Born: September 21, 1925
Campaigns Served: Namur (wounded), Saipan (wounded)
Highest Rank Attained: Private First Class
Decorations: Purple Heart with Gold Star
The following biography has been compiled from several interviews and communiques with George from 2006 - 2009.
Let me tell you, if I had to do it all over again, I don't know if I would.
Let me give you an example of how ignorant I was. Growing up, you know, we all thought the Japanese had those slitty eyes, horn rimmed glasses, short, bandy-legged... I wanted to be a Marine since I was young. Where I was from in Philly was a lower income neighborhood, older guys wanting to make a few bucks would join the Reserves.
I think that without that ignorance I would have gone down right away. I talked to the psychiatrist about it. He said I was delicate, emotionally, and that was how I repressed it... I don't know, I didn't really listen to what he said.
I think all veterans are like this... I don't remember the horrible moments. If I dig down deep I can recall them, but mostly I remember the fun times. Even Moo Moo getting hit and swallowing the tobacco was lighthearted. The way he came flying down the road with his shirt open.... If you asked me to describe a really horrible battle, I don't think I could do it.
Leaving the custom house after signing up. Eddie Lykins would become a mortarman in Able Company. October 1942.
I enlisted in Philly at the old court house, our platoon on Parris Island was made up of guys from Philly, and others from New York - Ksiekievicz and those guys, even though they weren't from Philly, they enlisted down there. Anyway, our platoon was made up of those two groups, and we stayed together until the end. I was the first one in line that morning and Lykins was the second. He was in the Three C's, you know, Civilian Conservation Corps? So he had a little knowledge of what was going on.
Our recruit platoon had its training cut short and the entire platoon (with very few exceptions) was sent north to New River in December '42. Shortly after arriving we were told we were to be the nucleus of a new (Special/Super) unit that became the First Separate Battalion, Reinforced. Our recruit platoon formed "A" Company, with twenty-four of us making up the weapons platoon. The only officers for the better part of the week were the Captain (Buck Schechter) and the First Sergeant. We were quartered in oblong pasteboard/flakeboard huts (great for perfecting our knife throwing technique) unfinished on the inside that exposed the framing and heated by a kerosene stove, when it worked.
George takes aim outside Hut 10, New River, North Carolina. 1942.
On Friday of that first week, Buck called for a Field Day (General Housecleaning) to be ready for a Saturday inspection by our newly arrived "Battle Hardened" officers. We were all aware of what was required, having just left boot camp. Saturday morning our 14 man hut sparkled, and at 0900 the bugler sounded inspection call. Shortly after we heard the inspection party approach. Every time I think of Phil Wood this is the picture that comes to mind. A fresh-faced long drink of water in "New" officer greens and "WHITE” gloves squares himself in the hatch, shoes barely inboard the threshhold, raises his arm over his head and passes his hand along the door sill, brings his hand down to eye level, stares, and then says loudly "DUST!" He steps back and is gone leaving half of us laughing hysterically and the other half dumbfounded. Of course we all thought any chance of liberty was nil. But when Liberty Call sounded and some brave soul checked the liberty list, he found we were all on it. We all agreed we weren't too sure about our Lieutenant being "Battle Hardened" but we were damn sure we had a good one!
I also remember a time we ran out of oil for our stove. We didn't have any way to get more, and boy was it cold at night. We told Lieutenant Wood about it, and he said that he couldn't do anything, but added "You know, the officer's hut always has plenty of oil, we have a good supply. I guess maybe tonight everyone'll be bedded down early." Well, we knew what he was trying to tell us - get out that night and go get some of their oil - and we did! We were the only hut that was warm that night! We maybe took a little extra than we should have, and didn't really have anywhere to store it. Someone lit on the idea of keeping it in the bucket of sand we were supposed to have for firefighting, they were kept covered in the middle of the company street, so nobody would know the difference. That worked great until somebody else upset their stove and started a fire, we were all running to get sand and I saw Izzo chasing someone down the street, yelling - the other fellow had grabbed our bucket with the oil in it and was about to pitch it on! Lucky he got to him in time and we got our oil back, that would have been a real mess.
I didn't get on as well with our platoon sergeant, Yaniga... he came from western Pennsylvania and had an accent, so every morning at roll call he would say "Schmidt!" and I would say "Smith!" - and my punishment was 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!
Some of the occupants of Hut 10, New River: JJ Franey, George Smith, Howie Haff, and Howard Kerr. "Mother" Geesaman is peeking through the door. November, 1942.
