WW2 Pacific Combat Marine Tells All

say and spell your name right now for me please well it's benjamin eddie edwin newman b-e-n-j-a-m-i-n e-d-w-i-n n-e-w-m-a okay what were you doing in 1941 before pearl harbor was blocked i was a kid just playing around in the woods we lived out in the far east side and we used to play in the woods is in the wintertime it's cold we used to like go out and build a fire and i don't remember if we cooked anything on the fire i don't remember that now but uh anyhow we used to go out and build a fire and play in the woods and stuff and and i had horses at home and and bird dogs and that was always my job to take care of the horses and the bird dogs and and those kinds of things i i didn't have a job uh mom wouldn't let me work she said i'd go to work soon enough she wanted me to stay a kid as long as i could i was 16 when pearl harbor happened how long after pearl harbor did you enlist and in what service did you enlist well i was 16 when pearl harbor happened and then of course that month later on i was 17 and i thought strongly of going into the service in 42 before i finished my senior year in high school and my grandpa kind of talked me out of that and then the government changed things that they didn't want you enlisting anymore at that age they wanted you to finish high school and then the draft would be initiated so that's what happened in january the 22nd was the day i graduated from high school and i remember walking down lodge avenue and thinking wouldn't it be something if my draft papers were in the mailbox and i got home and looked and they were in there the very day i graduated and uh so i went in then and in the service in april of 1943 and what branch of service did you enlist in i enlisted in the marines and where did you go from there where did you take your your basic training and and what happened from there well from there went to san diego and that's where the recruit depot is on the west coast for the marine corps and it was right in the town of san diego and so anyhow i took my recruit training there and then at that time they started granting a 10-day leave when you finish boot camp they give you a 10-day leave well it's a four-day trip on a train all the way from san diego to evansville and i had four days going and four days going back and it gave me about a day and a half in evansville and so but i had a i had a girlfriend in evansville and we felt pretty strong about each other and so i had to come home and see her and then when i went back where i they gave you uh they kind of took the the uh lines across the map the uh what are that longitude okay and we're pretty much on par with san francisco so they assigned me to the san francisco area which was mary island california at the time and they built ships there that was north of san francisco maryland was and they had a penitentiary there for government for you know service people and so i went on guard duty there and you know a young kid like that on guard duty with a war going on that's a little more than you can handle and i i didn't care for it at all so i volunteered for the to go overseas as a replacement and uh when i did when i they sent me down to camp elliot which is down near san diego to await being called up overseas well in the meantime the fourth marine division had moved from the east coast to the west coast and when they uh came to the west coast they weren't a complete unit some of the some of the unit had come down the atlantic coast and gone through the panama canal come up the california coast and everything to camp pendleton and the rest of them would travel by train across cross country so anyway why i was assigned to the fourth marine division so i didn't go overseas i went to camp pendleton and took my my took training there because i had no training combat training or anything like that i didn't to have gone overseas would have been a stretch but it happened it happened it just didn't happen to me that time but anyhow i i joined them i guess it must have been in about august or late july and um we went overseas then in january the 13th of 1944 and we went directly from san diego we stopped off at the hawaiian islands and got regrouped ships all got together and regrouped and then we took off for kwajalein the fourth division did and uh we went right directly into combat we never got off the ships at maui we never got off the ships or anything we stayed on a ship but we went directly to mount to a kwajalein and that wasn't much at all there i had i was where i landed was the airfield and there wasn't any japs on the airfield they'd all run over to the adjoining island which had all the trees and all the cover on it and they had their fortifications over there so uh i didn't uh i didn't even get into much right there but uh they had some had some excitement there on on kwajalein they had a a marine threw a satchel charge inside of a torpedo storage dump not knowing where he was throwing it and it blew a hole in the ground by as big as this room here about 30 feet deep and i went over there to see that because when that thing went off i bounced on the ground and i was half a mile away from it and there was debris it fell on us over there from that and it was a whole i got a picture of it at home but uh anyhow that when that was over with we went back to maui and uh we uh we stayed on maui then that was our home base the fourth marine division's home base and we trained there and we did a lot of amphibious stuff there of course we did that in california when i when i joined the fourth marine division we were always out in the ocean san clemente island making landings and all that kind of stuff around here but anyhow why in may of uh 44. we uh packed up and left maui went down to the dock and loaded up on the ships down there and went up to pearl harbor and pulled in there and docked at pearl city and we stayed there at pearl city for about two weeks just docked there and nobody said anything about where we were going any place or if we were going any place or anything but then anyhow we pulled out of out of pearl city and pulled on out of pearl harbor got out in the ocean and they told us we were going to saipan and uh uh that was that was pretty close to around the first of june i guess when we pulled out of there maybe a little bit a little bit earlier than that because uh when we were on board ship heading for saipan there was a radio jeep anchored on the deck right there and they were always getting tokyo roads and getting all the news and everything and they got the news that they'd landed in normandy june the 6th and so then we didn't get to saipan until the 15th of june and we landed there on the 15th of june and that for me that lasted 30 about 37 days and i never missed a day and i never missed a minute with the company uh we took an awful lot of casualties when we landed they split us up uh a and c company i was in b company a and c company moved up to what they called the 01 line that's where they wanted you to be on the first day and that was about a half mile inland and we got out at the beach and the beach was where all their artillery fell because they had planned on us landing on the beach and they were going to get us when we landed on the beach well fortunately i was in the second wave and we went in about 200 yards and got out inland you know what they caught it was a little bit uh well the town was sharing kanoa but it was a little uh japanese park and they had little bridges there and little things and different stuff of course shells were falling all in it and everything all around us and everything and the first platoon i was in the third platoon the first platoon took quite a bit of the artillery fire and we lost a bunch of them and the second platoon they lost their platoon leader lieutenant um harry blaine who's the sweetest guy he was killed right away and we kind of kind of just dug in there and and uh we uh the shells were still falling all around and marines were coming back all bloodied and everything from up at the old one line they'd run into a lot of small arms fire up there they had a battle going on up there too and and they were coming back through and and uh we'd taken up they had there was a little lake there was called lake sousapay and there was a cane field around this lake and the water was up in the lake a little bit and we got out in the