We already knew that, but I found this paper with a family line on one side (David Gardner) and then this information on the back:
"This is the line in which Mrs. Ava Maxwell Bertch, Daughter of Milton Maxwell and Jerusha Swain joined the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). Her number is 247014 and she was admitted through William Worth.
William worth was an old man living in Nantucket (Massachusetts) at the time of the Revolution, and he loaned money to the colonies to help them in their fight for Independence. So he is listed as a "Patriot" which entitles you to be a member of the DAR. You also have another line Zacheus Macy who was an old man living in Nantucket he loaned money and also held public office during the war.
Very interesting if I do say so myself!
Memory
Monday, January 6, 2014
Obituary of Newton Gardner: Thursday February 20, 1902
The Falls City Journal
Death of Newton Gardner
An old and respected citizen has been called away
Newton Gardner, an old and highly respected resident of this city died at his home on North Fulton street early Monday morning after an illness covering a period of two weeks. The cause of his death was pneumonia.
The funeral services were held at the family residence on Tuesday afternoon and were conducted by Rev. Alexander. AT this time a large number of friends called to pay their last respects to their old neighbor. At this time the following tribute, prepared by Mrs. George W. Schock, was read by Miss Rebecca Wilson:
Newton Gardner was born September 21st, 1821, near Liberty Union Co. Indiana. He came to Nebraska in September 1865, and settled on a farm four and one half miles south of this city. Here he endured the discouragements and privations incident to the life of the pioneer, until February 1882 he retired from the active labors of the farm and purchased this home, to which he became very strongly attached.
On the 30th day of November of that year he was married to Miss Alice Stetler and brought his bride to this home, which was from thenceforth an earthly paradise to him. It is a remarkable fact that he has not spent a night outside of this home in the twenty years that have passed since February 1882. Here his children, Della and Harry, were born and have grown to maturity. He has always manifested more than an ordinary fatherly solicitude for his wife and children.
I cannot conclude this brief obituary and imperfect tribute to the dead without especial mention of a dominant characteristic of the man, his kindliness of heart. His temperament was poetic; plain and practical on one side, he was deeply sentimental on the other and his heart seemed to go out to embrace humanity and when his body was racked with pain and he could only speak in whispers, he was hear to say, "I want to be kind to everybody." He never used a harsh word when a kind one would accomplish the purpose and no one knew better than he how much more effective the latter are.
His genius was constructive and knew no bounds, and though he was great of brain, he was yet greater of heart, and his kindliness will ever linger as a fragrant memory.
As a further testimony of the regard in which Mr. Gardner was held by those who most intimately knew him, the following tribute was prepared and read by Mr. George W. Holland:
It was my privilege to know Mr. Gardner intimately for nearly twenty-two years. When I first met him I bore a message to him from some of his relatives and friends in Iowa and it seemed that our friendship began there. The last nine years of his life he was my neighbor and I have consequently met him almost daily during that time. He was in some respects a remarkable man. He was a student by nature. Many and many a time have I heard him discourse on historical and scientific subjects which proved that he was well read and that his reading s and studies were of the best. In his business life he was punctiliously honest. In fact he condemned dishonesty in any form whatsoever. His word was as good as his bond and his bond was absolutely good. I doubt whether in all the men he ever knew or associated with one could be found who would say Mr. Gardner ever did else than according to his agreement. His life was not spectacular nor showy. He never performed an act in his whole career which had for its object the plaudits of men. The great question with him was it right, and with him "right was mighty" and he governed his deeds accordingly. Had he desired I have no doubt he could have had the greatest honors conferred upon him, but he cared nothing for that. His ambition was to be a good and honest citizen, a humble but worthy member of society, a loving and faithful husband and a just and tender father. Such men are the strength of our nation. We may be glad to look at the bright stars that have shone in the history of the past. We like to read of the brilliant names that brighten the pages of the world, but after all the great sturdy of manhood of the common people is what gives our nation its power, its strength and its glory. To that manhood Mr. Gardner belongs. He is one of its most illustrious examples, caring nothing for honors from his fellow man, yet honoring mankind by doing his duty faithfully and honestly. Caring nothing for being known as having a well trained mind, yet possessing culture and knowledge to a remarkable degree. Caring nothing for having an ancestry which can be traced from the Mayflower to the present distinctly and among which are many illustrious names, yet possessing it. In fact I think there is more in such a life as his, in such a career as his, than one more brilliant and more showy. The diamond glistens in the sunlight and gladdens the eye, but the iron builds homes, cities, nations and benefits mankind. Mr Gardner belongs to the iron class and the world will remember the men of iron long after the glittering baubles of humanity have been forgotten. He was a man whom to have known was an inspiration. Every act of his life, every sentence that fell from his lips, was ennobling and inspiring. One could not look at his kind deeds and not be made better. One could not hear his words of knowledge and judgment without having better opinions of mankind. "His life was gentle and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man."
His children can be proud of having such a father and now and in future years they can look back to his life and say, "He never wronged a man." His wife can remember with a blessed satisfaction him who journeyed along life's pathway with her, side by side, scattering good deeds, here and there encouraging friends and neighbors by examples of kindness and deeds of charity.
The quartet sung Mr. Gardner's favorite hymn-that old sacred song which is well known to so many people:
I saw a weary traveler in tattered garments clad.
struggling up a mountain-it seemed that he was sad;
His back was laden heavy, his strength was almost gone,
But he shouted as he journeyed, "Deliverance will come!"
The summer sun was shining, the sweat was on his brow;
His garments worn and dusty, his step was very slow.
Still he kept pressing onward for he was wending home
He shouted as he journeyed, "Deliverance will come!"
I saw him in the evening the sun was bending low.
He'd overtopped the mountain and reached the vale below.
He saw the golden city-his everlasting home
He shouted as he journeyed, "Deliverance will come!"
