Iwo Jima Vet Ted Below Recalls Historic Battle 75 Years Later (Full Interview)

we went into the beach dropped the tailgate and we got up and and went around them and the first thing I did when I get around him of course was hit the deck so I wouldn't get shot at because they were shooting at us and I looked up and a head rolled across in front of me that was one of my buddies and that was my introduction to Iwo Jima hi I'm Greg Caramba our guest today is Theodore below he is a US Marine Corps veteran of World War two and the Battle of Iwo Jima and sir thank you very much for being with us you're welcome where were you born and raised sir I was born in Brooklyn I was raised all over the country my father was in show business and so we traveled a lot what kind of show business did he do almost anything that would make a book he sang he told jokes and I don't remember what else when did you join the service oh goodness my 18th birthday would don't ask me when that was because I I don't remember well ok and why did you join the Marine Corps well I lived in Brooklyn and I've kept seeing these sailors and and army guys all running around drunk so I didn't see many drugs Marines so I just signed on the Marine Corps what I realized later was there was no drunk Marines because there was no Marine base there so you're saying they might drink once in a while huh so the Marines do drink every once in a while Oh only once in a while just about every other minute they can get hold of booze where did you do your training sir well don't go and I can't think of the name of the base but it was in South Carolina no darn Paris island parris island that's it ok and when were you deployed well I after I finished with training in Parris Island they had opened up the school for parachutists in north carolina and i attended that became one of the first parachute Marines that they had had in a long time of course the Marine Corps didn't have parachutes in it and I figured it probably didn't have the money to pay for it either so where did they send you after that Camp Lejeune North Carolina and from there we went to Canada and was in California but I can't think of the camps name probably Pendleton yes can't pedal right ok and when did they send you into the Pacific Theater or where did they send you perhaps it's more important you know I don't remember okay what do you remember about preparing for the Battle of Iwo Jima actually not much I understand you were stationed on Hawaii for a while yes there was what did you do there learn to swim in the Hawaiian surf and to climb some of their mountains well that would come in handy oh yeah and and I also was in a class to become a sniper really really what was that like level was different got along got a chance to get in a lot of different sensations to climb up on trees and shoot at things and that kind of stuff did you ever get to use that skill in combat no they didn't let you do that so what would you remember about the Battle of Iwo Jima itself do you remember the shoreline the Japanese resistance anything come to mind well a lot of things come to mind specially after listening to this stuff about Iwo Jima we were in the first wave we came in in troop ships and they put us in [Music] Amtrak's AM trackers is kind of like a pickup truck but it has no wheels but paddles and so we got lined up to come straight in toward the beach at Iwo Jima and happened that a couple of big Navy battleships were in our way so we had to go in and go around them and when we were going around them they were firing at the Ujima so it knocked us pretty close to cold the cause of all the noise getting those big guns fired right over our heads we went into the beach the Amtrak's pulled up on the beach stopped dropped the tailgate and we got up and and went around them and the first thing I did when I get around him of course was hit the deck so I wouldn't get shot at because they were shooting at us and I looked up and a head rolled across in front of me that was one of my buddies and that was my introduction to Iwo Jima how did you keep going after that because that's what I was supposed to do I had gone to different demolition school and so I was had a lot of practice blowing things up and one of the first things they did was send this up on on the wooden team called Hills they were little Rises and what they really were were were caves and the Japs were in the cave and it was our job to blow them up or my job and so I had gone up there with a 20-pound pact of tnc strapped to me and the trick was to get to the emplacement opening and throw the twenty pounds of TNT into the cave the problem was that if it stayed in there very long I mean you know like 10 15 minutes they would throw it back out so we would we had mechanical fuses and the fuses were set for 19 seconds which is way too long so we would count and count one chimpanzee two chimpanzee three chimpanzee until you do you know about 16 or 18 because you want to throw it in there before nineteen and so that's like I countered that with the first few as I counted to 17 chimpanzees and that was too long so then I counted to 19 and threw it in and fell flat on my face so that it blew over me and that's the first thing we did it it would Jima and it's the thing I remember probably the most about he would GMO it was certainly different than any place I had ever been why well for one thing it started out after we hit the beach somehow the Japs stopped the Navy from shooting at us and we were stuck on a beach we couldn't get up we couldn't go back to the boats and so we were stuck on the beach for four days with no refreshed I shouldn't say refreshments worked but no food and no ammunition and no water well as I had been a parachutist we had learned to survive on what was called composition d2 or something like that it was chocolate candy and it was a chocolate bar that was about an inch thick and the only way you could could really handle that was to put it on a rock or on a helmet and break it into pieces and then stick it in your mouth and it usually lasts in about an hour what I don't remember and we must had was water we had cam teams we do which took about a quart of water and that we certainly must have gotten water somehow but I don't remember how for days without water would have been a big problem yes it was so then how did you get off the beach well that's when I went up and blew up caves but how did you get up there if you were pig lost I guess I don't really remember