctor came by and looked at my tag.
And well first when we landed there at the Johnson Island, landed at the main island, he looked at my tag.
And he took her off to see what ward I should go to and my tag said combat fatigue.
And they put me in a combat fatigue ward on there. It had no nurses on there, no doctors on there, no nothing on it.
And my bandage needed to change badly and cleaned it all and stuff.
And the doctor came through to check us out and asked me what I was doing there and I said they put me here.
And he said, oh schedule this man for a tap.
And so I said, well at least I've got something going.
After he left I asked the nurse, I said, well what's a tap? He said, well you're bleeding on the inside.
And he says you've got blood in your chest cavity and they have to get the chest, get the blood out.
And he says they stick a needle in your back and drain it, drain it that way.
I said, good lord.
So I went to bed at evening and that night I woke up and I thought I'd wet the bed.
Because I had peed all over the rubber mattress that they had there.
So I hollered for the nurse, the night nurse came over and she looked at me and asked what for.
And I told her I had wet my bed I think because I was sitting on the sleeve and bunch of poor.
She turned the night light on and she looked at me and turned it off right away.
And it took off and we came back with a couple of other guys and turned the lights on like that and pulled the cover back.
And I had been laying in the pool of blood because the bandage was off.
And I rolled over on my left side and all that blood that was in my chest came out and went all over.
And that's what I was laying in.
So you tapped yourself.
And so yeah.
So he said, we'll have to cancel that.
And I said, what?
He said cancel that, you're not going to have a tap tomorrow.
I said, oh, thank God.
Oh, I remember that.
I was happy.
Anyway, the next day after they changed my bed and stuff like that, the next day they came over and they transferred me to going to the States.
So I took, I think, and I'm not for sure, I think I flew to the Naval Hospital landing.
I think it was a PBY.
Yeah, and I flew around.
I can't remember the ship at all.
Because I think I flew in.
I got in there and they looked at my tag and it said combat fatigue.
And that's where it went.
They took me in and put me in a combat fatigue ward.
I told you that's the story I had about combat fatigue and PTSD.
The guy diagnosed me on board ship because I had knocked his butt across the hull when they were going to take my arm off.
I mean, you were tired of being shot, basically.
Anyway, that's where I got put at first.
And it's still got my, it's in my records on it that it's combat fatigue on the thing.
I didn't say anything about my wounds at that time at all.
Right.
No.
Anyway, I got into San Diego Hospital.
And I stayed there for a month, I think.
It was about a month. Then I got shipped home.
I had a few entities in the hospital, but minor.
And that got me home.
I flew home.
I got out of San Diego.
I hitched a ride.
Or, oh.
But, a little side.
I had met my wife, my common wife,
in Astoria, Oregon, when I was stationed at the second point.
That's where I had met her.
And her sister had married a Navy guy, and they were stationed in San Diego.
So I was able to sneak aboard,
when I was aboard, to seek a way out of the hospital.
And got a cab.
Went over and met my future wife and her sister and her husband.
And stayed there that afternoon and the evening.
And then the first thing in the morning, well,
I snuck back into the hospital.
And I stayed there until I got...
And she came home, back home, to her Astoria home,
and graduated out of school.
And I went to the hospital and had a furlough transfer.
That was the first furlough I had had in the Marine Corps.
Never had a day off more than 72 hours passed in the four years.
And then when I was overseas,
they told me and the rest of the Rangers,
you're only required to be over there 12 months.
That's all.
So, 10 months came, we were all short-timed, as we thought.
But the Marine Corps didn't think that.
They said, no, it's going to be a year and a half before you go home.
Maybe a year and a half, no, it's duration.
We never did get a chance to get out of there due to the turnover.
Anyway, I got home on a furlough transfer,
and they had asked me where I wanted to go for my last six months
of the service.
I said I wanted to be a drill instructor at Parris Island.
That's the closest Arkansas that I could get.
So I caught a train that was to Kansas City.
I think that's where it was.
And then, no, just the opposite.
I got one from San Diego to Kansas City on a plane.
I said on boxes.
I did that out as a military plane.
And I got in Kansas City, then I took a train down to Arkansas.
I met my folks and I stayed there until my leave to be up.
Then I transferred over to Parris Island as a drill instructor until my discharge.
I'm sorry, Frank, I didn't mean to interrupt.
What was it like?
Up to that point, you'd seen fierce fighting,
you'd seen what Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman talks about as the most
traumatic version of combat, which is the extremely close bayonet,
knife fighting that you obviously encountered several times.
So how did you handle physically your transition as far as your wounds,
and then you got out, touching on PTSD.
What was that journey like for you mentally after being in the South Pacific,
literally fighting for your life for multiple years?
Well, when I got...
I was put into the PTSD or combat ward.
I was put into that.
I didn't have regular medical care because if I wanted something,
my bandage changed, I had to go someplace else to get it.
And in that, when my time came to discharge,
a different guy in the PTSD ward was in charge of it.
He released me without conferring to the medical doctor.