water and that was our foxhole we sat in water for two days and two nights and the shells a lot of the mortar shells didn't go off when they hit that lake and that water you'd just hear them go down in the mud and everything of course a lot of times they'd go off and blow mud and dirt everywhere and you could hear the ones going over going back to the beach and there was a lot of them going back to the beach but anyhow after the i spent two nights in that in that place and of course we had to be awfully quiet because there were japs running all over the place down there and and uh they were mostly observers and and snipers is what they were and you had to kind of watch watch it at night stay awake at night well my foxhole buddy that was with me was he was a b.a.r man and i was his ammunition carrier and anyhow he had a habit of going to when he slept at night having nightmares and why they ever left him in the marine corps i'll never understand and and that's what the doctor said about him when he when he wound up in the hospitals that they don't understand how they ever let him stay in the marine corps but he did and when he had a nightmare he used to get up and run and uh he uh he lost a bayonet one night he took his bayonet and threw it somewhere and lost that and he went out in the rain one night on maui and laid out there in the rain until it finally woke him up and he came back in and got back in his bunk but then he was supposed to be sleeping and i was watching and i was sitting we were sitting across from each other like this and he started started his nightmare routine he's always chasing some guy and he'd say stop him stop him i say he was the sweetest guy sweetest guy you ever wanted to know but anyhow he did this nightmare and when he did i just leaped right straight across right on top of him and i got a hold of his both of his biceps and i put my chest right in his face and i just held him as hard as i could because he was a lot stronger than i was and i was pretty much of a lightweight but anyhow i held him down and held his arms and got him awake and the next morning a sergeant in the back behind us there said what's going on over with you guys last night he says i almost shot you and i never told him i know we never said anything we didn't tell him he had a nightmare or anything we just didn't say anything uh because we didn't particularly care for him anyhow and he was the one that i had authority my dad sent me a 45 pistol uh it was a government-issued pistol from world war one i imagine and the parts in it were kind of worn and it the hammer didn't always stay back when you pull the hammer back to fire that first round sometimes that hammer wouldn't stay back real good you had to kind of make sure it locked in place and where you're aiming at when you're doing all that so anyhow i tried to get it fixed before we went overseas and you couldn't take it to the armor there and just turn it over to him because you'd never see it again if you did so i held on to it and and finally one of the corporals there in the knew i had it and he said well let me take a look at it so he worked on it he couldn't do anything with it it needed parts and he said well he couldn't he did he wouldn't advise taking it to the armor to get it done so anyway why i never did get it done but in the meantime this sergeant he tried to get that pistol away from me he kept telling me all the time give me that pistol he said he wanted to give it to gordon gordon was our first lieutenant of our platoon and i didn't really care that much for him either i didn't think he was that good of a man he he was a good man but he he just didn't he just didn't handle these people right of course i was just 18 years old and a kid what did i know you know but that's the way i felt about him now and so anyhow i um he kept trying to get that pistol away from me when we were on board the ship getting ready to land on saipan to go get in the boats and land on saipan while he uh he uh i was strapping my 45 on i had the 45 i had a duty belt and i had 45 on this side my knife on this side and i had them tied down to my legs with rawhide thongs and he told me he says newman if you so much just fall down he says i'm going to jerk that pistol off of you and i told him i said well you better make sure i'm dead when you do it but he was the sergeant but he didn't last anyhow he he fizzled out and disappeared nobody ever knew where he went but anyway why the next day after that we moved up to the old one line and that's when my foxhole buddy he couldn't handle it anymore he and he suffered till the day he died he died about in 2000 on december the 7th he uh i went up to see him in wisconsin in 80 in 98 and spent two or three days up there with him and but he never ever recovered from he went over to help a kid that was shot through the chest or somewhere up in there and and when he was helping the kid why the kid threw up and threw up nothing but blood and he just blanked out and that was it he didn't know anything after that and i ran into him that following october in oakland california when i went to the hospital there and when they transferred me from overseas i went to oakland first and went to oakdale hospital and i ran into him right away there and he was still a nervous wreck and everything and he just he never recovered he he became a carpenter in life but he was always 100 disabled and uh but anyway why saipan went on for about 37 days like i said i never missed a minute i was there the whole time and of course there's a lot of things that happened on saipan i don't know what you want to what you want to hear but anyhow i um why don't you ask me something well you said a lot of things happened on saipan tell me about some action that that you were in and you said there in the end you went to the hospital uh in oakland were you wounded yeah i got wounded over on ten in okay yeah after we took saipan while then i kept looking over there attending all the time and i thought i bet we wind up over there when this is all over with and sure enough we did we didn't get any replacements or anything i got promoted to corporal and and i was supposed to have a group but we didn't have any group we didn't have anybody there wasn't that many of us left and so anyhow i um i uh well when we went well a lot of things happened on saipan our lieutenant that one i was telling i didn't particularly care for about the sixth day he got shot through the shoulder and that was a kind of a bad day for us too we lost about six or eight more men that day but we went down into this palm grove and uh when we got in that thing the japs are all dug in down there and just waiting for us and of course when i got down there when i i had the bar by that time i took erdmann's var and i i had had that so um i didn't have it well i had the indian chief was supposed to be my ammunition carrier chief was an old-time marine and he'd been busted so many times it was pathetic but i don't even know if he was a pfc at that time he might have just been a private i don't know but he was my ammunition carrier well when we moved approached this thing we came through a kind of a weed field like down there most of the fields were cane but this was weeds kind of and we got down into this thing and approached this this uh we called it baker's knoll i was in b company and uh but anyhow as we approached this thing my fireworks started so i kind of i was in the in the back row there's guys in front of me and i was kind of in the back row so i kind of skirted around to the left and went around that way and chief went on a head straight well chief got in there and he got killed took a bullet right through the head and so when i skirted around to the left why i ran into several of my buddies over there and one of them was laying on the ground crying and i asked him what's the matter well i never saw him again after that he i guess he they took him back i guess he was i don't know what you call it uh but anyhow he uh for sure we called it cracking up and uh so that's what he did i guess but as i approached why about four japs jumped out of a hole in front of me and one of the first one was carrying a sword and waving it around and everything and there was two three guys in front of me there over to the side and they killed all four of them jabs well in the meantime uh one of the other boys in my squad in my