About this time fifty-one years ago, I arrived in Okinawa on my way home from the war and the Siege of Khe Sanh. On the flight between Da Nang and Oki’s Kadena Air Force Base, I gazed around at the men on board. We looked battered, most of us donning dungarees so dirty and worn it seemed like we were prisoners bound for a life of confinement.
A Marine with whom I had an acquaintance, Corporal S, sat next to me. A cannon-cocker, I’d met up with him I don’t know where or when.
When we landed at Kadena, we deplaned and were ordered to fall in and stand at attention, which we didn’t do, and listen to a spiel given by a bunch of Marine Corps NCOs about what we could do on Okinawa and what we couldn’t while at Camp Schwab waiting transfer to the states.
Several of the two-hundred or so Marines who’d been on that plane barked out comments about POGs in Okinawa lecturing real warriors about what and what not to do.
Several of the NCOS jumped right in and instructed us that they were not any different from us; they’d just been wounded three times in Nam, so they had to finish out their twelve-month-and-twenty-day tour on Okinawa.
But collectively, we dirty band of ragged Marines, didn’t buy their explanations. The men facing us were decked out in snappy new dungarees and covers starched and formed as if they were all still in Boot Camp. We hooted . . . and this struck me . . . we hooted as if we could care less about how many times they’d been shot or wounded. And our derisiveness felt good to me, way down, and maybe it wasn’t fair of me or the rest of us, to put their service down, but at the time, it felt damned good.
The next morning we fell in and received orders for all of us to report here and there around Camp Schwab for mess and maintenance duty.
Right up front, Corporal S told the duty NCO, “Go to hell.”
Unlike him, I reported to the BOQ and spent the morning policing the barracks for transient officers. When I left for chow, I asked the duty NCO why they made us clean up while there were barracks full of new Marines headed to Nam who needed something to do.
Blogger Ken Rodgers at Khe Sanh prior to the beginning of the siege. Photo courtesy of Michael E. O’Hara.
He didn’t answer, just scowled at me.
I have never figured out why they did that—made us clean up, unless it was punishment for our salty attitudes out on the tarmac at Kadena—and that morning stint was my last. I spent the next two days shooting hoops at the base gym with Corporal S.
My mother used to tell me, when I complained about vacuuming the house or mowing the lawn when I should have been playing with my buddies, that an idle mind was the tool of the devil, and maybe the Marine Corps had similar sentiments.
Nevertheless, if the Marines in charge of keeping things running at Camp Schwab depended on me and Corporal S, and I suspect, the rest of us who arrived on that flight out of hell a few nights before, they were sorely disappointed.
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BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime.
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Today we want to share a guest post for Memorial Day from BRAVO! friend and supporter, Cobb Hammond. Cobb writes about military history for his home town newspaper, the MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL.
As we commemorate Memorial Day, 2018, many may recall a battle a family member may have been wounded or killed in, or themselves a vet, may have lost a comrade in arms. It should be refreshed in our consciousness that our WW II veterans are dwindling in number, and on this weekend of remembrance it should be incumbent upon us to recognize a battle raging 73 years ago this month; The Campaign at Okinawa.
This last battle of the War was not only the bloodiest of the Pacific theater but exhibited some of the most brutal and horrific fighting and battle conditions of the war; in that this was the first allied incursion on what was considered Japanese soil. This invasion was the first step in what was the initial phase before the eventual invasion of the Japanese home islands. The island of Okinawa was only 350 miles south of mainland Japan and was 463 miles square. It was populated by nearly half a million civilians and some 155 thousand Japanese troops of the infantry, air corps, and the navy, of which 80 thousand were front-line infantry troops. The strategic planning of the Japanese leadership before battle was to concentrate troops in several sectors that offered the most efficient use of troops—as well as the idea of inflicting the highest possible damage on US troops as they advanced.
Northern Okinawa was defended by one-division, whereas the more challenging terrain of the south was defended by 3 additional divisions- as well as multiple specialized brigades. This area was turned into four heavily fortified, ‘hedgehog’ defense sectors, taking tactical advantage of the topography, and the dense emplacement of artillery and mortars made it the highest concentration of fire the enemy used in the Pacific War.
Marines in Okinawa, 1945. Photo from Department of Defense Archives.
