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His name is Mr. Al Witte and he served in the United States Marine Corps from 1942 for the duration of the war. Interestingly enough he was a student here at Oak Harbor Forest High School, a senior on December 7th, 1941, and he was so moved by what happened he told me that the next day he came to school, cleaned

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out his locker, told his dean that he was leaving, went downtown Chicago and joined the United States Marine Corps. Then he went through his boot camp training and was sent to the Southerns in the South Pacific to take part in the Guadalcanal campaign. So what he will tell you then will be his experiences from the ground

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of what it's like to be in the Marine Corps and in the South Pacific fighting during the Second World War. Mr. Witte. Morning. Just as a little bit of introduction and give you an idea what the kid looked like a long time ago. This is a glossy of a picture that was in Time and Life magazine. It's also in

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the Division History. It was in other magazines but my parents saw this I think in Time or Life magazine and started looking at my brother Dick who was a freshman near them. He says, "That sure looks like my brother." So in exchanging correspondence we were in Hawaii at that time, my outfit, while we did

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determine that this was a picture was taken by a Coast Guard photographer as we were leaving Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. This was probably taken about the 23rd or 24th of November 1943. The Gilberts. November 43, recovered by the Marines. November 43. Due west about 2,000, 1,500 miles from Hawaii. That was the first

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fortified atoll. Atoll is another word for an island that anybody ever took. Small island, two and a half miles by half a mile, but there were a thousand Marines killed there in a space of about 24 hours. But this fellow, Walter Holoweski, I'm still in contact with. And little guy way back here, Bertie Perret, lives in Alton,

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Illinois. I'm still in contact with him. The chap right behind me, that's the kid. This chap right here, his name was First Class Walter Blam from Kankakee, Illinois. He was my very, very best friend. And he was killing action on the island of Saipan on the Marianas Islands on the 16th of June 1944. I thought you might

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like to get a little look at what the kid looked like. You can pass that around. And this is the kid when he got out of the hospital in 1943, after being wounded on Guadalcanal. Picture was taken in New Zealand. I was 19 years old, just turned 19. And just to show you, I was dead once.

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- We all were. - Yeah, a long time ago. Well, Mr. Tegg, kind of give you a little introduction. And I will remember that Sunday, being 17 years old and hearing about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. And I thought and thought and thought. And I

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didn't tell anybody I remember that because I wasn't sure that the Marine Corps would take me. So I beat it out of school here before first bell, I think was 8.05 on those days. And got on the elevator. And then I came back to school and told Mr. Metcalf, my dean, what I had done. And he and I went to the auditorium

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that morning, December 8th. The auditorium, much the same as it is today, it's all remodeled. But we all listened, the whole student body and the faculty listened to President Roosevelt on the radio. They typed the radio in there and we listened to President Roosevelt requesting that Congress to declare a

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state of war between the Empire of Japan and the United States for the day that would live in infamy. And I remember that so well. Went to West Coast, San Diego, boot camp. Got out of boot camp and joined C Company of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Regiment of Marines which was training at Camp Elliot, California. And because I

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was big, dumb, and strong, I made a machine gunner hobby. And I was running like a machine gunner. I learned that thing backwards and forwards. And if you were skillful enough and your memory was good enough where you could beat somebody else out from taking the thing apart and putting it back together, then you got to

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be number one gunner. And that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be the number one gunner and not the number two gunner because the number one gunner got shooted more than the number two gunner. And early part of May 1942, they put us on two transports. First we've been training and practicing and running and

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we were all in pretty good shape. The average age of our battalion at that time, as I recall, was 19 years old. There were a sprinkling of old-time Marines in there. Our 1st Sergeant and our Guarding Sergeant, our company, I remember, were both buddies in the 49th Company of the 5th Marines in Bellowood in World War I.

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And they were buddies, but they were professional Marines and they'd stayed in the Marine Corps all this time. But the rest of us were a bunch of kids that had been shaved. Like, was it Manchester, his book, said that the Marines in World War II were a bunch of young fellas looking for a fight. And we were looking for one. And I

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remember so well, we knew we were going to win because everybody was very angry with the Japanese. I mean, the whole country was taken up in a mission to beat the Japanese. I think people disliked the Germans and the Italians because, if memory serves me correct, the Germans and the Italians declared war in the United States.

