CAMP PENDLETON

The Building Of A Division: The Fighting Fourth at Camp Pendleton

Out of these experiences - the good times as well as the bad - the Division grew into manhood. For a division is not just an aggregation of 17,000 men but an organic thing, with a personality and aspirations of its own. And all the thousand and one details of training and recreation combine to make that quality to which men referred when they talked about the "Fourth."1

In 1941, the United States Marine Corps consisted of two under-strength divisions. The First Division, with the First, Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Regiments was stationed along the east coast; the Second Division, composed of the Second, Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Regiments made its home in California. The Fifth and Sixth regiments served in France in World War One, while others fought in Central America during the Banana Wars of the 1920s. Together, these two divisions represented the “old salts” of the Marines, and the experience and pride of the men made them a considerable fighting force.

Experience notwithstanding, there were simply not enough men for what was anticipated to be a protracted war against Japan. Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, recruiting stations were mobbed with civilians seeking to join the Marine Corps. The ranks of the two existing divisions were quickly filled with eager volunteers, and soon the government authorized the expansion of the Corps to include additional divisions. The Ninth Marine Regiment, created too late to see service in World War One, was reactivated in February, 1942, and became the first unit of the Third Marine Division that September. As the scope of the war continued to broaden, and the old line Marines experienced heavy combat and casualties in the South Pacific, the decision was made to organize and train another new unit: the Fourth Marine Division.

The Fourth Division was to be composed of one reactivated artillery regiment (14th Marines), one new Engineer regiment (20th Marines) and three new infantry regiments (23rd, 24th, and 25th Marines). The Twenty-third Marines, organized at Camp Lejeune in July 1942, was originally slated to be a part of the Third Division, but was detached in early 1943 to become the first unit of the new division.2 Five months later, this regiment was split in half to provide trained men for the nucleus of the Twenty-fifth Marines. In June, 1943, two battalions of the Fourteenth and the entirety of the Twentieth were likewise activated, and received the full range of training at Camp Lejeune.

The Twenty-fourth Marines had a much different experience. Two experimental units, the First and Second Separate Battalions, were ordered aboard trains bound for the West Coast. Most of the men, who had attended boot camp at Parris Island and gone straight to advanced training at New River, North Carolina, were men from the eastern seaboard who had never traveled west of the Mississippi in their lives. The train journey was an adventure all its own. Lieutenant Philip Wood, a weapons platoon leader in Able Company, First Separate Battalion, was impressed by the land rolling by outside his train window:

There is no way of telling you the breadth, of the beauty, of the warmth the people showed – little pickaninnies in the Atlanta freight yard dancing their hearts out – then throwing back the nickels – “Free for the sojers, please, mister” – girls in New Orleans flocking to the station, and exchanging addresses so that they could write to a Marine – nice girls. And the engineer slowing down as we went through the orange groves so that the little Mexicanos could throw us fat, sweet oranges.

And the beauty of the land, the rolling red hills of Georgia, the dark, thick, black swamps of Louisiana, the endless china blue sky and calicoed hills of Texas. Desert and sage and cactus and space and solitude of Arizona – sunset behind purple hills that rise suddenly from flat plains, as though someone below had punched up into the soft tissue of the land – and the fertility of California – past all believing – after the New Mexico emptiness to find these wide valleys between snow-girthed peaks, filled with peaches, plums, and apple trees, all in ordered bloom. All the land is planned for – you are unconsciously glad that none of the rich loam is wasted, but every plant produces so luxuriantly – the cows instead of being lean and athletic, as a hundred miles back, are fat and creamy – and the orange groves – the very symbol of richness and productivity – each tree catching the essence of Kismet, Eden, and the garden of Proserpine – the largest vineyard in the world, olives, avocados, and nectarines – the whole state is unbelievably rich and satisfying in its productivity.

And I will never get used to seeing palms and cacti – from Alabama on the land is full of them, and they, too, are lovely.3

George Smith, a machine gunner in Wood's platoon, had a slightly different set of memories of the voyage. “We rode Pullman, and had a big – no, huge – baked ham on rye and glass of milk every night. When [Lieutenant Wood] marched us out of the station in New Orleans in formation, each platoon got a case of beer so that every man received a bottle, with the exception of the guns and tubes – we got two. I think the skipper might have had something to do with that.”4 The skipper, Captain Irving Schechter, had more on his mind than beer and sightseeing. “All of the troops knew this was to be the last stop before the Pacific and for the first time I became concerned about men going over the hill,” he said. “It was possible that some of them felt that combat against the Japanese might not be a piece of cake.”

