Iwo Jima Marine Dodges Enemy Fire While Landing on the Beach

The water started to come down and hit the ammo dump, and all the 105 howitzers, the shells, the 75, the 30-30 cals, they exploded. They came up on top, came above us, up on the beach, and bursted. And all the sand came down, came down on me. And my buddy was there. He had a shovel. He started shoveling me out. You are about to embark upon the great crusade. To meet this mounting aggression. And make no mistake about it, good will prevail. I was born and raised in an old town called Yelitsin. It's about eight miles from Altoona. We had a family of 13. I remember, we were playing in a playground. And these folks come out, and they called us in the house and say, Hey, we've just been bombed by Japanese. And I said, wow. Of course, I was only very young at that time. You know, 1941. Sixteen years old, I think it was. And so that was it. I signed up in June of 1943. And then we went into August. We went to Parris Allen for basic training. I had buddies that already had joined, so I went along with them. So I left school early to join the Marine Corps. I was 17. We went to train to Parris Allen, South Carolina. Well, I was pretty active in civilian life. I was pretty well athletic. And when I got into basic training, I was pretty well in condition. We were assigned to Quantico. And that was a school of sound ranging. With sound ranging, the whole purpose was to locate hidden enemy artillery pieces. We would lay wire about 80 yards, and we had microphones. They were about 18 inches long. They had a positive sign, a positive post, a minus post. And we would connect them together, and that came from our command post. So we had connected those into our instruments. But prior to that, though, we had to check out the microphones. So we had to put a canvas cover around the microphone that was covered with dirt. And they would be clapped with our hands. And, of course, the needles at our base would move because we were picking up sound. So every time the enemy would fire, microphones would pick the sound up. It would come down through the wires into our meter. They would register. And how we determined where their position was prior to that, we had a map of the whole regime, and we had coordinates on each end of the island. So when we had set the artillery pieces, we made sure that they were in a grid, knowing what the coordinates were. And we knew where the coordinates were at the other end of the island. That's the only way we could tell how far they were by the coordinates. So anyway, when they fired, the sound comes into the microphone, comes into our command post. We would get a series of plus readings and a series of minus readings. So the more plus readings we got, the more accuracy we were getting to the position. So after we got all that data, of course, we had a lot of work. We had to calculate the elevation, the range, and the distance for the artillery. And that's what we did over there in New Virginia. It was back in 1945. We first went to Hawaii, and then we went up to Hilo. That's a little island. This is where we trained. This is where the Camp Toraro was for the Marine Base. And the 5th Marine Division had organized there. We trained there. We knew we were going to go to combat sometime, so we actually trained there all the time. I was really homesick at first. Of course, you have a lot of buddies with you. They keep you going a lot. So we were anxious to get there also. I think it was my 11th weight whenever we landed on Iwo. Before we got off aboard the ship, we had to get on the side of the ropes into what they call a duck. It was a motorized vehicle that runs in the water and gets up on the beach. We had a hard time getting on the beach because the sand was so thick and black. We couldn't get any traction. So they had to put some wire mesh down to get the vehicle up on the beach. So finally, we got partway up. We got out, and we got in the water about 18 inches, so we finally got on the dry land. And so we kept on going, and we had to stay at the beach. So how we had to stay there, the patrol came up and said, you're going to have to stay overnight because you can't leave. And so we did. We had to dig in at the edge of the beach. So when we dug in, of course, before we went along, we had to carry our equipment, which was sound-raising equipment, and all the other apparatus with it. I'm not sure about you, it wasn't too far from us. And they were firing mortars down on the beach. And I didn't actually realize that we were so close to an ammo dump at that time. Finally, the mortars started coming down and hit the ammo dump. And all the 105 howitzers, the shells, the 75s, the 30-30 cals, they exploded. They came up on top, clean above us, upon the beach, and bursted. And all the sand had come down, came down on me, and my buddy was there. Of course, we were in the foxhole at