Private Cecil Ray Tolley

Today's find is Cecil Ray Tolley (SN 831764).

Cecil Tolley was born in Calhoun City, Mississippi, on December 19, 1924. He was the fifth of six children born to Felix Tolley and Sarah Hearington - older sisters Velta, Leolis, Rachel, and Nelia, and younger brother Felix Junior.

Cecil grew up in Calhoun City and entered the Marine Corps on May 8, 1943, aged 18. The newly minted Private Tolley was assigned to a machine gun team in A Company's Weapons platoon.


The Marines were using the M1919A4 .30 caliber Browning machine gun. By the time Private Tolley joined the Marines, each company's Weapons platoon featured three machine guns, each commanded by a Corporal. The gunner would carry the tripod and ammunition, while the assistant gunner toted the gun itself (a hefty 31 pounds). They were supported by a team of three ammunition carriers. Each member would also be equipped with the M1 Carbine; the three squads would fall under the command of a Section Sergeant.

(The picture shows two members of the 24th at the Namur beachhead).

In May of 1944, the Marine weapons platoons were again reorganized; the new regulations doubled the number of machine guns and added two ammo carriers to each gun. The new larger section would be commanded by a Lieutenant.

The M1919A4 was capable of sustaining 150 RPM, with an effective range of 1,100 yards. Ammunition was loaded in cloth belts of 250 rounds, and carried bandoleer style or in metal cases.

Pvt. Tolley served with the MG section at Namur and Saipan. The war ended for him during the banzai attack of July 25, 1944, on Tinian.

Citation:
The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Cecil E. Tolley (831764), Private, U.S. Marine Corps (Reserve), for extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty while serving with Company A, First Battalion, Twenty-Fourth Marines, FOURTH Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Tinian, Marianas Islands, 25 July 1944. During a furious hostile counterattack, the enemy hurled hand grenades into the machine-gun position that Private Tolley held, seriously wounding him and two other Marines. Despite his painful wounds, Private Tolley courageously dragged himself to the machine gun and, loading the piece with one hand, fired four boxes of ammunition before becoming unconscious. By his gallant and selfless action, he succeeded in annihilating a number of the enemy and aided materially in repulsing the counterattack. Private Tolley's personal valor, aggressive fighting spirit and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

(Note: Even loading the Browning machine gun was no mean feat, even when unwounded and with an assistant. The gunner needed to opening the top cover, lift the extractor, and insert the ammunition belt into the gun's feed tray. He then lowered the extractor over the first round in the belt. As the cover closed, the operator's right thumb made sure the belt feed lever was to the left to ensure the lever fit into the belt feed lever stud cam groove, a machined groove on top of the bolt. After latching the cover, the cocking handle was pulled back palm-up, to avoid thumb dislocation from a round "cooking off" prematurely, and released inserting the first round into the barrel's chamber.)

Cecil Tolley was headed home.

He married Nadine Bernice Blakemore in 1949, and with her raised Linda Raye and Cecilia Faye Tolley.

Cecil Tolley died on January 4, 1987. He is buried at Fort Gibson National Cemetery in Gibson, Oklahoma.

Corporal Howard E. Smith

Strike one from the list of mystery names!

Howard E. Smith (SN 432003), born in Centreville, OH, enlisted in A Company, 24th Marines. He listed his hometown as Clayton, OH, and his next-of-kin was his father, Paul E. Smith.

Smith was one of the soldiers selected to carry the Browning Automatic Rifle (or BAR). Developed in 1918, the BAR was a beast of a weapon, weighing nearly 20 pounds unloaded. It had a rate 0f 300-450 RPM ("slow auto") or 500-650 RPM ("fast auto") - depending on how fast the gunner could load the 20-round magazines. Traditionally, the BAR was given to the smaller members of a squad (by 1944, a Marine rifle squad of 12 men had 2 BAR gunners) - ostensibly this was to build them up physically, though snipers trained to pick off specialist troops such as flamethrowers, radiomen, machine gunners and BAR men would also have a harder time hitting the smaller target. No matter their size, each Marine received basic instruction in the BAR and each would be capable of picking one up should the gunner be hit.