I called them together and gave them a pep talk about sunny California, with special emphasis on all the goodies they would find in Tijuana.... I also informed them that we still had a lot of work to do before we shipped out to the islands. Whatever I said, it must have worked. I didn't lose a single man on the train ride across the country.5

Their destination was Camp Pendleton, the newest and largest Marine Corps base in the country. Its 497 square kilometers, formerly Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores, had been purchased by the Marines in February, 1942.6 “[C]ontaining almost every type of terrain available, Camp Pendleton.... will provide the most magnificent training ground available to the devil dogs in the United States,” read an article in a Spartanburg, South Carolina newspaper. “They'll learn how to advance against an enemy over steep hills and narrow valleys, through broad meadows and across lakes. All these features abound at Santa Margarita.... And they'll acquaint themselves with plunging to a beach through churning surf from landing boats. The leathernecks will be able to fire their heaviest artillery without fear of damaging anybody's house.”7 Construction began in April; by September the Ninth Marines were in residence, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially dedicated the new base. The Ninth Marines became the founding regiment of the Third Marine Division, which organized and trained at Camps Elliott and Pendleton, before shipping out for New Zealand in February 1943.8

In March, Pendleton was a hive of activity once again. Between the ninth and seventeenth of the month, three battalions from Camp Lejeune – the experimental Separate Battalions – arrived at the San Diego base. On March 26, the battalions were augmented with a new Headquarters and Service Company and designated as the Twenty-fourth Marines.9 The new regiment, commanded by Lt. Colonel Orin H. Wheeler, was quartered in large, roughly made buildings that could house an entire company. Though built quickly to minimum standards, the new barracks – each capable of holding an entire company – were a welcome change from the tents and Quonset huts of New River:

The long wooden barracks, a few hundred yards from another just like it, had been painted a dull cream color. In the center of the ling side were two large double doors. Inside, a stairwell divided the two-storied building into four large sections. Each platoon had one quarter. After opening the door to one of these, [one] went into a small hallway. The left had side had small rooms for the platoon's NCOs; they got some privacy. The heads and showers took up the right side. Farther along, the hallway entered a large open room with metal double-decker bunks running down each side. Each bunk had two wooden footlockers.... A row of lightbulbs ran down the center aisle. Most of the light came in through the windows. The room held enough bunks for an entire platoon....9.5

After unloading their seabags and squaring away the barracks, the Marines were given some time to look around and get their bearings in their new environment. “We pulled in late Saturday night,” said George Smith (A/1/24), “and they told us on Sunday morning just to get the lay of the land.”

The Third Division had been at Pendleton, but they'd been out of there several months, so as a result all of this animal life regenerated itself. There must have been literally a thousand snakes. I was petrified of snakes – still am. I got a picture of one, but that's as close as I wanted to get to one. Every time we were playing around in the bush, I was petrified because I just don't like those suckers.10

Jeff Jowers, A/1/24, holds up a snake at Camp Pendleton, 1943. Collection of the author.

Philip Wood (A/1/24) wrote that the “country and climate are unparalleled – this is the perfect place to train, and the word is that we will be here for three or four months.”11 The sense of permanence was reinforced when Platoon Sergeant Charles Ckaminsky – a real “old salt” with twenty six years in the Corps – took it upon himself to have the rocks around his company's barracks whitewashed in accordance with regulations. In the coming months, the Twenty-fourth Marines would be joined by other units, from tanks and heavy artillery to engineers and corpsmen. Together, they formed the West Coast Echelon of the future Fourth Marine Division.12

The barracks building for A/1/24. Note Ckaminsky's whitewashed rocks.

Collection of the author.

The training program at Pendleton closely mirrored that of Camp Lejeune. Instruction in individual weapons never ceased, and the wide open fields and varied terrain of southern California were ideal for battalion-sized problems incorporating artillery and air support. The Twenty-fourth Marines got a unique chance to show off their training as extras in the film Guadalcanal Diary. The film, based on Richard Tregaskis' popular book of the same name, portrayed the then-recent struggle for the Solomon Islands. For several days, the Marines practiced amphibious landings and ducked explosions for the camera. They met William Bendix, Lloyd Knoll, Anthony Quinn, and Richard Jaeckel. Bendix and Knoll were “nice characters,”13 but many Marines expressed their derision that Richard Jaeckel – a teenager like themselves – was not actually in uniform.14 George Smith remembered an on-set incident that reminded the Hollywood people that they were working with Marines:

[The palm trees for the set] were all phony, they were wired to platforms. They used Marine flyers for the strafing scenes, and they came down and knocked half the trees down! The movie guy was really pissed! I guess they did it on purpose, but he didn't like it too much.15

Officers of First Battalion, 24th Marines on the set of Guadalcanal Diary. Director Lewis Seiler is seated at center. Collection of the author.