platoon come running over across the way and he was carrying an uh an old winchester 98 uh 97 pump shotgun and it was loaded with double locked buckshot well as he was running across there he stopped and blam in the ground you know they were all in the ground down you couldn't see him and didn't know they were there and and he he's when he was running he stepped over one and turned around and shot him so he ran up behind this coconut tree and that coconut tree was right in front of me right there and when he got up behind that canoe coconut tree all of a sudden he threw both hands up in the air like that and fell straight back on his back and he was laying on the ground he was trying to get his harness off his shoulders and a corpsman come running up there to him and that corman sat down with his back to that coconut tree and was was checking on deadman was this boy's name he was a marmon and he was checking on him and all of a sudden he picked up his his car being turned around and blamed it was one right behind him behind a coke in that tree so the corpsman got him and then he worked on dudman and sent deadman back but i think he died on the he died in the jeep going back to the beach i think he didn't make it he got shot down through here somewhere and it came out under his arm up here and anyhow i i moved on into that area then and when i did i was looking around for something to get behind there wasn't much stuff laying around anywhere but there was this dead cow laying over there it was a it was an oxen you've seen these oxens with kind of the pointed back horns they had a lot of them there and they used them for plowing and pulling carts and everything we had one our company had one that carried the packs and different stuff on them and around followed us wherever we went but anyway why um there was about four marines behind that that cow so i went over and i got right at his tail right the cow was laying these legs out like that and he'd been dead a couple two three days because he was pretty swollen and everything and i got there by his tail and while we were there the man the japs opened up on us with a machine gun somewhere and they they just literally break that whole area and one of the boys shot him right through the cheeks if he's behind and he was bleeding like crazy in there and jumping around and there was a lieutenant behind that cow up near his head and a bullet went through his helmet and grazed the top of his head and he flopped around like a chicken with his head chopped off and finally the guy sitting next to me was titter it was old george titter and he was in my group and george grabbed hold that lieutenant and pulled him over there and knocked his helmet off and rubbed the top of his head and said you're all right he says you didn't get hit so that lieutenant had a big smile on his face i remember seeing that but then i didn't see him anymore he disappeared and then this boy was crying back there got shot through the rear end and and everything and titter said eddie says you bring my belt out in my bar when you come out of here and he says i'm going to carry him out of here so he picked him up threw him across his shoulder and carried him out and i covered him while he was gone and nothing went on there was a there was four tanks with us in this area that were going through there were our tanks and they were firing that 75 if they saw something where there's really something going on they'd fire that 75 in there and that machine gun the guy held that trigger down on that machine gun and that thing was going all the time so you had to wave to him let him know where you were and so anyhow i um i waved to that tank a couple of times and he knew where i was and and while i was doing that about as far as for me that boy right there standing uh all of a sudden this helmet come up out of the ground and he came right on up and he was looking that way and i was at right angles to him but he was looking the other way the way we came down he didn't know i was aware behind that cow so anyhow i lined up on him but i just all i did was look down the barrel i didn't i think i was this is the first time i fired a shot and i just was well i i guess it was just uh you get a little buck fever or something when you do that but anyway i fired at him but i missed him i hit in the dirt in front of him and he went back down in the hole so i thought well this ain't going to happen again and what happened was my bar jammed too a bar has a magazine it's in the bottom and when you fire it a lot of times the magazine release will let go and it'll drop down a little well when it drops down it only has to drop down maybe a quarter of an inch that bolt comes back it can't pick a round up and put it back in there so you're on an empty chamber so what you got to do then you got to hit that thing real hard like that and pull that operating handle down which is on the left hand side of the bar and then because it fires with the bolt wide open so anyhow i did all that in the meantime he comes back up again only this time he stuck his rifle up first and he came up with his head and i let him come on up i sighted in on him that time and i put one right through his head and dropped him that was the first one i killed and anyway when i stayed behind that that cow and i was all by myself back there i couldn't even see any of the marines around but in the meantime why the tank was operating and he was pretty far away from me he was pretty far away he was as far away as almost outside that door and he was running at right angles to me across there like that well as he was going a jumped up behind him behind the tank after he passed and he had a crate in his hands and he ran up behind that tank and dropped that crate on the back of that tank well on the tanks when they landed over there they had these extensions on their exhaust so they go through the surf and he dropped it in behind that extension well i didn't think anything about it but i got to my knees as fast as i could because it's hard to fire they are laying down flat on the ground there's too much weight there and it's too hard to handle so i got on my knees and fired two three rounds at him down there and he he dropped but i don't know if i hit him or not but he already did the dirty work before did that but i didn't know didn't think about that thing being a charge that he put on there i didn't know what it was well the tank made a right turn and headed toward me so as he got up close to me i waved to the guy to make sure i was in there he knew where i was and he kept on coming and he got pulled right alongside of me and i could reach out and touch him just he was that close he just cleared the cows behind back there and i could reach out and touch him and the tank got about two-thirds of the way past me and it blew and when that thing blew i'm telling you of course i was up close to the tank very close to it so the brunt of the explosion went over the top i was under that but it still bounced off the ground and red fire was everywhere and the tank coughed a couple of times and stopped and i guess the guys in the tank got out i don't know i never did hear them getting out or anything but i couldn't hear anything i mean then that thing blew my ears went to pieces and my throat something down here in my chest i thought something was broke loose down there because when i swallowed it felt like my adam's apple and everything else was going to come back up in my throat again and so anyway why i i laid there for a while and and nothing was happening it was beginning the sun was going down and it was going to get dark for a long and i thought i better get out of here because my own men are going to shoot me here if i don't and i was on the side of the tank anyhow so i uh gathered up my bar and his bar and his ammunition belt and all that junk and i ran around the front end of the tank then and ran on back up there and fortunately uh guys were standing around up there and uh there was no nothing happening it bounced some machine gun bullets off of the off of a tank up there and hit a kernel and and they hauled him out of there and that was big news and uh so anyhow i i went on out and then that night we've set up a kind of a oh a little defense along the area where we moved down into that area and watched it that night and uh one come running down the hill at night and they the