The ideal defense employed by the Japanese commanders, were to allow all US ground troops to move well-inland, and then to defend every crag-laden hill, ridge line and ravine as our forces moved forward. This was a totally different strategy of previous island battles such as Iwo Jima and Tarawa, where the beaches themselves were heavily contested. Seemingly every ridge and hill contained natural caves and promontories; which typically had artillery encased inside steel doors and machine gun emplacements pointing down the fingers and draws of the hills.
As the battle commenced on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, the two Marine divisions, plus a regiment landed on the central and eastern part of the island and attacked on a northerly axis, whereas the initial two army divisions wheeled south across the narrow waist of Okinawa. The Army’s 96 Inf. Division began to encounter fierce resistance from enemy troops on those rocky ridges very soon, as it slowly moved south. The Army’s 27th division landed on 9 April and took over the right, or western-side of the push south. There were now three army divisions attacking here.
Enhancing the difficulty of the battle were the spring monsoon rains, which started in mid-April and didn’t let up until early June. The American foot soldier and marine became mired in mud and flooded roads, exacerbating the ability to supply men, evacuate wounded and navigating the steepening terrain.
As Marine Corps regiments moved forward abreast, going to the aid of the army divisions pulled off the line for a brief respite, they—as their army brethren, encountered fanatical resistance from the Japanese defenders. Later, in the largest ‘banzai’ attack of the war, some 2,500 Japanese were killed, with some of the fighting devolving into hand to hand combat. As of now, five US Divisions were fighting south by southwest—going against these formidable defenses, footnoting places embedded in the memories of the brave souls doing the fighting, and now infamous in military lore. Names such as Sugar Loaf Hill, where 1,600 marines were killed and 7,400 wounded; Hacksaw Ridge- recently immortalized on screen, telling the story of Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss—and the formidable Shuri Line, where the Japanese planned their last defense in a series of ridgelines and strong points, taking the better part of a month to extinguish the enemy resistance. Fighting was so prolonged and intense in this area, that casualty counts are unable to be accurate, however it safe to say, tens of thousands of Japanese and easily over ten-thousand US troops became casualties of some sort.
Guest blogger Cobb Hammond.
Not to be forgotten, was the intense combat at sea just miles offshore, as Japanese ships and kamikaze planes attacked US naval forces mercifully for weeks, with some 36 US ships sunk with another 380 damaged, as thousands of enemy pilots went down in fiery deaths. The morbid toll of he battle, which ended unceremoniously on June 22, 1945 was five-thousand naval personnel, 4,600 army and 3,200 US Marines, with total wounded exceeding forty-thousand. It should be noted that the Battle for Okinawa had more cases of combat fatigue and mental breakdown than any other battle of the entire Pacific War, as thousands were taken off the line- simply unable to continue. Japanese losses run as high as 140 thousand killed and additional one-hundred thousand civilians unfortunately perished in the crossfire of this hell. Denoting the widespread ferocity and valor exhibited in this campaign, 24 Medals of Honor were awarded; 14 posthumously, including one Tennessean. It should also be highlighted that the recent death of a friend of this writer, Memphis native William Phillips of the 7th Regiment, 1st Marine Division was a participant in this campaign.
As we contemplate this solemn weekend, shall we remember the sacrifice of so many on the bloodied rocky dirt of Okinawa.
Cobb Hammond is a financial advisor with Hammond Financial Advisory/Money Concepts, Inc. He writes on military history and composes short stories as a hobby. You can reach Cobb at chammond40@yahoo.com.
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NEWS!
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime.
This link will take you directly to BRAVO!’s Amazon Prime site where you can take a look at the options for streaming: https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.
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If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.
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Idaho recently honored Medal of Honor recipient Arthur J. Jackson in a memorial ceremony held at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise. Art passed away on June 14, 2017.
Art’s Medal of Honor was for his actions as a Marine PFC with the Seventh Marine Regiment on the island of Peleliu in 1944. You can read the citation here.
A young Art Jackson with his Medal of Honor.
The United States Marine Corps was involved in Art’s memorial and they brought Marines from Washington’s 8th and I Barracks as well as Marine Corps Band members who serve in the President’s own band.
The weather was warm, but not hot, and a breeze out of the west set the flags to fluttering.
