This is Ed Metzler.
Today is the 24th of January, 2017.
I am at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas,
and I am interviewing Mr. Mack McWilliams.
This interview is in support of the Nimitz Education
and Research Center Archives for the National Museum
of the Pacific War Texas Historical Commission
for the preservation
information related to this site. So Mac,
thanks for coming in from your home in
Burney to sit with us and share your World War
II experiences. I'd like to get
started by having you introduce yourself and
give us your full name, date, and place
of birth, and we'll take it from there. Ed,
thank you. My name is Mac McWilliams.
Actually, my name is Donald G, but people call
me Mac. And I was born on May the
the 23rd, 1925. I was born in Ballinger, Texas.
My folks had been ranchers up until 1924.
Sold the ranch. Dad was elected sheriff. We
came in to Ballinger. I was born there in
Ballinger, and we moved into the jail and spent
about six years there. So that's a little
So you had some jail time from early on in your life.
Yeah, and when I joined the Marine Corps, the
officer, the sergeant that was signing me up said,
Have you ever spent any time in jail? And I
said, Yes, Sir.
And he said, How many years? And I said, Six.
He said, Well, you're only 17. What the hell happened?
What the heck did you do?
And I laughed real big, I thought it was funny,
and told him that Dad was hurt, but he didn't
laugh at all.
So I wondered if I was joined in the right outfit.
Yeah, right up front, they seem awfully serious.
So I'm trying to remember, I don't know, my
geography's not that good, where is Ballinger
in Texas?
It's in West Texas, and it's west of San
Angelo, it's in the San Angelo area, that's Tom Green
County and Bellinger's in Reynolds County, so
they adjoin each other.
Yeah, all right. Six years in jail and... My
younger brother was born in jail.
Oh my goodness, and so how many siblings did
you have?
Well, there was ten of us all together. Oh my
word, ten children. Five boys and five girls,
and I'm very proud to say that during World War
II there were five of us,
that was served in the military. I had four
brothers. I had a sister that was in
the WACs, so we had all the branches
represented. Oh, you guys did more than
your part. Well, yeah, and mom was very proud
of the flag that she had in the
front window with a star for each one of them.
And I can't, I can't talk about my
brothers without mentioning the fact that I had
a brother in the Navy who won the Silver
Star. I had a brother that was in the Army who
won the Silver Star. He's buried in Anzio
and killed in Ebbing. So out of the five of us,
two won the Silver Star. That's pretty unusual.
That is pretty darn good.
It's remarkable.
Yes, I agree with you.
And if we have time, it's all related.
I'd love to tell you about my brother that was
killed in Italy, how some of that went about.
And then I had a sister in the WACs and another
brother in the Army.
So we had all the forces represented.
SHORT And your father was sheriff, is that what
you said?
sheriff in Reynolds County, Ballinger, and back
whenever, in those days, that was in
the 1930s, the Rangers, Texas Rangers, were
appointed by the governor.
They served at the governor's permission, you
might say.
Every new governor came in, they fired the
Rangers and brought in another one.
And after Dad was a sheriff, he became a Texas
Ranger, and he was chosen as the most typical
Texas Ranger.
He was long, tall, heavy-looking guy.
He was thin, but when he looked in your eye, he
knew he was a Ranger.
You could tell right away.
SHORT Did he wear a white hat?
DIXON He wore a white hat.
SHORT That's great.
That's great.
DIXON It is tough.
And your mother, being a mother of ten
children, I bet I know what she did for a living.
She ran the household and had her hands full,
didn't she?
Not only that, but when we lived in the jail,
Mom was the, I don't know whether they still
call them that way or not, but they call them a jailer.
And Mom was the one that went up and prepared
the meals and went up and gave the food to
all the prisoners up in the cells.
And they really loved Mom, all the prisoners.
No one would dare touch her.
I mean, she could walk into a cell and they
wouldn't bother.
Dad was a different story.
If he got on the floor, if they could kill him,
they would.
They tried it more than once.
My mom was a wonderful, wonderful person.
So you went to school in Ballinger?
The first grade.
But then we moved, when Dad became a ranger, we
moved to Austin.
Governor Sterling was the ranger, was the
governor at that time.
Dad was in and out of the rangers quite a few
number of times.
Just like I said a minute ago, each governor
that comes in.
It was an appointed position, yeah.
So we moved, incidentally,
Maggie and I have moved 52 times.
That's a lot of moves.
But we moved a lot when dad was a ranger
because he was transferred from one town to another.
He was a sheriff, a deputy sheriff.
So where'd you go to school?
Well, I went to school in Ballinger,
in Austin, in Midland, Big Lake, San Angelo,
Lubbock, back to Austin, Ozona.
SHORT You never could really put your roots down,
could you?
GILLIS Never could.
SHORT Being, you know, a student.
GILLIS But that brings up a point that I'd like to
just mention.
In the 52 times that we moved, part of that
was, of course, with Maggie and her kids,
I thought it was the most wonderful thing, and
they would admit it to it right now.
Moving helped them, because you never met a stranger.
If we moved into a town, they became a friend,
not just an acquaintance, but a friend.
And to this day, they walk into a room of
strangers, and they walk out with a room of friends.
SHORT Yeah, they learned to integrate quickly and
to make contact with people.
COLEMAN They did.
SHORT Yeah.
So, when you actually graduated from high
school, where were you? Ozona.
Okay, so you were a graduate of the... 1942.
And so, if you...
and that was in 42, you say?
So, the war started while you were still in
high school.
Still in high school.
Tell me about December the 7th and what you remember.
I was working in a drugstore. They had two
drugstores in Ozona.
They were side by side. Small town.
It was the richest little town, they called it,
the richest little town in the world.
Friendliest little town in the world.
They had two drugstores and I was working
during school
to make enough money. Back then, you know,
money was pretty tough to come by.
So I was working in the drugstore on December
the 7th, 1941.
I remember it very well.
So you'd get, what, radio or somebody came
running in off the streets and said...
didn't have television back then, so it was
word-of-mouth or radio.
So what changed for you when the war started,
if anything?
Well, my life changed because I became part of
World War II.
And by the time I joined, my brother was in the
Navy, and my other brothers had already joined.
So they were older than you.
They were older than me.
wasn't next to the youngest.
And my youngest brother later became a Marine,
but he was not in World War II.
But six of us were in the service, five in
World War II.
So my life changed because they had joined up,
every one of them had volunteered.
And Ed, in those days, you were ashamed if you
were a 4-F. You wanted to fight.
He wanted to join.
BN4F was a problem rather than a benefit.
You better believe it.
And people didn't leave the United States to go
to Canada or somewhere like that to
escape going into the service.
They wanted to be a servant.
So my life changed considerably as it did for
mom and dad.
So did you experience rationing and those kinds
of things almost immediately or could
you tell the difference on something?
I couldn't because back then we didn't have a
hell of a lot, so we didn't miss a lot.
We didn't have a thing that they cut out.
You know, I do remember that we had gasoline
rationing, but also remember that this was
in 1943 for mostly my account of the war.
I remember that women's hoes were rationed.
You couldn't get that.
There was some food articles, but we were not
hurt by it.
Probably less impact when you're out there kind
of in the country and people raise a
lot of their own stuff locally and that kind of thing.
You graduated from high school.
Did you go immediately into the military or
what did you do?
I went to Texas Tech.
Okay, so you started to school, okay.
to school, and I was 17, and when I came around
through the first semester, by then I really
wanted to join the service, and I wanted to
join the Marines rather than the Army.
I kind of had the idea that the Marines were
the toughest, best bunch, and that's what
I wanted.
That's why I joined the Marine Corps.
So I joined the Marines when I was, I had to
get my parents permission in 1943 for them
to let me join at the age of 17.
So you weren't 18 yet then?
Not 18 yet.
Okay, so you, what did you go in, in February,
March, March the 23rd, 1943.
So where did you actually go down and sign up?
In Lubbock, Texas.
In Lubbock.
Okay, because you were up in school up there in
Lubbock, that's right.
And that brings up a very interesting point.
There was six of us that joined the Marines
together, or joined the service.
Well, we knew we were going in the Marines, so
there's six of us that actually joined
the Marines together.
And one of the stories that I've written that's
never too old to cry is the story about the
six of us, how we go through the war, what we
do, how we love, how we fight, how we lived,
and not all of them made it back.
So you went in and where'd they send you to
boot camp?
Went to San Diego.
And we went by train, actually we went by bus
from Lubbock to El Paso.
And then we got on a troop train.
When we got to El Paso, they put us on a train
and we went from El Paso to San Diego.
And that's where I went to boot camp.
Let me see if I've got this right.
You're 17 years old.
You've probably never been out of Texas.
And now all of a sudden you're on a troop train
headed to the West Coast to go fight
a war.
What's going through your mind?
What are you thinking?
I was, I guess I was thinking about, I'm
anxious to get in a war and whip the Japs.
That's what every one of us were thinking, I'm sure.
And I was young.
I was in great physical shape, because I'd
played football in high school, played football
in Texas Tech.
So when I got to San Diego, I went into boot
camp there.
And it was pretty tough for most of the guys.
Wasn't as tough for me, because I
was in such good physical shape.
And I was young, 17 years old.
17, and football tough.
Yeah, football tough.
So what was the hardest part about boot camp?
Well, for me, none of it was real hard.
For some of the others, some of the long
marches and training
was hard.
But as I look back on it now, none of it
It was real tough for me, because I was in damn
good shape.
The food was wonderful.
I mean, I'd never eaten food like they served
at the Marine Corps.
People didn't have a lot to eat, but the Marine
Corps fed us, and it was family style.