The everyday training was far less glamorous. Endless trips out to the boondocks, sometimes for days-long battle problems, began to wear on the Marines. “On the whole, I enjoy the work so the days pass quickly,” wrote Phil Wood, “it's just that at times I get to feeling that it's all pretty sterile – plowing a field of dry sand.”16 Men became experts on blisters after long marches in full gear, with the radiomen and weapons crews struggling along under many extra pounds of equipment. Many of them encountered cactus and learned a painful lesson. An often-copied photograph in Able Company showed a corpsman named Sears “engaged in the delicate operation of removing cactus needles from [a mortarman's] butt.” George Smith's machine gun crew hid themselves in a patch of cactus for camouflage during a field exercise. The other Marines never found them, but a rattlesnake did. Smith (at left, picking out needles) had just gotten comfortable when he heard a loud rattle. “I came up out of that cactus, I had it all over me, sticking in me, but I wasn't gonna get bit by a snake no matter what happened!”17 Irving Schechter led his company eight miles out to the training area each day, but had a favorite shortcut for knocking three miles off the return trip, cutting off what he thought was a useless double-back. “Our barracks was up on this hill, and if you didn't go straight down, you had to go all the way through camp.... Schechter, 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 had to really hang on, and after a couple of times you break loose the grass and it's all dirt. I still can't decide if it was worth it.”18 The hill became known as “Buck's Shortcut,” and passed into infamy after one particularly grueling battalion problem.

A Company was to retreat for a day and a half while C and B tried to catch us, then it was supposed to be reversed. Well, in that day and a half we run 'em down so bad they called it off. This was at Tent Camp #3, about thirty miles out. At the end of the exercise, we were waiting along the road for our trucks – and then Schechter says 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 someone coulda got ahold of Schechter that night, they would have killed him! But at the same time, you know, we really realized what the hell we did physically, man we were in good shape. Whether we could fight or not was something else.19

The First Battalion of the 24th Marines made several long marches out to Pendleton's Tent Camp #3. It became their home for six weeks during the summer of 1943. In addition to the field training of the line companies, life in the tent camp afforded company cooks an opportunity to practice feeding their comrades while on the move. “The cooks were great with us,” recalled Smith. “We had our own little kitchen set up in a dry stream bed, and we could go down there in the morning and order two eggs sunny side up, and we'd get them.”20 Anyone assigned to a kitchen detail sported a tall, white chef's hat, and there was much clowning around with knives and saws as Marines pretended to carve each other up for the table. A photograph of Able Company taken at noon chow one day shows beaming Marines behind a table covered in chunks of watermelon. When not training, life in the boondocks – away from the scrutiny of officers and fatigue details – felt more like an extended camping trip.

Collection of the author.

Colonel Franklin Hart became the commander of the Twenty-fourth Marines on June 12, 1943.21 A forty-eight year old officer with a career stretching back to 1917, Hart had commanded a company in the late days of World War One, served in Haiti in the 1920s, and held a series of staff appointments at sea and on land. Hart was attached to the American Embassy in London as assistant Naval attache; in July of 1942, he participated in the raid on Dieppe as an observer on Lord Mountbatten's staff. After returning to the United States, Hart was sent to Camp Pendleton to assume command of the new regiment.22 Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler became the executive officer.23

The reorganizing of the upper echelons of the staff was matched by a flurry of promotions for the line companies. “Finally made me First Looey yesterday,” wrote Phil Wood. “Not a big promotion, but a welcome one. Only twelve of the Second Looeys in the Battalion made it, but all three of us in Co. 'A' did.”24 Some of the men felt they were unfairly passed over. Pfc. Claude Henderson, one of Wood's mortarmen, had his eye on a second stripe. “Claude wanted to be an NCO so bad,” said George Smith. “We found he had a blouse with corporal stripes in his seabag, and boy, none of us would let him go! He was a nice guy, but he just had this thing where he wanted to be a corporal, and sometimes he sorta acted like a corporal before he was, and it alienated some people.”25

Claude Henderson (left) with other members of his mortar squad. From left: Henderson, Leo Ksiekievicz, Bill Imm, Wilbur Plitt, Ed Hackett. Camp Pendleton, 1943. Collection of the author.