Then I heard a song of trumph he sung upon that shore
Saying, "Jesus has redeemed me, I suffer never more!"
Then casting his eyes backward on the race that he had run
He shouted glad hosanna, "Deliverance has come!"
At the conclusion of the services the remains were followed to Steele cemetery by a large concourse of sorrowing friends. To the bereaved wife and children all these friends extend their sincere sympathy and with one accord voice the sentiments in the two above tributes.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Sorry
This took forever to re-type. Sorry it took me so long to post it. I tried to write it exactly how he did.
Please send me your stories! Of anybody! I might post some questions to get your minds turning so that we can all add our little bits of history to this blog. Remember it will only be good if I have help!
Love you guys!
Memory
Please send me your stories! Of anybody! I might post some questions to get your minds turning so that we can all add our little bits of history to this blog. Remember it will only be good if I have help!
Love you guys!
Memory
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Richard Livingston's Story-1945
*Letter to Jim March 8, 2005*
Dear Jim,
I have already thanked you for calling me a hero, and now I will try to make up for the sixty years of silence about the occasion of my becoming a hero.
I too had been seeing and hearing a lot about the anniversary of the Iwo campaign. Usually I shrug it off and I certainly do not watch the depiction on the TV. This year it was different, I got to watching the history channel with a certain amount of curiosity instead of tensing up and getting emotional about it. Then came your letter and all these years of selfishly keeping the experiences to myself became obvious to me so here is what I remember. I didn't make notes during the fighting, it was frowned on by the military as possible aid to the enemy if captured.
When I got back to Guam and had time to think about what we had just done, I decided to suppress the memories and did my best to forget it. As demonstrated by the ease with which I typed the attached account, (it took less than two weeks), I did not succeed too well. I had my reservations about moving in here at Barstow, afraid that it would be a collection of old boy's fighting the war over and over in a "can you top this scenario". Fortunately, it did not turn out that way.
I think I need to put in a disclaimer about now, This account contains graphic descriptions of gruesome, horrible, frightening nature. Read at your own discretion. Frances asked to read it, became nauseated, and couldn't sleep that night. She slept well last nite so maybe she will be able to handle it.
I am going to send the recitations as an attachment, it being several pages long, it may not transmit too well. If it does not, let me know and I'll try "in line text"
Love,
Dad
*here is the account*
In any discussion of Heroism, it is probably important to begin with a complete definitions. Not just a dictionary, but a thesaurus as well. The circumstances surrounding the episode involving heroic behavior has an influence on the episode itself, and the evaluation of it by those witnessing it, recounting it, hearing about it or being the recipient of it, or beneficiary of the event.
This is all prelude to an answer to the need for a recounting of my experiences, (as I recall them) during the battle for the Island of Iwo Jima. I use the word need, more for myself than for others.
So here goes: The Task Force, made up of parts of the Pacific Fleet, and the landing part consisted of the primary, made up of the Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions, with the Third Marine Division in floating reserve. For those of you not familiar with a Table of Organizations: I embarked on a long dissertation on the Table of Organization that I have since decided is unnecessary, You guys can explain to your wives. To get this into a manageable picture, a reinforced infantry company had approx 220 men. This will become of interest when the final tally is taken and the fact that of that number, 15 or 16 made it through the campaign and went back to Guam.
I went ashore on the fifth day, or D+5, the reason for the delay was two-fold, first was that as I mentioned, we were floating reserve. The other reason was the swells were running 25 ft and you can't climb down a cargo net in that kind of weather. In a trough, you would go over the side with all your buddies right behind you, when the swell hit the boat came up as high as the deck of the ship, with you, all your buddies, the cargo net and all the tackle for lowering the Higgins boat in a pile in the bottom of the boat. If you could get untangled before the trough came, you didn't get jerked half way up the side of the ship when the net tightened up and you were either flung off the net and beyond the boat, in which case all you had to do was drop your rifle, get out of your pack and swim until somebody could fish you out of the water. Or if you were not thrown clear, and landed in the boat without breaking any bones (yours or the guy you landed on) you were then ready for a sea sick ride ashore. 25 foot swells don't work well with Land Lubbers. Those that fell between the boat and the ship had a hard time of it too.
By the time I went ashore we had decided to load the Higgens boats and swing them over the side. That way we only had to stay clear of launching tackle I mentioned before, when the swell pushed the boat up to deck level, you had to stay clear of the cable and blocks that coiled up on the deck of the Higgin's, because if you were too close when they straightened out, arms and legs were in peril. The trip ashore was punctuated by going under the muzzle of the battle wagons firing support for the guys on shore. I don't think the battleship Missouri, was firing that day, She had already left to start softening up Okinawa. The 12 and 14 inch guns were bad enough.
I don't know for sure at this point whether I had determined that I should not make friends on the boat, but I didn't know then how few of them would make it back either.
I forgot to mention that in the table of organization there was a headquarters unit with each unit. Therefore I had to have a unit and mine was headquarters company, 21st Marine Regiment. How I got assigned to headquarters: It had to do with making the best of whatever situation you find yourself. We had been on Guam for three or four months as a replacement battalion. In preparation for the campaign, the regiments were beefing up the personnel. I was in a group of 15 or more that were dumped out at HQ for the 21st Regiment. The Chief and the doctors looked over our service records, deciding who to send down to the battalions and who to keep. They needed a carpenter to make sick-bay furniture. You have always heard that you should not volunteer, but this was for the glory of our country and promised a cushy job so I raised my hand. They only had 2 sheets of plywood, so the carpenter work was a piece of cake.
We spent a couple weeks getting equipped for the campaign. When I got ashore, I found out quickly they didn't need more furniture on Iwo, and my cushy job was gone. I had not made a secret of the fact that our Chief was not my favorite guy. So guess who was selected to move up to the front lines, and replace a guy that had been wounded? Times up, no points for neatness.