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Yes, on December 11th, they declared war. Yeah. Because of the anti-combatant bag in the transport. But we declared war on the Empire of Japan.

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That's right. They struck first to see if that... And we wanted to pay them back. We, I remember, it was no doubt in our mind that we would win and soundly beat the Japanese. Apparently a decision was made, and things like this interested me after the war, and I read about it because I

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was there, I did certain things, and I wondered, well why did we go there? Why did we do this? Why did we do that? Well, as you well know, there are hundreds and hundreds of fine books in the library about the strategies of World War II, and I was most interested in finding out, well, why did they pick Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands? Why was this done? I read about it, and through my little discussion here, I'm going to maybe try and bring some of that

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in, and you might say, well, how did he know? Well, as a Marine Corps private, later on a non-commissioned officer, a platoon leader, later on in the war, well you very seldom ever really knew what happened outside your own company or platoon front. All you knew is the flanks, your organization spread so far, and you just made sure that there was somebody tying in on each side of you because it was in a battle, so to speak. If you're way out in front of

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everybody else, this gives the enemy in person a chance to get in behind you, and that's not good business. My kids, my two sons who also graduated from this school, asked me once, "How close did you ever come to the Japs?" I said, "Well, I had one step on me one time." I only mention this because I was a front-line guy. I think I read once that it took ten men and women in the rear areas to keep one combat man in the front line.

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Logistics, supplies, all the things that make the guy who's got a rifle on his shoulder, a bayonet on the end of the rifle, stay up in the front to give him the support. It takes ten people in the back. So all in all, we had what, six, seven million people in the services in World War II. You figure that out of that number, really maybe a million or so people actually shall be smell-powered. I often think, gee, I was one of those, and I don't consider myself a hero in any respect.

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I consider myself a survivor. The best souvenir that I got out of World War II is that little dog tag. We get two of them, warmer on our neck. And the reason they put two of them was because if you did get bumped off, they tacked one on a little cross, got your name, your serial number, the type of blood you had, and your service. And the other one, they put in your mouth so that if you ever did get dug up again and moved, they could identify the bones properly.

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That's where the notch is. You got a notch in yours? Is there a notch on that one? Or is it worn down? No, it's just worn. It did have a notch. I've not seen that kind before, but mine has a notch right here so it fit in the tongue. Yeah, the Army did. They were square. The Naval service, they were round.

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But then they tried to put a thumbprint with acid on the back, but that's the best souvenir I got. You still carry it with you? I still carry it. The beauty of it is you carry it home around your neck rather than in your mouth. That was the most important thing.

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Mr. Michael. Apparently a decision was made by the President of the United States that things were really, in early '42, things were not going too well for the United States. Lost all those battleships at Pearl Harbor. Guam was gone, the Philippines, Quincas Island. The Japanese really controlled a heck of a lot of areas.

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And the China, Dutch East Indies are pushing into India. This was all Japanese. Gilbert. All Japanese dominated. Japanese Navy ruled the sea there. Japanese aircraft patrolled all over the place. And the powers that be, including President Roosevelt, decided that some offensive action had to be taken. Let's do something and show the people in the United States that we weren't beaten. We had to recover. Let's do something.

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Well, the Japanese landed and took away from the Australians the Solomon Island. That was an Australian-mandated island that was governed by the Australians. As we learned later, missionaries from the Episcopal Church and the Catholic Church were extremely busy there. Most of the people that lived there were Micronesians.

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And the Lieber brothers had a big coconut plantation there. But the Japanese were building an airfield at Guadalcanal. If I make no point other than this one this morning, entire Marine battalions shot to pieces. First Battalion of East Marines at Tarawa lost five, six hundred men taking Tarawa alone. Killed.