In the late summer of 1943, the San Diego train station was overwhelmed by troop trains bearing the East Coast Echelon of the new division. The 23rd Marines were the first to arrive on July 12; they were followed by the 14th and 20th regiments, as well as support units.26 The 25th Marines, having traveled by ship through the Panama Canal, were the last to arrive, dooming them to quarters in a tent camp instead of pre-built barracks.27 By August 16, the 6,220 men of the East Coast Echelon had been settled into their new camp. That day, the Fourth Marine Division was formally activated, and Major General Harry Schmidt took command. The “intensive training” was about to begin.28

Digging a mortar pit in the Pendleton boondocks. Labels by George Smith indicate Theodore Grosch, Amedeo Izzo, Smith, Tom Johnson. From the 24th Marines Cruise Book.

The division was augmented by an influx of new men from Camp Elliott, and a smattering of combat veterans intended to balance out the inexperience of the regiments. For example, on August 26 alone, A/1/24 received forty-eight privates straight from Camp Elliott – most of whom had only enlisted the previous May. A handful of NCOs and a new First Lieutenant arrived in the following days. The new men were not well received by the cadre that had been together since North Carolina.

I only wish, however, that we had gotten a hold of these new men three or four months ago; they need a lot of work; not only on knowledge, but on the even more important matter of discipline and attitude. Getting these new men in has made me realize just how good a working team we had built up with the old men. It does take time, and we will have to take that time either here or out of the States, for we have about half the outfit which is still somewhat of an unknown quantity.29

George Smith cites a regimental restructuring as the reason for this change. “Prior to coming west we had four squads; three with two machine guns each, and a mortar squad with two tubes. While we were at Pendleton they changed our organization and gave us six squads – four guns and two tubes.” When it came to assessing the new men, Smith was not impressed. “The pick wasn't always the top of the heap. We on the east coast thought those Hollywood Marines were all pose and little substance.”30 With few exceptions, however, the Camp Elliott contingent performed equally as well as the men from New River.

Amedeo Izzo and Jeff Jowers, A/1/24, have a friendly sparring match, Camp Pendleton. Collection of the author.

Combat veterans were a valuable asset to a unit composed of men who had never been overseas. Within the microcosm of Able Company, there were at least two corporals who had witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor; one of these, Arthur Ervin, had gone on to join one of the famous Raider battalions and had experienced a combat landing on Pavuvu. He was sent to the new division after contracting filariasis in Samoa, and shared his expertise with an admiring throng of young Marines.31 Ervin was an officer's nightmare – most Raider units had practiced a much more egalitarian system of rank, and Ervin “was pretty much an individualist, not given to affection, and on first impression, not a top notch NCO.”32 His lieutenant, Phil Wood, had a different opinion and made Ervin a squad leader in the machine gun section. The salty, dangerous young corporal proved a better leader than Wood's own second in command. The ability of upper echelons to recognize and use the experience of lower-ranked veterans was of untold importance to the division's construction.

A machine gun squad of A/1/24, at a Pendleton tent camp. Clockwise from front: George Smith, Jeff Jowers, Tom Hurley, George Hall, Howard Kerr.

In addition to its thousands of regular men, the new division could boast of a handful of celebrities. Lieutenant Alex Santilli (D/1/24), a Fordham graduate, had led his school's football team to victory in the Sugar Bowl in 1942, and was on the roster of the College All-Star team.33 Sergeant Steven Opalenik had been a wrestling champion, and described in lurid terms what he would do to any enemy he encountered in hand-to-hand combat.34 Hamilton Pendergast (D/1/24), an exceptional baseball player, turned down an offer from a minor-league team to join the Marines.35 Lee Marvin, who would rise to fame as an actor, was a private soldier in I/3/24. Perhaps the biggest, if not most widely known, celebrity in the division was an eighteen year old PFC in A/1/24. His arrival caused a stir within the company. First Sergeant William Dolly took a look at the young man's identification, and called his commanding officer. “Captain, there's something screwy about the address of his next of kin,” he told Captain Schechter. “It's the White House, Washington D.C.” Schechter was, in his own words, “a little taken aback.” His new soldier, PFC Stephen Hopkins, was the son of Harry Hopkins – President Roosevelt's close personal friend and adviser. Mystified, Schechter returned to his office to meet Hopkins.