destroyers out in the ocean were firing these big star shells and it just light the light to place up like daylight so you can't you don't want to look up when you see one of those you want to keep your head down and just look around the brim of your helmet if you can because your face lights up like a like that light right there if you look up and they can see as plain as day at night so you don't ever want to look at a star shell so i saw him out one out there running around and i knocked him down and then the next day we went up they put us in front of a there was a battery of uh marine 75s there that were firing and uh they were going to fire all through the night too they were shooting up on the mountain that's where all the japs and most of them had retreated to is a mountain and so we we went up there and got in front of that in front of their artillery pieces and spread out in front of it so if anybody did come down come at them while they'd have to go through us first but anyhow when they fired those batteries that my chest jumped every time when they did that and then when i fired my blr it jumped and that lasted for about two weeks and i i i don't know what i don't know what it was it whatever it was finally tightened up again i guess but uh because it never bothered me anymore but um anyway why then we were pretty well shot up we didn't have we didn't have very many people at all so they were using us mainly to fill in at night if they had a place in a line somewhere that needed filling in why we'd fill in and we were the we were the extreme left flank of the whole fourth division and my company was the extreme left flank of the fourth division i mean extreme there wasn't anybody after us and the second division wasn't tied into us the second division landed there too but they weren't tied into us because they were going through that mountain and they couldn't keep up with us so anyhow i they used to get it call us out late in the afternoon and say you got to fill in over here somewhere well that meant you had to hustle over there we just run you to death and uh hot my god it was hot there the sweat the run off of you run off a stream off the ends of your fingers and your hands would get all warped and everything like you'd been in water all day from the sweat and mosquitoes would carry off at night and we had these little bottles of scat they gave us this and used i i always kept my sleeves rolled up about here on both sides and my blouse the top button on the second button i always kept open on it and both knees went out of my pants pretty early and i got sunburned on both knees so bad it just it was really burnt bad and my from here down was burnt and my neck right here was all burnt for three three or four summers after i got home i always had two different colors of skin from here down and up it was it was strange looking and these things here stayed brown for years they just the brown wouldn't go away on them it burned in there so hard but uh anyhow we just we kept that up and then of course uh we didn't have a lieutenant even for our platoon and they didn't have a sergeant our sergeant was killed he got on the first day he got shot through the arm he went out on a ship and got healed up and came back and the first day he was back i asked him i said why the heck did you come back and he says i just wanted to come back i wanted to be here with the boys and i said well i said if you got out of that once you oughta stayed out of it and he got killed that day the sniper shot him right through the heart i wasn't next to him when it happened i was they'd sent us on up ahead somewhere to go up and scout around and check on some stuff and he was standing back there and with some other guys and sniper killed him so we did we didn't have any leadership at all we pretty much were on our own and then finally they assigned us a lieutenant lieutenant walker and he was a nice guy he was a he was a real nice guy i i i think i could have really followed him anywhere but uh anyway why when he first got there why he took off marching down a road one day and those guys had been up here running all over that place all that time and and that our guy from headquarters that drove the jeep he brought some ten and one racings up there to us well good night we'd been eating them little old can rations and things and and a cardboard boxes terrible stuff you know to eat and these ten and one rations had preserved green beans and peas and corn and and bread and everything in it but they were in a cardboard box about like that and you had to carry them so we were carrying those boxes of of let's see they called those ten and ones ten and one raisins we were carrying those they'd swiped them from the army the army was on the island too and they'd swiped those from the army he said and brought them up there to us and we were just hoping we could get to a spot where we could build a fire that night or something and and you could always use a helmet for a pot or something if you had to you know to cook some green beans or something in and so anyway i always saved a canteen of water we got two canteens of water a day and i didn't drink more than one canteen because i thought well if they don't come up the second day and i probably says i won't have one so i'm going to hang on to one so i kept one in reserve all the time and so anyway why we always had water and we didn't have those ten and one rations but a couple of times but now this lieutenant was hot footing it down the road here you know and finally a couple of guys in the back said hey tell that son of a to slow down back there we can't go on like this so he did he slowed down and he looked around kind of surprised you know and so he slowed his gait down and then we went down and we went into attack one day and went down this hill and there was a lot of tree stumps they just cut the it was a hill facing the ocean out over the lagoon and everything where where we landed where we came into the island i guess they suspected at times you know they might be you know a landing there and that'd be an ideal place for a sniper to be and they had brush piled up in front of these stumps and it was on the side of a hill and had this brush piled up on the ocean side of these things and they sent us down through this well heck the guys in the mouth fit the old guy and they started walking down there and they walked right by those damn stumps you know i thought there's something not right here that i don't like the looks of them stumps and so i hung back and they got out in front of me about as far away as from here to that chair over there and uh as i was coming down there i was kind of walking kind of slow and watching this stump here come a rifle barrel right between two sticks on that stump so i took a real couple of quick steps and turned around and let them have about four rounds in that hole and they started screaming in there and killed themselves with grenades finished themselves off with grenades and of course that lieutenant was one of them it was out in front of me there that lieutenant looked around you could have bought all them guys for a quarter and they they just didn't know what to say didn't know what to think or anything else but i guarantee those tree stumps were checked out after that and we didn't get down that hill very far that day and they called us back now why they called us back i never knew this is a part has always been a mystery to me and i would have liked to have known more about what their reasoning was but they called us back we went back up the hill got up on the flat up there and we just take a break you know so we were all taking a break and it was in the afternoon by that time and it must have been about mid-afternoon and uh anyhow this lieutenant walker came walking back past and he came over me he said newman bring your bar and come with me so i grabbed my bail or jumped on my feet and he took off walking through the gun we walked through the whole company out in front and down the hill we went on down the hill and on down and right the side of this hill was kind of an outcropping like this right here that went around and it ground on top of it but not much it was kind of open in the top but down this hill at the bottom there was a there was a a brush pile it wasn't a brush pile it was brushed stacked all the way about as far as from here to that