The BAR was the standard front-line fire support weapon, and despite its drawbacks (significant weight, a barrel prone to overheating, and slow loading time) was a welcome addition to any firefight. The picture is a still from a USMC video, and shows a BAR gunner at front right. These are 4th Marine Division troops moving inland at Iwo Jima (notice Mount Suribachi in the background).

A more detailed summary of the BAR, with some great quotes, from Mark Flowers' website.


Howard Smith attained the rank of Private First Class before landing on Namur with the rest of the company. On February 2, 1944, A Company was on the right flank of the American line. The scheduled morning advance had been delayed by the late arrival of several medium tanks that had been allocated to their sector. At 10:05, the attack stepped off. The tanks soon drew the attention of the Japanese, and they swarmed over the American vehicles, posing a serious threat and allowing PFC Smith to shine.

Another outstanding act of bravery that afternoon is credited to Corporal Howard E. Smith, an automatic rifleman in the Twenty-fourth Regiment. Smith was with an assault platoon covering the advance of a tank unit. The lead tank, commanded by Captain James L. Denig, son of Brigadier General Robert L. Denig, poked its nose out of a jungle thicket onto a road. Without warning, five Japs swarmed over it, one of them throwing a grenade into the turret opening. Smith, seeing the Japs jump onto the tank, emptied two magazines from his automatic rifle at them. Four of them rolled off dead and the fifth was killed by another Marine. But the grenade had set off the tank's fuel and the four men inside were apparently doomed as the tank became a steel bound hell of blazing fuel and ammunition. Smith handed his rifle to a man near him and ran toward the tank, disregarding the fire of snipers and a machine gun across the road. He opened the hatch, pulled Captain Denig free and dragged him off the road to some undergrowth. Then he went back for Corporal Bill Taylor, the assistant tank driver, whom he brought to the concealment of the thicket, and returned for Corporal Ben Smith, the gunner. The fourth man was trapped and couldn't get to the hatch. Captain Denig died, but the other two men owed their lives to Smith's courageous action which won him the Navy Cross.

- from The Fighting Fourth.

PFC Smith was awarded his Navy Cross by Admiral Nimitz at Camp Maui, in April 1944. It was one of six presented to the regiment - out of those six, three went to members of A Company.

"We had a parade yesterday, and Nimitz presented the medals and citations to the 4^th Division. About 35 were awarded, and almost 90 percent of them went to the 24^th Marines. No Congressional Medals were awarded, but 6 Navy Crosses were – the next highest honor. Col. Hart got one, a company commander in the 2^nd Battalion got one, and four were awarded to enlisted men – one man in “B” Company and 3 in “A” Company! Think of it! There are about 65 companies in the Division, and “A” Company got 3 out of the 4 awards made to enlisted men....

Admiral Nimitz’s speech was very moving – he set just exactly the right note, and he mentioned three names, typifying those killed who we shall not forget – Steven Hopkins, Col. Dyess, and Jack Brown, whose father was with him in the same outfit.

...it was a pretty drunken night last night."

- Phil Wood letter April 28, 1944

Citation:
The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Howard E. Smith (432003), Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps (Reserve), for extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty while serving with Company A, First Battalion, Twenty-Fourth Marines, FOURTH Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces during the invasion of Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, 2 February 1944. After killing four of the enemy who had dropped a grenade into a Marine light tank, Private First Class Smith handed his gun to a comrade and proceeded forward alone, unarmed and in the face of hostile rifle and machine-gun fire, to pull the wounded out of the burning tank and into a nearby shell hole. His exceptional courage, gallant fighting spirit and willingness to sacrifice his own safety for that of other imperiled Marines reflected the highest credit upon Private First Class Smith and the United States Naval Service.
SPOT AWARD, Commander in Chief, Pacific Forces: Serial 2788

PFC Smith was promoted to Corporal and served through Saipan and Tinian with the Company - one of twenty nine original members to survive through the Japanese banzai charge on the first night of Tinian.

He is listed as Wounded In Action, but survived the war.

Wartime

Age 22 or 23, conducting a mail call.

This photograph is courtesy of George Smith, who enlisted in A Company at the age of 17. George went to the Marshalls and Saipan with Phil's weapons platoon, and by the age of 19 was an accomplished veteran.