Three meals a day, all you needed, all you
wanted, huh? Yeah.
And you better eat everything you put on your plate.
They made you do that.
So California's a bit different than Texas.
A hell of a lot.
And in so many ways, what was your impression
of California?
I mean, did you get liberty and able to go into
town or what?
While we were in boot camp, we couldn't go to
own liberty.
And our platoon, I was in platoon 284, and my
platoon was about, oh, I'd say the second
or third past the time that we could take liberty.
Up until then, when you went through boot camp,
you went immediately into your training
if you were sent to a special school, you were.
But about two or three platoons before I got
out of boot camp, they started giving liberty.
One of the things that I remember about going
on liberty was going to the Hollywood Theater
with a strip that said something different
about Texas.
I'd never seen a naked woman before.
But you did there.
But I did there.
I thought it wasn't too bad.
Yeah, maybe this California's not so bad after all.
This Marine Corps stuff is all right.
And just 17 years old, too.
You were impressionable, let's just put it that way.
I was, I was at that.
So, what, eight weeks boot camp?
There were two people that were very famous
back then, people don't remember them now,
but Tyrone Power, have you ever heard of him,
he was a movie star, and there was another
movie star, Bill Hayden, I think his name was.
He was in two platoons about the same time I was.
So when we finished boot camp, and they were
coming through just as fast as they could
recruit or get them to sign up, we went into
special training.
And some of them went directly into the Air
Corps, I mean trained to be a pilot.
Some of them trained infantry.
I was sent to Quartermaster School, where I was
trained in business work.
I didn't use it after I got overseas, but that
was the special training.
And where was that?
It was there at San Diego.
So it was right there. They didn't send you off
to somewhere?
No. We had what was called the Recruit Depot,
where we went to camp.
And there was a camp called Camp Elliott, and
that was the camp that I was in when I did the
special training.
They had another camp called Matthews, which
was our rifle range.
So while we were on boot camp, we also went to
Camp Matthews to learn more about using weapons
and make sure that we knew how to hit the
target, which we learned.
And after that, did you then go overseas?
I did. I was part of what was called the 27th
Replacement Battalion, and we were boarded
ship. The ship's name, as I best recall, was
Rambo, Rochambeau.
I have heard of that. That was like a French
liner or something, wasn't it, that was converted?
That's exactly what it was.
And we left the States on October the 23rd,
1943, from San Diego.
And our destination was Duke, Caledonia.
That was kind of the grouping area for all the
Marines that left out of San Diego and
I'm sure out of Parris Island.
New Caledonia was where we went to, and I was
there for maybe a month.
So New Caledonia, is that close to New Guinea
down there?
Yes, it is. Absolutely. In fact, New Guinea was
the next place that we went to.
That was the next stop, huh?
Yeah, and when we went to New Guinea, we were
assigned the outfits that we were served with.
I was assigned to the 5th Infantry Regiment of
the 1st Marine Division, and we went to
Milne Bay on New Guinea, Infantry Regiment, 5th
Infantry Regiment of the 1st Marine Division.
The 1st Marine Division, of course, had the
5th, and the 7th, and the 1st.
Those were the Infantry Division, and they had
the 17th, which was Artillery.
And then they had, I don't remember what the
other division or regiment was, but the six
of us that joined the Marines together, most of
us went into the 5th Regiment.
Two of them, a guy by the name of Billy
Harrell, I'll talk about him later, Billy
Harrell and
a guy by the name of Donald Woods went to the
7th Regiment.
We were all assigned to the 1st Marine Division.
Now, the 1st Marine Division had been to
Guadalcanal, correct?
Been to Guadalcanal.
And Guadalcanal was basically over when you
guys got there, right? Yes.
Exactly right.
I was not part of the Guadalcanal group.
Those Marines after Guadalcanal, it was tough,
and they deserved the rest that they were given.
sent to Australia.
And they stayed there and regrouped and retrained.
Then they went to New Guinea, and that's where
I joined them.
So I joined them when the 1st Marine Division
left Guadalcanal,
I mean, Australia, and went to New Guinea.
So by then, had they adopted Waltzing Matilda
as the...
It was it.
Yeah, because they picked that up in Australia.
We did, beautiful song.
Yeah, it is, I agree with you.
And yeah, we all got together.
Now, I'm going to go ahead a little bit from there.
After we got to New Guinea, the 1st Marine
Division started
training for their second.
Guadalcanal was the first.
The second one was Cape Coloster on New Britain.
So we started training on New Guinea for the
invasion of New Britain.
And we left New Guinea for New Britain on December,
landed there on December the 25th, Christmas day.
So you had a couple, well, you, I don't know,
it probably took you what, three weeks just to get
from the U.S. by slow boat,
or maybe this wasn't a slow boat.
It was pretty slow.
So you were what, four to six weeks there
at Cape Gloucester before you left, or...
No, not at Cape Gloucester, that's where we lived.
New Caledonia, I'm sorry.
New Caledonia, yeah.
What was it like there? I mean, tropical?
Yeah, it was very close to Guadalcanal,
and you've seen pictures of the coconut trees
and the jungle, the mosquitoes.
Mosquito netting and the Dengue fever.
Now, New Britain, that's where I became acquainted
with the alligators and the dinghy fever and
the mosquitos
sleeping in hammocks and so forth.
We trained on New Guinea. We went on New Britain.
Are you in tents or are you in barracks? Tents.
Tents. Miserable?
Do you want to know?
Is it miserable there? Was it?
Terribly so. It was hot.
And when we landed on New Britain,
New Britain wasn't anywhere near as difficult
as Guadalcanal, or later, Peleliu, and Okinawa.
So, a lot of the first Marine Division people,
after Guadalcanal, were sent home.
And then, if they made it to Cape Coluster,
most of them were sent home.
But I remember so well about New Britain, it
was a place where it rained every single day.
There wasn't a day that went by that it didn't rain.
And I don't mean mist, I mean rain, pouring
down rain.
So we Marines had to be cognizant of snakes and
alligators and snipers in the trees.
It seems to me like I saw more Japanese
soldiers in the trees than I did on the ground
at Cape Coluster.
So, what, did you go in on landing craft?
Landing craft.
Were you one of the early ones going in?
Well, I wasn't necessarily the first wave in my
group, but, you know, people say, well,
I went on the first wave, meaning that was the
toughest wave to go in.
It really wasn't, because most places that we
went into, and I'll get a little bit more
into that as we go into the later part of the war.
But when you went in, the Japanese, while
during the invasions that the Marines had
in the Gilberts and Marianas, Guadalcanal,
Guam, those places, the Japanese met you at
the shore.
tried to keep you from landing.
So the first wave was, they caught hell.
They caught hell.
But also, once they couldn't keep you from
coming in,
they moved further back inland, and we
were bringing in supplies.
So what they tried to do with their martyrs and things
of that nature was to destroy the supplies that
we had.
So it wasn't, I mean, the third and fourth wave
got hit pretty hard too.
So it was...
I think that was particularly true in Iwo and Okinawa.
They let you in almost and then wanted to nail you
once you were ashore, yeah.
Were you an infantryman at this point
when you were going in?
No, I was in H&S headquarters in the supply company.
And my duties on the various invasions
was working with the ammunition and weapons.
We would commandeer trucks, load them with ammunition
as they called for them from the front.
And we took the ammunition and the weapons
up to the front lines.
So we got the supplies in from the ships to the
shore, and then we got the supplies of
weapons and ammunition and got it up to the front.
So I wasn't in the infantry, but I saw many,
many people killed.
I had flesh blown, with mortars hitting near
where I was, blowing flesh of marine bodies
of mine all over me.
So it was, you were not safe simply because you
were down in, it was the real deal.
So you had mentioned you saw more Japanese in
the trees than you did on the ground, which
implies snipers of course.
Snipers of course.
So tell me about the snipers and what you experienced.
Well, the Snipers, the Japanese had two, I
think, two-toed shoes, I don't know whether
you've ever seen it or not, but it's kind of a
slipper, and it's two-toed, and it's
great for climbing trees, it's used, the
Japanese wore them all the time, but it was
great for
climbing the trees. So before we got there,
before we landed, a lot of the Japanese climbed
the trees and got up among where the leaves and
all the foliage was, the thickest. And
that's where they were whenever we came ashore.
And so a Marine would fall and you'd look
around, where in the hell did that shot come
from? It took us a little while to recognize
If you looked up, you saw some of the Japanese
hiding in the trees, snipers picking us off
as they could.
Of course, they were ahead of us, but it was
raining and muddy and sloshed around.
It was pretty miserable.
Did you have, by that point, some close buddies
that you had developed a relationship with,
you know, the band of brothers phenomenon? Yes.
The closest friends that I had were part of the
six that we joined together, because four
of us went to the 5th Regiment, and I made
quite good friends with them, and then some
of the other Marines that were in our outfit, a
lot of them.
I can remember a lot of them, and in my story
that I've written, I don't call anybody by
a real name, like I refer to a guy by the name
of Boog, actually his name was Booger.
His last name was Martin.
And one of the guys' names that I mentioned,
his name was Woods, I called him Woodson.
The guy by the name of Harold, I called him Harris.
The guy whose name was Queen, I called him King.
In fact, in my book, my last name is Mack
Williams, but in the book, I'm the Marine
that is Mack Williams.
The friends name that we had, you ask if I'd
made any friends.
We were all pretty close-knit group together,
and there's just a bunch of them that never
made it back.
And I sometimes wrote letters to the parents of
those who were killed.
That's not an easy thing.
It's not an easy thing at all.
