Corporal Williams

Thus far, I haven't received any letters back. Several have been returned by the postal service, but a few are still out there - so I'm staying hopeful.

I did, however, get a phone call from Bob Williams. After a few missed starts, we finally connected and he was gracious enough to give me about forty five minutes of his time.

Williams enlisted at the age of seventeen, just two weeks after he graduated from high school. After graduating from boot camp, he stayed on at Parris Island as an instructor on the rifle course. Eventually, he received orders to report to New River, where he would join the newly formed First Separate Battalion. Williams, along with thirteen other instructors (including Bill Linkins), traveled to North Carolina, where they were met by Lieutenant Harry Reynolds. They prepared for the influx of fresh Marines, who had just finished their own time on the Island, and by November 1942, Company A was being formed around this core of experienced NCOs.

Williams became close friends with fellow instructor Bill Linkins, as well as the newly arrived Ken Gray. He remembered returning to his barracks one day in December to find the bunk above his suddenly occupied. Gray had just reenlisted in the regular Corps - in his previous tour, he had been a field music.

When a personal tragedy befell Ken Gray, Bob Williams was there to help. Back home, Grey's wife Velma had given birth to twins. The happy occasion unexpectedly took a turn for the worse - the twins had been born unhealthy, and one died while the other barely clung to life. Clearly, Grey needed to be with his wife, and while the Corps allowed him an emergency leave of absence, he could not afford the voyage back to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Williams selflessly gave Grey the money, and cemented their friendship.

In February, 1944, Bob Williams was carrying a BAR in Lt. Osgood's platoon. He fought through the battle of Namur.

When the Marines returned to Maui, the company faced more tough training, as well as receiving replacements, promotions, and changing duties. Osgood was sent to battalion HQ, and Williams was transferred to Roy Wood's Third Platoon. He was also promoted, and assigned the position of Demolitons Corporal. This meant that he led a squad of selected men - Williams doesn't remember on what basis they were chosen - as one of the company's three assault squads. One squad was picked from each company, and in combat stood ready to use bazookas, flamethrowers, or explosives. In addition to his regular equipment, Williams carried a supply of TNT charges for breaching Japanese pillboxes.

Bob Williams' memories of Saipan are scattered and painful - the result of weeks of strain, thirst, noise, stress, and pain.

One day, Roy Wood sent his demolitions corporal off to secure a flank position on his own. Williams obeyed, and in his absence, the company advanced a distance up the next hill. Rightly scared and infuriated about being left behind, Williams scrambled after them, catching up with them at the crest of the hill. His lieutenant was overseeing the position of the platoon for the night, apparently completely unaware that anyone was missing. Williams was steamed. In his best Parris Island instructor fashion, he tore into his lieutenant, cussing him up, down, and sideways. He had just finished his diatribe when he felt someone behind him. Williams turned, and was startled to see his skipper, Buck Schechter, standing behind him. Buck had heard the entire speech, and was regarding both the corporal and the lieutenant.

Williams fully expected a royal dressing-down. He had committed the nigh-unforgivable sin of chewing out a senior officer - worse, he had done it publically, in front of the rest of the platoon. He braced himself for the captain's rage, but Buck simply looked hard at him, harder at the lieutenant, and walked away, effectively closing the matter. Williams felt indescribably relieved. Roy Wood, cowed by the rain of invective from the corporal and the silent rebuke from the captain, said nothing. Williams left him standing there and set about making his own preparations for the coming night.

Later that afternoon, Able Company was setting up a defensive perimeter - the Marines would always stop their advances early in order to save time for preparing their night positions - and Williams was dug in near some of the company machine gunners. A Japanese Nambu machine gun, unnoticed by the Marines, suddenly cut loose and sprayed the line with a furious fusilade. Williams saw most of the machine gunners go down, and remembered David Spohn as being one of the wounded.

[If Williams is correct here, this occured on the second day of Saipan. David Spohn was wounded that day, and it's likely the machine gunners who were hit were the unlucky ones on Pramberger's team].

He also remembers being wounded. Williams was shot in the hand on the Fourth of July. A corpsman found him a short distance behind the lines, and told him, "You gotta go back to the battalion aid station if you want a Purple Heart." Williams brushed away the sailor's concern. "I don't want a Purple Heart," he protested. "Just patch me up and send me back."

The next day, July 5, was the day of Lt. Phil Wood's unlucky patrol. Williams wasn't directly involved, and while he remembered the aftermath, he wasn't clear on the exact day. Later on the same day, Williams was again preparing his section of the nighttime perimeter. A Japanese soldier jumped up from his concealment, appearing as a blur in the corporal's line of vision, and pitched a grenade. Williams snapped off a shot at the enemy, hit the deck - and saw that the Japanese grenade was lying next to his leg, fuse sputtering. Without stopping to think, he dove for a nearby shell crater just as the grenade went off.

Luckily, most of the blast had missed Bob Williams, but several pieces of shrapnel tore into his arm, badly mangling it. His adrenaline was running so high that he scarecely noticed that he was bleeding; it wasn't until nearby comrades yelled at him to get to the aid station that he even suspected something was wrong.

Bob Williams was evacuated from the front line, and spent the next year in a succession of hospitals. By mid 1945, he was fit to be released but not for further duty in the Marines. He was discharged, and after the war moved from job to job until eventually going into business for himself.


I was so caught up in listening to Bob talk that my limited phone decorum disintegrated entirely into breathless questions questing for long-forgotten details. When asked about Linkins and Gray - both of whom died in combat - his voice took on that certain tremolo as he said "I think I'm going to have to cut this short." True comradeship - the kind that those who have never been in combat can never really understand - never dies, nor does it fade away.