Art and Sally Jackson at a celebration of Art in 2016 in Boise Idaho. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
A good sized crowd arrived in time to see Art honored with a 21 gun salute, a flyover by Marine Corps F-18s, a service delivered by the Boise Rescue Mission’s Reverend Bill Roscoe, and a solemn presentation of the American flag to Art’s wife, Sally.
I got acquainted with Art last year while we interviewed Sally Jackson for our upcoming film I MARRIED THE WAR about the wives of combat veterans. I was lucky enough, while Sally was being interviewed about her art work or going through old photos of family and friends, to chat with Art at some length.
Marines from 8th & I honoring Art with a 21 Gun Salute. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers.
At the time, Art was ninety-one, so his memory was a little worn and I doubt he remembered me the few times we met, but he did tell me some things about his service in the Marine Corps. He talked about the miserable weather at Cape Gloucester and the horrible ordeal of Peleliu and the brutal and grueling grind of Okinawa.
When Art told me these stories he’d stop midsentence and stare off at the other side of the living room, and I knew he was back there, reliving those moments, whatever they might be at that instant.
I don’t know, he may have been thinking about what he was telling me, or it could be something else: the face of a Marine who stood beside him in one of the firefights, or it could have been a recollection of the dead volcanic terrain of Peleliu, or the shattered families, the frightened children and other locals on Okinawa.
The rest of Art’s biography is interesting and you can read about it here.
On Peleliu, Art’s actions came to be referred to as “the one-man assault.” He was responsible for killing fifty Japanese soldiers—solo, no help.
Members of the President’s Own Marine Corps Band performing at Art’s memorial. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers.
When I think about what that means, killing all those men, leads me to think about my own combat experiences. For the most part, my time at Khe Sanh was spent dodging incoming—everything from 152 MM artillery rounds roaring in from Laos to 7.62 rounds from SVD sniper rifles. But in one instance I was involved in an assault into an entrenched position of an NVA battalion.
On that day, after an hours-long often hand-to-hand struggle, the men of my outfit, Bravo Company, decimated that battalion of NVA. Some of my comrades were honored with Navy Crosses and Silver Stars and Bronze Stars, but as far as I can recall no one did anything to match what Art Jackson did on Peleliu.
People talk a lot about courage when they talk about Art Jackson.
What is the nature of courage?
Dictionary.com defines courage as follows:
The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.
I don’t hold with the notion that what Art did or what others do in times of intense pressure is done without fear. I suspect courage comes forth in spite of fear.
Sally receiving the American Flag from Art’s coffin. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers.
A couple of quotes I found on the Internet seem to match what my experiences have led me to surmise:
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” ~ Mark Twain
“Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear.” ~ Roy T Bennett
Most of what I did in my stint during the war—and I was under fire a lot—was to do what was required of me and sometimes that placed me in extreme danger. And although I was scared, whether I did anything or not made no difference. I was still scared.
And also, after all the forty-nine-plus years since I left the war, I’ve come to believe that a lot of what I did that led me to eschew my own safety on the battlefield was due to peer pressure. I thought then and I believe now that next to death and maiming, and maybe, in some instances even before those horrible results of combat, behaving so that I was not thought of as a coward by the men with whom I served was the prime motivator for my taking actions that were life endangering.
Fear is a powerful motivator and left unchecked it can eat a man or woman up, drive them to inaction in a situation demanding action, can force them to hide when those they love die. To overcome that requires courage.
Lastly, besides peer pressure and duty, a man or woman engaged in combat will go above and beyond to help their comrades. Some people call it love. I don’t know what to call it other than regard for those with whom you share a bunker, those who make you laugh, who walk through the valley of death with you, who will pull you to safety when you get shot. As a Marine, we all felt we owed it to our brothers to help them if they were in extreme danger. A creed, I guess, that seems to be overdone these days, but more than a creed, something, on second thought, that is akin to love. And somewhere in there, I’m sure courage is involved.
I don’t know what Art Jackson’s reasons were for doing what he did. Maybe it was all of the above.
I am glad I got acquainted with Art Jackson. He was a national hero. The citation for Art’s Medal of Honor states that he was “stouthearted and indomitable.” I think that’s something all of us would, in some fashion, like to be.
Rest in peace, Art, and Semper Fi.
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In last week’s blog I wrote about the letters I sent home to my parents while I was in-country in 1967-68. In preparation for that article, I read each of the letters. I am glad I did because it clarified some events for me (I really did see elephants and coffee trees) and it cleared up some haziness in my memory about the timeline of my tour there.