The medical doctor had what they called a proud flesh
sticking out of my chest about an inch long.
And my wounds were trying to heal, and my muscle was sticking out.
And they referred to it as proud flesh.
But one doctor didn't tell half the other doctor, or get a release from him.
So they released me.
And so I took off.
And I took off, and I still had my bandage on,
I still had this muscle sticking out of my chest.
I got there in Arkansas.
My dad worked on...
He was the supervisor of the crew that worked on poison gas facilities.
And when I got there in Arkansas,
of course I went home and my dad was all...
He was all wanting to know what happened,
and where'd you go, and what'd you do, killing the Wiley, and all that stuff.
And mother was a different kind of a meeting.
Anyway, I showed him my chest, and so he peeled off the bandage off my chest.
And here's this damn piece of muscle sticking out about an inch.
Oh, he was about ready to blow.
He was so mad at the Navy doctors for letting me go like that.
So he called up the medical doctor on the bay, and told him the story.
And they took me over to the medical ward at the Army Hospital there,
and put me into the ward there, and asked what it was that I was wanted for.
The dad explained that I had just been released from the medical doctor,
from the PTSD doctor, and all that kind of stuff.
But he says, well, he looked at it, and he says, well, this has to go.
We have to take that off.
So he said, go in there and disrobe.
And I told the nurse, prep him up.
So they took me right in and froze the part that they were going to cut off.
And they cut that out, and redid it.
And he was pissed.
He couldn't believe that they had let someone out of the war wound
that wasn't even healed yet.
Well, again, the reason was I was in a PTSD ward,
and he didn't confer with the medical ward.
They had permission for one, nothing but the other, and that's why.
And I took it, but I wanted to get out of there.
As I said, my dad was a bugler, and he was a member of the Drum and Bugle Corps,
and I knew drums, so I joined the Drum and Bugle Corps with him.
And he and I used to march in the military parade together.
I'd play drums, and he'd play the bugle.
And he was the most happy man on earth to have his son home, of course,
and being able to be out there and play with and a band with him.
He'd react that way.
My mother was mad, of course, and she didn't want to look at the wounds for a while.
And she did.
I had two holes in my chest.
One of my clavicles was cracked on my arm right above my lungs,
and went out through my chest and went through my muscle in my left arm,
and they were going to amputate my left arm.
That's what made me mad aboard ship.
I had been massaged on my arm and shoulder for a long time
from a little woman at a Marine nurse corps in a type of hospital.
She massaged around my arms and shoulders.
And she said, what it was, that my arm muscles and nerves were still in trauma.
So all I could do was just raise my wrist up, and that's it.
But it got on.
And then PTSD didn't set in until after we were married.
For some reason, I don't know what shook it off.
I think what shook it off, I was president of the American Legion in Florence,
Florence, Oregon, and seeing all of the guys out there talking to them
simply brought back a whole lot of memories.
I think that's what set that part off. I started grieving.
And I found out there wasn't a way to go.
I saw that little hill. I got help from some guys in the American Legion there
who talked about it and stuff like that.
So it was okay until we got back over here in California and went in again.
They told me that I'd never get rid of it until you talk it out.
That's why I'm here. I want to talk it out.
I bring back a lot of memories.
I'm not one of the guys.
And that's about about it. You got any questions?
No, sir. Well, I mean, firstly, I want to thank you for telling the story.
And the fact that you're moved, the fact that you're emotional about this
is exactly what these conversations should be about.
Because my generation, it's such a bizarre thing.
Your generation is what we call the greatest generation.
And you saw and did so much that no one should ever have to see or have to do.
And then you have my generation that was raised with this insane notion
that men don't cry, men don't show emotion.
Kind of like the pattern example that you gave me.
Just give them a little slap around the face and that PTSD will be gone,
which has driven so many men and women into the grave because of that ridiculous notion.
So hearing from someone like yourself, and I always point to the 101st Easy Company
from Bander Brothers, the TV show they made, the real men that talk on that.
You can see the just sheer emotion in them, too.
So by hearing your story and hearing you get choked up is exactly what younger generations need to hear.
Of course, as you said, how could it not affect you that you had to take lives,
that you watched your friends killed, that you, you know, and then came back.
And even some of the situations where you were left wounded and feeling abandoned
in a psych ward when you should have been having your wounds addressed.
So I just, I mean, I want to thank you.
I want to thank you for taking the time to walk us through an event
where very few voices are left to tell that story and for being courageous to tell the other side,
which is, you know, the part that most people shove down, you know,
the impact mentally and physically on the men and women that we send to war
and what they bring home in their body and what they bring home in their mind.
It's helped me a lot.
I go to the Stockton Marine Corps Club,
and I meet a lot of good people that have gone through the present-day war,
I'll call it that, they've been to Vietnam own,
and some of their stories and stuff, and that has helped me.
I've given speeches to the Sacramento Club and their home Marine Corps birthday balls.
I've spoken there. I've given two or three speeches on Iwo Jima, and that's helped.