On the trip West, we rode Pullman and had a big - no, huge - baked ham on rye and glass of milk every night. They marched us out of the station in New Orleans, in platoon formation, and each one of us got a case of beer so that when we returned every man received a bottle, with the exception of the guns and tubes - we had two! I think Buck may have had something to do with that.
It was when we arrived at Pendleton that our training area was eight miles out in the field away from the barracks area. And the only flat ground was along the main road where the railroad track was. Buck had a favorite short cut up a steep hill that cut nearly three miles off our route to the barracks. I still can't decide if it was worth it.
"When we had nothing else to do, we took pictures." George Smith, JJ Franey, Howard Kerr, Tom Hurley, Tom Johnson, 1943.
When we got to Pendleton, we pulled in there on the train late Saturday night and they told us on Sunday morning just to get the lay of the land. The Third Division had been at Pendleton but they had been out of there several months, so as a result all this animal life regenerated itself, and there must have been literally a thousand snakes, and that morning when we're walking around, this guy, this is one of the thousands! And I'm petrified of snakes, still am, but at any rate I took that picture and that's as close as I ever got to one. Them suckers, every time we were playing around in the bush I was petrified because I just don't like 'em.
Jeff Jowers holds up "one of the thousands."
It was during this early period at Pendleton that we were brought up to strength, and the pick wasn't always the top of the heap. Of course you should realize we on the east coast thought those "Hollywood Marines" were all pose and little substance.
JJ Franey, Tom Johnson, George Smith, Howie Haff, outside Able Company's barracks, 1943. Note Sergeant Ckaminsky's whitewashed rocks.
Out at the tent camps, we had our own little kitchen, and believe it or not we could wake up in the morning, go down there and say "I want two eggs sunny side up" and we'd get them. The kitchen was in the stream bed, and boy it was really neat. The cooks were great with us. This was a temporary thing - when we were out in this bivouac we were eating out of these kitchens, we had big tents and we were out there for a month and a half.
"Able Company 'crapped out,' 1943."
We were out there for a month, a month and a half living in those tents. And you know, our officers were all pretty great - outside of Roy, who wasn't too hot - but they had a table set off to the side where they had their mess and they would eat. They had to get in line like us, and it was funny when it came time for chow, they would be hiding behind the tents so they could get in line as quickly as we could, and it really was a conspiracy to keep them in the back of the line and make them suffer! But they got onto it and they'd hide between the tents. It was great, really a great time.
Watermelon for a treat. 1943.
I'll tell ya a story about when we came back from being out in tent camp to the other end of Pendleton, the permanent base, there was the main road - I don't know whether you know much about Pendleton but it was an old ranch, Spanish rancho, they have the original ranch house and when they build Pendleton they built the main road practically alongside the ranch house. This road here went out to the training area, but over here it went way up, literally several hundred feet, and that's where our last barracks was. If you didn't go up that hill you had to go down the main road and take a windy road and go all the way through the camp to get back to the barracks. So Schecther, in his wisdom, figures we can cut all this out if we go up this goddamn hill, and I'll tell ya, it was STEEP. You really had to hang on, and you know after a couple of times we're starting to break loose the grass and it's all dirt.... I think Phil mentions the fact that we were out on battalion maneuvers, and A Company was to retreat for a day and a half while C and B tried to catch us for a day and a half, and then it was supposed to be reversed. Well, that first day and a half we run 'em down so bad they called it off. At the end of the exercise we're waiting along this road - now this is Tent Camp 3, thirty some miles out - we're waiting by the road and these trucks drive up. Somebody said something about A Company's trucks... and Schechter said, "We're not riding, we're walking." Thirty some miles, after we played around for a bit... and we came back in like six hours. It was one hell of a run, and all the way back people are saying, are we going up that goddamn hill? Sure enough, it's dark, we're all tired, six hours, man, we went up that goddamn hill. I thought if somebody coulda got hold of Schechter they woulda killed him! But at the same time, you know, we really realized what the hell we did, that we physically, man we were in good shape. Whether we could fight or not was something else.
George picks out cactus spines after a nasty encounter. 1943.
And that was my introduction to cactus. I also had it in my back. We really got into these maneuvers, and so we were trying to figure out where to set the gun up, and I said "Nobody'll think to look in the cactus for us," so we cleared the cactus out, put the gun in there. I told you about the snakes, right? We set up, we just get nice and comfortable, and all's I hear is that rattle... and I came up out of that cactus! I had cactus all over me, sticking in me, but I wasn't gonna get bit by a snake no matter what happened!