and it's and he's thinking about except that I'm wound up there doing it okay and is that what you did for the entirety of the battle I doubt but I remember we we moved up I don't know which end it was but was the other end anyway no not Suribachi and one of the things that want to make a note they put up a lot of noise about raising the flag at Suribachi and that really burned us up because those guys got up there and they raised the flags in five days and and they stopped combat they Stu sat up there and we went 30 days to finish up the island and so we it really got to us that they were very famous and heroes and everything and and here they didn't fight for longer than five days and we did thirty or about thirty so we moved up to what I think was the north end of the island and while we were doing it we came across a landing strip and a big bomber one of ours with the crew landed on there and we realized then why we were there to provide that landing strip it was just about a hundred miles from from Japan and so we knew then what the reason was for us to be up there risking our necks and I remember going up to the end up there of the ends of the runway and one of the things I remember we would have foxholes that sands of Iwo Jima were fairly easy to dig in there were coarse sand and I were black and [Music] the way we used to work is that there'd be two guys in a foxhole and one guy had one he wouldn't went to sleep the one guy would stay awake and be maybe a guard and you'd sleep for two hours then you'd switch and I was sleeping as a demolitionist I couldn't carry a carbine and all the junk I was carrying so I carried a 38 revolver which my father had sent to be spit on Western and I used to sleep with that cop which is not very Pro smart and sometime all of a sudden I felt I've heard that my buddy who was guarding me get up and run from the hug the foxhole and so I was holding the pistol on my chest and I looked up and I saw this Japanese marine and I want to make a note that although we hated Japanese Marines they were entirely different than regular Japanese who think of Japanese as being little people and these guys were at least 6 feet tall and they were very good soldiers but anyway I heard it heard and saw this marine right so the glitter of a knife and I pulled a pistol up and shot him and he disappeared and the morning and when it got light I got out and didn't see the body but there were a couple of big pools of blood so I must have hit him and it's something I still remember those kind of the other thing I remember about II was I was feeling pretty miserable and in the middle of the night I looked up the sky and the moon was behind clouds and it was beautiful and I thought to myself well there's still some beauty in life another thing I remember is that we were in our foxholes during a day and a couple of stretch of carriers came by me and what is interesting is we had stretcher bearers who were going out and bringing people back in and the only way you could do that is is to stand one at each end of the stretcher and trying to run for some place that way you can hide it and take care of him and all the stretcher bearers were conscientious objectors and no regular they were few third eye are guns and and you know we had nothing but respect for them and speaking of that I remember seeing I think probably purple deers later days later when a stretcher came by and one the guy on the stretcher have lost an arm and he was had his artery and his teeth keep trying to keep from bleeding to death and I still can see that sometimes so it was not a very good place and as I said I took about three days to finish Ujima and on a 29th day I was out put the island word that was about the end of it and I was told by a lieutenant to take a bazooka which is basically a rocket that you shoot out of a piece of pipe and to shoot at a 5-inch gun that was shooting it at our people and the way you did that you had taken and put the pipe on your shoulder and you had a helper who then shoved the rocket in there and there were two wires that they connected and once they're connected to they'd slap you on a shoulder and that told you that if you press the trigger it would fire the rocket the problem was though was we hadn't learned how to handle or make bazookas that would just fire straight and they'd fishtailed all over the place so I had to fire and this 5-inch gun and of course it it didn't come anywhere near it and when my helper had hooked it up I told him I said want to get the wires hooked we were on this at the base of a Japanese anti-aircraft gun and right in back of us was a I think there's about a 20 foot deep ditch so I told him a minute you got you give me that hand single leg tapped on the back I said jump by hell out of here and down on the ditch so he tapped and where I fired and he tapped and jumped down and the rocket never got near that 5-inch gun so they fired and that anti-aircraft gun came off its mount and landed on me and so I was lucky enough to to be hold off in a stretcher to the naval base or whatever and I was sent off when I spent three years well three months I'm sorry in three different Navy hospitals and then they just charged me and it was the end of the war mister below we only have a couple of minutes left here what do you think of most when you think of your service to our country and in particular at Iwo Jima I probably think most is how many of our people lost their lives were a good part of their lives protecting our country and I have always felt that it was well worth it and those guys were doing my thing where I had done and what we should have done because we live in a great country and finally sir what would you like to be sure that younger generations know about your service and the service of your generation that there are times in our history or what a big one called that the country that we live in there's really a wonderful country is worth defending sir thank you so much for your time with us today we truly appreciate it and most of all thank you for your tremendous service to our country well I'm really proud that I did and my friends did because it's what we should do thank you you're most welcome sir Theodore below US Marine Corps veteran of World War two and the Battle of Iwo Jima I'm Greg Caramba this is Veterans Chronicles you

Channel: American Veterans Center

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Id: VcdQxcGHFSo

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020