And one of the guys that joined with me who was
killed on Peleliu, he was my best friend.
And that was probably the saddest, toughest
moment that I had, was knowing that he got killed.
Peleliu was a mess.
I know that. SHORT-CIRCUMSTANCE
So, how long did the Cape Gloucester, New Britain...
How long did it last? SHORT-CIRCUMSTANCE
Campaign last for you guys.
How long were you there?
Went in on December the 25th and 26th, and it
was not secured until April.
And so there was another little invasion that
part of the 5th Regiment made, and it was
only the 5th Regiment out of the 1st Marine
Division that made the one that I'm going
to talk about a place called Talasea,
T-A-L-A-S-E-A, and it's a Japanese base on the
north end
of Cape Colostrum, New Britain.
So that took some time, and after, I guess it
was the end of April, when New Britain
was declared secured, we were sent to, we
thought, some of us may go to a rest camp,
and we thought we might even go back to
Australia where we'd come from.
But that wasn't the case.
We went to a place in the Russell Islands
called Puvuvu, and any Marine in the 1st Marine
Division will remember Puvuvu.
We had to carve out a rest camp.
We didn't go there to rest immediately.
We went there to make a camp where we could rest.
SHORT Yeah, I've heard of Pavuvu.
I've heard of Mog Mog, too, which was some R&R
camp that the forces in the Pacific used.
But Pavuvu, you built a camp there.
who built a camp there. They had land crabs as
big as a baseball, some of them as big
as a Stetson hat, I guess. And they were
everywhere. And it rained a lot for us there on Pavuva,
but in between rains we were able to make a
pretty decent rest camp. And that's where
Here we stayed, and when you're in a rest camp
after you go in from an invasion, you
not only go in to rest, but you also go in to
train for the next invasion.
And our next one was Peleliu, and that was in
September the 15th of 1944.
So we were on Puvuvu up until about...
So it's a mixed feeling there, you're there to
kind of get some R&R, but you're training
for the next one that you know is coming. Absolutely.
And Peleliu was the next one for us.
Going back to Cape Gloucester campaign for a
moment, what was your closest call there,
your low point, your most dangerous experience?
I don't know that I could really recite the
closest call.
You were under fire, but you don't know how
close you are.
I will say this, that one of the guys that
joined had a mental breakdown on Cape Gloucester.
Constant rain, under fire, difficult conditions.
It was pretty tough for a lot of them to take.
We call it, nowadays, we call it, you know,
combat fatigue, and I guess that's what it was.
Back then, what did they call it?
I think it was called combat fatigue back then.
Post-traumatic stress syndrome.
That's what they call it now.
That's the word I was trying to think of.
But it's pretty much the same thing. It's...
Was it looked down upon by people, other
people, when they saw something like that
happen that
maybe just wasn't a strong person or was trying
to get out of combat?
You know, it's interesting that you ask that
question because there was a little bit, there
was sympathy, of course.
Because you could see that the guy, when he had
a nervous breakdown, he was just a bowl
of jelly.
He lost it.
And it's tough to see one of your buddies that way.
But then, looking back on it, I don't see much
of anger or thinking that this guy is
trying to get out of it.
It was just something that happened later on
after two or three invasions by some of
The guys wanted to get out and had to do almost
anything to get out, but that was still early
in the war.
What did you think about, who was your, I
promise you I wasn't going to ask a bunch
of questions about remembering names, but who
was your commanding officer when you went
in on your first campaign at Cape Gloucester?
I cannot remember, isn't that something?
was he somebody you had confidence in? Did you?
Yes. Indifferent to him? Did you
love him? Tell me about emotion between you and
your officers. Before I answer
that, let me tell you about three other leaders.
Okay. That I had occasion to like
or dislike. Okay. Those were our DI's in boot
camp. We had a sergeant by the name
of Jeffries. He was tough as a boot. We had a
corporal by the name of Adams, and he was
the one that was the toughest, but the one we
respected the most. We had a PFC called
Miles, and he was a pussycat. He was easy on
us, but he was one that we didn't like.
We liked the guy that was the toughest.
So back to your question about Cape Coluster,
for the life of me, I cannot remember some
of the officers' names that we had there.
That's a long time ago.
Over seventy years ago, seventy-three years ago.
Maybe in a little bit I might remember some of them.
One of them's name was Williams, Captain Williams.
He was the direct guy over our group, now that
I've mentioned it, Captain Williams.
And he was a very quiet type of a person.
He was elderly.
What, thirty?
No, thirty-two.
He was an old greybeard.
You know, we had a Marine that was twenty-eight.
His name was Munster.
And we called him Pop.
That kills me every time I hear that story, but
I've heard it so many times.
Well, we were all 17, 18, 19 years old.
I look at a 17 or 18 year old kid today and I go,
whoa, what a difference.
And, you know, you look at pictures, our pictures,
with us with beards, with a machine gun in our hand,
raggedy clothes.
I've got pictures of me standing on top of
Cherry Castle
in Okinawa. Really?
all around us. I was still only about 18, 19
years old by the time we got there. I look at
some of the guys, some of the kids that are 17,
18 years old, and I wonder if they could have
done, if they could do the same thing that we
did. I think they can, if they put their mind
to it.
They just don't have to.
They don't have to.
That's the difference.
Now did you experience any bonsai charges on
Cape Gloucester?
Not on Cape Gloucester.
So that's coming later?
It's coming later.
Okay, good.
So you did your R&R. You built the camp.
You had some R&R at Pavuvu.
And you trained for the next campaign.
And it was the Peleliu.
Peleliu. September the 15th, 1944.
Tell me all about Peleliu.
Okay, that was in September of 1944.
In the summers of 1944, MacArthur and Nimitz
and Roosevelt met on Oahu
and they charted the course of the war.
MacArthur wanted to take the Philippines
and he also wanted to take Okinawa, but he also
wanted to take Peleliu.
Peleliu was offset.
So it would protect the flank.
Exactly, while he went into the Philippines.
Nimitz wanted to take Peleliu because of an
entirely different reason.
He wanted to go on up to Taiwan after Peleliu.
MacArthur wanted to go from... Taiwan?
And MacArthur wanted to take the Philippines,
Okinawa, and then on into Japan.
But Nimitz wanted to do the Peleliu.
So Roosevelt decided he would go with
MacArthur's plans, which was take Peleliu, take Okinawa,
and then going into landing on Japan.
So Peleliu was our destination.
The land route as opposed to the island hopping route.
Well, he was an army guy, so I guess you'd
expect that.
Plus, he had this thing in his craw about the
Philippines and his return.
I will return. Yeah.
What was the opinion of MacArthur versus Nimitz
amongst these guys?
Oh, they were a world of difference.
We had the highest respect for Nimitz.
MacArthur, we did not.
Why is that?
We called him Dugout Doug, and the name kind of
gives you an idea.
He was a showman.
I think the Marines kind of resented some of
the Army that served, and they served hard too.
They lost a lot of people.
I don't want to degrade the Army in the Pacific
at all, but, you know, the Marines were the
first in, and the Army came in afterwards.
And our opinion of MacArthur was pretty much
old dugout Doug is coming back.
Did you work side-by-side with Army at all
during any of your campaigns?
I never did.
The Army came in, but I was never associated
with them.
Because, I mean, they split the duty, I know,
in Okinawa, and I know they did in Peleliu
as well.
That's right.
But only after, in Peleliu, they came in after
the Marines had Security Island.
Army did not come in to Peleliu.
I mentioned Billy Harrell, one of the guys that
joined the Marine Corps with me.
He was killed on Peleliu.
And the Army was going to come in to take over
our lines.
When I saw Billy, he was in the 7th, I was in
the 5th, and I saw Billy.
We were coming off, and they had already been
pulled off the lines.
The Army had gone in, the Japanese Banzai
attack occurred, they broke through the lines,
they called for the 7th Regiment to go back up
on the line, and Billy was killed.
So you see a connection there between the Army
in a way and the death of your friend.
And I believe that was probably the hardest,
saddest part of the war.
I lost some buddies, but he was the closest.
I wrote a letter to his mother.
We didn't know at the time that he was killed,
because when I saw him he was going down to
the beach to board a ship to go home, to go to
the rest camp, which was Puvuvu again.
So I thought he made it through, and it wasn't
until after we left Peleliu and we went back
to a rest camp, which was Puvuvu again, and
this buddy of Mine, his name is Ike.
In fact, he's the only one, other than myself,
out of the six of us that I've written about
in my book.
He and I are the only two that are left out of
that group.
And he and I went over to the 7th Regiment,
where they were camped on Puvuvu, and I asked,
you know, where's Billy Harrell's camp?
Does anybody know Billy Harrell?"
They said, yeah, hell, he got killed.
Well, he didn't.
He got killed on the last day.
So, I have to look back on that as probably the
toughest part of the war.
I lost other friends, but none of them as close
as Billy.
Well, first, he was a close friend, and then
secondly, the odd circumstances and how you
found out makes it double-hit, huh?
So I wrote a letter back to his mother and told
her about him, how he got killed.
And she wrote back, and she said she had left
his room as it was.
She had it decorated with the American flag,
but I don't have that letter anymore.
It was tough to write, and tough to get word
back from her that I was glad, of course,
She knew from my letter what had happened, but...
Where did he live?
He lived in Canadian, Texas.
In the book, I don't have that as his home, but
that was his home.
Yeah, it's up in the Panhandle.
Yeah, it is.
That's why I guess I was in love with him, and
why when he was recruited, he joined just like
we did.
All of us were volunteers, none of us were
drafted, but that's how we became friends
right away in Lebanon.