He arrived at my office and gave me the proper salute. I asked him to sit down.

"Hopkins," I said, "I see you have been in officers' training and I'm somewhat puzzled as to why you should show up here. There is no mention of your flunking out of OCS."

"No, sir," he answered, "I did not flunk out; I just got damn sick and tired of getting the needle about my having some kind of an easy job because I was Harry Hopkins's son. My dad has believed in this war since it started and so have his sons. I'm anxious to go overseas and back up what my father stands for because I stand for the same things."

"Okay, Hopkins," I told him, "we'll get you into machine guns in the morning."36

Training on a division-wide scale went into full effect in September, 1943. “An uncanny amount of work is being required of us platoon leaders by a stepped-up training schedule, and by a new high exactitude in things military,” wrote Phil Wood. “Difficult to describe this last to a civilian, but the result is the multiplication of the minutia of the duty – and a doubling of the hours. For the last ten days, though we haven't been out in the field but a few days, I've been at if from six thirty in the morning till ten every night.”37 The ranking officers of the Division personally made sure that their men were performing at peak capacity. Wood's mortar section was visited at the firing range by Lieutenant Colonel Aquilla Dyess (the battalion commander), Colonel Franklin Hart (the regimental commander), and Major General Harry Schmidt (the division commander). Young Lieutenant Wood was pleased that his crews “acquitted themselves with credit” in front of the dazzling array of brass.

They stayed for about an hour, and I had to explain every detail of the mortar techniques we were using. The General is quite a boy – there are only two men in the Corps who outrank him (Holcomb the Commandant, and Vandergrift of Guadalcanal). He wasn’t exactly chatty – he asked one question, and cleared his throat twice. Col. Hart, though, I like very much. He reminds me very much of Daddy in his looks, though a somewhat older and slighter man, very distinguished looking with an aura of command and leadership about him. Lt. Col. Dyess is also a good man. The men call him “Big Red,” both respect and fear him. He rules with an iron hand, though he is human in individual cases.38

The payoff for the 24th Marines came on September 26, 1943.

Yesterday, the 24th formally came of age – at a Regimental parade, which is a very involved and precise sort of a military square dance. The regiment was presented with its colors. It really was a tremendously impressive ceremony, which I wish that both of you could have seen – everything was out there, all our artillery, vehicles, all our weapons, men in greens, plus full field equipment – helmets, leggings, packs and so forth – four thousand men passing in review, the 24th Band, an excellent 25 piece band, playing the 24th Marines’ March. A 21-gun salute from the 75 millimeter Howitzers, quite the most impressive thing of its kind that I have yet seen. All the visiting Potentates were very enthusiastic too – pronounced it one of the finest parades they’d ever seen, with not a man out of line or step – no mistakes, etcetera.39

The color guard of the 24th Marines.

Orvel Johnson, of C Company, 23rd Marines, claimed his comrades had “run, marched, and crawled over seemingly hundreds of miles of Camp Pendleton to condition our legs and lungs. We had climbed walls, cliffs, steep hills, ropes, and landing nets to develop our arms and chest muscles. We knew what it was like to sleep outdoors in bone-chilling weather.” Training with individual weapons never ceased. “We had done everything with our rifles from removing protective cosmoline coating to breaking them down blindfolded and reassembling them the same way.... We carried them on forced marches, 25 miles in one day. We even slept with them inside our ponchos or used them as our pillow. They had become an extension of ourselves.”40 Johnson and other C/1/23 Marines also recalled harvesting cactus fruit – a welcome culinary break from C-rations in the field – and encountering numerous rattlesnakes, including a monster stretching six feet long.41 The daily grind was mitigated with stories of weekends spent in Los Angeles or San Diego, and with the hope that when the next liberty call sounded, one would pass inspection and be allowed off base.

Foremost in the mind of every Marine in the new division – especially those recently arrived from New River – was liberty call. Jacksonville, North Carolina, had been marginal liberty at best; unless one could get a ride to the capital, or a long enough pass to attempt the trip to New York City, the Marines were limited to drinking, chasing women, fighting, and drinking more. San Diego offered little change from this regimen, which suited many men, but left many more disillusioned or even disgusted with their opportunities for recreation. Wilbur Jones, in his composite sketch of the “prototype common Marine,” placed Jacksonville and San Diego in a tie for most disliked spots in the United States.42 Creative Marines could always find some means of entertainment, however. Los Angeles (right) was a short ride to the north, and the notorious Tijuana bars and houses of ill repute were less than an hour to the south. Many lasting bonds were formed between Marines who shared adventures on liberty – as many, if not more, than those forged in training. “Sometimes it seemed that Pendleton was simply a place to stay between weekends in Los Angeles. For you were living on borrowed time, for all you knew, and you wanted to live that time intensely. Every day was precious.”43