I also noticed some recurring subjects one of which was “scuttlebutt.”
Scuttlebutt originally was a British nautical term that named a water cask kept on deck for sailors to get a drink of water. Over time, the scuttlebutt became a place for sailors to gather and share rumors or gossip. The term is quite old and was purloined sometime around the turn of the 20th Century to refer to gossip. In the Marines of the 1960s, the term scuttlebutt referred directly to rumors.
In my letters I refer to scuttlebutt in a number of instances and now, with the actual history of events available for comparison, what I thought was going to occur in any given period of time most often turned out to not happen.
A few examples of the scuttlebutt going around in 1967-68 with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines follows, as recorded in my letters written at the time. I had not been in the field south of Hill 55 very long when I wrote this on 4/27/1967:
Rumor has it that the first of July or August, we will rotate to Okinawa for a month of training and then we will be sent afloat as an SLF (Special Landing Force) where we will make landings at trouble spots in Vietnam. We will be based out of Olongapo, the Philippines.
Bravo Company was located just south of Hue on May 8, 1967 when I sent this:
The engineers are building a 20 mile road to a hill southeast of Phu Bai. We will act as security. The country is “virgin.” The only Marines in there have been reconnaissance Marines. When we get to the hill, we will secure it and set up there.
On June 22, 1967, nowhere near the “virgin” country (we never went on that road-building operation), I wrote this from Hill 881 South west of the Khe Sanh Combat Base:
Rumor also has it that we shall be rotating to Phu Bai and then Okinawa in the next couple of months. I also hope that that is one rumor that comes true.
On September 1, 1967 I wrote:
By the 15th the battalion is supposed to be in Phu Bai. From there who knows? Maybe to Okinawa.
I never made it to Okinawa until I rotated back to the States when my tour of duty was up. I never made it to Olongapo either.
The thing that gets my attention now is how the scuttlebutt usually had us going somewhere away from the war, to a place with women and food and beer. I am not sure if that’s the result of my own wishes—how I interpreted the rumors—or if it was a unit-wide desire. I suspect that my comments in the letters are a result of both my own optimism and the hopefulness of the unit in general.
I do know that one of the things that kept me going over there—that might have helped me stay alive—was my optimism, my hopefulness. The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire said: “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.”
During the siege, the world we inhabited was miserable, more than miserable, yet we laughed, we hoped, we dreamed of home.
I think all those references to being someplace other than where I happened to be, the misery of days of rain, the attacks by legions of leeches, the constant work and little sleep, the horror of the Siege of Khe Sanh, were nothing more than attempts to be optimistic.
I say “nothing more,” but as I think about it, that staying optimistic was a key thing in me staying alive. Since I had something to hope for, it made me work harder to stay alive.
My old buddy Joe Skinner who was a Marine Corps officer at the end of World War II once told me, “Hope is one step from despair.” When he told me that, I laughed hard. It’s true. When the jaws of despair are gnawing on you, whispering in your ear that all is folly, hope and optimism are the things that help keep you going, help keep you alive.
The 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson said it well:
# 254
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
On the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona on February 15, 2015 at the historic Paramount Theater. Doors open at noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow. We will give you more details about this screening as they become available.
We are also pleased to announce that BRAVO! will be shown at Idaho’s historic Egyptian Theater in Boise on March 30, 2015. We will post updates to this event here as they become available.
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.
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I found them in an old blue binder, one of those flimsy ones with a cheap vinyl cover. All the letters I sent to my family while I was in the service from 1966 through 1969. I had no idea my mother had kept them. As I re-read them, I was surprised by a number of things: back then I had very poor penmanship although it was much more legible than it is now; I initially wrote in cursive, something that one sees very little of these days; I was naive at the beginning of my Vietnam tour, cynical and somewhat bitter at the end; except for several letters sent berating the anti-war protesters back home after we Khe Sanh defenders got infamous on the covers of Time and Life and Newsweek, for the most part, I shined my parents on about what was going on in the places I was located in Vietnam.