So let's go back to the Peleliu campaign.
So you're transported as part of an invasion
force on troop carriers, I guess, or LSTs,
what have you.
Tell me about your experience going in.
One of the ship's names, and I don't remember
whether it was the one that we were on when
we went into Peleliu, but it was the Hays
presidential, it had been an ocean liner,
I think, and it was called the Hays, H-A-Y-S.
The president line, they called it, and they
had ships named after presidents. Absolutely.
And like I say, we went in on Peleliu on
September the 15th.
On the morning of September the 15th, when we
were getting ready to go in, they called
us down to chow, breakfast, they called it.
And we were served Spam and powdered eggs.
Powdered eggs isn't much.
I wouldn't touch them.
Spam, I still eat it today, but we were served
that as breakfast.
And our commanding officer heard what we had
been served, and he went to the ship's captain
and told him to break out fresh eggs and steak,
that he wanted his men to be served eggs and
steak that morning because he said it would be
the last meal that some of them will ever get.
So we ate the second breakfast.
And we crawled down nets from the ship to our
landing craft.
And I don't think they were tanks, landing
craft tanks.
I think they were just troop carriers.
I don't remember exactly.
Yeah, there's so many of those LC, there's
LCTs, and LCIs, and LC...
But we crawled down the nets and into these
boats, and we were jam-packed, overcome almost
by diesel fuels, the smell of diesel.
And diesel fumes, both. Fumes.
From exhaust, yeah.
And we were all covered with vomit and salty spray.
And some of the guys and, of course, the
landing craft that I was on, once it was filled with
the number that they were supposed to carry,
and I don't know how many were on it, but
there were quite a few, we were jam-packed,
then they'd load up another one and they'd
load up another one until all the Marines were
off the ship ready to go in.
And the ships, these landing craft would circle
out beyond Peleliu until everybody was assembled.
And then they formed waves and went in.
Go in in formation.
And some of the guys, I remember one guy who,
the fumes were so overwhelming.
And if you're covered in vomit of somebody
else, you sometimes do things you shouldn't.
And some guys would stand up and look over the
side of the landing craft to get fresh air.
And they were good targets for the Japanese
whenever we got close enough for them to do.
So it was, as much as it stumped and as much as
you dreaded to be in vomit and sweat, it
It's safer to be down below the sides of the
ship, but a lot of them didn't do that, and
they suffered.
So before you even hit the sand...
A bunch of them were killed.
I do remember on my ship, on the landing craft
that I was on,
there was a movie star by the name of Bill Lundigan,
He was a movie star, but he was recruited as a newscaster.
He was taking pictures of the landing, and he
was on the little boat that I was on, landing
craft going on.
And we hit the beach, and the thing that you
have to do, and it was, we were trained to
know it, and we were reminded of it by our
drill instructors, our sergeants. I had a
sergeant that was in charge of me, his name was
Moran, Sergeant Moran. And when you hit
the beach, the word, you know, get off the
beach, because that was
the target area of the Japanese mortars. And
they loved to pick you off. And also on Peleliu,
They buried landmines and artillery shells, so
that if you stepped on them, you know,
they blew up.
So that's why, even if you wasn't in the first
wave, anybody coming to shore had a good chance
of not making it any further than the shore
because of the landmines and the artillery
shells that they stepped on.
SHORT That's what we call an IUD now.
COLWELL It is.
SHORT But back then, it was...
Exactly, exactly.
The result is the same.
So what does Peleliu look like?
Is it just a low kind of an atoll?
Or are there hills?
It's a coral atoll,
and it's generally flat,
but there are some, surprisingly so,
like on Peleliu,
they did have a higher part
park overlooking the airport. The 5th Regiment,
our assignment was to come in and take the airport
as soon as we could, and we did. And the thing
about the airport and its proximity
to where the Japanese were inland, the Corsair
planes would land on Peleliu on one end of the
the airstrip, get their bombs, load up, take
off the other end, drop their bomb, and come
back. And some of them were back in 15 seconds,
not minutes. SHORT-CIRCUMSTANCE
That's a short run.
15 seconds. That's a short run. And the thing
about Peleliu, I'm sure if you've interviewed
other people, or you have, I know, interviewed
people of Peleliu, the Japanese, for the first
time realized that they were not going to try
to meet us at the beach like they did
on the Marianas and Gilbert Islands and some of
those marshals. And what they had done,
they knew that it was going to be one of the
islands that was going to be hit. And way
before we got there, they started digging
caves, huge caves in the coral rock. And there
was a lot of tombs, burial tombs there. So the
caves and the tombs were broken into in
such a way that they were interlocked. You
could go from one to the other
to the other. And so the Japanese, prior to the
time that we got there, put all their
big guns and all their troops and waited in
those caves for us to land before. We didn't
We didn't know that. We didn't know that they
were all in the caves, because three days
before we landed on Peleliu, our Navy and
planes, Air Force, had bombed Peleliu into
almost, there wasn't anything left.
SHORT ALMOST flattened it.
COLEMAN Almost flattened it. In fact, word was
sent to headquarters, we're out of targets,
What can we bypass? And they even thought about
bypassing some of the higher command
They thought about bypassing Peleliu because
there wasn't anything left
But when we got there, we found out that was a
hell of a lot different because all the Japanese
And all the guns that had been on the surface
They were still there
But they were in these caves and they came out
the minute that we came ashore and that's when
they really really
began to hit us hard.
So when you hit the beaches, it was pretty smooth?
Fairly smooth.
Except for some of the booby traps.
Yeah. And I'll tell you,
maybe I shouldn't tell it because
it's a little funny, but it's not
quite the act of bravery.
When we landed,
the Japanese were beginning to drop
their mortar shells on the beach.
And I could look to my left, and I could see a
shell exploding here.
Then another shell was exploding a little
closer, and another shell was hitting a little closer.
So common sense says you better get the hell
out of there.
So me and my buddy, Iverson, we started running
down the beach.
It told us to get off the beach, but we were
running down the beach.
Well, some of the other troops saw us running,
and they thought we were so brave, we were
leading the attack.
In reality, well there's the old saw that says
when you start seeing the shells hit
progressing towards you, you run towards the
shells because the next ones are going to be...
Yeah, if you could time it that would be perfect.
I don't know what I'd do in that situation.
But anyhow, you got inland.
So you were playing the same role here that you
were in Cape Gloucester?
The first night of the landing on Peleliu,
which would be September the 15th, we dug in,
made us caves, I mean foxholes as much as we could.
It was caliche, hard coral rock, but if you
knew your life depended on getting down below
ground, you found a way to dig.
I was in the, that night I was in the foxhole
and the Japanese were sending martyrs our
way and a mortar shell exploded right near
where I was and a piece of shrapnel hit me
in the leg.
It didn't break the skin and in fact I brought
with me today the piece of shrapnel that hit
me in the leg and hit in the coconut log that
was right there.
Can we look at it?
I'd be happy to show it to you.
A real piece of Japanese shrapnel.
You can open it up, Ed.
Okay, so we're opening inside a piece of paper,
pieces of shrapnel, and...
This is what it says.
Yeah, I'm reading the paper, I'm looking at a
piece of shrapnel hit me in the leg, other
pieces embedded in a log beside me, Peleliu,
1944, wow.
I did not.
Compliments of the Empire of Japan.
And I did not get a Purple Heart, I did not
apply for it, didn't want it, because it was
so insignificant.
I mean, people were killed and hurt and wounded
severely, but I wasn't.
I kept the shrapnel, but I didn't carry it
beyond that.
I didn't try to get a Purple Heart or anything.
So how long were you on Peleliu?
About, let's see, September until, it seemed
like it was April.
For a long time. Yes.
General Rupertus, with the 1st Marine Division,
had said Peleliu would be taken in four to
five days.
He predicted that, and that's his assessment,
that Peleliu would be taken in four to five days.
And we were there for eight weeks, so whatever
eight weeks is from September the 15th, but
We were there, instead of four days, we were
there for eight weeks.
56 days instead of four days.
So once you got out of your foxhole, then you
made your way forward as much as you could.
And I don't want to make it sound like I was a
brave hero of winning the medals like my
older two brothers did.
I was just one of many and the guys that were
ahead of me were the ones that took the brunt.
But we had to cross the airstrip and I remember
one of the Japanese tanks, they were small,
very small compared to our Shermans.
We had Sherman tanks, Japanese tanks, and I
remember as we crossed the airfield one
One of the Japanese tanks had been hit by a
shell, had burned, and the Japanese soldier
that was in it had crawled about halfway out, I
guess, before he couldn't make it any further.
So his body was charred, you could see him, and
his little dinghy was still charred but
it was still kind of small, if you know what
I'm talking about.
So we advanced and secured the airfield as soon
as we could.
So you're supplying ammunition to the front lines?
So what is this, small ammunition or big rounds or?
Mostly small rounds.
One of the big things that we used quite often
was illuminating flares.
And you use those at night whenever, like you
set up a perimeter, set up your base camp
and you fire those illuminating flares and they
light up the area so you can see any
movement of the Japanese.
I remember, I think it was on Okinawa that the
story I'm about to
tell you now happened, but we had those
illuminating flares, and I thought I saw
something move.
I was using a BAR. I saw something move, and I
fired a couple, three rounds, and it wasn't
but a little bit before we received a word back
from the 1st Regiment, said, hey, knock
that crap off. Somebody put two holes through
our command post tent.
And that must have been you.
It must have been me.
You wouldn't get an award for that.
But back to Peledum, which was the toughest one
of the bunch.
To me, it was by far the toughest invasion.