George Smith had an unusual task to perform during his first week at Pendleton. His close friend Tom Hurley was a married man, and Anne Hurley was not going to miss any time with her husband as long as he was Stateside. She had already moved once, to be nearer to the base at New River, and when the regiment transferred to California, Anne was not far behind. “That's how much she loved the guy,” said Smith. “She wasn't gonna let him sleep on his own.” Hurley and Smith spent their first weekend liberty traveling Oceanside, California, to find a suitable place for Anne – without a car to travel, they had no success and hiked back to Pendleton on a Saturday night. Anne arrived in Oceanside the next morning, and after a few days in a hotel managed to rent a small holiday cabin in a complex where other married Marines lived with their wives. The Hurley's door was always open to Tom's comrades, and Smith remembers being rewarded for his help in securing the apartment:

We would go on liberty Friday night, and [John J.] Franey and I would stop at the grocery store to buy what we could, including meat. We would drop it off with the Hurleys, we would go up to LA and come back Sunday afternoon or night, and she would have a dinner for us! That's what kept us civil down there.

Anne Hurley, with JJ Franey (left) and George Smith.

Smith also recalled several less tame diversions. He gained the nickname “Gunga” after an evening of drinking and taking in the 1939 film Gunga Din. “I rolled into the barracks shouting, 'Din! Din! Bring me water, Din!' Someone threw a bucket of water on me and I guess the nickname just stuck.”44 He spent several wild nights in the Haywood Hotel, Los Angeles; men from Able Company's weapons platoon were ejected from the establishment “on several occasions.”45 Smith often went on liberty with his friend, Jeff “Tiny” Jowers. Jowers, a Floridian, “had a face like an alligator, alligator skin,” said Smith. “We had a great time, but he looked so rough... and we'd go on liberty, and women would fall all over the guy! And I asked him once, 'Tiny, what the hell do you do?"' And he said 'I treat 'em like a lady. As long as you do that, you'll never have any trouble.' And I never forgot that.”46

Liberty at the Haywood Hotel, 1945. These A/1/24 Marines are revisiting the scene of some wild nights now that the war is over. From left: George Smith, Henry Hufnagle, unknown, unknown, Tom Hurley, Robert Larson. Collection of the author.

 

The crowning glory for Smith's platoon came late in their stay at Pendleton. A certain San Diego hotel, one of the favored places for liberty excursions, happened to come under new management. The men in the weapons platoon, being energetic and seemingly possessed of a devil-may-care attitude,did not endear themselves to the new manager, and after some forgotten episode, one of their number was kicked out and banned from returning. It was felt that this was unfair, that he had been made an example of, and the Marines returned to Pendleton with a bone to pick. It so happened that several men in the platoon had been assigned to additional training in demolitions, and some blocks of TNT that had "gone missing" from the training area appeared in the barracks. They now had a golden opportunity to teach their enemy a lesson while applying their training. On their next liberty, the Marines returned to the scene of their defeat and a chosen team sequestered themselves in the bathroom. They first stopped up the toilet with wads of paper, then affixed an eighth of a stick of TNT to the commode, rigging it to explode when the flush chain was pulled. They exited, smirking, found the manager, and complained of a blocked toilet in the men's room. As the manager went to investigate, the entire platoon ran for the door. The resulting blast was later discovered to have blown the manager clear out the door of the bathroom, which terrified but did not injure him. As Smith concluded: "We weren't smart in Weapons, but boy we were loyal."47

Smith (right) and Howard Haff
in a souvenir photo booth.