Our infamous rubber boat brigade things, holy jesus.... I liked it to a certain extent, but the water was so damn cold and particularly at night, when we went out at night, ah damn.... Because we were the rubber boat platoon for the battalion, we'd spend a week on the beach doing this while everybody else was playing around someplace else. You know how they lure you into this? Pendleton had a lake alongside of the dispensary, and when they first told us we were gonna be rubber boats they took us down there on a Sunday, put us in this lake, it's great! Sun's shining, it's nice and warm, we thought oh hell this is great! Then they put us down on that beach, they like to killed us. These boats came in, there were two basic sizes, the seven man boat you'd have three men on each side with a coxswain in the back, and the thirteen man boat you had that number twelve, six on each side with a man on the back, and they were brutal those 13 man boats, just picking the suckers up when they were wet.... Anyway, the one night the sergeant refused to get in the boat - that bastard bailed out on us and we almost lost Hoppy, I think Phil would have taken that coward that night if he could have gotten to him - what we would do, we'd come off the beach, go out past the breakers, play around a little bit then come back through the breakers. We tried to get out three or four times and just got beat to death, and whatever time it was, the fourth or fifth time, I was what they called the bow man, the number one on the port side, and we had the machine gun stashed in these thwarts that came on an angle up the front. We were paddling, and it's dark, I mean there's no moon, no stars, no nothing!
All of a sudden it got blacker, if you can picture this, and I don't know what made me look up, but maybe fifteen, twenty feet above me is this little white line where the breaker starts, and it picked that boat up and it threw us, god knows where the hell it threw us but it threw us all over. As the boat went up, the lashing broke on the MG and now the receiver (which is the big end) is hanging down. I thought, "if I go off, the thing is gonna come on top of me," so I just closed my legs on the thwart and I just rowed the boat until it settled upside down and I got off. But at any rate, Gann was in charge of the boat and said "Take a head count." So we're counting, and I realize the gun's missing, I think I'm gonna have to pay for it, so I go down. Now, when the waves go out we're only up to the waist in water, but when the waves come in you were like 15 feet under. So anyway, I go down to check the gun, Gann counts, and of course there's one missing. I come up and I don't know who - Dave Spohn, I think - says "I'll go down and try to get it." So Gann counts again, and says "We're missing somebody, who the hell's missing?" There was a big mix up. In the meantime, Hoppy's hanging on to the back of the boat not saying anything, so when Gann figures out that everybody's there (and the hell with the gun) we start pushing the boat. I said something to Hoppy, I don't know what it was, and all's I hear is "blublublublublub!" He was out on his feet and he's holding onto the boat and as we're pushing his head's going down in the water and I hear this bubbling, that's him breathing, and Christ we woulda lost it! I said that's all we need, lose the damn gun and lose somebody who lived in the White House on the same night! We never used rubber boats in combat. The seven man boat was OK, the thirteen man was a beast. Last time we used the boats, we were dropped by Navy at night, and as soon as Navy takes off, we saw a green star cluster from land, signifying Do Not Land. Miraculously, we landed on a beach 150 yards long, flanked by rocks and facing a sheer cliff. Had to be taken off by landing craft next day. Never used those boats again. Thank God, we would have been massacred! We had some good times out there but as it was we were chilled to the bone.
There was a certain San Diego hotel, one of the favorite places for liberty excursions, and it happened to come under new management late in 1943. The boys in our platoon didn't endear themselves to the new manager, and someone, I won't say who, got kicked out and banned from returning. We felt that this was unfair, and returned to Pendleton with a bone to pick.
The Marine was sitting in the barracks bemoaning his luck when someone - again, I won't say who - cooked up a plan to get even. Several of the men had recently taken additional training in demolitions, and some blocks of TNT that had "gone missing" from the training area appeared in the barracks. So we had opportunity to teach the enemy a lesson while applying our training.
On our next liberty, we went back to that hotel. One team went to the bathroom, stopped up the toilet with wads of paper, then stuck a stick of TNT to the commode, they rigged it to explode when the flush chain was pulled. They found the manager and complained of a blocked toilet in the men's room. As the manager went to investigate, we all ran for the door.
The blast was enough to blow the manager clear out the door of the bathroom! He was terrified but not hurt. We thought he'd learned his lesson - we weren't smart in Weapons, but boy we were loyal!
I got the nickname after seeing the movie Gunga Din... I came rolling into the barracks shouting, "Din! Din! Bring me water, Din!" Someone threw a pail of water on me.
You say things sometimes you're gonna regret the rest of your life. We were sitting on some railroad ties on the dock in San Diego, getting ready to go out, and somebody said something about going out and Hoppy said "Yeah," he said, "I know I'm not coming back." And big mouth me, I said "Yeah, if I lived the life you did I wouldn't expect to come back either," and of course I have to live with that.