Anyway, that is how I got to the war and was attached to either Easy or Fox company. The guy I replaced was in the company headquarters platoon so I was too. I had four apprentices in the other platoons of the company. They were great guys and taught me all the things I had not been taught in the Training Battalion in Camp Elliott. They were battle haredened by two prior campaigns. Oh I knew about the basic first aid, and starting I.V's under field conditions but tying your scissors to your jacket with rubber tubing, from the Serum Albumen IV kit, so you didn't have to keep track of them while bandaging a wound, was the kind of thing that made you effective. We mostly used the scissors to remopve clothing and expose the wound. They also told me what kind of badages to stock in my kit, since we didn't use many 1 inch rolls or compresses on the battle field, like we did in the Training Battalion, (sharp C ration cans you know.)
To get back to the war I was told to get in this Jeep ambulance, and the driver took off across the two or three hundred yards that separated the front lines from the Rear Echelon. On the way we passed Sea-Bees on road graders rolling unexploded projectiles from those battle wagons I spoke of.There was rumored to be a bomb or big gun projectile dropped for every square yard of the surface of Iwo Jima.
We got out of the ambulance at the 2nd battalion aid station. And the ambulance loaded up two stretchers and headed back down to regimental headquarters. I was told to follow the tail of walking wounded up to either Easy or Fox company and take the place of the guy just wounded. It turned out to be a guy I had gone through Field Med School with. I only remember his last name was Robinson. He probably made it off the island ok as his wound was not life threatening. This is where I met the corpsmen I mentioned earlier. We didn't lay around too long before we called in an air strike and I think there was a mortar barrage being laid down in support of our impending attack, charge or whatever you like to call it. Then we got up from our nice, warm sunny fox holes and take a run at the Japanese troops opposing us. Our air strike, and the barrage didn't inconvenience them too much as they began shooting holes in us and we had to return to our fox-holes. The other corpsmen and I practiced our bandaging, and general first aid. I think it was about this time when we heard about the flag raising on Suribachi, and I think it was about the same time the Ernie Pyle paid us a visit. He was killed shortly after. Visitors to the front lines that insist upon seeing the sights don't last. The enemy does not like being looked at.
The next day we embarked on that famous battle tactic, a flanking manuever. I don't think we were all on the same page because our company had just gotten well strung out on our charge, when somebody on our side figured we needed some support, so they unloaded a rack of four inch rockets that caught us just about in the middle of the company. Talk about friendly fire?? We were losing men as we went along, that's why I was not there when the rockets hit, I was patching somebody in the drag. All in all, we lost five guys from that little gesture of support, one of whom was a flame thrower. At least half of him disappeared but cooked shit leaves a lingering memory.
When I moved on to catch up with the company. the Nips knew we were coming and that we would be crossing this open stretch of ground so they practiced their poor marksmanship on me. The corpsmen behind me were yelling for me to get under cover but I didn't see any cover handy so I just kept running. They told me later that every time I picked up a foot, the dirt would puff up where the bullet hit.
I could follow the path of the company by the dead and wounded. This was the time I was so busy I kept leaving my rifle behind when I ran to the next guy. It also was when I realized that we were going to need ammunition, with the fight lasting as long as it had, so started cutting the carbine ammo off the dead bodies as I came to them. It turned out to be a good idea as the seventy-five rounds I had was nearly all we had when we were ordered back to Battalion HQ to pull back and dig in for the night. This was a very busy hour to hour and a half. It will take a paragraph for each anecdote that took place in that short space of time.
I caught up with the company just in time to see the gunnery sgt. pop the spoon off of a grenade, walk up on top of a pillbox, stoop over and toss i into the opening just before it went off. I was to later find out that he counted the time between popping the spoon and the explosion of every grenade withing earshot. He explained that usually they were five counts but sometimes they were four counts and he wanted to know which was which. He was not only cold brave, he was smart. By holding them till they were ready to explode, they could not be thrown back at him.
This was also the time that I got the rifle that had a bullet hole in the stock that started in the pistol grip and came out the butt plate. It belonged to a buck sergeant that had been looking into the barrel of a Japanese rifle and the Nip shot first. I didn't have time to find out if the Sgt. shot back, I presume he did or I wouldn't be patching him. All I could see in the way of wounds were between his ring and pinky fingers. Then he told me of the painful wound in his shoulder. Since he was a Sgt. I figured that when he said it hurt like hell, he was in pain so I gave him a shot of morphine, before I cut his jacket sleeve off to expose the wound. It turned out to be "just a flesh wound" through the front muscle of his shoulder. I bandaged him, took his rifle and told him to run as fast as he could so he would get closer to the aid station before he passed out. I think he made it ok, I talked to some of the guys at battalion later and they said they found some guy wandering around half asleep.
The pull back was dictated as each guy ran out of ammunition. Since I had ammo, I got to stay and shoot. I found that it was a great deal like in the cowboy movies. You would rise up over the boulder, see something move, shoot , hope you hit it, and duck. The reason that you didn't stay to look around was, that by firing, you became "what was moving" and therefore the target. I, and two or three guys with me, were fortunate that the Nip with the Nambu machine gun was moving when I peeked over the boulder. It drew my attention I snapped off a round, and ducked. I changed position, peeked again, the Nambu was there, but the Nip was not. You can bet that I did not go down and count coup on him like the Indians do in the movies. I was just glad to see that gun, unattended.
We eventually got dug in and settled down for the night. After a head count we found that there was a couple guys still unaccounted for. This meant they were probably still alive in the target area of the barrage planned by the battalion. We immediately made up a rescue group, ala "saving Sgt. Ryan" to go get them. We asked permission from battalion which was denied. Just before dark a company of tanks moved into position to fire the barrage. The position, required there muzzles to be right over our fox-holes. A medium tank is armed with a 75 mm gun. And the muzzle blast is similar to being hit with a 5 lb hammer. I've not been hit with a 5 lb hammer, so it is only a guess. Anyway, we didn't get much sleep until they lifted the barrage about 2200. And wouldn't you know the two guys we were going to go after, came stumbling in a short time later. They had been wounded before the barrage, they had survived the shelling and their earlier wounds, and we did not have to risk the rescue. Some things turn out ok.