It wasn't the bloodiest, Okinawa was the
bloodiest, as more people killed both Japanese
and Americans
and civilians.
And civilians.
over 100,000 civilians killed on Okinawa. But
as far as the tenacity of Peleliu, there
was none that exceeded. Temperatures got as
high as 115 degrees. The coral rock was so
heavy, so hot, that it would burn through your
boondockers. And when you're in weather
that hot. I mean, Japanese or Americans that
were killed, it didn't take long for them
to start swelling and you had bloated carcasses
around you that didn't smell all that good.
Oh, I bet. And was it Peleliu where you
experienced the bonsai charge? Yeah.
Tell me about that.
Whenever the Japanese, and I think they do it
at the end, whenever they feel like, okay,
we're not going to win. I've got one more
chance to make it." They do the Bonsai attack
and they come at you with the expectation, I
think, they want to win, but I think they
come at you with the expectation that they're
not going to.
It's pretty much a suicide charge.
Suicide attack is generally what it is. But
whenever they start yelling, they don't come
silently. They make as much noise to scare the
hell out of you if you can't. And so whenever
they came across yelling and hauling banzai,
they were easy to pick off. I don't know of
any of them that were ever successful. None of
them were successful on us. They tried
it more than once.
Did they get close?
Some of them even got as close as where the
foxholes were, but most of them didn't.
But some of them did.
Did you ever see any Japanese prisoners taken,
I mean POWs, Japanese POWs?
I didn't actually see them taken, but I saw a
bunch of them.
I remember
This is at Peleliu?
I think it was on Peleliu.
I remember that two Marines had a wounded
Japanese soldier on a canvas, what do you
call those things, stretchers, and they were
seeing how far they could bounce them in the air.
We were not necessarily kind, I might say,
politically correct to the Japanese.
In fact, we didn't take many prisoners.
I don't know if, I guess if some of our
officers were forced to admit it, they did not encourage
taking prisoners.
So I didn't see many of them.
So you never got up close to talk to them, or
even if they could speak English, I guess
they can't.
I got close to them, but not close enough, nor
did I want to.
So what are the two or three things that stick
in your mind when you think about Peleliu?
If I say Peleliu, what do you think?
There's two things.
I won't say it's the first thing, but one of
the most important things that stick in
my mind when you say Peleliu is my friend Billy Harrell.
The second thing, I think, is the heat and the
tenacity, the toughness of fighting.
It was there.
Anybody that was on the island was subjected to fighting.
They had cooks, they had people that delivered
mail, they had anybody that was on Peleliu.
A lot of them were called up to be on the lines.
I wasn't, but a lot of them were.
But I guess I remember the tenacity and the
fighting in Billy Harrell as the thing I remember
most about Philadelphia.
One of the things I also mentioned a minute ago
about the caves that they had built.
What the Japanese had done, they had
constructed sliding doors, metal doors, that
covered the
front of these caves so that whenever we came
ashore, and we're using small arms, of course
when we came ashore, they had, Peleliu wasn't a
very wide place.
So when we came ashore, the artillery had to
stop the shells coming from the ships.
They knew that they couldn't fire anymore.
Up until we landed, they could, but once we
landed, they couldn't.
And the planes that came over couldn't drop
their bombs.
Just any old place.
That's right.
So when we came ashore, it was at that time
that the Japanese slid these big metal sliding
doors back to open up the area for them to come out.
I remember that.
I guess all in all, it was, I remember the toughness.
Did you ever get out of tents and into barracks
or anything like that?
Not there.
We wasn't there long enough.
We were in tents when you wasn't on the line.
Now back on Cape Gloucester, we've mentioned
that before, we were issued hammocks that
We strung up between trees, and they were
supposedly waterproof.
They had mosquito netting, because there were
so damn many mosquitoes on Cape Coluster,
that when you could, you slept in one of those.
And it had a canvas top to keep the water, the
rain off of you as you slept.
If you didn't construct it right, and one of my
friends, George Popa, we call him Pappus
in my book. He didn't construct his ride, and
he was sleeping in a bathtub with so much
water. And he took his bayonet and punched the
bottom of the hammock to let the water
out so it would drain. So that's what we slept
in at Cave Colossus.
On Peleliu, we were issued camouflaged ponchos.
And they looked, when I say Camouflaged, they
They used camouflage ponchos at Cape Colosta as
well, but they had a different color than
what they did when you landed on Peleliu.
And that's what we just slept on the ground.
I was never in a tent at all.
I don't know that any Marines were in a tent on Peleliu.
Did you eat field rations or were you never got
a hot meal? No.
Back then, they had what was called a K-ration,
and they would fit in your backpack.
It fit where you also carried your gas mask.
And it was on Peleliu that I saw the smoke of a
herd of martyr, and it landed not far
from where I was.
And it was colored.
You know, it wasn't white smoke.
It was dark smoke, had a yellowish tint to it.
The first thing that I thought of, and the
first thing that we all thought of, was it
was mustard gas.
So you tried to get your hammock out, I mean
your gas mask out, in a hurry.
A lot of them didn't have them.
I know you scrambled around and found one in a
hurry, but a lot of the Marines would
get rid of that gas mask and fill it with what
we called Pogey bait, which is candy
bars and cigarettes, and rations, K-rations. We
were talking about what we ate, K-rations,
and a little bit later on when you had a little
bit more time and were not landing or something,
We had what we called C rations.
And then on Okinawa, they came out, I think it
was Okinawa, could have been Peleliu, they
came out with what they called P rations.
And P rations were pretty tolerable food.
It had cans of bacon.
You needed to start a fire, but you didn't have
the time enough for the place to do it
on Peleliu.
But in Okinawa, sometimes you did.
So the pea rations were quite good food, you
know, for a military type of food.
Yeah, given what you had to deal with.
So you were pretty happy to say adieu to
Peleliu and get out of there.
I was damn happy to get to say that, as all the
rest of us were.
We accomplished what we were sent in to do.
security island, took the airport. But here's
the thing about Peleliu and taking the airport.
One of the reasons that we took it was because
MacArthur wanted to take it to protect his
eastern flank and to supply it with fighter
planes. As difficult as Peleliu was, not one
fighter plane, Everton, took off from Peleliu
to support the Philippines.
SHORT Why?
DIXON Because MacArthur went in on the Philippines
before it was scheduled. I don't know whether
it was scheduled or he took it before it was
scheduled, but actually he had already gone in
to the Philippines before we went in on
Peleliu, so there was not a single plane, to my
knowledge. The first morning, I mentioned
the first night on Peleliu, we had been told
that we might be bombed by the Japanese planes,
the Zero planes. The Zero was the most popular
Japanese fighter plane that they had. And
The first morning, I could hear the sound of
the planes.
Remember back in those days, those were
propeller planes.
And I could hear the planes coming in.
We all knew it.
We all knew that it had to be the Japanese
planes coming in.
Instead, it was the Corsairs, Navy Corsairs.
And you talk about a beautiful sight.
That was a beautiful sight.
those draped dove wings, as they call them.
And they flipped them.
Now, I remember talking about planes.
On Cape Veloster,
one of the planes that was coming in,
one of the American planes that was coming in
to bomb ahead of us,
was shot down by our own troops.
They saw the plane. They didn't...
They were gun-happy, you might say.
And they shot down the planes.
So I think that
the Navy pilots realized that they had to let
us know who they were, and the corsairs
would flip their wings back and forth, and then
they'd come in.
Beautiful, beautiful sight.
Yeah, it's a beautiful aircraft, too.
It was.
So, where did you go after Peleliu?
Back to Pavuvu?
Back to Pavuvu, and we trained again.
We didn't know where we were going, but they
issued us what we call Eisenhower jackets.
They were fleece-lined jackets.
Well, if you're in the jungles in the South
Pacific and you get a fleece-lined jacket
issued to you, you know you're going to
somewhere where it's cooler than what it is there.
It's either a snafu or you're going north, one
of the two.
And as it was, we were going to Okinawa.
We didn't know that when we got to Pavu, but we
soon learned that we were going in on Okinawa.
So I read somewhere that the layover between
Peleliu and Okinawa was a fairly extended
period of time.
Iwo Jima was in between there.
One of the reasons was that the first Marines
took such a pummeling at Peleliu that they
really needed to try and pull it all back together.
They did.
Is that what you experienced?
Yes, it is.
Each division, there was a 1st and a 3rd and a
6th and a 2nd Division.
Each one of them had assignments of the Pacific
area, that was their area.
And it so happened that the 1st Marine Division
was assigned to Guadalcanal and New Britain
and Peleliu and Okinawa as part of them.
On Okinawa, we had the 1st and the 6th Marine
Division and the Army 7th, 17th, and 27th.
There was another very, very smart maneuver
done by the 2nd Marine Division on Okinawa
Perhaps in your interview, and you've talked to
other people, if you haven't heard it,
it's an interesting story.
It's true.
The 2nd Marine Division, before we went in on
Okinawa, we went in on April the 1st, which
was April Fool's Day and Easter Sunday.
Before we went in, the 2nd Marine Division made
a fake landing on the southern part of
of Okinawa. They didn't go in, but they went so
far as to leave their transport ships,
get into the Higgins boats and actually act
like they're coming in. What it did, it
pulled 75,000 Japanese soldiers down from where
they were in the north part of Okinawa
to the South. It concentrated them to the South.
That was a tremendous help to us taking
Okinawa. I don't know how I got off on that
part of the story, but I guess I was talking
about, when you were talking about other places
being taken in between Peleliu and Okinawa,
I'm sure they were.
I'm not cognizant of where the Marines landed elsewhere.