He was seriously wounded on Saipan, but survived and now lives in New Jersey. He is still teaching boating safety classes for the Coast Guard Auxiliary.





Unfortunately, I don't know who the other guys in the picture are.

Peacetime

I keep forgetting that I have these, which is a shame... here they are for future reference.

These are from my grandmother's scrapbook.

Age three.
























Age sixteen.

























Phil and Gretchen.















Uncle Phil: Phil Wood, Sr. - died suddenly in 1940 while filming "Our Town." He even has an imdb page. Uncle Phil was a fairly accomplished stage actor, and there's an issue of the New Yorker out there with one of their trademark pen-and-ink drawings of him looking mysterious.

Young Phil: is 18 years old; I think he graduated high school a year or two early, so this is in the Swarthmore era.

Kit Wood - my great-grandmother.

Aunt Greta - Margretta Wood, Phil's mother.

Gretchen - Phil's sister.

Beginning

This isn't actually the beginning, in a number of ways.

The real beginning might have been in 2006, when I found the first three letters, carefully typed up and pasted in my grandmother's scrapbook, surrounded by pictures of a young man in uniform.

He is smiling; he has the distinctive family smile that comes from certain last names on my mother's side. Like my uncles and their cousins, he is tall and rail thin, towering above his grinning friends on the deck of a ship, arms locked, on their way to adventure. He writes beautifully, a change from the terse, semi-literate/floridly verbose missives that I am used to from years of reading about the Civil War. Pictures on preceding pages show him in a mortarboard, in high school, on summer vacation, playing with his dog, playing with his sister, and finally sitting somberly as a child, looking at the camera with sardonic trepidation.

The real beginning might have been in December, 1941, when the young man left the comforting walls of Yale Law, wrote an short note home to his Dear Girls, and dropped off the radar for months. When next they heard from them, he had enlisted in the Marine Corps. Undaunted by the minimum weight requirement for the Corps, he ate bunches of bananas and drank gallons of water before his weigh-in, and passed. Yale and dreams of being a lawyer would have to wait.

The real beginning might have been September 20, 1920, when the young man was born.

Regardless of where the real beginning is, the story of this young man has expanded to include a vast range of characters. Some are living, some are long dead; some are Marines, some are friends; some are family, and others became as family. Some he barely knew, some barely knew him, or only knew people that he had known; some died beside him, and a few died for him.

The young man never became an old man; the dreams of being a lawyer, of being married with four children, of finishing school and living a life never came true. He died as a Marine officer leading his men, and his last action was not to end life, but to save lives. The Corps gave him a medal. Four of his friends gave him everything.

The young man has been gone for sixty four years, yet his memory still inspires tears in those who knew him.




My own part in this story began many years ago. I have been devoted to history since a fascination with ships and archeology combined into a full-fledged obsession with the RMS Titanic. By the age of ten, I could rattle off lists of statistics and facts about the doomed liner, inserted it into every art project I could, and had even been to meet and "interview" Dr. Robert Ballard (being ten, I was far too shy to actually speak to my hero, and merely sat and listened while my father read my list of questions). The Titanic led, through a convoluted and not entirely clear passage, to the naval history of the American Civil War, which touched off the proverbial powder keg of military history. By 11, I had a large diorama of the Titanic sinking in the school library; it was soon joined by a "wreck model" of the Bismark, which I had painstakingly carved up according to the latest undersea pictures of the wreck.

I had been vaguely aware that my family must have done something in the military in the past. My father's mother referred to the Blitz in her more lucid moments; other grandparents mentioned the Second World War in the particular tones that members of that generation use when describing the watershed event of the century. There were a few references to "Uncle Ned" and "Gompy" being in the service, but details were not usually forthcoming, and I was concerned mostly with the Civil War. A chance find in a Martha's Vineyard bookstore changed all that. I was reading the latest book of Dr. Ballard's, about the ships of Iron Bottom Sound off Guadalcanal. The Battle of Savo Island was under way; Japanese ships had come out of nowhere to decimate the American and Australian ships patrolling the sound. My grandmother came and looked over my shoulder as I leafed through some pictures.


"Oh!" she said. "That looks like the Quincy!"

I looked at the caption. It was, indeed, the USS Quincy, CA-39.