The losses for that flanking movement, was a 25 dead and wounded. The rest of the day went pretty much as I have told it.
The next couple days are a little hazy in my memory. We went through some reorganization, that's why I've been a little unsure about which company I was in. Eventually Easy company, Fox company, ad George company were combined into one company. There simply were not enough men to justify the three companies and the attending officers, noncoms etc.
Mostly it was the lack of officers. We lost officers at a terrific rate. We would get a new Lieutenant in the morning and he would be killed or wounded before noon.
We, the 2nd battalion, had been point for the regiment for a week or more so we were rotated to reserve position, 3rd Bn. took point, 1st Bn. took support. They took on the job of blasting the mouths of the caves shut, much the same as the 1st Bn. did to get us up off the beach. The way it worked was, the platoon would locate the mouth of the cave, and the fireports protecting it. The BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) men would close those fireports by shooting into them while the demolition man would run up to the mouth of the cave, pull the rip cord on the igniter fuse, throw the 16 lb satchel (TNT blocks taped together) into the mouth of the cave and then you can bet he ran like the dickens. Like everything else we did to overcome Yamamoto's fortifications, it didn't work perfectly. There were Japanese stragglers coming out of those caves a year after I was back in the States. During the time we were in reserve we were furnished a gallon, read helmet full of hot water and told to bathe and shave and draw clean clothes. It was about time for me, my dungarees were stiff with dried blood from the guys I drug across my lap while patching them up. Even the blow flies didn't like me anymore.
At about this time Major Cushman took over the Regiment as a result of Col. English getting wounded. He was a different kind of commander than English. He insisted on knowing the battlefield first hand. The wire from the radio to the handset was only 4 feet long so the poor radio guy took a step every time the major did, cause he also insisted on transmitting his own information. Being so close together it was either a mortar of hand grenade that got them because they were both wounded. The Major had the hand set and we could hear him telling the corpsmen to never mind him, take care of the radio man first. He may not have been the best strategist on the island but he was brave.
The reason I mentioned strategy was demonstrated by the next advance we embarked on. By this time, 2nd Bn. was point and we set out across another air strip. They laid down a smoke screen and off we went. This was where the Nips had dug their little tanks into the ground and fired them as gun emplacements. It would have helped if we had not jetisoned our bazooks or at least had some anti tank grenades. But since we had not encountered the tanks so far, we began to doubt if they even had nay and we didn't have any way to destroy them, so we bypassed them. I am getting ahead of myself.
As we started across the air strip, I'm dragging up the rear, patching as I go, and come across this wounded guy next to the shell hole. Its the only cover available so I get in and drag him in on top of me. Since this hole is about the size of a wash tub, you can imagine it was not much protection and while I was working on him we were treated to a couple shots from the tanks. Fortunately for us, we were between tanks. By that I mean they could not traverse their guns and we were not in the line of fire. They could elevate and depress the guns so if they were shooting at us, at ground level, the trajectory of the projectile was very flat, making them skip like rocks on water, and I could see them flipping end over end. Calm logic tells me those guns couldn't be bigger then37 mm but at that moment the projectile looked as big as a milk bottle. When I finished the patch job and had the IV running, I crawled out from under him and thought about how I was going to get off that airstrip. It was still a long way to go and without the smoke cover, I gave some thought as to what I could do without when I caught up with the company. I had Serum Albument kit in my pack, my first aid bag, my rifle and ammunition. So I put it all on, started off at a run and soon slowed to a walk. The Nips must have pulled out because not a shot was fired at me.
The company had taken cover at the edge of the airstrip and sort of waited for me. We then got down in a gully about half the size of the one in Yorba Linda. When we came out at the upper end we were at the north end of the Island. This would have been almost as great a feat as the flag raising, except we had bypassed the tanks and no telling how many Nips, while traveling up that gully. The outcome of our maneuver was that we were cut off from our support. No carrying parties, no water, no rations. It didn't help anything when the lieutenant took a rifle bullet right between the eyes, just above the brim of his helmet and right out the back.
We dug in and set up a defensive perimeter, and called HQ for a new commander. We found out that we were at the upper end of the coastal defenses. What we thought were fox holes, pre dug by the Nips, turned out to be the mouths of tunnels that had the other end down the slope toward the beach. The upper end of the tunnel had been blocked, leaving a generous size fox hole for us to move into. It was not long before they were shoving grenades back through the blockage into what we thought were foxholes. So we patched up some more guys.
While I, and the other corpsmen were doing that, the euphoria of seeing the ocean, lured the more irrepressible guys on a souvenir hunt. some of them got shot for their trouble, and had to lay out in the sun all afternoon before we could make a run down the slope and drag them back under the cover of twilight. By the time they got up to my fox-hole, it was almost dark so three of us corpsmen and the wounded guy, pulled a poncho over ourselves I squeezed his arm for a tourniquet, one corpsmen struck paper matches, and the third corpsmen started the I.V to replace the water that was lost by the day in the sun.
By the way, if my chronology gets a little ragged, read any book about the Iwo campain, that gives an account of "Cushmens Pocket". We were the lint in Cushmans pocket.
We laid there kind of quiet for a couple days. Then somebody said for us to prepare for another move. I swear that if the mortar shells that fell on us as we got up from our holes were not Japanese, they had to be "friendly fire" they were right on target, us. There was a JASCO unit next to us consisting of an ensign observer, and a non-com to crank the generator. JASCO stands for joint assault communication. The were our link to the navy, either carriers for air support or destroyers for night lights, (star shells).
