After the Houston Ride for Kids yesterday, Spoiler and I were taking the long way home and found ourselves in Navasota. I decided to visit a friend in Independence so we parted ways and I took off down 105 and up 50.
As i pulled into their place, I was amazed at the size of the trees I helped plant along their driveway roughly 40 years ago when they bought the place. I also noticed the 4 acre lake was dry. Looks like the Brenham area needs some rain.
Anyway, the part I thought you guys might find interesting was my visit with my friend's father whil my friend was away. His dad, known to his Marine buddies as "Tex", just turned 90 and still has a stronger grip than I do. We talked for a while and then he shared his limited edition book about the 4th Division Marines he served with during WWII. He was one of the founding Marines in the Fightin' Fourth. Tex was a pretty quiet man as I was growing up with his son, but I knew he had been a Marine. We couldn't get much out of him then, but he was now ready to share. I'll leave out the more detailed descriptions of tactics and engagements as the internet probably isn't the place he would want them. If you're interested, ask me later.
After Basic, they had their first training mission - taking the Marshall Islands at Roi and Namur. Yep, it was trial by fire. Tex was the company runner and stayed with the officers in the field, but the officer's job was a dangerous one and pretty soon a 2nd LT was the only officer they had. That LT survived long enough to eventually become a Captain. Tex remained the runner and although he suffered through a fall off a 40 foot cliff and being blown into the air by a shell explosion, he stuck with them through it all.
The short version is that after rooting snipers and others from caves and tunnels, they returned briefly to the base in Hawaii before leaving to take Saipan, where roughly a third of their 17,000 men sufered casualties between killed, wounded and missing. But, those Marinesl took out almost 24,000 of the enemy (more than that if you count prisoners taken). After almost a month of constant fighting, they secured the island and had two weeks out of battle before they were sent to Tinian.
Some of you may know the Tinian name as that was where the Enola Gay took off to drop the bomb at Hiroshima. But, first, it had to be taken from the enemy. In a 9 day battle, of the 9000 Japanese troops defending the island, only 250 were left to be taken prisoner. The 4th lost 290 men, with another 1500 wounded, but they had a runway that would be used to launch B-29 bombers, including the Enola Gay.
They returned to Hawaii for rest, medical treatment and training. The next landing would be their most famous - Iwo Jima. With the 3rd and 5th divisions, they stormed the beaches at Iwo Jima. They suffered over 2000 casualties in the first two days, many in the first part of the landings on the beach and many more trying to get up the coral cliffs/dropoff. He said they had to use bulldozers to push the tanks up the cliff to get them into the action. They were in that fight for 26 days in order to secure the whole island, which was planned for later use to stage for a ground invasion of Japan.
In a little over a year of service, the 4th was engaged in four major amphibious assaults (and Tex didn't join the Navy because he didn't like the water).
I know I've gotten long winded because it was so interesting to hear those first hand accounts of the hell they fought through. There's more to this great story, but I'll leave that to another time. Yep, I guess there is a bit of hero worship on my part, but Tex and the guys he fought with are heros to me. Wanderer's dad, who was a fighter pilot in the Pacific, fit right into that group of heros as well. I'm sure you guys have stories of your own as I know we have a lot of veterans in the group. Thanks for your service and for Tex's.
ps I now know how to diffuse a WWII era Japanese hemisphere mine liked they used at Tinian. The mines were murder on landing craft at high tide and on wading personnel at low tide. Tex lead the guys who diffused them after they starting blowing up landing craft and made a path for the remaining landing craft to get through. So, if you happen to come across one, shoot me a text and I'll walk you through it. Always good to pick up new skills, eh? The ride home was more satisfying.