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Marine battalions shot to pieces for a little tiny island or a bigger island, but why? For an airfield. Unsinkable aircraft carriers. Carrier aircraft are great. Aircraft carriers were great. But they didn't have the aircraft, did not have the range. They couldn't carry the bomb load that land-based aircraft could handle.

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Consequently, take islands that have airfields on them. Because in Guadalcanal, that airfield was in the process of being built by the Japanese, and with the aircraft flying from there, they could interdict all the traffic coming into Australia from the east. Consequently, these people and the people in New Zealand were in extremely bad shape.

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And with the possibility with the Japanese landing in Australia and New Zealand, which I'm sure they had plans to do. So it was decided that there were two or three regiments of Marines that were in pretty good shape, pretty well trained. So they put General Vanden Heuvel in charge, and we left San Diego and joined down to the 1st Marine Division. We took the place of the 7th Marines, 7th Regiment, which were not quite trained enough, and the 2nd Regiment was trained.

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So we took the place of that regiment. Three regiments of Marines landed on August 7, 1942. My organization landed on an island called Florida Island, which is across the U.R. Channel from Guadalcanal, just to secure that flank. And supposedly my company commander, E.J. Crane, Captain E.J. Crane from Lubbock, Texas, was the first American to set foot on Japanese-occupied soil in World War II.

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That's Japanese-occupied soil, not Japanese territory, but occupied by the Japanese. We saw Verrill Island in the first few days. In fact, I never got a chance to fire the air-cooled machine gun until a raid that we made later on. And if I get a chance, I'll give you a little idea of what that was like. And please, if you've got any questions as I ramble along here, I would enjoy answering your questions.

00:17:24.920 - 00:17:46.920

If I don't know the answer, I'll invent one. But I do have a tendency to get off the tangent, and my powers of recollection are pretty good, but these are events that happened 44 years ago. So I try to remember everything that I can. I remember well the first dead Marine I saw.

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It was Talibee. He took us off of Florida and brought us over to Talibee Island, which was the administrative headquarters of the Australian government. And I saw my first dead Marine. He's laying on a trail. We were going up to patrol. Talibee wasn't very small island. He was dressed just like me.

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Same kind of shoes, same type of uniform. We wore a dungaree type of uniform, much like your blue jeans, only a greenish color. We had the camouflage ones until much later. These were kind of a green color. I looked at him as we went by, and I didn't know him, but I thought to myself,

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I've just turned 18 years old. I said, "My mother will never find my grave in this place." It was a terrible place. Playa Canal was probably the worst place I've ever been in my whole life. The Solomon Islands was the worst place I was ever in my life.

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Hot, rainy, bugs, all kinds of creepy, crawly things. Later on, we were all afflicted with a malarial parasite. When I say it's a parasite, it's a parasite because it's a reoccurring malaria. You couldn't get off the front lines on Playa Canal unless you had a temperature of 101.

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It wouldn't take you in the hospital. Chills and fever. That stayed with me until 1965. I had malaria probably once a year. 1965 was the last time I had it, but it stays in your bloodstream. That parasite stays in there.

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Any little nick or scratch that you get off a ration can or anything else, it seems like it would get infected immediately. In the early part of the campaign, the Japanese would harass us night and day. In the daytime, the bombers would come from Red Bull and Munda,

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counted as many as 70 two-engine bombers overhead, big Vs. They would try and get our airfield. The Navy did manage to get some aircraft in there. Some of the first aces that the United States had in World War II were fellows like Schmidt and Voss that blew the old Hellcats and Wildcats.

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They couldn't live in the air with the Zeros, but they learned that our aircraft were much better built than the Japanese aircraft. What they'd do is get way up high, and then they'd come down on the bombers, make their pass, and shot down many of them.

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I guess Schmidt got 25, Voss got 25, and we'd lay there watching them. They had a real fine air raid system on Guadalcanal. It consists of a 75-millimeter artillery shell, the brass part, hanging by a wire from a tree. They passed the word by voice, said, "Condition red."

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Condition red meant that an air raid was imminent, was on the way. A lot of types of condition red, and the first bombs falling from the aircraft were simultaneous. If you bang on that shell and said, "Condition red," look for the aircraft overhead. The Japanese landed artillery pieces, and they would shell us with those during the day.