They had packed up their stuff and the non-com was sitting on the side of their hole, when he caught a mortar in his lap. This is not just gratuitous blood and guts, these guys were ten or twelve feet from me, and the ensign jumped into the hole with us. He was not badly hurt, lots of dirt and debris blown into his face and exposed skin, but the thing that bothered him the most was his non-com all over him. Our carrying parties were operating by that time and I assured him that he would be issued a clean set of dungarees when he got back to the hospital ship.
We eventually got relieved and went back a couple hundred yards for R&R. Our Corporal Clinger made it down to the first air strip and brought back a pack full of hot corn on the cob. The next day he brought a supply of "ten in one rations". Ten men for one day, or one man for ten days. In any event they were stolen from the airforce and they were better than anything we had eaten for a long time. This is where I got the can of bacon that I may have mentioned at another place and time.
Things had slowed down for everybody and we were sort of resting and counting heads, when the over-all command, decided that we, all eighteen or twenty of us should take on a bunch of replacements and move up to relieve part of the 5th division that had encountered some stiff resistance. We got probably ten or fifteen replacements, and moved out. We took cover along the trail, waiting for the 5th Div to vacate their position. I decided to eat my bacon. The waxed paper that the K-rations came in would make a good, smokeless fire. I figured that going into a fire fight was no place to have uneaten bacon in your pack. It turned out that I had plenty of time to cook and eat my lunch, because we relieved at least four times as many men as we had in our outfit.
We moved on, blasting a few caves as we went, and set up our perimeter for the night. My foxhole was at the head of a little ravine, and I shared it with the radio man as part of company HQ. Being a corpsmen, I didn't have to stand watch, so I went to sleep. In the morning I woke, looked around and asked the world at large if anything exciting had happened over night. They pointed to a Nip about ten feet from my fox hole. The poor guy had climbed up that ravine and was looking around for which way to go when the first of our guys shot him. That should have wakened me, the tow or three grenades they heaped on him, should definitely have wakened me, but there I was asking if anything had happened. Oh well, 20% never get the word, an old navy proverb.
We eventually declared the island secure. That way it could be turned over to the Army. They used our Marine trucks to haul the doggies up from the beach, but would not let us ride in them on the way back. We had to shoulder what we had and walk down to the Higgins boat to go out to the ship. It was funny to see the poor guys getting off the trucks with fixed bayonets and a camp stool over the other shoulder.
There you have it. My experiences in the campaign for Iwo Jima. The things I have left out until now, are the all pervading fear, and the relationship with God that developed over that three week period are things to be recognized as the molders of m character, making me who I am today.
That may satisfy the requirements defining a hero, but the real hero in our lives was your mother. She served without glory or flag waving. Took care of Linda, took care of herself and Bruce.Suffered through the news reports. Enjoyed the few letters she received from me, and put up with me when I got back. Thank you Margaret.
Love, Dad
Dear Jim,
I have already thanked you for calling me a hero, and now I will try to make up for the sixty years of silence about the occasion of my becoming a hero.
I too had been seeing and hearing a lot about the anniversary of the Iwo campaign. Usually I shrug it off and I certainly do not watch the depiction on the TV. This year it was different, I got to watching the history channel with a certain amount of curiosity instead of tensing up and getting emotional about it. Then came your letter and all these years of selfishly keeping the experiences to myself became obvious to me so here is what I remember. I didn't make notes during the fighting, it was frowned on by the military as possible aid to the enemy if captured.
When I got back to Guam and had time to think about what we had just done, I decided to suppress the memories and did my best to forget it. As demonstrated by the ease with which I typed the attached account, (it took less than two weeks), I did not succeed too well. I had my reservations about moving in here at Barstow, afraid that it would be a collection of old boy's fighting the war over and over in a "can you top this scenario". Fortunately, it did not turn out that way.
I think I need to put in a disclaimer about now, This account contains graphic descriptions of gruesome, horrible, frightening nature. Read at your own discretion. Frances asked to read it, became nauseated, and couldn't sleep that night. She slept well last nite so maybe she will be able to handle it.
I am going to send the recitations as an attachment, it being several pages long, it may not transmit too well. If it does not, let me know and I'll try "in line text"
Love,
Dad
*here is the account*
In any discussion of Heroism, it is probably important to begin with a complete definitions. Not just a dictionary, but a thesaurus as well. The circumstances surrounding the episode involving heroic behavior has an influence on the episode itself, and the evaluation of it by those witnessing it, recounting it, hearing about it or being the recipient of it, or beneficiary of the event.
This is all prelude to an answer to the need for a recounting of my experiences, (as I recall them) during the battle for the Island of Iwo Jima. I use the word need, more for myself than for others.
So here goes: The Task Force, made up of parts of the Pacific Fleet, and the landing part consisted of the primary, made up of the Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions, with the Third Marine Division in floating reserve. For those of you not familiar with a Table of Organizations: I embarked on a long dissertation on the Table of Organization that I have since decided is unnecessary, You guys can explain to your wives. To get this into a manageable picture, a reinforced infantry company had approx 220 men. This will become of interest when the final tally is taken and the fact that of that number, 15 or 16 made it through the campaign and went back to Guam.
I went ashore on the fifth day, or D+5, the reason for the delay was two-fold, first was that as I mentioned, we were floating reserve. The other reason was the swells were running 25 ft and you can't climb down a cargo net in that kind of weather. In a trough, you would go over the side with all your buddies right behind you, when the swell hit the boat came up as high as the deck of the ship, with you, all your buddies, the cargo net and all the tackle for lowering the Higgins boat in a pile in the bottom of the boat. If you could get untangled before the trough came, you didn't get jerked half way up the side of the ship when the net tightened up and you were either flung off the net and beyond the boat, in which case all you had to do was drop your rifle, get out of your pack and swim until somebody could fish you out of the water. Or if you were not thrown clear, and landed in the boat without breaking any bones (yours or the guy you landed on) you were then ready for a sea sick ride ashore. 25 foot swells don't work well with Land Lubbers. Those that fell between the boat and the ship had a hard time of it too.
