November 2, 1943
Dear girls,
This last week was again a pretty tough one. Amphibious operations, three two-day problems, each of them starting with a landing – and while the days are still pretty warm here, take off your shirt warmth, the nights are getting damned chilly, especially for sleeping on the beach under one blanket. So cold that I went on patrol all night rather than hit the sack.
Several days ago we had at least two days of rain, and immediately the hills started to get green again. A couple more rains and this country will again look like the paradise it was when we first came – lush green fields, velvety hills dusted with acres of nodding wildflowers.
I’ve been having a series of headaches with my platoon all of a sudden – I had a wonderful record so far as they were concerned – ever since I first got the, not a man AWOL, and in almost a year only one man had to come up before the Captain for reprimand; almost a perfect score, which was amazing. But about a week ago, one of my steadiest and most dependable men – the man who waited on table, mother, at the Officer’s Mess, decided to go on liberty for the first time in three months – got blind drunk, got picked up for disorderly conduct, resisted arrest and knocked down an MP – and he got off comparatively lightly. [See #1 below - ed.]
Then my very best NCO, my pride and joy – the section leader of the mortars, got all fouled up in his personal life – his girl married somebody else, so he went AWOL back to Utah for four days to tell her what he thought of her, and had to be broken – now a PFC, and as such I have had to put him back in a squad, under the men he was commanding – a bad situation. [See #2 below - ed.]
Then one of my squad leaders, a new man in the platoon, just back from overseas, refused to jump [from] the 33 foot tower in the swimming course, then in the rubber boat training, trying to launch a rubber boat against a very heavy surf, seeing a big wave coming he jumped out of the boat, deserted his squad, swam in and walked up to the Captain and told him that he just couldn’t take it. I don’t know when I’ve been so furious – I immediately relieved him of his squad, and am sending him out of the company as soon as possible. [See #3 below - ed.]
And to top it off, my new second in command and I don’t hit it off – he babies himself and bullies the men – if he hasn’t got blisters on his feet then his legs ache, and if his legs don’t ache it’s his stomach. I don’t like him, and neither do the men, yet he’s smart enough not to make any open mistake. [See #4 below - ed.]
And there won’t be enough furloughs to go around to let all the men get home again before we shove off – one squad leader has an incurable Samoan disease [see #5 below - ed.], a section leader is having his tonsils out [see #6 below - ed.], one man has chronic appendicitis, and another has bad flat feet and can’t march [see #7 below - ed.], another has a trick knee that was ruined on maneuvers.
All this has caused wholesale re-juggling of the squads, which is also bad. I just didn’t realize how lucky I had been for a year. I just wish all this had happened long ago instead of at the last minute.
Oh well, with all of this, I’ve still got a swell bunch of boys, who I know will be a credit to me when the chips are down.
Wrote to Weyer a while ago; have been dating some Navy nurses stationed at the Santa Marguerita Hospital. Got a letter from Ed Keyes the other day, and he is very happy – landed in the First Marine Raider Battalion, which just got back from Kedova, and will surely go out again very soon. [see #8 below - ed.]
Spent a very pleasant day yesterday, which we had off, back up in the hills, hunting with another Lt. and a jeep – strange to say we were successful, we got a deer – successful in a way, that is, for while the chase was very exciting and all that, both of us were overcome with pity when we found out what we had killed – worse yet it was a very pretty little doe – neither of us had any desire to eat it, so we rather sadly buried it. And I’m quite sure that I will never go deer hunting again. It’s got to be something that can fight back, like a great big ferocious grizzly bear – that is, if anything at all. Didn’t exactly feel like great big rugged Marines when we were through, either.
Write soon. Keep writing all the time.
Love,
Phil
***
As far as I can decipher, the Marines mentioned in this letter are:
1. PFC Frank Gosiewski - October 15 and 16, confined to brig, October 17 tried for: "Being under the influence of intoxicants, using profane and obscene language and striking an MP in Oceanside, Calif. Awarded 30 days restriction with EPD [extra punitive duties, IE, cleaning and fatigue detail during one's liberty time], released from confinement and returned to duty."
2. Corporal John R. Svoboda - AWOL from 7:00 PM Oct. 21 through 6:15 AM Oct. 26. Tried and sentenced to be reduced to next inferior rank (Private First Class) Oct. 28, 1943.
[I checked in with George on this one to corroborate what was on the muster rolls, and apparently John Svoboda was "trouble from the day he arrived and didn't like water." Svoboda eventually won his stripes back and became a sergeant before getting hit on Saipan and hospitalized.]
3. This guy has been hard to locate. I only noticed one A Company NCO transferred out of the company in November 1943; he already had a few months with Able and a strong record before that (as acting First Sergeant) so I doubt it was him. Either Phil never managed to get the man transferred, or it was explained in the battalion reports as something different. Either way, this was one of the very few times when Phil was openly angry in front of his men - and with good reason. "The sergeant that had just returned from overseas never did really fit in, and it wasn't the tower thing. I was up there a long time before I jumped. It was the rubber boat incident, which was at night and I think what reall made Phil go off was the fact that during the same attempt to get our boat past the breakers, and that bastard bailed out on us, we almost lost Hoppy.... I think Phil would have taken that coward that night if he could have gotten to him." - George.
4. The best educated guess I can make is that this is a reference to Platoon Sergeant John Yaniga. Yaniga appears to be the least popular member of the company in living memory, and George remembered being singled out for specific abuse:
"He came from western PA, so every morning at roll call he would say "Schmidt!" and I would say "Smith!" - and "Run around!" [For] my punishment, I had to run around the motor pool! Every day it was the same dialogue, he would say "Schmidt" and I wouldn't stand for it, and away I went... I had the best damn legs in the company!"