In combat, each gun squad was assigned to a rifle platoon. My squad, along with Moo Moo [Corporal Arthur Ervin], went in with the First Platoon. Even in our boat going in to Namur, Howie Haff, Franey and I were playing Mutiny on the Bounty! I don't remember who was Bligh, I was Christian... anyway, even then we had no idea what we were in for. On the way in, we passed off the starboard quarter of the new USS Washington just as she fired a full broadside. The wave she created hit us broadside and almost turned us over. Not only did we get wet, but some of us got a mouth full of water and of course the tobacco as well.
[NOTE: George is likely mistaken about the identity of the battleship. The USS Washington had been bombarding Kwajalein on January 30 and 31, but in the early hours of February 1 suffered a collision with the battleship USS Indiana. The Washington lost most of her bow, and was dispatched back to the rear for extensive repairs. It is improbable that she participated in the bombardment preceding the Marine landing. - ed.]
When that explosion went off, that blockhouse blew, we had concrete reinforcing bars coming down in the boat, and Horan's the first one in the middle. We had three lines, one against each side and one in the middle. Horan gets hit with a rock, and it was so bad that it dented his helmet and opened his head. He had white hair but mostly bald, and he takes his helmet off and the blood starts running down his face. Now, we're landing on this hostile island and there's gunfire, and Ski [Corpsman Albert Zrimsek] turns around and says to Horan, "You can't go in," like it's in the middle of Broadway at noon! Horan says, "Why not? "Well, you're bleeding." "Well I ain't bleeding that bad!" And it's a whole conversation, and everybody's standing in the boat waiting to get the hell out, and these two are... I've never forgot that, it was really funny. Our boat was on the beach and the ramp going down when it went off. Beside being hit with concrete and steel from above a dense cloud of dust, cordite and body parts filled the boat. I must have swallowed my gum at this time.
We hit the beach and Hurley and I jumped over the side, and the beachmaster, he was a big guy like Mr. Reynolds, he yells at us "Get the hell off the beach!" So we go over and are in this ditch, like a tank trap. And there was fella lying there, I tell you, that sucker was six foot six if he was an inch. Boots up to his knees. And he'd been there a while. You know how varnish stains? This guy was lying there, his skin was all stretched tight and he looked someone had done smeared his face with with varnish, he was all striped. I yelled at Hurley, "I think I'm in the wrong ballgame!" I could take all the short, bandy legged fellows in the world, but this guy....
I ran into a live one while we were moving up this road. I jumped into a hole - we were going hole to hole for cover, and I jumped in and landed on the guy. I let go with a whole clip to make sure I was the one jumping out. I got the hell out of there and got back with my squad - someone said, "Look at your trousers," and I saw there was a big rip - his bayonet had gone through and cut my leg. I didn't feel it at the time, though it hurt like hell later on. It wasn't a big deal, really.
Moo Moo being the Warrior he was decided to go straight up the road. In doing so he passed a hole with a live Jap and the Jap squeezed one off just as Moo Moo was even with him and the bullet traveled up his left side from his hip to his ear, not breaking the skin but leaving a burn mark here and there. Of course he killed the Jap but even as we ran to him and it was apparent he wasn't hurt hardly at all he just stood there, frozen, with this weird look on his face. Now this was one brave cat we are talking about, but there we stood in the middle of the road, four of us trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with him. Perhaps you guessed, he had swallowed his tobacco and was getting ready to throw up. And it was just about then that I discovered I didn't have gum in my mouth and realized I must have swallowed it when the block house blew. When we talked about this later, and never ever when somebody else was around, Moo Moo would actually laugh out loud and that would be the only time. In all the time we were together I never knew him to hardly smile, let alone laugh.
Moo Moo came around and we took off up the road again, and we just joined our platoon, that was using a part of the Japs secondary defense line that consisted of a trench system. We had just reached them when some jughead from another squad decided to take on the Nambu in the pillbox. Which wasn't a bad idea, except most of the company was between the two guns. We piled into the trench that was perpendicular to, and ran almost from the road to the beach, with a Y not to far off the road going toward the front. The first thing we noticed was this Jap. He was on his knees with his arms folded across his chest, and his head resting against the forward side of the Y. It looked like he had been praying and got hit and just fell forward. I must say I cannot remember Phil being in that trench, but he must have been because it answers why Hop was leaving the gun, something that has bothered me all these years. We were no sooner in the trench than Hoppy, who was next to me on the right, started mouthing off about the Jap, how he wasn't sure he was dead, etc, etc. But hell, those riflemen had been in there with him a long time before we got there. What happened next will blow your mind. Phil must have called Hoppy to go forward, one of the few mistakes Phil would ever make, and Hoppy, who was armed with an M1, pointed the muzzle at the Jap's head. He moved around the rifle, keeping the muzzle on the Jap, almost touching him. As he was about halfway around, the Jap raised his head and lifted his arm with a grenade in his hand. You may not believe this, but Hop squeezed one off dead center into the Jap's head and all the Jap did was shake his head and continued with his right arm. I have to explain that, unlike our grenades, the Japs had to arm theirs, usually by striking them on their helmets which was a dead giveaway that you were about to get a blast. Hop put the rest of the clip into him before he stayed still.