By the time I went ashore we had decided to load the Higgens boats and swing them over the side. That way we only had to stay clear of launching tackle I mentioned before, when the swell pushed the boat up to deck level, you had to stay clear of the cable and blocks that coiled up on the deck of the Higgin's, because if you were too close when they straightened out, arms and legs were in peril. The trip ashore was punctuated by going under the muzzle of the battle wagons firing support for the guys on shore. I don't think the battleship Missouri, was firing that day, She had already left to start softening up Okinawa. The 12 and 14 inch guns were bad enough.
I don't know for sure at this point whether I had determined that I should not make friends on the boat, but I didn't know then how few of them would make it back either.
I forgot to mention that in the table of organization there was a headquarters unit with each unit. Therefore I had to have a unit and mine was headquarters company, 21st Marine Regiment. How I got assigned to headquarters: It had to do with making the best of whatever situation you find yourself. We had been on Guam for three or four months as a replacement battalion. In preparation for the campaign, the regiments were beefing up the personnel. I was in a group of 15 or more that were dumped out at HQ for the 21st Regiment. The Chief and the doctors looked over our service records, deciding who to send down to the battalions and who to keep. They needed a carpenter to make sick-bay furniture. You have always heard that you should not volunteer, but this was for the glory of our country and promised a cushy job so I raised my hand. They only had 2 sheets of plywood, so the carpenter work was a piece of cake.
We spent a couple weeks getting equipped for the campaign. When I got ashore, I found out quickly they didn't need more furniture on Iwo, and my cushy job was gone. I had not made a secret of the fact that our Chief was not my favorite guy. So guess who was selected to move up to the front lines, and replace a guy that had been wounded? Times up, no points for neatness.
Anyway, that is how I got to the war and was attached to either Easy or Fox company. The guy I replaced was in the company headquarters platoon so I was too. I had four apprentices in the other platoons of the company. They were great guys and taught me all the things I had not been taught in the Training Battalion in Camp Elliott. They were battle haredened by two prior campaigns. Oh I knew about the basic first aid, and starting I.V's under field conditions but tying your scissors to your jacket with rubber tubing, from the Serum Albumen IV kit, so you didn't have to keep track of them while bandaging a wound, was the kind of thing that made you effective. We mostly used the scissors to remopve clothing and expose the wound. They also told me what kind of badages to stock in my kit, since we didn't use many 1 inch rolls or compresses on the battle field, like we did in the Training Battalion, (sharp C ration cans you know.)
To get back to the war I was told to get in this Jeep ambulance, and the driver took off across the two or three hundred yards that separated the front lines from the Rear Echelon. On the way we passed Sea-Bees on road graders rolling unexploded projectiles from those battle wagons I spoke of.There was rumored to be a bomb or big gun projectile dropped for every square yard of the surface of Iwo Jima.
We got out of the ambulance at the 2nd battalion aid station. And the ambulance loaded up two stretchers and headed back down to regimental headquarters. I was told to follow the tail of walking wounded up to either Easy or Fox company and take the place of the guy just wounded. It turned out to be a guy I had gone through Field Med School with. I only remember his last name was Robinson. He probably made it off the island ok as his wound was not life threatening. This is where I met the corpsmen I mentioned earlier. We didn't lay around too long before we called in an air strike and I think there was a mortar barrage being laid down in support of our impending attack, charge or whatever you like to call it. Then we got up from our nice, warm sunny fox holes and take a run at the Japanese troops opposing us. Our air strike, and the barrage didn't inconvenience them too much as they began shooting holes in us and we had to return to our fox-holes. The other corpsmen and I practiced our bandaging, and general first aid. I think it was about this time when we heard about the flag raising on Suribachi, and I think it was about the same time the Ernie Pyle paid us a visit. He was killed shortly after. Visitors to the front lines that insist upon seeing the sights don't last. The enemy does not like being looked at.
The next day we embarked on that famous battle tactic, a flanking manuever. I don't think we were all on the same page because our company had just gotten well strung out on our charge, when somebody on our side figured we needed some support, so they unloaded a rack of four inch rockets that caught us just about in the middle of the company. Talk about friendly fire?? We were losing men as we went along, that's why I was not there when the rockets hit, I was patching somebody in the drag. All in all, we lost five guys from that little gesture of support, one of whom was a flame thrower. At least half of him disappeared but cooked shit leaves a lingering memory.
When I moved on to catch up with the company. the Nips knew we were coming and that we would be crossing this open stretch of ground so they practiced their poor marksmanship on me. The corpsmen behind me were yelling for me to get under cover but I didn't see any cover handy so I just kept running. They told me later that every time I picked up a foot, the dirt would puff up where the bullet hit.
I could follow the path of the company by the dead and wounded. This was the time I was so busy I kept leaving my rifle behind when I ran to the next guy. It also was when I realized that we were going to need ammunition, with the fight lasting as long as it had, so started cutting the carbine ammo off the dead bodies as I came to them. It turned out to be a good idea as the seventy-five rounds I had was nearly all we had when we were ordered back to Battalion HQ to pull back and dig in for the night. This was a very busy hour to hour and a half. It will take a paragraph for each anecdote that took place in that short space of time.
I caught up with the company just in time to see the gunnery sgt. pop the spoon off of a grenade, walk up on top of a pillbox, stoop over and toss i into the opening just before it went off. I was to later find out that he counted the time between popping the spoon and the explosion of every grenade withing earshot. He explained that usually they were five counts but sometimes they were four counts and he wanted to know which was which. He was not only cold brave, he was smart. By holding them till they were ready to explode, they could not be thrown back at him.