wall over there it was a pretty long pile of brush and it was pretty high it was stacked up about that high and thick very thick you couldn't see through it and he we went down this hill and i mean it was a steep hill we climbed down that hill and got down there and we hit this little patch of flat ground right there and he walked over there and there wasn't a thing in front of us there wasn't a there was a great big old about as far from here that brick wall over there there was a great big old outcropping of a coral rock sitting there and i was about as far away from the brush pile as well i was i was a little farther from here to the gentleman sitting over there and he said and we were standing there and he said what i want you to do he says i want you to spray this area with your bill or just just fire right in that start one end of it and go down through the whole thing and start firing well i had every magazine was full i had three on this side three on this side and one in the bar and there was there was three pockets with two magazines in there there was 20 rounds each in each one of those so i got down on my knees because you can handle that vr better that way i'm down on the ground if i drop the magazine i could pick it up real quick and i had this duty belt around here and i had my cartridge belt for the for the bar had suspenders on it because it was so heavy and had it over my shoulders and i had these two buttons loose on the blouse up here so i started firing in that brush and when i emptied a magazine i pulled it out i stuck it inside my blouse and kept shooting loaded another and kept you well the first thing you know they started shooting back and we weren't behind anything there wasn't a thing in front of us but dirt well they threw a couple grenades out of there but i don't think they knew where i was and i just got down low and put my my helmet down held my helmet down over my face like that the grenades went off and i never got never got hit with i had any number of them thrown at me but just as lucky never got hit and uh but anyhow um i got back up and started firing again well wherever anything came over that brush pile that's where i let it have it and they had these little knee martyrs they call them it's a mortar it's on a rod and it's got a thing you can put against a tree trunk or something like that it's got a tube right here it's got a trigger and they put those projectiles in there and they fire that trigger and it fires that thing well it comes out like a football just spiraling in the air the projectile is about that long and looked like it was about that big around it just come out like a football wherever one of those came up i let them have it and i finally stopped that they didn't come out anymore but they were going by we were so close to them they couldn't hit us with them because we were too close to them they'd hit themselves trying to hit us and uh so anyhow i i kept on shooting i don't know how many magazines i used but uh i did i never let up i just kept shooting and first thing you know i heard a bunch of rustling behind me and i looked back and it was three guys from up up on the hill up there the lieutenant was behind me he had his hands on my shoulders and was pointing to me where he wanted to fire where something happened and i would fire there or i would fire where i wanted to fire if i saw something it was you know it was just that way but i had he hadn't said anything to me for a while i didn't think anything about but when i looked around he was laying on the ground behind me he got shot through the face and he was laying on his back just laying there like that and and these three guys up there saw him get hit so they come running down there and they got a hold of him i remember this one fella said to me he said keep shooting kid keep shooting so i just kept shooting in that brush and they grabbed a hold of him and drug him back up the hill and there i was by myself again i always wound up by myself i don't know why i did but i was always by myself and there was down there by myself again and anyhow i a little while later the sun sun was getting down it was getting down and it was time to get the hell out of there and uh i hated to just turn around run up there because i couldn't see them back there i didn't know if they had a trench back there and was laying down in the trench or what was going on so anyhow this kid came down there and all he had was a carbine and he came down and he says i'm going to help you get out he says you go ahead and get out and i'll cover you i turned around i looked at him and i said get your ass back up that hill so he turned around ran back up the hill and i turned around went with him and i just knew i was going to get it in the back before i got to the top but i didn't there wasn't a shot fired or anything and next day we went down there into that area and i didn't go back behind the brush but i was down at the end of it and i looked down there just to see what was going on there was about four or five of them dead ones laying down there and there was this sergeant sitting there in front of me he'd shot through both legs he couldn't walk and then there was another dead one that tried to crawl back up into this cave he died on his way up there and he had a they all carried a satchel and that satchel they carried their grenades in and they just went around her shoulder and he was laying there and that satchel was laying right there by him then there was another one up there sitting up there that wouldn't stand up couldn't see anything wrong with him don't know whether he was shot somewhere or what but there was no blood on him or anything he just wouldn't stand up he wouldn't do anything he'd just sit there and stare like that so they brought him down the hill and then back in this cave there there the soldiers there was a bunch of civilians in there with them so they brought those civilians out and got them up the hill and then they got this this dap out that wouldn't talk or wouldn't stand up or anything he'd just sit and scoot well they started bringing him down down the hill and he had to pass that dead body well i knew good and well that that satchel right there had grenades in it and i knew good and well he's going to reach over and get in that thing sure shooting and this kid that was bringing him down the hill he wasn't paying any attention he was looking around looking back up at the cave and one thing another and so i watched it he got down there sure enough his hand went over and he got reached in there and that i said hey hollered at him and he put his foot and shoved him on down the hill and he slid down the hill and uh but uh somebody took him off the side and shot him i think it wasn't me i i wasn't too good at doing that but uh anyhow i that uh the lieutenant died that night later on that night he died i don't know if he made it to the jeep or not but i saw him up there they had him propped up against a tree trunk he had a big bandage up on the side of his head but i never ever i never ever knew why we went down there the way we did and when i told this story i told this story at a at a reunion we had one time and several of the boys that were in my outfit that were wounded on saipan but got wounded the first day and never got a chance to see anything else they just got their legs blown off or something and he told me he said the next day he said eddie you know i laid there in bed last night and he says i i couldn't believe why you guys there wasn't something there and i said john it's just like we were out there in that parking lot there wasn't a thing for us to get behind and then incidentally that big old rock over there they bounced a bunch of machine gun bullets off of that trying to find us man they hit that rock and that stuff splintered and the white streaks went across it and but they didn't know where we were they couldn't see us they they just well they couldn't because they didn't stand up if they stood up they could have looked over the brush pile but they wouldn't stand up and how they hit that lieutenant i don't know but he was he was elevated a little higher than i was and i guess that's how they saw him but uh yeah we lost him that that was two lieutenants we lost and then we didn't even well we got another lieutenant when we went to tinium and uh the guys used to come down you'd see the the outfits