Philip Wood, Smith's platoon leader, had his own opportunities for liberty. After visiting his mother and sister on a brief furlough, he returned to the confines of southern California. He accepted an invitation to go hunting with a friend:

Spent a very pleasant day yesterday, which we had off, back up in the hills, hunting with another Lieutenant 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.48

Unfortunately, being a “great big rugged Marine” landed some men in trouble. One mortarman in A/1/24 decided to go on a long-overdue liberty, “got blind drunk, got picked up for disorderly conduct, resisted arrest and knocked down an MP.”49 The man got off “comparatively lightly” - for “being under the influence of intoxicants, using profane and obscene language and striking an MP” his punishment was a thirty day restriction to base, plus extra punitive duties.50 Another man from the weapons company went “over the hill” after hearing a rumor that his girlfriend had married someone else. “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.”51 As the date of departure for combat grew closer, punishments grew more severe. A private in Dog Company was brigged for forty days and lost $75 for being absent without leave, and an Able Company rifleman was fined $32 and spent twenty days in solitary confinement for “having in his possession, wearing apparel belonging to another person.”52

When they returned from liberty or from the brig, the Marines went right back into training. “The 132,000 acres of the former Santa Margarita Ranch with its hills, canyons, and semi-arid desert were ideal terrain for CPXs (command post exercises), field problems, hikes and maneuvers,” reads the official history of the Fourth Marine Division.

There are other things one will remember... the machine-gun range, bayonet practice, conditioning hikes, the moving-target range, pillbox assaults in Windmill Canyon, night attacks near the Santa Margarita River, rubber-boat landings at the boat basin, combat swimming with the brutal words of the instructor: “STEP OFF!”53

Of all the trials endured by Marines at Camp Pendleton, the ones involving water had the greatest impact. Many Marines had never seen a body of water larger than a lake before, and a considerable number had never learned to swim. Pendleton had a number of swimming pools, which were open to all Marines when off duty. Expert swimmers made good use of the pools and diving towers, which stood ten, twenty-five, and thirty-five feet high. Jackie Helton, of the 23rd Marines, was an expert swimmer and routinely impressed his friends by diving from the highest platform.54 Most preferred to ignore the tall tower until forced to jump from it during graduation from “abandon ship” drills.

One of Camp Pendleton's swimming pools. The 35 foot tower is the tall structure at left.

Each Marine had to face the tower eventually, and most found the height terrifying. Jim Tobin, a platoon leader with C/1/23, wrote that he was “scared to death of that 35-foot platform.” As an officer, though, he had to lead by example. “My solution was to go to the head of the line and get it over with as soon as possible, before I had time to think about it and chicken out. I did so, and thankfully I made it. I hoped that the men would just think I was a gutsy, marvelous guy, rather than recognizing that I was really just a wimp who didn't have the nerve to wait his turn.”55 Jackie Helton, who had no fear of diving from the top platform, had to be ordered to jump in feet first. He complied, but swore he would face a firing squad before jumping again.56 George Smith, of A/1/24, said only “I was up there for a long time before I jumped.”57 One sergeant in Phil Wood's platoon flatly refused to climb the structure; he had previous overseas service, but by disobeying a direct order, he was labeled a troublemaker.58

USMC Photo.

In late 1943, some unknown officer had the bright idea of designating one platoon per battalion to act as a “Raider platoon” to conduct such activities as night reconnaissance, swift surprise attacks, and the use of rubber assault boats. For the 23rd Marines, the chosen platoon was First Platoon, C Company, under the command of Lt. Garfield Randall. One of Randall's marines remembered:

There was no specific schedule or plan to achieve the goal of making us a “qualified” raider organization. I think that one or two days a week we broke away from the regular company training to do “special training.” Lt. Randall would talk to us about subjects that he thought were appropriate and would devise some platoon problems for us to run. In addition, some time was taken up with trivia. I remember one session where we had a lengthy discussion about what Randall's battlefield “handle” would be.59

The 24th Marines fielded a platoon from Company A, with a machine-gun squad attached.60 “You know how they lure you into this?” asked George Smith. “Pendleton had a lake alongside of the dispensary, and when they first told us we were gonna be in rubber boats they took us down there on a Sunday. The sun's shining, it's nice and warm, we thought 'Oh hell, this is great!' Then they put us down on that beach and they like to killed us.”61

A/1/24 praticing with boats. USMC Photo.

The levity in Smith's recollection is a far cry from the reaction of the Marines assigned the unenviable job of manhandling unwieldy rubber boats through pounding surf, getting soaked and seasick in the process, rowing in to shore, and repeating the whole ordeal several times a day. They quickly learned that the smaller seven man boat was preferable to the thirteen man version, which was back-breakingly heavy and had a tendency to fold in the middle when carried. “The water was so damn cold, especially at night,” said Smith. “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.” Pictures of the “infamous rubber boat brigade” mainly show exhausted Marines lying on the beach, or standing wearily in line for chow.

Captain Schechter (in sweater) and Lt. Roy Wood
monitor the chow line on Aliso Beach.

Collection of the author.