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Not too many, but just enough to keep you on your toes. At night, the Japanese Navy would come in, and they'd greet us from, oh, about 10 or 11 o'clock at night until 3 or 4 in the morning, and they'd just fire rounds into our position. I think that's the most frightened I ever was in a whole war,

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was when the Japanese battleships would shell us. 14-inch gun. A 14-inch shell is probably close to 3 feet long, and 14 inches this way. And you'd get--and the batteries, I think, were 3 and 4 guns.

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And you could hear the reports out on Sea-Lark Channel, and then sometimes you could see the rounds. They were red hot, and they'd be coming. They'd go, "Don't let it land by us." Sometimes they did.

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A concussion of one of those things landing, it'd be in your foxhole. When they'd land and go up, it'd lift you right out of the hole and down again. And if you were laying on your stomach, the concussion sometimes would go through the ground and knock the wind right out of you, just like somebody hit you in the stomach with their fist.

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Because you couldn't fight back. No way. They would send aircraft over at night, just fly around, washing machine Charlie and Louis DeLaus, we named them. One had a different engine than the other one.

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And you got to pick them out. I think one was probably a two-engine aircraft. The other one was probably a float plane off of a cruiser or a battleship. And it didn't have synchronized engines.

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You listen and say, "That's Louis DeLaus." That's the other guy. The first time I fired a machine gun was a raid that we made. The Guadalcanal was kind of a funny-shaped island.

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We had a little binder here, all mountains on this side, Henderson Field. We only held a perimeter about four miles by eight miles, airfield. And Talagi over here, Florida Island over here, and a little island called Saville right there. If you ever read the naval history of the United States Navy,

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you'll find that there was about five or six major battles around Saville Island, S-A-V-I-L-L. The worst defeat the United States Navy has ever had, I think, in our history, was the night of August 9th and 10th, 1942. We lost four heavy cruisers.

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Heavy cruisers, no slouch of a ship. That's a pretty good-sized ship, 10,000, 12,000 tons, 8-inch gun. And on that night battle, we lost the cruisers Quincy, the Vincennes, the Astoria, and the Australian heavy cruiser Canberra.

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When those ships were sunk, our supply ships had to leave because they had no naval cover, and they left 10,000 starving Marines on Henderson Field. Mine would say we were starving. Two guys shared one can of rations a day.

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Didn't have any more because the supply ships had to leave, but I'm digressing. The Japanese had built a listing post at a place called Iola, the Iola River, about 35 miles from Henderson Field. What they would do, they had a radio station there and telescopes and all that,

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and when our Navy would try and bring in a supply vessel to supply or bring in reinforcements to Henderson Field, they would radio Rabul or Munda, and within an hour or so, there's this guy with Japanese aircraft trying to sink the supply vessel.

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So they decided that it had to be destroyed. So they took our battalion from Tulagi, brought us by small boat, that night through Sea Lark Channel, and we landed at night, and we were met by a man called Captain Martin Clemens, who was an Australian.

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He was a coast watcher. He stayed on Guadalcanal when everybody else left, and he hid up in the hills, and the native police boys were very loyal to him. And as I said before, they were good Christians.

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They were fine people. Black as the ace of spades with red teeth. Ever see anybody with red teeth? I never saw anybody with red teeth, but they chewed a nut called a beetle nut,

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B-E-T-E-L, and it stained their teeth red. It gave a little jolt. I guess it was like Coca-Cola or something or a little stronger. I never asked.

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But the first time one of those guys smiled at me, I-- "That guy's got red teeth." Never saw anybody look like that before. These guys, they really--

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He'd say, "Hey, what do you think about the Jack?" And they'd talk pigeon English, and they'd say, "Him, Jack, fella, bad fella." They kind of talked backwards. "Him, Jack, fella, bad fella."

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I remember the one guy who would say that. But they guided us that night, and we went through swamps and I don't know what. You'd have to hold on to the guy in front of you, and that isn't easy to do.