coming down out of the hills up there and on the roads and stuff you'd see them down there and there was there was always a guy out there on the front fender with his rifle riding shotgun on the front fender on that thing coming down and i told myself that's where i'm going to be when we come down out of the hills i'm getting on that truck and i'm going to get on that front fender and sure enough when the trucks came up i ran over there and i got on that truck first thing and i sat on that front fender on the drive on the passenger side i had that bar stuck right here i held it up there in the air and we came down that mountain had my feet on the bumper and we came down out of the mountains that way that was always a big thrill to me to ride that thing down i always wanted to do that that's kind of called riding shotgun but uh i got a chance to do that and then oh we i i tell you that you hear so much about friendly fire and stuff like that and guys getting hurt and everything and it's true it was it was every any number of incidents in my company that happened that one guy shot another one one guy killed one of our guys one night it was an accident and uh you know some guys are jumpy awful jumpy jumpy at anything they're jumpy in broad daylight and they're extra jumpy at night you know and they just they're dangerous and some guys just freeze up at the slightest thing that happens and they don't always have their weapon on safe you know they're not waiting for something to happen and take it off safe put it on you know firing position and i always kept mine on safe i never took it off unless i was getting ready to do some shooting and uh so anyhow i we had another kid we took we went off the side of this road and they wanted us to go down this hill in single file well i was leading the thing so i went down the hill first and this boy behind me and there was another fella behind him well the third guy in the line he was one of these frees up guys well he got down that hill about 20 yards i guess and there was an old wagon down there that somebody rolled down the hill and it hit a tree and turned over and there was trees all around around us you had to look at look in the trees and look where you stepped and everywhere because you didn't know what you were running into and was a real steep hill well anyhow a shot rang out and a blood curdling scream all at the same time and it was right behind me well i thought we must have passed a and he was up in a tree behind us so i slid down on the ground and started looking all around everyone couldn't see and this kid was laying on the ground back there and finally some guys up on the hill came down and got him and drug him back up the hill and he was shot through the back of his leg right there well the guy behind him froze up for some reason why i don't know and squeezed the round off in his bar and shot this shot his own man right and they were real good buddies they played guitars and sang together and all that kind of stuff shot his own man right in the back of the leg and then they drag him back up well there i am i'm alone again down there in this thing all by myself and i stayed down there for a while and just taken because i didn't know what happened until i got back up on the road and so anyway i don't know if that boy lost his leg or what i i don't know i never knew what ever happened to him um you know just like let me check the tape josh a ufn earshot hello hello uh how much time's on the counter up there okay um let's let's go and put in that second tape do you see it there it's labeled war testimonial we are rolling okay well anyhow we uh we lost several more men up there trying to clear out some places and things and places they'd bypassed and so forth and snipers got them and and another one of those tree trunk incidents they walked past the whole darn bunch walked past that tree trunk the last man came by the killed him and that happened and then well we had we were doing a lot of shooting one night we one day we had to move out at night and that's spooky at night because your own people will suit you and you got it from both sides there you just don't know what to expect moving around at night and i was uh i was a one of the last men in that column that moved out that night went down this road and everything that's spooky and so anyway why we went down this road and then we stepped off the road and went down off the road and turned and went this way so the last man was the last foxhole down here and the first man off the road was the first box hole up here and we all got off the road we were only off the road about 15 feet something like that and they had us dig in well i wasn't the last foxhole there was one more foxhole i don't know how this worked out but there was one more foxhole it was over to my right and anyhow the boy that was with me was named bob hartman he was from up here in westville indiana and uh he laid down beside me well we we just laid down on the ground because there wasn't any well it was rocking stuff there and it just wasn't good digging or anything and i'd been there a long time and i said hell let's don't dig a foxhole just lay down. so we just laid down i asked him i said do you want to watch first and i'll sleep or you want to what do you want and he said eddie i'm so scared he says i don't know what to do i said well then just lay down there and go to sleep and i'll watch in so first thing you know coming down this road was two japs walking the one in front had a sword on and the one in the back i don't know what he had the one following along behind him he must have been some coulee or something the first guy must have been an officer but anyhow as they came down they stepped off the road toward us and they were between us and the road where they were walking and they walked along the side of that road down there and when they they walked in front of the whole company when they got down there to my foxhole i nailed that that first one that officer i knocked him right down but i couldn't get my bar up to hit him in the guts i hit him in the legs and then the sergeant was in the foxhole next to me this was a good sergeant here this was staff sergeant kraft he was a good guy he killed the one behind him so anyhow after i knocked this jab down why you couldn't see it was awful dark it was a dark night but i could see him moving on the ground i could see some movement there and everything and i knew i knocked his legs out from under him and i didn't know what he was doing but he had a pistol and he took a shot at me with a pistol and it just went right over my head this fire flew right out of that that was closest to him from here to you almost and when he did that well then he was down on his knees and i nailed him then but uh that was spooky that was spooky um but then when we left saipan when we came down out of the hills we went back to an area where our sea bags were they unloaded all our sea bags and put them on the island so i went over and picked out my sea bag and worked the combination and got in it i got some clean clothes and stuff out there because all the clothes they brought up there would fit you it was the biggest clothes you ever saw and i wouldn't wear them i couldn't wear them i couldn't wear all that stuff and keep the pants up and everything else and all that kind of stuff so i just kept my old clothes on well both cheeks and my ass were hanging out and both knees were out the bottom part of the legs were ready to fall off my jacket was ripped all the way down here those jackets all in blouses ripped up there in the shoulder first anyhow they were all ripped and dirty filthy never been washed i never shaved for 37 days we didn't get anything for 37 days and most of the time they had diarrhea and all that and i was never plagued with anything like that until the last day and uh so anyhow i we uh we got back and i got in there and i had a pair of khaki pants like these in there and i didn't have another pair of greens in there so i pulled those khaki pants out and put them on and i had another blouse in there so i got a clean blouse out and put in on got some clean socks and my feet were terrible my feet were nearly rotted off so i had the corpsman he got my feet and greased them all up and i got a shower and greased my feet all up and uh wrapped them and banished them and then he said take these bandages off