This was also the time that I got the rifle that had a bullet hole in the stock that started in the pistol grip and came out the butt plate. It belonged to a buck sergeant that had been looking into the barrel of a Japanese rifle and the Nip shot first. I didn't have time to find out if the Sgt. shot back, I presume he did or I wouldn't be patching him. All I could see in the way of wounds were between his ring and pinky fingers. Then he told me of the painful wound in his shoulder. Since he was a Sgt. I figured that when he said it hurt like hell, he was in pain so I gave him a shot of morphine, before I cut his jacket sleeve off to expose the wound. It turned out to be "just a flesh wound" through the front muscle of his shoulder. I bandaged him, took his rifle and told him to run as fast as he could so he would get closer to the aid station before he passed out. I think he made it ok, I talked to some of the guys at battalion later and they said they found some guy wandering around half asleep.
The pull back was dictated as each guy ran out of ammunition. Since I had ammo, I got to stay and shoot. I found that it was a great deal like in the cowboy movies. You would rise up over the boulder, see something move, shoot , hope you hit it, and duck. The reason that you didn't stay to look around was, that by firing, you became "what was moving" and therefore the target. I, and two or three guys with me, were fortunate that the Nip with the Nambu machine gun was moving when I peeked over the boulder. It drew my attention I snapped off a round, and ducked. I changed position, peeked again, the Nambu was there, but the Nip was not. You can bet that I did not go down and count coup on him like the Indians do in the movies. I was just glad to see that gun, unattended.
We eventually got dug in and settled down for the night. After a head count we found that there was a couple guys still unaccounted for. This meant they were probably still alive in the target area of the barrage planned by the battalion. We immediately made up a rescue group, ala "saving Sgt. Ryan" to go get them. We asked permission from battalion which was denied. Just before dark a company of tanks moved into position to fire the barrage. The position, required there muzzles to be right over our fox-holes. A medium tank is armed with a 75 mm gun. And the muzzle blast is similar to being hit with a 5 lb hammer. I've not been hit with a 5 lb hammer, so it is only a guess. Anyway, we didn't get much sleep until they lifted the barrage about 2200. And wouldn't you know the two guys we were going to go after, came stumbling in a short time later. They had been wounded before the barrage, they had survived the shelling and their earlier wounds, and we did not have to risk the rescue. Some things turn out ok.
The losses for that flanking movement, was a 25 dead and wounded. The rest of the day went pretty much as I have told it.
The next couple days are a little hazy in my memory. We went through some reorganization, that's why I've been a little unsure about which company I was in. Eventually Easy company, Fox company, ad George company were combined into one company. There simply were not enough men to justify the three companies and the attending officers, noncoms etc.
Mostly it was the lack of officers. We lost officers at a terrific rate. We would get a new Lieutenant in the morning and he would be killed or wounded before noon.
We, the 2nd battalion, had been point for the regiment for a week or more so we were rotated to reserve position, 3rd Bn. took point, 1st Bn. took support. They took on the job of blasting the mouths of the caves shut, much the same as the 1st Bn. did to get us up off the beach. The way it worked was, the platoon would locate the mouth of the cave, and the fireports protecting it. The BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) men would close those fireports by shooting into them while the demolition man would run up to the mouth of the cave, pull the rip cord on the igniter fuse, throw the 16 lb satchel (TNT blocks taped together) into the mouth of the cave and then you can bet he ran like the dickens. Like everything else we did to overcome Yamamoto's fortifications, it didn't work perfectly. There were Japanese stragglers coming out of those caves a year after I was back in the States. During the time we were in reserve we were furnished a gallon, read helmet full of hot water and told to bathe and shave and draw clean clothes. It was about time for me, my dungarees were stiff with dried blood from the guys I drug across my lap while patching them up. Even the blow flies didn't like me anymore.
At about this time Major Cushman took over the Regiment as a result of Col. English getting wounded. He was a different kind of commander than English. He insisted on knowing the battlefield first hand. The wire from the radio to the handset was only 4 feet long so the poor radio guy took a step every time the major did, cause he also insisted on transmitting his own information. Being so close together it was either a mortar of hand grenade that got them because they were both wounded. The Major had the hand set and we could hear him telling the corpsmen to never mind him, take care of the radio man first. He may not have been the best strategist on the island but he was brave.
The reason I mentioned strategy was demonstrated by the next advance we embarked on. By this time, 2nd Bn. was point and we set out across another air strip. They laid down a smoke screen and off we went. This was where the Nips had dug their little tanks into the ground and fired them as gun emplacements. It would have helped if we had not jetisoned our bazooks or at least had some anti tank grenades. But since we had not encountered the tanks so far, we began to doubt if they even had nay and we didn't have any way to destroy them, so we bypassed them. I am getting ahead of myself.
As we started across the air strip, I'm dragging up the rear, patching as I go, and come across this wounded guy next to the shell hole. Its the only cover available so I get in and drag him in on top of me. Since this hole is about the size of a wash tub, you can imagine it was not much protection and while I was working on him we were treated to a couple shots from the tanks. Fortunately for us, we were between tanks. By that I mean they could not traverse their guns and we were not in the line of fire. They could elevate and depress the guns so if they were shooting at us, at ground level, the trajectory of the projectile was very flat, making them skip like rocks on water, and I could see them flipping end over end. Calm logic tells me those guns couldn't be bigger then37 mm but at that moment the projectile looked as big as a milk bottle. When I finished the patch job and had the IV running, I crawled out from under him and thought about how I was going to get off that airstrip. It was still a long way to go and without the smoke cover, I gave some thought as to what I could do without when I caught up with the company. I had Serum Albument kit in my pack, my first aid bag, my rifle and ammunition. So I put it all on, started off at a run and soon slowed to a walk. The Nips must have pulled out because not a shot was fired at me.