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I had the machine gun here, and I was holding on to the pack of the guy in front of me, because if you let go, you'd be lost. Who did you talk to? You can't believe how dark it was.

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Unbelievable. Anyhow, we got to a certain place, and my officer said, "We're going to battery here, "and when it gets light, you're going to see shacks and tents,

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"and anybody in front of you is Japanese. "Shoot them. "Aye, aye, sir." I went into battery and started getting light, just like he said,

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probably 100 meters in front of us or less. Saw shacks, saw tents, started to see people move. Somebody fired, and I could see people there, and they were Japanese. When they were training to be a machine gunner,

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especially with the air-cooled machine gun, they said fire in short bursts, because the barrel gets too hot. First time I fired that, 250 rounds. Being in a box, 250 rounds.

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I'll never forget that. It was a culmination of all my training. The thing I had waited for, I carried that thing, I cleaned it, and now I had a chance to fire.

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To be in combat, to be in contact with the enemy, to see the enemy, I think is the biggest high I ever had in my life. It's indescribable. To be in a combat situation and see the enemy,

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I don't care what other experience I've ever had. I think death, and of course many times afterwards, when I stop and I think about it, mighty exciting. It really is. Yes, sir?

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How did you feel about actually killing people? Never gave it a thought, to tell you the truth. To just kill or be killed, really. That's right.

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That's a situation. Better than yourself. We found out on Guadalcanal, the first Marines were really the first bunch that really came up against

00:30:48.920 - 00:31:05.920

a large group of Japanese on Guadalcanal, probably second, third week on the beach. They really, the Japanese, charged their positions along the Tanaro River. By the sand spit?

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I think it was the Tanaro River. It wasn't the Botanical, but maybe you've seen pictures of them. They're half buried in the sand. They came up from the beach and they hit the first Marine's position.

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After the shooting died and it got light, they went out, the Marines did, to try and find out if there were any wounded, take prisoners and so on. They'd see one and he was wounded, and they tried to help him, so to speak, give him first aid.

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They tried to kill him, throw a hand grenade, try and shoot him, whatever. We learned our lesson. No quarters. No prisoners.

00:31:50.920 - 00:32:06.920

They didn't want to be taken prisoner. I know as far as this airplane was concerned, I didn't want to be taken prisoner by the Japanese. There were mighty few prisoners taken by the Marines and the Army

00:32:06.920 - 00:32:26.920

in World War II fighting the Japanese. As far as the feeling goes, and this question has come up before, because I've done this same thing for the kids at Pinsdale South High School, which is where I'm employed now, it was no big deal.

00:32:26.920 - 00:32:31.920

People go, "Well, how many did you kill?" I don't know. I never went out and counted them. I was a machine gunner.

00:32:31.920 - 00:32:38.920

There were a lot of people in front of me at different times, at Baja Canal. I fired the gun. They went down. I couldn't tell you.

00:32:38.920 - 00:32:56.920

I don't think I remember going out early and looking, because I had to stay by the gun. I know at night I always took my pistol out. I had a pistol on a lanyard, and I had the pistol right there where I didn't have to pull it out of the holster in case we had stoppages.

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We had a lot of stoppages on our machine guns in Baja Canal because we were using World War I ammunition. Stoppages means it's blocked. Yeah.

00:33:04.920 - 00:33:15.920

The piece wouldn't fire. You'd have to take immediate action, lift up the cover and pull the belt through. It's a bad round. A round works as long as each round goes off.

00:33:15.920 - 00:33:32.920

That actuates the bolt that makes the piece fire. But you get a bad round, and you've got to clear that out. I always thought if that happens and I get a stoppage I can't clear, at least I want my pistol there in case they get close enough that I can--

00:33:32.920 - 00:33:47.920

I never did shoot it at anybody, but it was awful nice to have it along. Hand grenades were the best business that we had. Hand grenades were bad news to a machine gunner, but also they were good news because you could throw the hand grenade

00:33:47.920 - 00:33:58.920

and if the Japanese were close enough, you couldn't really tell where the hand grenade came from because we did not have smokeless powder, flashless powder. The Japanese did.