in two days don't leave them on any longer in two days well we had to spend that night we were going to spend that night down on an lst and then the next morning we were going to go down and get in the amp tracks and come out of the lst and head for 10 in so we did we went by boats out to the lst and got on there and we didn't get any replacements or anything we just took what we had antenn was a was a island surrounded by rocks and on the north end there was two little passages there was just big enough for an amtrak or a tank to get through and so they faked the landing down at tinian town which was about eight miles away they faked the landing down there so all the japs were down there so when so we got the whole darn division and everything to those two little gaps and my amphibious tractor broke down in the ocean coming in going to tinion and we floated around out there in that ocean until four o'clock that afternoon and uh finally a army duck came by and he picked us up and took us in and we got out of the amtrak around the duck and i told the guys i said why don't we just spend the night down here on the beach in the morning we'll go up here and look for the company because we had no idea where they were there was no briefing or anything when we went to tinian so we i had no idea where they were so we stayed down there in the rocks that night and then the next morning we went up and started looking for the company and a opened up with a machine gun back in that cane field one of them would come down there and brought a machine gun down there and he sat down there and opened up on him boy i mean he was he was raking the ground about that high there was a great big old rock over there and i i got behind i was pretty close to that rock so i got behind that rock well it wasn't any time until there must have been six guys jumped behind that rock and i was kept getting higher and higher all the time getting rooted out and in the meantime the kid got hit through the face and the mouth and he's his jaw and this doctor had him laying right beside me right there and this doctor was wiring his jaw up he wired his jaw up in place so i guess it wouldn't fall off or something i don't know but anyway why that finally quieted down so we got up and started a tank came in there went in there and knocked that machine gun out so then we uh we took off then looking for the company we finally found them and joined them then and we just progressed up up the island there was a row of mountains on the on our left side and that was the second divisions they always got the mountains it seemed like and we were the extreme left flank again of the whole fourth division and my company was it we were it and uh so we came to an airfield and we spent the night that airfield and that night a sniper killed another couple of boys in our outfit uh so anyhow the next morning we went across that airfield and up up across this airfield was a tree line antennian town was over here and that's where uh our the bottom part of the fourth division was down toward that area and up this tree line every so many feet say every 30 feet or so was a was a mound of dirt it was like a pill box it had a gun slot in the front and had twin mounted uh they must have been at least 20 millimeter guns sticking out of there i think they had what they called a 41 and i don't know what else they had but these were twin mounted and they were sticking out and they were firing as we were going up we're my outfit we were right next to the tree line going up and we had tanks with us well as we went up the hill the tank would fire in there to those uh openings and mangle a gun and kill anybody whoever was in there you would think so anyhow as we were going up the hill why i always stopped and i was the last man in the bunch going up the hill i was looking and watching to see if there's any movement inside those things through that slot when i got to about the third or fourth one a jap's leg was in there and he was scrambling like this trying to get away from the opening i think when the guys went by i was back a little bit i think he think oh everybody was gone and he came over there to look and then i come by so he tried to scramble away so i hollered to joe osborne i said joel there's one in here i said you take that side and i'll go around the other side because there's a scuttle hole on each side of those things so joe went up that side he pulled a pin on a grenade and went up that side and i started around the other side and when i started around there all of a sudden there was this tremendous explosion and i i got hit got hit right right there in the leg right there and it hit just like getting hit with your fist and it kind of jarred me a little bit and then it my leg kind of started drawing in a little bit so i got down on my knees and then i laid down and i couldn't get comfortable so i laid down on my back and i'm putting my leg down and when i did that was horrible so i took my helmet off put my helmet under my knee and rested my knee in the helmet and that kind of took a little bit of the pain away so i laid there on the ground and the bar was laying there so i picked it up and about that time machine gun bullets come flying through there i mean they were just kicking all around and this kid had run over to me to see what was matter he took off and he says i'm going to go get some help he took off running so there was a shell hole over there about four feet away from him pretty good pretty good-sized one so i went over there and i crawled in that shell hole and laid down that to get down below the line of fire and i kept my bar and everything i kept it ready to go because the company was moving they're not stopping they're moving and uh i thought i'm gonna wind up alone here and there's gonna be some sneaking around because nobody had been over on the other side of that tree line no telling what was over there and i thought well here i am alone again and i'm just going to have to see what happens well in the meantime the guy that came down the hill telling me to keep shooting that day him and two other kids came over there and they he took i got my first aid pack out and he took that first aid pack and wrapped around my leg and he said we're going to carry you down the hill so they turned around and took me and took me down the hill and there was a jeep down there waiting with stretchers and stuff on it so i i sat in the front seat of the jeep i got in the jeep and sat in the front seat and they had two or three boys in my company that got run we started running into stuff when we got into that and the company lost they lost more men the guy that i spent most of my time in the foxholes with on saipan lost an eye that day joe who's with me was killed and uh uh let's see tex was tex was hit shot through both legs machine gun got him through both legs and flear the other boy that's in my squad spotted a japanese bar jam and he got down on his knee to work on his bar and he was down like this and that shot at him and the bullet went through his helmet went through this side i think went through this side of his helmet and turned and went into his neck and that you have that fiberglass liner inside that helmet and all that metal parts and that fiberglass and everything went into his neck with a hunk of the metal out of that that helmet it was the funniest looking thing you ever saw there's that bullet he had it he showed it they took it out of his neck on the on the hospital ship we were on the same hospital ship together and uh it was the bullet was just had torn a hunk of metal out of his helmet and just wrapped it around that bullet and the whole thing went in his neck and uh of course they didn't do they didn't do anything on me on board the ship they uh they just gave me sulfa drug and i only take that for a while because the first thing you know i started having backaches and stuff and it gets your kidneys is what it does and you have to drink a lot of water and i wasn't drinking a lot of water because then you'd have to get up and i couldn't get up so i just didn't drink much water so i had to quit taking the sulfa and they didn't want to start me on penicillin or anything so they just let me go well my leg got infected and it swelled way up got great big huge because they wanted i think they wanted it to get get that way but they still didn't do anything to it