that time. And all the sand came down on me, and he had a shovel. He started shoveling me out. We were very, very fortunate that we got out of there alive. And then the next day, the patrol came up and they said that some of the shells went down as far as 50 to 80 yards along the beach. It really injured a lot of Marines and killed a lot of Marines for that particular incident. And while that ammo was going on, we had two Marines actually crawling up with a fire extinguisher trying to put the fire out. So one of them didn't make it. And, of course, the other one, he finally got it put out. So the next day, we had to leave, and so we had to carry all our equipment back up there. We had to follow that tank to get to our position. And here where we got to, a lieutenant had us missing in action. We didn't show up that day, so they were very, very pleased to see us. So from there on, of course, then, you know, we had to move forward. At the end of the campaign, which was about 30-some days, they knocked down 50 Japanese artilleries, and we got a presidential citation on that. I can remember when they laid out an area for the graveyard. Most of our units were around there watching, placing the bodies in the graveyard. That was one thing. Very, very, very sad. We were out on the beach. There was this Marine had a tripod with a telescope. He hollered at me, Hey, Marine, come on down. He says, You want to see history made? I said, Yes. So I went down. He says, Come on, look through that telescope. I looked up there. By golly, there he was. The first time I saw the flag being raised. And, of course, you know, they raised it the second time. They went down to the ship and got a much larger flag to be brought up to be placed up there. How did that make you feel? Oh, terrific. The very last day, my birthday was on the 27th of March, I think. We left maybe a couple of days after that. That was my time that I can clearly remember, the leaving after my birthday, the 19th birthday. We went back to Pearl Harbor. That was back up in Hilo to recuperate. Of course, we were there until the time we were to leave to go to occupation in Sasebo in Japan. If we had to evade Japan, we'd evade Sasebo anyway. They told us that we had to go through this canal to get into Sasebo. And if we had to evade that, they had artillery on each side of the channel. We would have never made it through that channel. I think our whole division would have been wiped out, really, if we had to go there. So, we were really fortunate the war was over. Well, when we got there, they were very friendly. And we couldn't drink their water or food, because we had to carry purification tablets for our water. Just in case, you know, we had to have water. We had to go through an area where we had to disarm some Japanese troops, all their weapons, rifles, and all that stuff like that. And then, of course, you know, they had points. You get discharged on points. You had to have 40 points to discharge. And I had that many. We packed up, and we boarded the boat. We went back to Camp Pendleton. And then, from there, we took a train all the way into Great Lakes, Michigan. That's where we were discharged. I remember it was on April the 6th. In 1946, we were discharged. If you're enjoying this video, you should join our exclusive Patreon community to receive early access to videos each week, the chance to send questions to our heroes, and much more. We scour the country to identify, film, share, and preserve these first-hand Battlefield accounts. And time is of the essence. To join our mission, visit patreon.com slash American Veterans Center or click the link in our description. It's up to each of us to guard their legacy and honor their sacrifice. Thanks, and now back to the interview. My dad and brother came to the railroad station and picked me up. After the war, we signed up on a 50-20 club. You know, you got $20 a week until you got a job. So I got hired for the city of Altoona. And, of course, with this training I had at Quantico, it was surveying. And I had experience on surveying. So there was an opening for the city engineering department. So that's how I got in with experience. And I became a surveyor and an engineer. I spent 45 years with the city. I've been retired since 91. We go down, come off the LST, and I had to carry some equipment with me. You could see that. We were working over towards the area where we were going to dig in. And then we placed all our equipment. Of course, we had to dig a foxhole first. And we had to place all our equipment in there to protect it in case it would get damaged. And I can recall that. This is one of my buddies that, I think this is one of my buddies that pulled me out of this foxhole. That sand come out on me. Where are you? Right here. I was 18 years old on that photo. I tremendously feel highly about it, really. I could do it again if I had to, really.