Here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote on March 28, 1967, the day I got to Danang, Vietnam:
“Instead of getting 3-4 weeks of jungle training in Okinawa, we got 60 hours of shots, blood donating, plus work parties. We got here at 3:30 this morning via Continental Airlines. We’ve just been sitting around in the filth and heat and humidity–getting sticky and dirty…”
Or this from November 17, 1967:
“I got a new pair of jungle boots today–my other pair, 5-1/2 months old, were literally falling apart at the seams.”
On January 8, 1968 I wrote:
“By the time you receive this letter I should have only about 90 days left in country.”
On February 26, 1968:
“A newsman from NBC got my picture the other day. Look for my flick on TV.”
Ken Rodgers, co-producer, co-director of BRAVO!, photo courtesy of Kevin Martini-Fuller
On March 10, 1968, I wrote a diatribe, what I described at the time as “podium pounding” that included deleterious comments about the North Vietnamese and about the war protesters at home. Some of the more plain vanilla narrative from that letter follows:
“…we aren’t sitting around waiting to die, we are sitting around waiting for the time we can go home because we are alive and are going to live because it takes more than 16,000 (the real number of NVA was closer to 40,000)…idiots to beat 5000 (the real number of US personnel–USMC, Navy, Army, Air Force and South Vietnamese allies was closer to 6000) Marines face to face…”
As I read these letters I reflected on how long it took for letters to get delivered from my family and friends to me while I was at Khe Sanh, and vice versa, how long it took for mine to get home. It usually took weeks for correspondence to get from back-in-the-real-world (as we called it) to me in the bush. Oftentimes letters and packages got lost. Mail was our lifeline from the “real world.” It helped keep our morale up, helped stiffen our spines.
Now, troops overseas can communicate almost instantly with the folks back home. Besides the old method—the mail—one can telephone, email, Skype, video teleconference and instant message. Same results, I think, but the immediacy of it all, I suspect, makes those direct contacts pretty common should a warrior choose it to be so.
Back in my day, you could go to Danang and wait in line in the middle of the night to call home. I only knew of one or two Marines who took advantage of the service. Most of the time I was mired in the bush and Danang was a long ways off, and when in Danang I was going somewhere, to a school or on R&R or to raise some hell at China Beach.
Think about how it must have been for Caesar’s legionnaires back in 53 BC. Correspondence must have taken months, if it happened at all, and once a warrior tromped off to Gaul, he may never be heard from again.
For most of us, family ties are strong and the memories of home and thoughts of returning there are a powerful bond that help Marines keep their spirits up and allows them to function whether it be on watch, on a work party or in battle.
While we fought in Vietnam, our loved ones needed our letters. We needed theirs.
On the screening front, we are pleased to announce that BRAVO! will be shown at Idaho’s historic Egyptian Theater in Boise on March 30, 2015. We will post updates to this event here as they become available.
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.
BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help raise more public awareness of this film.
Kitty Delorey Fleischman, photo courtesy of Sherry Ann Elizabeth Photography
Guest blogger Kitty Delorey Fleischman is publisher and editor of IDAHO magazine. She’ll tell you that one of the advantages of being old is that you’ve had time to do a lot of things. She taught school in Michigan and Alaska for eight years, has worked as a reporter at the Nome Nugget, and the Great Lander in Anchorage. Moving to Idaho in 1981, she worked part-time for United Press International before co-founding the Idaho Business Review in 1984. The IBR was sold to its current owners in 1999, and she started IDAHO magazine in 1999.
Kitty is married to Gerald Fleischman, an engineer working in the renewable energy field, and she has two children, eight grandchildren and seven (at last count) great-grandchildren.
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Now they’re called, “The Greatest Generation,” but when they went to serve, they simply wanted to put a stop to the evil and aggression that were engulfing the world in what was, at that time, called “The Second War to End All Wars.”
Both Lt. Donald Delorey and Lt. Mary Jane Healy were volunteers who went without being called. They were my parents, so from here on, I’ll refer to them simply as “Mom” and “Dad.” Seeing what was happening in the world, Dad signed up for the Army in July 1941. In fact, he was in Panama on Dec. 7, 1941, when news of the Pearl Harbor attack arrived. He and another soldier were immediately sent on horseback to map the coast of Panama, looking particularly for sites where the Japanese might try to land. The Panama Canal would have been a plum prize.