I know, of course, Guam, Marshall Islands,
Winnetau, Saipan, Iwo Jima, all of those,
they were major, major parts of our war.
Saipan proved to be the best airfield.
We were bombing Japan proper from the ships,
from the planes, from Saipan.
Yeah, Saipan and Tinian. Tinian in particular,
I think. Right.
Yeah, they're right next to each other.
They were right next to each other.
So when did you find out that you were headed
to Okinawa?
I'm sure it was after you were en route.
En route, yeah, we found out.
And, you know, it didn't mean anything to me.
to me. I mean, they said we were going to
Okinawa. I wasn't aware of where Okinawa was.
It was only 400 miles away from Japan. And in
the war, when the war started in 1941,
the Americans was nothing. We didn't have an
army. We didn't have a navy. We didn't
have a Marine Corps. And we were 3,000 miles
away from Okinawa, I mean, Japan. And by the
By the time we went in, three years later, on
Okinawa, Japan was only 400 miles away.
So, we were now...
The doorstep.
Well, we were a tidal wave then, and when it
first started, we were calm waters, you might say.
So, we've got this huge invasion fleet headed
to Okinawa. Yes.
When you were part of it, you were on what, a
troop ship?
A troop ship.
I don't know that I... it might have been when
I mentioned the haze, it might have been
that I was on the haze that went in on Okinawa.
I can't remember for sure.
I used to collect a little piece of dirt off of
every place that I went into in the Pacific.
I had a little piece of dirt from New Guinea,
New Britain, New Caledonia, Okinawa, and Peleliu.
Thank God I didn't have to get a piece of dirt
from Japan.
That's right.
So tell me what happened in Okinawa.
I know that's a huge story.
It is a huge story.
By the time we went in on Okinawa, the Japanese
didn't much care for the Okinawans.
There's a difference between the Japanese
soldiers and the Okinawan soldiers.
They were kind of looked down on by the
Japanese soldiers.
They were more expendable than the Japanese soldiers.
The Japanese recruited and put in force some of
the Okinawans as young as twelve and thirteen
years old.
They were part of the fighting force that the
Japanese relied on in Okinawa.
And Okinawa was a beautiful place before the
war started.
I've seen pictures of it, and it was cultivated
by what we call, even then, backward farm
equipment, oxen, wooden plows, and they grew a
lot of rice and vegetables.
Okinawa was a pretty country, and as I said
earlier, we went in on Okinawa on April 1st.
The latter part of March, the planes, mostly
from aircraft carriers at that time, some
of them were from Saipan and Tinian, began to
bomb Okinawa.
Now, Okinawa had its share of caves, and it had
its share of rain.
And I have in my possession, I was able to get
it back.
I guess I sent it back in my sea bag.
But I have a Japanese soldier, it belonged to
an officer, and it's highly engraved.
It has engraved dragons on both sides of the blades.
And I found it in a cave on Okinawa. SHORT-CIRCUIT
A sword? THORNBERRY
A sword.
And I also picked up a Japanese rifle that I
brought back, and I picked it up off the
battlefield there on Okinawa, and I brought it back.
I brought back a Japanese flag from Peleliu. I
took it off of a dead Japanese soldier on
Peleliu. So I came back with mementos of those
two places. Okinawa was, for the 1st and the
6th Marine Division, the first day was
relatively calm. We had expected the Japanese
to meet
us on the beaches like they did, and fight us
like they did on all the others, but they didn't.
So we landed, I think the beach I landed on was
white, called White Beach.
And we were in the north part.
We all landed up there, and the 6th Marine
Division turned north, and we went straight
across and our first day's assignment was to
take the Kadena Airport. There's another
airfield there and I don't remember what the
name of it was. And the three army divisions,
when they landed, they turned south. And it was
after we secured the northern part of
Okinawa before we turned and joined forces with
the army toward the south.
So it was tough fighting, cave fighting, muddy fighting.
We were by far facing by far more Japanese
soldiers than we had ever faced before.
Some of the other islands, you might have 10 or
maybe 11,000 Japanese soldiers defending
the island. Here we had, well, there's over
100,000 of them that was killed. I've heard
the story of 110,000. Don't know whether that's
true or not, but that's how big a force that
we had to fight. And we fought them from one
step at a time. It was take this, take that,
then fall back, take this, take that. One of
the prime areas that we took was on Okinawa
a place called Shiri Castle. A lot of people
have heard about the Shiri Castle. I have
a picture down in the south, right?
Yes. Down near Naha. And that's me standing on
top of the Shiri Castle. You can see all
the dead Japanese soldiers.
Oh, look at them.
So it was, Naha was one of the major cities,
the capital of Okinawa.
And I've recently talked to people who lived,
this is a long time after the war, just recently
I'll say, they lived in beautiful homes and
complexes in the site of Naha, in Shiri Castle.
They tell me how nice it is now.
It wasn't very nice back in those days.
This is me on the...
With the Japanese flag. Yeah.
And two of your buddies. Yeah.
You asked me if I could remember some of their names.
Those are two of them right there.
Ralph Olden Glenn. Yeah.
Oh, this is Peleliu here. Yes.
That's Peleliu.
Now, these are great photographs.
can make copies of them if you'd like. I'd like
to. I've got a copy machine right next
door that I can use. And I guess that's the
picture of me. Mom had a picture of all six
of us, all ten of Us kids, on her bedroom wall.
And that was the picture. Photo of you
in your dress, uniform, June 1943, age eighteen.
Yeah, that was after I joined up and I had
become 18 at that time.
SHORT So what was the toughest period in your Okinawa
I mean, I know it was all tough, but what was
the ugliest part as you see it?
DIXON Well, I think the ugliest part, for me, now
for others, it was ugly from the day one to the
last day.
The first part of Okinawa campaign, for me and
a bunch of the others who were with the 5th Regiment,
we lost some people, no doubt about that.
But we almost walked across the island.
And you don't expect that after Peleliu.
You don't expect to be walking across an island
that you're taking.
But we did.
Big island, loaded with Japanese.
So it was later on that the fighting really got
the toughest.
As to the exact day and time, I don't know that
I could remember that.
Some of it is kind of a blur right now.
I understand.
A long time ago too.
A long time ago.
So you basically walked across the island and
then it was time to turn and go south
and helped the Army, who had run into that
mountain range down there with all the different
names, Hacksaw Ridge, and all the different
names, and the Shuri Castle.
So tell me about that part.
COLWELL Well, I don't know that I can add a lot to
what I've already said.
Shuri Castle was the stronghold of the Japanese.
And it's like it is or was in Italy.
There's certain battles where the battle was concentrated
around one part of the island or whatever
you're taking.
Shuri Castle was the central part of the fighting.
Once the Japanese lost Naha, Shuri Castle,
then it was less organized.
The Japanese were still gonna kill you if they could,
and did.
But it was not quite as coordinated
as it was to begin with.
So did you see American casualties close by,
all around you, during? Yeah.
hand-to-hand type combat? I didn't get
hand-to-hand down in Okinawa. A lot of it
was close enough to where you used a rifle, but
I'm sure a lot of the Marines
could tell you a whole lot more than I could
about hand-to-hand fighting. I
didn't, but they did. And did you link up with
the U.S. Army down there or did you
guys fight kind of side-by-side, but not together.
We stayed, the Marines generally stayed, we
were under the 10th Army.
General Buckner, who was Army commander who was
killed in Okinawa, he was in charge of
the 10th Army, and the 1st Marine Division, I
believe, I think I'm right on this, was,
We were under the 10th Fleet, I believe it was
the 10th Fleet.
But we were under the command, central command
that Buckner was called.
Now one of the things that I did see, the
Japanese on Okinawa started using kamikaze
planes and I got up real close to one of the
kamikaze planes that had come in and did not
explode. He landed and it was a deadly weapon,
the kamikaze planes, suicidal. And the troops,
the Marines and the Army on land were hit, not
as much as they were hit on the Navy ships
because you can sink a Navy ship with a plane,
a kamikaze plane, whereas on land you might
kill a few soldiers or Marines.
Yeah, it's just like a bomb on land.
Absolutely, like a bomb on land. That's a good
way of putting it.
So that was, you know, you had, and also
Okinawa, to my knowledge, was the first place
in World
War II where the Japanese soldiers surrendered.
That's what I heard, too.
Up until then, they fought until they died.
Some of them were captured, but mostly the
Japanese fought until they were killed.
But on Okinawa, they had a lot of them who did
surrender, give up, had a lot of civilians
that gave up, a lot of civilians that were
killed on Okinawa.
Yeah, wasn't it Okinawa where the natives were
jumping off the cliffs? No.
Or that Iwo Jima?
Iwo Jima.
That was Iwo Jima. Yeah.
saw anything but a tent or a foxhole then when
you were on Okinawa?
Or did you actually get...
Were you there long enough to where you had...
You know, I can't remember that I ever stayed
in a tent on Okinawa.
Oh, really?
I'm sure I must have, but I...
I remember tents more in Pavua, our rest camp,
than I do any other...
So you were just out in the open then, huh?
Looking back on it, we must have had tents that
we slept in, but for the life of me,
I don't know that I remember it.
So, if I ask you the same question about
Okinawa that I ask you about Peleliu, if I say Okinawa,
what are the two or three or four things that
come into your mind that you would just blurt out?
We were there when the atomic bombs were dropped.
Oh, you were there, okay.
You were an occupation force at that point,
because the island had been secured in June. Yes.
And the bombs were dropped in August.
And August is 6th and the 9th.
And then Japan surrendered on the 15th.
But I was on the island.