And by getting it away from me, I put it in my book that I have written,
that that's what I think it would be good for those people, those men and women
that have all this traumatic experience on it, if they get rid of it,
and let people know, you know, when they ask, you know, what happened,
they won't hold nothing, report a little bit, stuff like that.
Well, hell, tell them. Tell them what it is.
Know about it. And let people know what it is.
Maybe they won't think about, if they do come into,
or they have the authority or the vote, if you will, in Congress or so,
about going into war again or causing things to go to war,
God, don't do that.
Do something else if you have to do it. War is hell.
But get rid of it. Tell somebody. Tell somebody.
Show what you did in the service on it.
Let them know that it's not just the play of your games.
And John Wayne had a speech, and of course I've written for him,
but he had a speech on Iwo Jima on it, the first day on it.
He talked, and he has the words that, they sounded like he really meant it, you know.
But that was exactly what it was. He meant it. He really meant that on it.
That's not all glory. I see some of the movies that always,
of course they've got to sell it, too.
But they've got the romance in it, and some of them show what their wife
and her girlfriend are going through, which is good.
And they're suffering, too. The home folks suffer.
That's why I jumped at the chance to say my story.
And I lost a lot of my memory, otherwise I used to be able to.
When I started writing my book on it, my wife was against it.
Because I had referrals, I had things that I had to look up.
The names of ships. I was on 11 different ships overseas,
going to and from different islands, both for combat or for just being transferred.
And that's a lot of ships.
That is.
I've got one submarine and a whole bunch of ships.
It's an adventure for a young kid, that's adventure.
And I realize that I'm 96 years old now.
My memory is getting a little short.
And I know that people, and there's not much of us left on it.
Not much left of 96 year olds, five or no five.
And I know that my wife asked me,
about why do you want to go there? What do you want to do there?
I said, I want to be there.
I said, just to give some of these little four and five year old kids
an opportunity just to shake hands with someone that has been in the fight
that I have been in too.
And it's good, and as old as I am. I'm a grandfather to a lot of them.
But I'm not.
There is a man that I've been around with on these different occasions in Stockton.
He was on Iwo Jima. He was wounded the same day that I was.
And he says he is at least on March the 3rd, 1945.
And he's 106.
That's 10 years older than I am.
Sure did a whippersnapper to him.
Yeah, that's an old man. He caused me kid.
My grandmother is 104. She's still going strong.
Yeah, see.
And it's nice to see, and I see some of the kids when they tell them he's 106.
Their eyes are big as saucers.
You can see that he's over 100 years old.
He was in China.
He was one of the old China Marines.
He went in, I think he said 1934 or something like that.
But he's in a home in Stockton named Major William White.
Major William White.
Major William White on it.
And 106 on July the 21st.
Incredible.
That was 96 on July the 5th.
Not December like the old birth certificate.
Well, Frank, I just want to say thank you.
Like I said before, I mean, to hear the whole story,
to give the background to you even joining up,
and it definitely gives us a perspective versus maybe some of the mentalities these days.
The physical side, the mental side, the transition out.
It's been an incredible conversation.
You did write a book.
I wrote a book last year, I think it was 2019 on it.
And it's called Battles in the Pacific, World War II.
And you can get them at Amazon.
And they print them up and they have a real good report on that.
It has a story about what I did in those times.
It has a little romance in it because that's when I met my wife on it.
I was married for 74 years on it.
And that was her first date and my first date on it.
Amazing.
It lasted a long time.
And I'd like more people to buy it, to kind of get an idea
and have it in their book reading if they possibly can.
And it also details a lot of the stories that I just detailed.
Absolutely.
It's good.
Yeah, well, just to be fair on this thing, I read it.
I got it at the Kindle, which is the one you get on the computer just because of time.
I think it was going to take a couple of weeks to ship.
But I mean, it is.
How often do you get to read a story like that?
And there's a lot of detail in some of the conflicts and battles that you had and the wounds
that we didn't even really get to touch on, which is good.
I don't want to tell the whole book on this conversation either.
So I highly recommend it.
And again, if we want to support someone from that generation,
we want to keep the story alive, then I hope people listening will go online and get it.
So it was Battles in the Pacific, World War II, My Personal War Causing PTSD.
So everyone looking for the subtitle.
That's my name right beside because there's several books on the market that go by the name of World War II.
Yes.
Battles in the Pacific.
And the Battles in the Pacific, World War II, Frank Wright.
And that goes right to it.
Absolutely.
Well, I just want to say again, thank you.
Thank you so much for coming on today.
We've been talking for almost three and a half hours now.
So I know you told Chris you weren't sure if you're going to be able to fill 90 minutes.
He says, you know, it might be an hour.
It might be.
No, sometimes it's a go two hours.
That's it.
I don't remember.
Well, you smashed it.
I don't think I can do that.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
My honor.
My honor to listen to your story.
It's good.
It's nice to get it out.
That's why I have to get it out.
And this is my avenue to get it out.
Thank you very much, Chris and Jane.
Thank you very much.