Until the end of the battle the next day, A Company would occupy this area. Some time after dark, it always seemed to me about midnight for some reason, and against all rules that anyone moving at night gets shot, password or no, our gun was ordered forward. You must understand at this time the only organized resistance was directly in front of A Company with that pillbox anchoring the left side of their line. The distance between our lines was no more than 25 yards. We trotted up the road until we came to a "Heavy" - with the Lieutenant [James Donovan, of First Platoon, Dog Company] behind the gun for fire discipline - set up just off the right side of the road. We moved off the road to the right about 10 or 15 yards and started to set up the gun. As we were doing so, I saw somebody moving off to our right near the beach and asked Hoppy to cover him. Hop just turned to bring up his weapon when I saw the muzzle flash and Hop went down. He hung on till he reached the hospital ship the next morning, and they buried him at sea - a death that had to be reported to the White House.
Show you how nerves get you, when Hoppy got hit a corpsman came up right away and indicated that we were out well beyond where we should be, and we, I, expected a litter up there in a hurry - nothing came, nothing came, I really don't know about time but it seemed an awful long while, and I finally got enough nerve, I knew that whoever got up stood a chance of getting zapped, but at any rate, I got up.... I was looking for that corpsman, and I came up on that trench with the heavy gun crew. I wanted to talk to someone - I knew Knight by name simply like I knew 100 or some others in the company, no special contact, but you know when I started back all's I wanted to do was talk to him. Why the hell, I don't know, but you know the ironic part? I kept asking "where's Knight, I wanna talk to Knight," and those gunners in the trench just sat there, that Lieutenant ignored me and I'm standing there yelling. Finally someone said "he's over by the tree, he got shot in the mouth and he can't talk!" To this day I still can't figure out why I wanted to talk to him!
It really set in for me that night when Hoppy was killed... the next day we went on like nothing had happened. It bothered me at first.
Able Company marches down the beach after the battle of Namur. Official USMC Photo, published in the Marine Corps Gazette.
One gunner that took a Jap officer's tooth got killed, and we really never knew how. We suspected he was souvenir hunting and a sniper got him. [Probably PFC Paul Southerland - ed.]
Colonel Dyess was our battalion commander. We were all in a trench waiting to attack near the end of the battle, and he came up with his red bandanna around his neck, stopped to talk to his runner, then went around a bend and got killed by a machine gun. He got the Congressional Medal of Honor for that.
After Namur, the whole sky turned gold - Moo Moo was impressed, and if he was impressed by something, you knew it was special.
Captain Schechter's tent, Camp Maui. Sign to left reads "CO. A 1 Bn 24 Mar" - to right, "C. O. CO A 1 Bn 24 Mar."
This was on Maui, that's the only picture I have of Maui. When we went out they told us no cameras, and most guys adhered to it, but a couple of them would put cameras in their gas mask cases. We had one guy, always carried his gas mask and everybody'd say "What the hell's he doing, why's he carrying that?" and here the sucker had his camera in it.
There was a regiment-wide inspection by Colonel Hart. As you know there are a good number of troops (175 to a Company, 4 Companies to a Battalion, 4 Battalions to a regiment) and the 1st Battalion, of which A Company was a part, was in formation on either side of a unpaved road. Every time a vehicle passed we received a cloud of dust that had a reddish tint to it (it's what makes the pineapples grow). When "Old Rusty" finally showed up (almost four hours late and one suspects a liquid lunch) as he trooped down the ranks he kept touching the weapons and saying "Rust."
I'm surprised Phil didn't write home about The Great Chair Caper. The infantry units were across a wide, deep valley from the Headquarters and Special units, such as the cannon cockers [Marine slang for artillerymen, in this case the 14th Marines - ed]. Among other goodies, they had HOT WATER. We referred to it as Nob Hill. It wasn't that we were never invited, it was just that we preferred using cold water for our showers and had no need to go over there - that is until they couldn't find enough able bodied men to stand guard duty on this great heap of supplies. Well, being in weapons was a sign of being none too bright, but we were above all loyal to our officers - Phil, Buck and Mr Reynolds in that order.