Yaniga also "wasn't the bravest guy" and panicked on one of the infamous nighttime rubber boat training sessions; yelling "I can't swim! I can't swim!" he promptly fell out of the boat, which capsized seconds later. Quick thinking by Al Perry and DeWitt Dietrich saved the situation, and the squad was rescued at daylight. [Though if the above supposition is true, the question remains as to what Yaniga was doing in a boat with a rifle squad instead of with weapons - though the boats may have landed in assault teams which combined rifles and support weapons. I'm not sure on this.]
Yaniga did eventually redeem himself somewhat, at least to one Marine, when he got George a safe assignment guarding an ammunition depot when both had been hit and evacuated back to Maui.
5. Corporal Arthur Ervin, as noted before, had previous overseas service and caught filiarisis somewhere along the line - which, if untreated, sometimes develops into elephantitis. His nickname Mumu derived from the Samoan word for the disease.
6. Sergeant Frank Tucker (section leader, machine guns) is on the muster rolls as sick in a US Naval Hospital from Nov. 1 - Nov. 4.
7. PFC George L. Hall, aptly nicknamed "Flat Feet."
"Hall, he didn't just have flat feet, his arches were lower than the rest of his feet. He had a terrible time. We used to go out to a training area five miles every day, five miles out five miles back, he had a terrible time and finally I think the last couple operations they kept him back, kept him out." - George Smith
8. I don't know who Ed Keyes is, but evidently he was a lieutenant at New River in 1942 and shared quarters with Phil and Ted Johnson (Johnson became XO of C/24). Likewise "Kedova" doesn't appear to exist, though the First Marine Raider Battalion had just returned from Noumea, New Caledonia, and was currently stationed in Auckland. In February of 1944, the Raider battalions were reorganized into the (new) 4th Marines.
As far as I can decipher, the Marines mentioned in this letter are:
1. PFC Frank Gosiewski - October 15 and 16, confined to brig, October 17 tried for: "Being under the influence of intoxicants, using profane and obscene language and striking an MP in Oceanside, Calif. Awarded 30 days restriction with EPD [extra punitive duties, IE, cleaning and fatigue detail during one's liberty time], released from confinement and returned to duty."
2. Corporal John R. Svoboda - AWOL from 7:00 PM Oct. 21 through 6:15 AM Oct. 26. Tried and sentenced to be reduced to next inferior rank (Private First Class) Oct. 28, 1943.
[I checked in with George on this one to corroborate what was on the muster rolls, and apparently John Svoboda was "trouble from the day he arrived and didn't like water." Svoboda eventually won his stripes back and became a sergeant before getting hit on Saipan and hospitalized.]
3. This guy has been hard to locate. I only noticed one A Company NCO transferred out of the company in November 1943; he already had a few months with Able and a strong record before that (as acting First Sergeant) so I doubt it was him. Either Phil never managed to get the man transferred, or it was explained in the battalion reports as something different. Either way, this was one of the very few times when Phil was openly angry in front of his men - and with good reason. "The sergeant that had just returned from overseas never did really fit in, and it wasn't the tower thing. I was up there a long time before I jumped. It was the rubber boat incident, which was at night and I think what reall made Phil go off was the fact that during the same attempt to get our boat past the breakers, and that bastard bailed out on us, we almost lost Hoppy.... I think Phil would have taken that coward that night if he could have gotten to him." - George.
4. The best educated guess I can make is that this is a reference to Platoon Sergeant John Yaniga. Yaniga appears to be the least popular member of the company in living memory, and George remembered being singled out for specific abuse:
"He came from western PA, so every morning at roll call he would say "Schmidt!" and I would say "Smith!" - and "Run around!" [For] my punishment, I had to run around the motor pool! Every day it was the same dialogue, he would say "Schmidt" and I wouldn't stand for it, and away I went... I had the best damn legs in the company!"
Yaniga also "wasn't the bravest guy" and panicked on one of the infamous nighttime rubber boat training sessions; yelling "I can't swim! I can't swim!" he promptly fell out of the boat, which capsized seconds later. Quick thinking by Al Perry and DeWitt Dietrich saved the situation, and the squad was rescued at daylight. [Though if the above supposition is true, the question remains as to what Yaniga was doing in a boat with a rifle squad instead of with weapons - though the boats may have landed in assault teams which combined rifles and support weapons. I'm not sure on this.]
Yaniga did eventually redeem himself somewhat, at least to one Marine, when he got George a safe assignment guarding an ammunition depot when both had been hit and evacuated back to Maui.
5. Corporal Arthur Ervin, as noted before, had previous overseas service and caught filiarisis somewhere along the line - which, if untreated, sometimes develops into elephantitis. His nickname Mumu derived from the Samoan word for the disease.
6. Sergeant Frank Tucker (section leader, machine guns) is on the muster rolls as sick in a US Naval Hospital from Nov. 1 - Nov. 4.
7. PFC George L. Hall, aptly nicknamed "Flat Feet."
"Hall, he didn't just have flat feet, his arches were lower than the rest of his feet. He had a terrible time. We used to go out to a training area five miles every day, five miles out five miles back, he had a terrible time and finally I think the last couple operations they kept him back, kept him out." - George Smith
8. I don't know who Ed Keyes is, but evidently he was a lieutenant at New River in 1942 and shared quarters with Phil and Ted Johnson (Johnson became XO of C/24). Likewise "Kedova" doesn't appear to exist, though the First Marine Raider Battalion had just returned from Noumea, New Caledonia, and was currently stationed in Auckland. In February of 1944, the Raider battalions were reorganized into the (new) 4th Marines.
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