00:33:58.920 - 00:34:12.920

The Japanese fired at you at night. You'd see just a faint purple flash. Our weapons--you ever shoot a firecracker off at night? Makes a flash?

00:34:12.920 - 00:34:31.920

Magnify that by 250 rounds a box, cyclic rate of fire 700 rounds per minute on a machine gun. Makes a lot of flashing. Didn't fire that gun at night unless they were coming at you.

00:34:31.920 - 00:34:48.920

They were zeroing at you. Hand grenades were good business because you couldn't tell where they came from. That particular raid at Iowa was probably the most exciting because it was the first time that I remember was in action

00:34:48.920 - 00:35:10.920

and really got a chance to put several boxes through the gun. I think if memory serves me correct, we killed 60 or 70 Japanese naval and marine personnel. The Marines in the Japanese Navy were supposed to be the elite.

00:35:10.920 - 00:35:26.920

Took no prisoner. We lost one officer, Captain Stafford, who was an intelligence officer, and he tried to take a prisoner, and they shot him dead. I remember that very, very well.

00:35:26.920 - 00:35:40.920

But the different kinds on afterwards now-- Did you take an observation post? Did you knock it out? Yeah, burned it down and took the whole thing and destroyed it. So they couldn't supply it anymore.

00:35:40.920 - 00:35:54.920

Well, they probably built another one, but-- They blew the radio station up, and it was something that had to be done. Yes, sir.

00:35:54.920 - 00:36:09.920

In your experience, did you ever come across the Japanese-- I don't know if it's true or not-- did they build up or take drugs before on the offensive? On Saipan, I think, in the Marianas is where we came across that

00:36:09.920 - 00:36:30.920

the most that I remember. About four or five days after we were in Saipan, they launched the first tank attack that we'd ever experienced between Garapan and Sisupi on the coast of Saipan.

00:36:30.920 - 00:36:45.920

I think they had 15 tanks and a number of infantrymen, and we knew they were going to do something because they were hollering and screaming, blowing bugles. Japanese are great for bugles.

00:36:45.920 - 00:37:03.920

They love to tune on their bugles at night, and it was just like telegraphing the fact that they were going to come. But still, it kind of made you scared because you didn't know where they were coming and how many of them.

00:37:03.920 - 00:37:19.920

They were great night fighters. We stayed in our holes at night, or the Japanese would be all over the place. I would imagine that Saki and whatever was blowing rather well

00:37:19.920 - 00:37:34.920

to get them all hyped up to do their thing. But as far as narcotics goes, I couldn't say about that. But I would suspect that they hit the rice wine, Saki, pretty well. Yes, sir?

00:37:36.920 - 00:37:48.920

Who care? Oh, yeah. Christmas of 1941, I never was so homesick in my life. Oh, did I miss Oak Park.

00:37:48.920 - 00:37:57.920

Were you a parasylum? No, San Diego. There were two boot camps, one a parasylum, one San Diego. I had my choice.

00:37:57.920 - 00:38:09.920

And I said, "I don't know, a parasylum on the East Coast. It'll be cold there in December, but San Diego will be nice and warm." It was nice. San Diego was a nice place.

00:38:12.920 - 00:38:22.920

No, there were no Marines that really did anything in Europe, only the ship's guards on the naval vessel. No real combat? No.

00:38:22.920 - 00:38:30.920

First Marines came out of parasylum. First Marines were at East Coast. That's right. There was Camp Lejeune.

00:38:30.920 - 00:38:41.920

The parasylum was a boot camp. Camp Lejeune was the FMF camp, the Fleet Marine Force camp. Yes, sir. Where were you wounded?

00:38:41.920 - 00:38:52.920

Guadalcanal. I'll tell you about that if we have the time. That was the first time. The second time was on Saipan.

00:38:52.920 - 00:39:12.920

It was a hand grenade fight. They took a piece of hand grenade shrapnel in this side and this side. I went here and they pulled out, and believe it or not, in 1961, I kept having problems right here.