The company had taken cover at the edge of the airstrip and sort of waited for me. We then got down in a gully about half the size of the one in Yorba Linda. When we came out at the upper end we were at the north end of the Island. This would have been almost as great a feat as the flag raising, except we had bypassed the tanks and no telling how many Nips, while traveling up that gully. The outcome of our maneuver was that we were cut off from our support. No carrying parties, no water, no rations. It didn't help anything when the lieutenant took a rifle bullet right between the eyes, just above the brim of his helmet and right out the back.
We dug in and set up a defensive perimeter, and called HQ for a new commander. We found out that we were at the upper end of the coastal defenses. What we thought were fox holes, pre dug by the Nips, turned out to be the mouths of tunnels that had the other end down the slope toward the beach. The upper end of the tunnel had been blocked, leaving a generous size fox hole for us to move into. It was not long before they were shoving grenades back through the blockage into what we thought were foxholes. So we patched up some more guys.
While I, and the other corpsmen were doing that, the euphoria of seeing the ocean, lured the more irrepressible guys on a souvenir hunt. some of them got shot for their trouble, and had to lay out in the sun all afternoon before we could make a run down the slope and drag them back under the cover of twilight. By the time they got up to my fox-hole, it was almost dark so three of us corpsmen and the wounded guy, pulled a poncho over ourselves I squeezed his arm for a tourniquet, one corpsmen struck paper matches, and the third corpsmen started the I.V to replace the water that was lost by the day in the sun.
By the way, if my chronology gets a little ragged, read any book about the Iwo campain, that gives an account of "Cushmens Pocket". We were the lint in Cushmans pocket.
We laid there kind of quiet for a couple days. Then somebody said for us to prepare for another move. I swear that if the mortar shells that fell on us as we got up from our holes were not Japanese, they had to be "friendly fire" they were right on target, us. There was a JASCO unit next to us consisting of an ensign observer, and a non-com to crank the generator. JASCO stands for joint assault communication. The were our link to the navy, either carriers for air support or destroyers for night lights, (star shells).
They had packed up their stuff and the non-com was sitting on the side of their hole, when he caught a mortar in his lap. This is not just gratuitous blood and guts, these guys were ten or twelve feet from me, and the ensign jumped into the hole with us. He was not badly hurt, lots of dirt and debris blown into his face and exposed skin, but the thing that bothered him the most was his non-com all over him. Our carrying parties were operating by that time and I assured him that he would be issued a clean set of dungarees when he got back to the hospital ship.
We eventually got relieved and went back a couple hundred yards for R&R. Our Corporal Clinger made it down to the first air strip and brought back a pack full of hot corn on the cob. The next day he brought a supply of "ten in one rations". Ten men for one day, or one man for ten days. In any event they were stolen from the airforce and they were better than anything we had eaten for a long time. This is where I got the can of bacon that I may have mentioned at another place and time.
Things had slowed down for everybody and we were sort of resting and counting heads, when the over-all command, decided that we, all eighteen or twenty of us should take on a bunch of replacements and move up to relieve part of the 5th division that had encountered some stiff resistance. We got probably ten or fifteen replacements, and moved out. We took cover along the trail, waiting for the 5th Div to vacate their position. I decided to eat my bacon. The waxed paper that the K-rations came in would make a good, smokeless fire. I figured that going into a fire fight was no place to have uneaten bacon in your pack. It turned out that I had plenty of time to cook and eat my lunch, because we relieved at least four times as many men as we had in our outfit.
We moved on, blasting a few caves as we went, and set up our perimeter for the night. My foxhole was at the head of a little ravine, and I shared it with the radio man as part of company HQ. Being a corpsmen, I didn't have to stand watch, so I went to sleep. In the morning I woke, looked around and asked the world at large if anything exciting had happened over night. They pointed to a Nip about ten feet from my fox hole. The poor guy had climbed up that ravine and was looking around for which way to go when the first of our guys shot him. That should have wakened me, the tow or three grenades they heaped on him, should definitely have wakened me, but there I was asking if anything had happened. Oh well, 20% never get the word, an old navy proverb.
We eventually declared the island secure. That way it could be turned over to the Army. They used our Marine trucks to haul the doggies up from the beach, but would not let us ride in them on the way back. We had to shoulder what we had and walk down to the Higgins boat to go out to the ship. It was funny to see the poor guys getting off the trucks with fixed bayonets and a camp stool over the other shoulder.
There you have it. My experiences in the campaign for Iwo Jima. The things I have left out until now, are the all pervading fear, and the relationship with God that developed over that three week period are things to be recognized as the molders of m character, making me who I am today.
That may satisfy the requirements defining a hero, but the real hero in our lives was your mother. She served without glory or flag waving. Took care of Linda, took care of herself and Bruce.Suffered through the news reports. Enjoyed the few letters she received from me, and put up with me when I got back. Thank you Margaret.
Love, Dad
Monday, December 14, 2009
My idea
So I was reading in the Ensign magazine yesterday about this guy who wanted to know more about his dad's history. He was a POW in World War II. Anyway, he created this blog for his family so that they could see their grandfather's story and I thought it would be a great idea for our family. Last night Mike and Steve and I ran across some letters from Grandpa Livingston (Richard) from when he was on the front lines of Iwo Jima in World War II. It was really neat. So I will post things like that on this blog. PLEASE email me any stories/pictures you have of any family member. I may make it one family member a month, but I need to start collecting any information you guys have. I want your stories too! We may not think our own lives are very interesting, but one day we will be the grandparents and our grandchildren will want to know more about us. So this month it will be Richard Livingston. Uncle Bruce sent me a story that he wrote about his life and I will be posting that next. This blog will only be as good as the stories that I get! I love you guys and I hope you will jump on board and help me out. I think it will be great!
Love
Memory
Love
Memory
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