"My uncle Ned - that's your great uncle - was an officer on the Quincy. He died in the War, you know."

I had not known. Suddenly, the picture seemed almost three dimensional. The caption said that the photograph had been taken only a week before the sinking.

I kept on reading about Savo Island. I was delighted to find Lieutenant Commander Edmund Billings mentioned in the text. A two-line description of being woken up to take command of the bridge gave me a jolt, and I pictured a dignified looking man in his forties, carrying a pipe and assuming a fatherly sort of air to the young midshipman who had woken him.

Several pages later, the Quincy was in bad shape. The Japanese fleet had completely surprised the Allies, and shells were raining down on the American cruisers. A photograph at the top of the page showed a chilling sight: the Quincy, her burning hulk starkly illuminated by searchlights, with nowhere to hide. I read on, until I reached the last reference to Uncle Ned. I was horrified. I could clearly see the ship's bridge on fire, having taken a direct hit that killed most of the officers. Lieutenant Commander Uncle Ned stumbled from the flaming ruins - half of his face was gone. Someone heard him say, "Everything will be fine, the ship will go down fighting," before he fell lifeless to the deck.

Silently, I flipped forward to the pictures of the expedition. There lay the ruined Quincy, battle-scarred and rusting, on the floor of the sound. Most of her rear superstructure was gone. The tip of her bow was sheared off, whether during the fighting or when she hit the bottom. The pilothouse showed the scars of battle, yet illuminated in the lights of the submersible, it looked much as it did the day of the battle. I was looking at the place where a relative of mine had died; someone who was not just a figure in a historical record, but a person who my grandmother remembered and doubtless loved.


I don't remember exactly when I first heard Phil Wood's name mentioned, but it was probably my grandmother again. He was another relative, somehow connected to our family in California, and had died in the Pacific like Uncle Ned. I logged the information away, concentrating on learning about the Guadalcanal campaign, and then letting it fade entirely as I grew old enough to join a Civil War reenacting regiment. All my energy went into my new found hobby, and research books and memoirs of the 1860s gained the favored bookshelf space. I learned I had at least one Federal soldier in my background, and some cursory Web searching turned up several more possibilities. One, a private in the flashy 14th Brooklyn, shared my last name, came from the same area of Germany as my family, and even (I thought hopefully) resembled my dad, though any connection to the staunch Chasseur would doubtless be a distant one.

My grandmother, a prodigious genealogist, keeps her scrapbooks on her living room table. These massive tomes contain photographs, letters, personal recollections, and Internet research compiled into thoughtful essays. I was casually leafing through her latest effort and marveling at her thoroughness, when I saw the first letter, supplemented by a picture of three smiling men in uniform. I read through the three abbreviated missives, and was speechless. This was the Holy Grail of any history buff - letters from the front lines - and from a family member, no less. I grabbed my computer and typed them up word for word.


Two years later, we've come a long way from a clipping in a scrapbook. The entire collection of Phil's wartime correspondence - nearly fifty pages - has been collected, edited, and re-edited. Inquiries were made to veterans, and mail exchanged with a survivor of Phil's platoon. The letters were found by a producer from PBS, who re-wrote a documentary script to include them; photographs, interviews, and USMC official footage gave life to a story that already read like a movie.

But the story of Phil Wood's time in the Marine Corps is not solely his. Each name he mentioned was an individual soldier with a life and family behind him. The veterans I wrote to, George Smith and Al Perry, were fortunate to come through the war at all - the company suffered 97% casualties from the original contingent; only 26 of those men survived (and only seven - including Al Perry - had never been hit). They earned an astonishing number of awards for their bravery, and suffered unimaginable horrors as young men simply because they believed in their country and their comrades. From their training at Parris Island, Quantico, New River, and Camp Pendleton, to combat on Roi-Namur, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima, men from all parts of the country and all walks of life showed an intense dedication to their purpose and to each other.


This blog will serve as a means of organizing information and research that I've turned up on Company A of the 24th Marines. It will change from time to time; some assumptions will be right, others wrong (and hopefully corrected) as the story takes shape. The end result may be a factual book, may be a fictionalized account based on research (a la MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville) - or maybe this site itself will serve as a reminder of what these soldiers experienced.