They even saw fit to schedule us for the night tour. But they made a great error in having allowed us to see what was in this pile of stuff by having us arrive before it got dark. Well, there were these canvas folding chairs, something like they use in Hollywood, and to be honest with you we thought the stuff was to be thrown away, it was just piled there all disorganized. So why let some perfectly good chairs go to waste? When we boarded the trucks the next morning, our platoon leader and Captain (not sure about Mr. Reynolds) had a couple of great canvas chairs. Of course, the fact that they belonged to the Commanding General and his Aide took some of the fun out of giving Phil and Buck their presents! Never did hear what heat Buck took over that; there was never a single word about it to any of us, ever. We knew they were tickled, though.
When we were getting ready to go to Saipan, we were tied up along Hickam Field, at Pearl Harbor. They were getting the LSTs loaded up over in West Loch. We were playing grabass over at Hickam Field, and all of a sudden this damn explosion went off. I mean, it rocked the whole island! They had five or six LSTs lashed together, and the middle one blew. To this day I don't think they ever knew what caused it. Besides the exploding ammo, they were loaded with these Alligators, these [amphibious] tractors, and they used aviation gas, so there was a huge fire. It would have been worse, but there was a Navy chief who took an axe and cut the line to break one of the LSTs free.... I guess he was on the middle one, because he managed to cut the outboard lines too. Whoever was in charge of that outboard ship opened the bow doors and put her on the bottom - he flooded her to keep her from going up. Even so, there was a pretty good loss of life. You can talk to people who have been in the Pacific who never knew this, even at the end of the war they kept it quiet.
[The West Loch explosion on May 21, 1944, remains one of the little-known fiascos of the Second World War. A detailed article by A. Alan Oliver can be found here.]
We were on the ship to Saipan in June of '44. I was palling around with McCay - he was a real wise guy, typical Jersey sort of guy - and we came upon this group of sailors and marines playing craps. I wasn't much of a gambler, didn't make a habit of it, but McCay decided he wanted to try his luck and asked me for a loan. I thought, what the hell, we won't need it where we're going, so we pooled the little money we had. Well, son of a gun, McCay steps up and throws three in a row! Fives or nines, I don't remember which, they're both real difficult to hit in craps. I couldn't believe it, and neither could one of the sailors who'd just lost a lot of pay - he thought we had loaded dice and boy were we lucky not to get thrown into the sea! We split up our winnings and find we have a lot of change left over, and McCay just hurls all his coins over the side. He said we wouldn't need the coins anyhow, where we were headed, but might as well keep the bills. So I pitched mine over as well.
Right after landing on Saipan, I saw a hibachi grill on the side of road, and said "someone has been making dinner!" Right as I said it, I guess some Jap shells came in, and the next thing I remember is crawling towards a small building. I saw Gene Walsh on other side of a little building that had a goat - we debated whether or not we should try and milk it, but we looked and saw, well, it was the wrong kind of goat! I have no idea how long I was out, but when I went to catch up with the company, they were some distance away across this field. Spohn said "We thought you were dead, so we left you," and I think he was kidding....
The shellfire that first night on Saipan was the worst experience I remember. If there was a place I could have run to, I would. Most of us stayed on the line because we were petrified and didn't want to let our friends down. I was behind the gun with Cease beside me, and we could hear those rounds getting closer and closer. Thank God our batteries opened up and the fire lifted.
That next morning, around dawn, we had a guy running right for the gun. He was swinging a sword. I put three carbine shots into him, and I could see where they were going - he kept coming - luckily I held on to my .45. He not only stopped doubled over and backed up when I hit him with that. That carbine they gave us was worthless, I tell ya. We had to carry it along with the machine gun, and it was just the right length to get in your way. And it would rust like crazy. I didn't take the sword - I never did take a souvenir sword or anything like that. Usually we were all too busy to bother with things like that, and I never understood about taking trophies, anyway. Why would you want to remember something like this?
That morning was about the last time I saw McCay. We were getting ready for the day's attack and McCay, who was a demolitions man, was coming back through the line with another marine. They'd just blown up something important - he was looking real happy, a big smile, walking like a Jersey guy. Anyway, a couple days later he got killed going after somebody who was hurt, and he knew it was probably gonna take him away.
[Thomas McCay was probably killed while trying to rescue PFC Henry Niles Woods. See McCay's biography page for the story.]