Donald Delorey in the United States Army
In early 1943, when President Roosevelt issued a presidential call for volunteers for “a dangerous and hazardous mission,” the call was answered by some 3,000 American soldiers. The volunteers came from stateside units, from the jungles of Panama and Trinidad. Some had been involved in the campaign in Guadalcanal, New Guinea, and New Georgia. Some were hardened and battle-scarred, some were new to war. Each was different, with one thing in common: they voluntarily answered the call of their nation. Dad was among the first to volunteer, and he went through his Ranger training at Ft. Benning, Ga. The unit was officially designated as the “5307th Composite Unit (Provisional),” Code Name: “Galahad.” Later it earned its more popular name, “Merrill’s Marauders,” in recognition of its leader, Brigadier General Frank Merrill.
After preliminary training, operations began in complete secrecy in the jungles of central India. The Marauders began the long march up the Ledo Road and over the outlying ranges of the Himalayas into Burma. It was men and mules. The Marauders had no Jeeps, no tanks or heavy artillery to support them, as they hacked their way, walking more than 1,000 miles through the foothills of the Himalayas. The path was through extremely dense, nearly impenetrable jungles. They were part of a “throw-away” force sent half-way around the world to delay the Japanese, because everyone was sure the Japanese could not be beaten.
Well, “everyone” didn’t know my parents.
Mom & Dad met on the USS General H.W. Butner, a troop transport on its way to India. Dad was assigned to the 5307th Provisional, and Mom was a member of the 44th Field Hospital. They met shortly after the ship pulled out of Norfolk, Va. Their unknown destination was Bombay. Dad spotted Mom instantly and proposed to her on the second day he knew her. A 26-year old “first louie,” Dad always claimed Mom said “yes” on the third day, something she vehemently denied until just a few months before she died, then adding, “Well, one of us had to keep our heads!”
It was not Mom’s way to stand back and ask others to do a job. Her older brother was serving in France, and Mom knew nurses would be desperately needed to care for the wounded. Mom was 22-years old when she shipped overseas, a registered nurse who didn’t quite meet minimum Army standards requiring that women be five feet tall and weigh a hundred pounds. While Mom and Dad always claimed Mom was five-feet tall, at five-foot-two, I was nearly half a head taller than Mom, who was 4-foot, 10.5-inches tall, and tipped the scales at 95 pounds, fully-clothed. But they weren’t checking nurses too closely in those days. Dad always told us, “Yes, kids, it’s true. Your mother did wear Army boots.” They were size 4 1/2s.
Mary Jane Healy
Their first date was in Cape Town, South Africa, when Dad escorted a group of nurses into town for the day and bought Mom a warm Coca-Cola. They spent their shipboard days planning their lives together with a little white house in the country and a flock of kids. When the ship landed in Bombay and they parted company, Dad promised he’d find her again.
With that, the Marauders were off on their assignment to throw stumbling blocks in front of the Japanese 18th Division, Emperor Hirohito’s elite “Chrysanthemum Troops,” the unit that wrought havoc across China, and Burma. The Marauders faced the Japanese in five major engagements, at Walawbum, Shaduzup, Inkangahtawng, Nhpyum Ga, and Myitkyina, as well as thirty minor engagements.
By always moving to the rear of the main forces of the Japanese, the Marauders continually disrupted the enemy’s supplies and communication lines. The conflict climaxed behind Japanese lines with the capture of the Myitkyina airfield, the only all-weather airfield in northern Burma. It came after four full months of marching and combat in the Burmese jungles.
It is said that no other American force except the First Marine Division, which took and held Guadalcanal for four months, has had as much uninterrupted jungle fighting as Merrill’s Marauders.
There also is solid basis to the claim that no other American forces ever had to march as far, fight as continuously, or display more endurance than the fast-moving, hard-hitting Marauders. Dad often told us about watching airplanes searching the valleys 10,000 feet below them, looking for them to drop supplies to them, while they were high above the planes on trails far up in the foothills. He talked about even the sure-footed mules falling off cliffs in the mountains as they made their way along ancient, treacherous paths, guided by locals.
The mules and muleteers of the Mars Task Force trained for the job in Colorado Springs, Colo., and they earned the full faith and respect of the unit. Some years ago I met with a number of the muleteers at a reunion they held in Boise. I’ve never talked with a Marauder who didn’t tear up at memories of those mules who shared their path in those hard times.