And a lot of people nowadays will say, you
know, it's terrible that we dropped the atomic
bomb, that we killed so many Japanese soldiers.
Well, I'll put it to you this way.
If you're on Okinawa and you're in the military
and you know that next week you're going to
board a ship to try to land on the shores of
Japan, knowing how fanatical they are,
you got a good chance of not making it.
Very good chance.
So you're more inclined to believe
maybe an atomic bomb
might have saved my life.
And that's how I firmly believe.
Atomic bombs
kill less people
actually, than some of the
firebombing that was done
over in Europe and in Japan itself.
But I do remember
I was on Okinawa when we heard
We didn't know what an atomic bomb was, but
they described it as something good for us.
So where were you on Okinawa when you heard
about the A-bomb drop?
Were you in the Naha area?
We must have been in the Naha area.
Because I don't remember that once we left the
north and went south, I don't remember
that we ever went back up north.
So we must have been camped.
So was there a lot of talk amongst you guys
about, well, the next step's going to be Japan?
We knew it was coming, and we knew that it was
going to be brutal.
we had sense enough to know. Scuttlebutt
sometimes, it always gets around and sometimes
it's right.
So the scuttlebutt was that the Japanese were
going to defend their island, the women, the
children, they'd do it with broomsticks,
rifles, spears, knives, whatever they could get. They
were not going to give up. Although as I said,
we did have some that surrendered on Okinawa.
But we knew that if we went in on Japan, Honshu
was where we were supposed to land.
And the 1st Marine Division, I've seen
write-ups about how the plan was to take place, and
the 1st Marine Division was one of the first
ones that was supposed to go in, and we were
supposed to go in on Honshu, so we knew it.
I was not unhappy at all to hear that the
atomic bombs had been dropped.
Were you writing letters home during your stay
out in-
I did.
I wrote a lot of letters.
And I kept notes.
And while I was overseas, it was forbidden to
write too much about it.
You couldn't, of course-
You weren't supposed to keep a log, because if
it ever fell in enemy hands, it could-
And you know our mail was censored, both going
and coming, but I kept notes.
And after the war was over, and we made our
final moves, final meaning move into the house
where we are now, had it built in Farrel's Ranch.
And I found the notes that I had taken all
during the war, and I read them to Maggie.
I said, Maggie, listen to this.
And she said, you know, that'd make a wonderful story,
wouldn't it?
And I said, it really would.
And she said, why don't you write it?
So I applied to the University of Iowa Novel
Writing School,
was accepted, went there for two summers, wrote
my first
novel, and then I remember so well the night
that I figured
I had written about everything I wanted to
write about World War II.
And it was late at night.
And I went downstairs.
I told, I'm going to get a little emotional,
but I told Maggie that evening, I said, I
think I'll finish the book tonight.
I've written about everything that I want to
write about. So when I finished writing
that night, I closed up the computer, and we
have a balcony. We kind of have a second
story to our house. And I walked out on the
balcony, and I looked at the stars, and I
I remember how bright they were. And I went
downstairs, because I was thinking about all
the buddies. And I went downstairs, and Maggie
had a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
And we drank a toast to all those who didn't
come home, as well as those who did.
It was a very emotional time for me.
I look back on World War II, and I think of all
the killing and the misery, but there
were some moments I look back on, and I just
die laughing.
Like one time when we were on Pahvoo Voo, we
had this second lieutenant that just joined us.
We had just come back from Peleliu.
When you come back from Peleliu, you know, you
don't have quite the feeling about things
as you might otherwise.
We had this second lieutenant that came aboard,
and we had let her hair grow pretty long,
and we wanted to play a trick on this second lieutenant.
We passed a word that I'd been a barber back in
civilian life.
I'd never given anybody a haircut in my life.
I had cheered sheep, but never given a haircut.
But he fell for it.
He came and said, Carpal McWilliams, can you
give me a haircut? And I said, I
sure can, Lieutenant. And I sat him down on
this GI can.
And I had gotten these clippers and scissors
from the Red Cross.
had given it to our Marine outfit somewhere or
another. So I sat the Lieutenant down and I started
cutting his hair and I told my buddy, I said, I
cut his hair and it falls to the ground. You pick
it up and move it off until he can't see it so
he doesn't know how much I'm cutting off.
Well, I cut his hair and I cut it pretty good.
Pretty short. He keeps saying, Corporal, I just
just wanted to trim and I said I'm not cutting
lots and look on the ground you
don't see a lot of hair. Well he couldn't
because my buddy had taken it. But when he got
back to his tent and looked in the mirror I
heard him scream and I made it
out. I ran to my tent, we were living in tents
at the time, and I crawled into my cot
But he found me anyway. He found you anyhow.
What'd he do? Put me on guard duty.
That's all. Shit, he did.
Well, you know, it's funny you launched into
your story about something you laugh about as
you look back on World War II.
That's one of the questions
that I ask
guys, and you just did it naturally. I didn't
even have to ask, you know,
always say, ìWhat was the worst Time?î And then
you say, ìWell, what were some of the
funny things that Happened?î And you did it
without me even asking.
I must tell you about another funny thing.
The same lieutenant had a pet chicken, and this
chicken had been given to him by a native
on the island, Puvuvu. This lieutenant with
this chicken was almost like the Mutiny on
the Cane. Do you remember that movie? Well, he
was almost that type to me, it seemed like.
Anyway, he had this pet chicken. And me and Ike
decided one night we were going to steal
as chicken. Before all that, we had made jungle
juice. Have you ever heard of jungle juice?
Well, yeah, it's alcoholic stuff made out of
whatever you could get.
One hundred and ninety proof sick Bay alcohol.
Yeah. Oh, Sick Bay Alcohol.
Sick Bay alcohol. And any fruit that you could
get from the mess hall, and you put it in a big
can and it ferments and it makes a drink. And
it's powerful. And there's about five or ten of us
drank five gallons of Sick Bay alcohol that
night. And it was on that night that we decided
that we'd go steal his chicken.
There's a cause and effect here, I think, yeah.
We got the chicken and someone said, well, what
are you going to do with the chicken?
And I said, well, let's make chicken soup out
of it. There's not enough to barbecue
or fry it for the whole group so we'll make
chicken soup.
And one guy says, well, we've got to pluck the
feathers off of it first.
I said, no.
If you do that, there's not going to be
anything left.
That's skinny, huh?
So we just put the whole chicken, guts,
everything, feathers and everything,
into this pot of boiling water.
And we ate that chicken soup.
Well, we were sick, because the sick bay
alcohol and the chicken soup wasn't too good either.
Not a good mix.
And the next morning, the lieutenant looked for
us, and I guess he knew me from giving him the haircut,
that I'd be doing something like that, and he
looked first for me, and again I was hiding in
my cot.
And he found you again.
He found me again.
And you got guard duty again.
Oh, shit detail.
So those were some of the funny things, so you
had to have laughter as well as moments
to cry. Absolutely.
When did you come home after the war?
I got my discharge, or told to come home, in
January 1946.
We were in Peking.
We'd been to China.
After Okinawa, we went to Peking, China.
you're a China Marine also. I am. And after
Okinawa, we went to China to disarm the Japanese
soldiers there. And we were there until January.
Before I forget that, let me tell you about
I know I was asked a question one time, what
did you do for entertainment? What did you
do while you're overseas. We played football
with a coconut. Now, you can pass a football,
you can run for fun, but don't try to kick an
extra point with a coconut. The reason
I thought about that is because when we got to
China, I was able to get a real football
And we played football as recreational.
But I was given a discharge, told to be
discharged in January 1946.
And we came back to Okinawa.
I mean, back to San Diego.
And all the time we had been aboard ship, every
time we got aboard ship,
they said, where are your life jackets?
Where are your life jackets?
Because if the ship sinks, they might save your life.
So when we pulled into the harbor at San Diego,
we took off our life jackets and threw them
in the water.
Guess what?
They sank.
So much for the concept of life jackets.
Well then from San Diego I got my discharge.
And my dad, as a ranger, at this time he was a
deputy sheriff in Rankin, Texas.
And so I rode the bus from San Diego to Rankin.
And as the bus was coming into Rankin, he was
driving pretty fast, but he tried to apply
his brakes.
He had no brakes.
he realized that if he went as small as Rankin
was, he realized that if he didn't stop, don't
tell him what damage he was going to do to
people and buildings and to the bus himself.
And he tried to turn the bus, and when he did,
the bus turned over. And I flew out through
the front glass of the bus. I landed on my
shoulder, and I looked up and the bus was
coming over on top of me. And I managed to
scoot out from underneath the bus before it
crashed. One lady got her back broken and other
people got hurt real bad. But the only
thing that happened to me was I had one of the
emblems, Marine emblems, on my uniform
that came off. And I thought many times, I've
gone through the war, through battles, and
then came that close to getting killed.
Get killed when you rolled home?
When I'm coming home.
Oh my goodness.
What a story.
So, then dad met us.
Dad was an officer there.
And this bus driver,
he found me and he said, Marine,
you said your dad works here
in this town?
I said, yeah.
He said, don't tell him I did anything wrong.
I couldn't help what I was doing.
I said, you don't have to worry about it.
And they couldn't have cared less about what
the driver did or didn't do.
He was more interested in seeing me after the
war was over.
Yeah, that was his focus at the time.
Let me ask you a broad question here.
How do you feel your World War II experience
changed you as a person?
I think it made me a better person. I really do.
I think it gave me an insight to life that I
wouldn't have had.
And I think today, if more kids could
experience the military experience,
I think they would benefit a lot.
And I think all of us who are in World War II,
they call us the greatest generation.