We were going up a hill that was cut practically in half - like a firebreak would be. That night, they knocked the heavy machine gun out, and Hurley said "Come on, we'll go up and bring them and the gun back." We had no sooner started up - it wasn't a real steep hill - when, believe it or not, I saw the shell hit. I guess it's hard to believe, but the Japanese had a couple of 88s, German 88s, which are really a rifle, they fire flat trajectory - you can tell by sound and we knew it was an 88 - so since we survived the first one we knew the next one was coming! Both Hurley and I escaped with nothing, had a couple guys in front of us get killed, a guy alongside of us took a piece of shrapnel to the shinbone, it really hurt me as much as it did him. But it shook me a little goofy in the sense that I could not control my emotions. I started to cry. I wasn't hurt, you know, nothing. I played this up pretty good - we never got to the gun or the men - when we come back, [corpsman] Ski said "What are you crying for?" I said "I don't know, the shell went off...." So he said, "Here, take some of this," and he had medical brandy, and that's all I needed for it. So every time that I thought something was going to be a little raw, I'd go to Ski and say "I don't feel too good, I think I'm gonna cry." And the ironic part of this is when I did get hit, I didn't want to take morphine - they had those little syringe things, I didn't like them worth a damn - so I go to Ski and say "Boy, I really need that brandy," and he says, "Serves you right! You drank it all and now I don't have any." So I paid for it anyway. That's really what kept me out of combat and not the wound that I got.
[George is referring here to Corporal Anthony Pramberger's heavy machine gun team, which was wiped out on June 16. Six of the seven gunners were wounded, the seventh was killed. The "couple of guys" in front of him were probably Corporal Albert Duryea and PFC John Manson. George's claim that the Japanese were in posession of the famous German-made 88mm guns is corroborated by the account of Lt. Colonel Justice Chambers (3/25) who also had a close encounter with the weapon on D+1. Read Chambers' account here.]
We never saw any Japanese bodies until we hit the O-2 line [June 17, 1944]. Unless we killed them, that is. They were real masters at that, I guess you'd call it psychological warfare, recovering their dead so we never knew how hard we were hitting them. We came to these caves, and they'd evidently been bringing the bodies back and storing them in there... I don't know, it was satisfying in a way, knowing we were getting them back.
[On June 22, First Battalion was sent against Hill 700. Able and Charlie companies ran into immediate heavy resistance and were completely cut off from each other, and from Baker Company, which was unable to provide support to either. Only by nightfall were enough reinforcements available to effect a partial withdrawl. Able Company alone lost three killed and seventeen wounded. George's platoon of machine gunners was the worst hit, with two dead and seven - including Smith - wounded.]
Stafford, "Cease" we called him, he was my assistant gunner most of the time. When I got hit, he got hit also, he got hit between the elbow and the shoulder with an explosive bullet, and it literally took bone. The only thing was holding his arm on was some skin on the inner side. They sent him to Philadelphia where, now this is in like '44 or '45, they inserted bone and saved his arm. What I'm saying, this was back in '44, nobody ever heard about putting artificial bone in, you know, repairing an arm.
Tiny Jordan - he was a big guy from Florida - he got hit in the face and was blinded temporarily. I was leading him down the hill because he couldn't see. He was the only guy I heard cry, and I don't mean to belittle him at all, I felt the same way about my eyes. Later I heard he recovered and became a fireman back in Tampa.
I remember Spohn, he was wounded up on this hill, shot in the legs - we loaded him and the others into an ox cart. We formed a sort of caravan led by a jeep - Howard Smith was sitting on hood with his BAR - and it was brought up in rear by our guys with the oxcart. Whoever made it was not a very good wheelwright, and the wounded were yelling - I broke out laughing, because of nerves.
[George was evacuted from Saipan in an Army DUKW amphibious craft. He was then taken by hospital ship to Naval Hospital #10, Aiea Heights, Oahu.]
That hospital was great. We would sit out each night and could look out over Pearl Harbor, really peaceful. I was in what they called the quiet ward. There'd be this one pharmacist's mate, he'd come in on his rounds every morning and snap on the radio. It'd take a while to warm up, but when it did, it'd come on blasting. This one morning a commercial came on, it was for a concrete manufacturer in Oahu, and it was so loud, I about flipped that bed over trying to get under it... I was in no shape for loud, sudden noises. And this nurse comes by, she looks through the window in the door, and sees me in this predicament. She raised all kinds of hell. Mostly, those Navy nurses wouldn't touch a wounded man, the pharmacists did all the work, but this one, she was different. And older, maybe forty. Anyway, I'd fallen into this habit of not shaving, and my hair was starting to grow out all scraggly. This nurse, she got a hold of me one day, and said, "Smith! Meet me in the linen room in fifteen minutes!" I thought, what the hell does she want? So I get down there, and she has a chair all set up, she sets me down, lathers me up and gives me a shave and a haircut right there! She said something like "From now on we'll each take care of our own luxuries." She was something else, cause like I say, mostly the Navy nurses wouldn't interact with the wounded. Not like the Army nurses. I don't know, maybe it's different now.