Emmett Payne, an old Marauder who spent his last days at the Idaho State Veterans Home, told me stories that Dad never told his daughter. I don’t know whether he told them to his sons. Emmett told about how the Marauders, all of whom—from Merrill on down to the lowliest private—were suffering horribly from dysentery and malaria. They didn’t have time to be sick, and there was no time for diarrhea, so they kept moving despite malaria, and they cut holes in the seats of their pants to deal with the diarrhea. They kept walking and fighting.
The Marauders carried all of their equipment and supplies on their backs or on the backs of their pack mules. They were often resupplied by airdrops, but also had to make clearings in the thick jungles so the supplies could be dropped to them.
When they took off from Bombay, Dad’s pack weighed 75 lbs., which was half of his body weight. Mom carried 40 lbs., which was 40 percent of her body weight. Dad was wounded three times. One was a flesh wound where a bullet passed through the fleshy part of his thigh. After he was treated, he tore off the tag and went back to his men. The second time, a bullet shattered the base of his thumb so he couldn’t pull a trigger. That put him out of commission for a little longer.
Following a plane crash that killed a number of the nurses from the 69th General Hospital, Mom was transferred from Bhamo to Ledo. There was never a shortage of work for the nurses, and Mom also helped to train nurses for Dr. Gordon Seagraves, “The Burma Surgeon.”
Donald and Mary Jane Delorey in 1946
In the Ranger tradition, every wounded Marauder was evacuated. The third time Dad was shot, he was 15 yards from the Japanese machine guns. His upper right leg was shattered. “It felt like a bag of wet marbles,” he said. He lay there for nearly an hour, applying a tourniquet, picking little tomatoes off a nearby bush, and savoring what he thought were his last moments. While Sgt. John “Tex” Texiera was directing mortar fire from a nearby hill, Capt. Jim Holland, Sgt. Pappy Meyers, Lt. Colonel Ken Harrell, and Capt. Brubaker from the headquarters company came out with a litter to bring Dad back behind the American lines. “What the hell are you doing here,” was Dad’s first question. “You didn’t think we were going to leave you here, did you?” Jim Holland asked. Dad said that, actually, he was pretty sure they would have to leave him, and he believed the only reason he was allowed to live was because the Japanese planned to kill those who they knew would come to rescue him.
Because they were a secret unit, there were very few photos, and only three reels of movie film ever taken of the Marauders. Two of those were destroyed in a plane crash. On the one remaining reel are images of Dad being carried back to the American lines while bullets snap leaves from nearby trees. So Dad began his long trip home on a Piper J-3 Cub.
Mom’s unit remained in Burma, nursing the troops. The Japanese army had been broken, however, so things were quieting after Myitkyina. Eventually her unit was sent to Okinawa, preparing for the invasion of Japan. Mom was assigned to wade ashore with the first wave of troops.
When the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima ended the war, Mom was sent home, but not before Typhoon Louise, classified as a “Perfect Storm,” slammed the island, damaging, sinking or grounding 265 ships and leaving 83 men dead or missing. During the storm, Mom spent three days huddled under a butcher block with two other nurses after everything else they had was blown away.
Mom said the admiral cried when he came ashore and found the nurses with nothing—no food, no dry clothing, not a comb nor a toothbrush—nothing but the wet, filthy clothes on their backs. “American women should never have been treated like this,” was his first reaction, and the next thing they knew, there were naval commanders running all of the supplies they needed.
Shortly after that, the nurses were evacuated and, although the typhoon was still in evidence, Mom, a non-swimmer, refused to ride up in a basket like those who were too afraid to make the climb. Still in the throes of the subsiding storm, Mom said sometimes the scramble net was far away from the ship, sometimes it was slammed against the side, but Mom proudly climbed the 40-foot net up the side of the ship, satisfied with the knowledge that she had done her part in the second “War to End All Wars.” She had helped to make the world safe for democracy. She and Dad had both done their parts to assure a peaceful world for their children.
Twenty years later, almost to the day, my older brother Don, set foot on Okinawa, a young Marine on his way to Vietnam.
From Elko, Nevada, where there is a threat of snow, news on the news of Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor. Read co-producer Ken Rodger’s guest blog posted at James Goertel’s All Lit Up, at NextTV, on the genesis of the movie from his escape from Khe Sanh until today, February 1, 2012. The post is at http://bit.ly/A001S1.