00:39:12.920 - 00:39:28.920

I went to my good old family doctor. He looked and he took X-rays, and there was a little piece of shrapnel, maybe a half inch, probably a little thinner than that, but thicker than a needle, working its way out here.

00:39:28.920 - 00:39:35.920

In all those years? All those years. Did he pull it out? Oh, yeah, he pulled it out.

00:39:35.920 - 00:39:46.920

He made a little incision and pulled it out. I got it at home wrapped in cotton. I sleep on it. I put it under my pillow every night.

00:39:46.920 - 00:40:03.920

But they dug this one out, and the corpsman looked at it, and he said, "Doctor, what do you think?" He said, "Put a bandage on it or send it back to duty." But it did crack the rib when it went in.

00:40:03.920 - 00:40:18.920

It was a pretty fair-sized piece like that. The Japanese hand grenades fragmented in sharp slivers were our hand grenades or big pieces of metal like that. They're two different kinds of hand grenades.

00:40:18.920 - 00:40:33.920

In Japanese hand grenades, picture yourself, you're in a hole listening, and you have two guys in a hole. One guy is asleep and the other guy is staying awake. And when you couldn't stay awake any longer, then you hit the guy in the hole

00:40:33.920 - 00:40:53.920

and say, "Your turn," and then he'd wake. No two guys slept at the same time. There's no way, not when you're--there's nobody in front of you but them, got rifles and machine guns and hand grenades and big, long, ugly knives.

00:40:53.920 - 00:41:05.920

So you didn't really rest too well. War is not a restful place. You lose a lot of sleep. But--

00:41:05.920 - 00:41:20.920

What's the Japanese hand grenade? The Japanese, it was quiet, but the Japanese hand grenade was activated. They'd pull a pin, and our hand grenades would pull a pin. You'd throw it, and there's a spoon flies up, and that lights the fuse,

00:41:20.920 - 00:41:32.920

and in seven seconds the thing will go off. Japanese hand grenades are activated. They pull a pin. You'd have to activate it by hitting it on something, their helmet, a rock,

00:41:32.920 - 00:41:43.920

and you'd listen, and you'd hear that. Just like that. You knew that you were going to get something coming your way. But that was a good deal for us

00:41:43.920 - 00:42:06.920

because you had some kind of a warning, but you'd listen. And I tell you, you listened real well. And that real good--the eerie feeling, spooky, like in Guadalcanal, every little rustle, every little--

00:42:06.920 - 00:42:23.920

They're coming, and it generated in your mind, "They've got to be there. They've got to be there." And you'd hate to fire the machine gun because you could give away your position. In Guadalcanal, it's mostly a defensive position.

00:42:23.920 - 00:42:45.920

We made patrol action. Getting back to the first time I got wounded, patrol-- We made big patrols, sometimes battalion-sized. By the 5th or the 10th of November, 1942,

00:42:45.920 - 00:43:09.920

General Vandenbroek heard from the natives that were doing the spying for us that a great number of Japanese landed up past Kukum. Kukum was the main kind of an area this way from Henderson Field. So they divided the plan where the 5th Marines, two battalions of the 5th Marines,

00:43:09.920 - 00:43:29.920

went on patrol action this way. Our organization, we went up and around grassy-- snow, big hills, no trees on them. And we were going to come in and try and come in behind this large group of Japanese.

00:43:29.920 - 00:43:44.920

So we were battalion-strength, about 900 men, and the 5th Marines, of course, they had a lot of casualties because they were a little smaller. But they went this way. We were going to try and trap them in here.

00:43:44.920 - 00:44:01.920

We got to this--there was a coast road that ran right down the coast through all the coconut trees and then on various areas where they couldn't grow the coconut trees. There were big patches of what they called banyan trees. Banyan trees are huge trees, seeming south, with big roots that come out.

00:44:01.920 - 00:44:31.920

And Japanese were very adept at making pillboxes, bunkers, and so on. And going down the coast road towards where we figured the Japanese might be, and my squad and the infantry platoon that I was attached to were at the point. That's real fun to be in the point because there's nobody in front of you but the bad guys.