Well, it's great not only because of what we
did, but what we did after the war.
The GI Bill was one of the biggest aids to the
military that I've ever read about.
Biggest aid to the nation.
Aid to the nation.
Aid to the nation is right.
So I look back on World War II, I made some of
the best friends I've ever made.
Probably the best friends I've ever made.
And there's only one other Marine out of the
six of us that's still alive.
His name is Ike Iverson.
He lives in San Angelo.
But he's my best friend, always was, always
will be.
So I think it made men out of boys in a short
period of time, and I think it made women
out of girls in a short period of time.
We grew up.
We had pride in our country that I sometimes
feel like we don't quite have, none or never
of us do in today's world.
We were willing and anxious to serve our
country, and it made us proud to do that.
So I'm totally, totally proud of my experience
in World War II, and I know it made us best.
And Mom taught us to be the best we could be,
and the Marines made sure that we were.
I like that, that is a good way to say it.
Let me flip the coin now and ask you another question.
How do you feel about the Japanese today basis,
what you went through?
In all honesty, I don't like the Japanese.
A lot of us went so far that they wouldn't even
buy Japanese products, like Japanese cars.
I never did take it to that extreme, but I
don't have the respect for the Japanese person.
And I hate to say that, but in honesty, that's
the way I feel.
I've run across very few Japanese people.
When I was writing my story, I was able to
contact a Japanese person and told them what
I was writing and let them read some of what
I'd written.
And I asked them, I said, is this okay, am I
writing about something that you've never
even heard of in Japan and you don't believe is true?
And they agreed, yeah, what you've written is
pretty much the truth.
So I have run into a few Japanese people that I
have learned to respect.
And I shouldn't say this, but my anger and
animosity towards a Japanese soldier, they
taught us that way.
They showed pictures in training camps of the
Japanese soldiers and they made him look
like he was, you know, totally wrong, totally
crazy, fierce, teeth hanging out, blood dripping.
They told us to hate the Japanese.
And I guess one comparison you might say, you
take an NFL football player and you put
him on the football field and he wants to tear
your head off and he leaves the
field and he wants to be the nicest guy in the
world. It's hard for him to make a
change. It was hard for us, all of us, to
change from the way we felt about the
Japanese to one of love and compassion now. I'm
sorry to say I don't have that.
What else about World War II can we talk about?
You've got some stories you still
want to tell? Yeah. Someone asked me one time
if someone hears what we're saying
now or reads it, what will they gain, if
anything, from my story to you? What will
it mean to them? Well, we, the servicemen who
served overseas came home with a lot
of memories, but we came home with a lot of
nightmares. World War II veterans are dying
pretty rapidly nowadays, and not too many of
them left. And there's some memories that
I want to remember, some memories that I want
to forget, some things I can't forget. I cannot
forget some of the white crosses that I saw on
some of the islands. I cannot forget the
White Cross in Italy, in Anzio, where my
brother is buried. And I can't forget the sailors
who lost their lives and are buried beneath the
sea. Ronald, my brother, that won the
Silver Star in the Navy. He came back to the
States and he was put into the Navy V-5, 12,
V-5, or it might have been V-12. I think it was
V-5. He went back to SMU and he played
football there. So, to my knowledge, every
Marine or serviceman that served in World
World War II came back and did something with
their lives. I'm sure there's a lot of them
that didn't, but the ones I personally know,
they learned enough from being in the service
to where they made better citizens out of
themselves. I'd like to say that the guys
that go into the service, guys and gals that go
into the service now, will do the same
thing, and I think most of them have. I wanted
to say this. When I came back after the war,
I went back to college and got my two degrees
there, and that's where I met Maggie. I haven't
talked much about her, but she's a big, big,
big part of my life. In June of this year,
You have been married 70 years, and it's a
wonderful time.
But I met her in college, and we dated, we had fun.
I stayed in contact with the buddies that came back.
Billy Harrell didn't.
And many years ago, back in the late 1980s, one
of the guys that was with me, Queenie
was his name, called me and he said, I finally
found you, I've been searching for you.
He said, I know how to find Popa, do you know
how to find Iverson?
And we did, and the four of us met and we went
to Gatlinburg.
And I hadn't seen them since the war ended.
And as we drove through the town of Gatlinburg,
passed a beauty shop with a mannequin out
in front in the windows with a red, curly wig.
So I stopped and asked the person, I said, I'm
going to meet some Marine buddies that
hadn't seen me in many, many, many years.
Can I borrow that wig and I'll bring it back?
She said, yeah.
So I go in and I get on this red curly wig and
I get out of the car where these other
guys were, Queenie and Popa, and they looked at
me and said, Mac, is that you? Curly,
red hair.
We kept in touch.
Thats great.
And we, I had them visit us in Faro, France,
they and their wives.
Thats great.
In fact, one of them, Queenie, had a boy and he
named him after me, Donald Garrett Queen.
One of the things that you and I discussed
before we started the recording was that if
we had the opportunity to allow you a few
minutes to talk some more about your parents
and I think about the experience with your
brother and Anzio, so I'd like to let you
do that now, so go ahead. You got the air.
Well, Dad was a rancher, Mom and Dad were
ranchers, right before and during the crash,
the Wall Street crash of 1928. And they knew
prices were falling, lambs and wool were falling,
And dad had enough sense, and mom, to get out
of the ranching business before it really hit.
And so that's when dad moved the family into
Ballinger and he ran for sheriff and was elected.
Dad was a very stern person.
Some of my brothers and sisters, maybe even, I
know my younger brother did, was almost
afraid of Dad because he was so stern.
He didn't fool around.
And Mom was one of the most wonderful persons
that ever lived in this earth.
She was an angel on death, on earth.
And she was called Granny Mom or Mama Mac.
And Mom and Dad were wonderful, wonderful
parents to us kids.
All ten of you.
All ten of us.
Ronald did something that he shouldn't have
when Dad was sheriff, and Dad took him upstairs
and put him in jail.
Locked the door.
Real jail.
The real jail.
And he made Mom promise not to let him out
until he came home to let him out himself.
So Dad was firm, but he was fair.
Mom, as I said, she loved kids.
She could walk into a room and every kid in
that room would want to sit in her lap.
She was that kind of a person.
She was Granny Mom to every one of them, or Mom Mac.
So I can't say enough about both of them, about
what they taught us as kids.
Taught us to be fair and honest, good, and back
then, you know, there wasn't any such
a thing as you lose your job and you get paid
anyway, compensation.
If you lived on what you made, if you didn't
make it, you didn't live.
And Dad and Mom both taught us the value of
money, but they taught us how to be good people.
And that's what we've tried to do, me and
Maggie, what we've tried to do with our kids
and grandkids.
And I must say every one of them have taken the
lesson good.
SHORT That's great.
COLEMAN Every one of them.
Not a black sheep in the bunch.
SHORT That's great.
That makes you proud, doesn't it?
It makes me very proud of every one of them.
Tell me about Anzio.
Elwood won the Silver Star during the Battle of Cassino.
And his commanding officer was killed.
This is your older brother?
Older brother. Yes.
The one in the Army.
His commanding officer was killed.
And Elwood took over the command and led his
troops across this river.
And that was on February the 4th, 1944.
Back in Ozona, that's where the family lived
during that period of time, Billy, my younger
brother, who was the only one at home, heard
Mom crying, and he got up and he went into
her bedroom.
And he said, Mom, why are you crying?
And she said, something's happened to Elwood.
And he said, oh, mom, no, no.
She said, yes, he's been hurt.
And she described a scene, a river scene,
where Elwood was hurt.
And some time later, Army chaplain came to the door
and he knocked on the door.
And he said, are you Ms. Mack Williams? Yes.
I hate to tell you, but your son's staff sergeant,
Roland Elwood McWilliams, was killed
on February the 4th.
And that was on February the 4th beforehand
that Billy heard my crying.
And no word at all, she just felt it, huh?
She knew it.
And while I was working overseas with Sinclair,
I made a trip
back over to Italy
from Algiers
And I visited his grave.
And every military cemetery I've ever been on
was beautiful,
well manicured, well kept.
And I bought flowers and put it on his grave site.
And Mama had the choice of either bringing him home
or leaving him there.
And she said, no, let him stay with those who
died with him.
So that's why he's there.
Now, I mentioned Ronald.
I must tell you about him, how he earned his
silver star.
He was on a ship that had been torpedoed off
the coast of Tulagi, near Guadalcanal.
And his ship was on fire and was burning.
And the captain gave the order to abandon the ship.
And all the sailors were going topside to get
into the lifeboats.
And Ronald heard some knocking on one of the
doors as he came up.
And it was locked.
And he came up and he asked the captain,
he go back down and help the guy, or guys, he
didn't know. And the captain told him,
he said, The ship's burning. It's going to
explode. We've got to get out of here.
And Ronald said, Leave me a boat and I'll go
down. So he went back down and he forced
open the door and he carried two sailors. One
of them was dead, he didn't know it, but
the other one wasn't, and he carried both of
those up, got in the boat, and pulled away
from the ship before it exploded, and he got
the Silver Star.
Are you worn out?
I could talk longer, but you are.
Thank you for spending the time with me.
I enjoyed it.
Do you want to say a parting word before I shut
it down? Yeah.
I want to say that our country needs to be
united right now.
Now the men and women, Marines, Navy, Coast
Guardmen, our people of World War II, we're
passing on.
And I hope that we have left a foundation for
our country to get together and make it
like it used to be, well, that's not quite right.
Make it even better than it used to be.
And I think it will.
So I love the military.
I love being part of the greatest generation.
And I'll never forget World War II.