My roommate was this great guy from some little town in Kentucky. He had been hit by a grenade, I mean really peppered. Little pieces of metal would keep working their way to the surface, and he'd be able to pick them out himself, and he'd just drop them on the floor - so when I went walking around without slippers, I was getting bits of grenade in my feet! Funny thing, he's from this little backcountry town, and one day this nurse comes in to check up on us, they have the same accent! Turns out they're both from the same hometown. He was a real funny guy.
The first time I got out of the hospital, I was a little wifty and they sent me to a rest camp.
This was around Kaneohe, and it had been a YWCA camp. There were these little shelters, some had 2 some had 4 some had 6 beds in 'em, and it was really some place to unwind! The Marine Corps took it over and you'd stay there for a week - I was so wifty they kept me for two weeks.
On the right side of the road, over this side, they had a large building that would be like a rec center, and this pier ran off of it, that pier ran out a couple hundred yards into Kaneohe Bay, they had tennis courts there, you could really unwind. One of these was a dining hall, it was big, boy you could go in there and eat family style, they had china. I was glad they kept me for two weeks. I wasn't too happy they thought I was cuckoo, but it was a great place.
When I got out of the hospital, I wanted to go back to the company. I was set to go back and even got back to camp but the surgeon said I needed more surgery, and with the psychological thing, they declared me unfit for active duty. So I was sent to this replacement depot, there's a bunch of us just sitting and waiting to be assigned. You sometimes saw familiar faces - I had Howard Smith come visit once. He had a jeep and told me to get in, nevermind where the jeep came from. We're tooling around the island and see these two guys, civilian or Army or whatever, hitching a lift - Howard yells at 'em, "Join up and get your own, you sonsabitches!" It was great!
One day Yaniga comes in, he's acting First Sergeant, and I thought "here we go again" - we hadn't got along back at the company. But I tell ya, from the moment he showed up, I could do no wrong. He came right up to me, called me "Schmidt," and said "Anytime you want a liberty pass, you just come ask me." He'd even give me an overnight - there were three grades, 8 AM to 6 PM, then until 10 PM, and an overnight - and you weren't supposed to get an overnight unless you had somewhere to stay. He calls me in one day and says, there's this opening at Lualualei ammunition depot, it's good duty, do you want it? I said yeah, so I went up there. Otherwise, I was all set to go to China - I saw Cease, he was going back out the other way, and he was on his way to China. These pictures were taken for the Pacific issue of Leatherneck, and that's me. My mare's name was Maude, and the rough ride you got with her you had to kick her all around the thing.
George Smith brings up the rear on Maude, 1945.
The ammunition depot had been a large ranch and when the Navy took it over they made it an ammunition depot, and it was just this big vast area, dotted with what they called "igloos" where they stored the ammunition. They were concrete bunkers and they put dirt and everything over them - you couldn't hardly see them - and it was a hard way to patrol so the horses came into play. It was funny, you know, they had this stable but I guess they only had about six stalls in there, so most of the horses were out in this corral.
When we were going on at 4 o'clock in the morning, you had to go out there, you had to chase your horse down, get that sucker! And they were rolling around in the sand, then you had to clean 'em off... four o'clock in the morning and you're out there playing with those suckers. But anyway, it was fun.
Then one day, Yaniga called me up and said, "Pack your seabag, we're going back." He said he'd heard they were getting all the original guys from the Fourth Division back in, and we were all going to go home. Well, I got packed and ready, but then he said there'd been a problem - but "don't unpack, just wait." Sure enough, he calls me again a few days later and says, "There's a jeep outside. Get your bag and get in, we are going home." And so it was thanks to Yaniga that I got back to the States in the end.
You know, looking back it was like a dream. Everything just flowed together, the good and the bad. Aside from that one time on Saipan, there's nowhere I would rather be.
George Smith as a sergeant during the Korean War.
George served stateside during the Korean conflict, eventually retiring from the Corps as a platoon sergeant and marrying his sweetheart, Doris. He served with the Mounted Police in Philadelphia for thirty years, retiring in 1986 with the rank of Lieutenant. His son and grandson also served in the Marines; the latter received a commendation for bravery in Iraq. George and Doris are active with the Coast Guard Auxiliary in Cape May, New Jersey.
George appeared in the documentary "New York Goes to War" in 2007; he spoke about serving under Phil Wood, whom he still often refers to as "Lieutenant Wood."
For more of George's pictures, click here.