until i got to hawaii and then in honolulu at the dock there they took me off they had to take me off on a stretcher then put me in an ambulance and took me up to aiea heights hospital naval hospital there and they operated on it right away and got the shrapnel on everything out and they put tubes in and tubes out and stuffed it full of vaseline gauze a hole full of vaseline gauze and when i woke up the next morning there was text in the bunk next to me he i didn't know he'd gotten hit he got hit through both legs and uh anyhow i didn't see the other boy that got hit in the neck anymore he i don't know where he went but i didn't see him anymore but he did see several guys that i knew there in the hospital do you remember the date of your wounding i always said it was july the 31st but what happened was joe got the congressional medal of honor when joe went up there with that grenade in his hand he wound up falling on that grenade uh the guy that that had uh the guy that had assisted well kept told me to keep shooting that day he was a corporal he was an assistant squad leader is what he was um he came over and to joe and i don't know what happened i i didn't know joe got a congressional medal of honor until the infantry journal sent out this green book and i was going through that green book and there was us there was a joel's picture in there in the in the medal of honor people and i thought for god's sake so i got to read the citation and i don't know who wrote the citation but they weren't there where we were and i couldn't get anybody to admit to who wrote the citation and now i've had a lot of second thoughts about it uh hank was this guy's name he wound up being getting a field commission uh he was a good hand he was a good man to have around he wasn't much of a shooter but he was a good guy to organization and and helping guys out and stuff like that he wound up getting a field commission he uh he came by the house one day about 50 years later he called me up and said he was in evansville and i said well where are you and i'll come get you. so he told me and i went over and got him brought him home we talked and i told him i said you know i never could understand what that explosion was that uh when i got hit i said that was no grenade i said that was something more in a grenade he said well he said didn't say much about it but he said i i gave joe a satchel charge he gave him a satchel so here's a guy who had a b.a.r in his hand a grenade with a pin pulled and he gives him a satchel charge and joe i don't know what happened he doesn't know either because he stepped behind a tree there was a humongous tree right next to this thing and he was behind the tree when the explosion went off but they used to ask me all the time in the hospitals they'd say what what was he what was the thing that explosion that got you and i said i don't know i said it was a terrific explosion i said i just always thought maybe they dropped a martyr on us or something i didn't know but i didn't know he gave joel that satchel charge that wasn't part of the plan and so anyhow i and then i wanted to bring this up i that was the end of the war for me but uh anyhow my company my division went on to iwo jima after that and one of the boys in the first got a congressional medal of honor on iwo jima and that was daryl cole the ship the coal uss cole there was two congressional medal designers given them up my company and one was to joe and one was to daryl cole and uh yeah it uh it's a lot of strange things happen when you get into something like that and it that was pretty much that was pretty much everything for me as far as the war went how long were you in the hospital i was finally discharged december the second i thought i was wounded on the 31st of july but in the citation they had the 30th of july so i could have been wrong a day i was counting back days and things i was pretty good at counting back days at that time i could tell you every day it happened on saipan i can't do that anymore because there's some blank spaces i can't fill in but i can remember pretty darn good and i know i met some boys joe had a ship named after him the uss osborne is a destroyer and the destroyer uh president of their of their uh association put a note in our in our fourth division wanted to know anybody that had any information on joel osborne they wanted to know something about joe for their ship so i called this guy and talked to him and they were going to have a reunion down in san antonio texas and he wanted me to come and i said well i've got three other friends that that were in the same squad was joe and so he he said well who are they and i gave him their names and addresses and they called them and then when i he told me he wanted me to come down there to their reunion i got a hold of the techs and and uh one in denver and the one in arizona i had a tough time doing it but i talked them into that's all going there so the four of us met there in san antonio that reunion and of course they treated us like kings and everything that a bunch of sailors did and it was it was real nice and they wanted to hear our stories and things and and we all told the stories and they got the newspaper there and had the newspaper interview us and everything and so forth and that was nice and and i we were made honorary members of their association and i still get their newsletter all the time and we told them about joel and then they had joe's granddaughter was there joe's son had died he'd gotten killed when he was 21 but he had a he had a child he had a daughter and i think he had a daughter and a boy the son did i'm not sure about the boy but anyhow the daughter was there at the reunion i got to meet her and she just lives over here in benton illinois joel was a coal miner that's why he was familiar with explosives he wanted to be my he came to me after i made corporal and said eddie i want to be your demolition man and but uh anyway why we had a nice time at that reunion down in san antonio we stayed down there four days and uh we had a good time and they i went to pay my bill and and i met their editor for their paper downstairs and he said eddie it isn't necessary for you to go pay your bill he said it's all been taken care of so they paid all four of us his way down there and they took up a collection that night they had a bunch of people there because this ship had had a lot of people as crews over the years it was finally scrapped in 75 i think it was built in in 45 and commissioned in 46 i believe and then it it stayed on until 75 and they scrapped it and but anyhow so many of the guys that said well they'd always sat there and looked at that bronze plaque joe and they just wondered who he was because they didn't know anything about him and he was a nice he was a nice fellow he was an i had nothing but nice fellas in the marine corps and it's kind of hard to talk about sometimes but anyway why um oh yeah got to see us meet his granddaughter and i i talked call her on the phone every once in a while and talk to her and her husband's a coal miner over in illinois which is is tough because they've closed many of those mines down over there and but they he lives in benton and i guess he's they've still got a mine maybe open there somewhere because he's still working there well we've about filled up our 90 minutes that the government has allotted can i answer just a couple quick questions yes she can when you were on the first island and you were in the water the foxhole uh what was the man's name that you were in sharing the foxhole what was what what was the man's name that you were sharing the foxhole with oh eighth and erdmann and how did you sleep and survive in that environment we just sat up all the time we had crane piled over the top of us and the rats run across the cane one night one got on my helmet and came down the helmet got on my shoulder and i just kind of shoved my shoulder a little bit and he crawled back up a helmet and went back in the king yeah well it was that was pretty bad in that water that was it was the u.s coal named for that and that's the one that's the one that got bombed over josh yeah hello josh yeah you may stop tape and stop the omnion record please

Channel: Kirk Newman

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Id: S2FoPdg9a24

Length: 80min 13sec (4813 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020