00:44:31.920 - 00:44:48.920

That's a scary feeling. You're at a point. No good guys in front of you at all, just bad guys. Going along, and they opened up on us from a couple of these banyan trees.

00:44:48.920 - 00:45:10.920

And I went down right to the right of the road. I was not hit, but my number two gunner, a fellow by the name of Jim Brazey, from someplace in Kansas, I think it was, he went down and he was unhurt and helped me. Well, I had a machine gun, but I had no ammunition for it.

00:45:10.920 - 00:45:31.920

I didn't have the tripod, but I did have my pistol. And I rolled over to try and help Brazey, and we were close enough to the one-- I'm pretty sure it was a Japanese light machine gun. They call them Nambu guns.

00:45:31.920 - 00:45:53.920

Got a curved magazine from the top with metal, and I could hear them changing magazines. The metallic click where they take the one magazine out and put another one in. That's how close we were to them. And I rolled over so that I was on my back, and I was going to roll over again.

00:45:53.920 - 00:46:04.920

I was on my stomach, and the guy opened up on me. But when I rolled over, I didn't wear a pack. Machine gunners didn't wear packs. We just brought them up in little carts.

00:46:04.920 - 00:46:25.920

It saved my life, I think. Because when I rolled over, my back rolled into a little depression. So my feet were like this, and my back and head were down here like that. And the guy couldn't depress the barrel of the gun enough to get the rest of me,

00:46:25.920 - 00:46:45.920

but he did--was shooting by my feet and legs. And he hit me in the left leg about here and a bullet went out the bottom of my foot. And the experience was like somebody took a baseball bat and just hit you as hard as they could on your leg.

00:46:45.920 - 00:46:59.920

Just wowed you with it. And I went, "Whoa!" I remember that. And he kept shooting. And I moved again because I was laying on the pistol,

00:46:59.920 - 00:47:15.920

and I was going to try and get the holster around so I could get the pistol out of the holster. At least I had something. And he kept shooting some more. And the bullets were hitting--it was like a white coral rock.

00:47:15.920 - 00:47:33.920

That's what the road and the area was made out of. And they hit, and the bullets were breaking pieces apparently and break the rocks. Anyhow, somethings up so when they finally got me out of there, they brought in mortars.

00:47:33.920 - 00:47:53.920

Our guys brought in mortars and a half-track and fired at the Japanese, and they left. And then I remember a kid by the name of Palumbo. He was a Cajun from Louisiana. The ugliest looking guy you ever saw in your life.

00:47:53.920 - 00:48:08.920

But he sure looked nice to me. And he shook me because I had passed out. It was the most painful. Probably more painful than a toothache to say the least, especially in your leg.

00:48:08.920 - 00:48:23.920

Anyhow, "You all right, boy? I'm all right. Get me out of there." He dragged me out. He swiped my pistol. I didn't really care. But he took the pistol, and they threw me in the back of a dump truck.

00:48:23.920 - 00:48:37.920

They threw three other guys in there--Bracey had died, a guy from a Durin had died, and one other, Booker, was wounded. I remember that. And they threw us in the back of a dump truck.

00:48:37.920 - 00:48:51.920

The Marine Corps were so poor we didn't have ambulances. They had a dump truck. And it took many hours to get us back to the division hospital. They didn't stop at an aid station.

00:48:51.920 - 00:49:06.920

I think E.L. Bryant was on that load, too. And his wounds--he was wounded in both feet. And I've seen E.L. Bryant since then. He lost both his feet.

00:49:06.920 - 00:49:26.920

He ended up as a principal of an elementary school, so, I mean, it couldn't be all bad. But he lost both his feet through infection. But I think they counted--I had 28 holes in both my legs. Both my legs are just about all scar tissue on the top.

00:49:26.920 - 00:49:41.920

You'll never see this hairpin in Bermuda shorts. The scar tissue doesn't take the sun as well as your regular skin does. It's very shiny. I never had hair on my legs in the front of them.

00:49:41.920 - 00:49:47.920

And the curl, probably a good deal, if you don't like hair on your legs, is the curl.