Perilous experiences were commonplace. George Smith recalled one nighttime exercise involving a launch from shore. The surf was heavy, and one sergeant – the same that had refused to jump from the combat swimming tower – bailed out of his boat, abandoned his squad, and told Captain Schechter that he “just couldn't take it.” He was immediately relieved of his squad by an irate Lieutenant Wood, and Corporal Kenneth Gann took over.62 The boat was still struggling through the breakers when bow oarsman George Smith saw an immense wave looming overhead.

It's dark, I mean there's no moon, no stars, no nothing, and all of a sudden it got blacker. I don't know what made me look up, but maybe fifteen, twenty feet above me was this little white line where the breaker starts, and it picked that boat up and god knows where the hell it threw us, it threw us all over. As the boat went up, the lashing broke on the MG, and the receiver – the big end – was hanging down. I thought “if I go off, this thing is gonna land on me,” so I closed my legs around it and just kept paddling until the boat settled upside down, and I got off. We were only about waist deep in the water, but when those big waves came in you were fifteen feet under. Gann called for a head count, but I didn't hear him – I knew our gun was gone, and I thought I would have to pay for it, so I ducked underwater to search. I came up, and of course Gann had one missing, so we counted again just as my buddy Dave Spohn ducked under to look for the gun. It was a big mixup! We finally figured out everyone's there, and the hell with the gun, and started pushing the boat back in. Hopkins was beside me and lost his footing; I said something to him and all I heard was “blub blub blub!” Christ, we about lost it, and never let him forget that. I said, “that's all we need, to lose the gun and someone who lived in the White House on the same night.”63

The culmination of the rubber boat training was a series of landings performed at night. By now, the “Raider” platoons were thoroughly fed up with the exercise, and wished wholeheartedly that they were back on a hike through the boondocks. C/1/23's experience with a night landing was more discouraging than dangerous. After being deposited by a Navy landing craft, their little flotilla of six rubber boats had only the faint glow of the eastern horizon to guide them. Rough seas split up the formation, and soon each boat was frantically paddling for shore alone. Seasickness and disorientation slowed their progress; without even a compass to guide them, there was the potential for a real disaster. Through sheer luck, all boats made it safely to shore.64

A/1/24 inspects an assault boat. Collection of the author.

With such disastrous results occurring night after night, it is hardly surprising that rumors of drowned Marines began to circulate. Alva Perry, one of the riflemen who joined A/1/24 from Camp Elliott, decided “I did not want to lose my life in a freak accident. I was going to save myself for combat....” He discovered that plastic Lister bags could be inflated with air and fit perfectly into his pack. Knowing that he risked the wrath of his platoon sergeant if they were found, Perry stowed the bags in his pack, passed inspection, and boarded a troop transport for the night landing exercise. The sea was calm as they climbed down cargo nets to their rubber boats, but as soon as the ship departed a heavy wind began stirring up waves. Perry's platoon sergeant began to panic, screaming “I can't swim!” at the top of his lungs. As the squad tried to restrain the sergeant, he lost his balance and fell overboard. Private DeWitt Dietrich quickly dove in to rescue the floundering sergeant; the boat capsized and spilled everyone into the ocean. “I started to sink like a rock with open eyes, I could see little bits of phosphorous pass in front of me as I rapidly sank into darkness,” wrote Perry. He dropped his BAR, kicked off his boondockers, and his air-filled pack carried him to the surface “like a cork.”

When I got to the surface our boat had been blown away. It was pitch black and the wind was blowing strong, everyone was dog paddling less their rifle. Lenny [Yush] and I got the squad close together and told them to get rid of anything that would hinder their ability to swim. They all stripped less skivvies.

….I continued to rid myself of everything I had on but the pack. I didn’t know how long we would be out there; it was nearly four hours to daylight. We found that if we stayed together that I could support a number of the men in my squad when they become fatigued. DeWitt held on to me with [the sergeant] who was helpless and in a state of shock. We continued to stay afloat and drifted like this until daylight. At daylight we could see boats trying to reach us, but to no avail. The surf was too high. I noticed that we were drifting right into shore. When we were about one half mile from shore I felt my feet touch the ground. I knew we would soon be able to walk ashore. I had to get rid of the pack. I took it off and let the little remaining air out and sank it under my feet. We all staggered into shore with just our skivvies on. We nearly froze on our ride back to camp. The next day we got new gear. We found out later that this exercise was a near disaster; none of the boats landed where they were supposed to land and a lot of gear had been lost.65

A/1/24 in the surf. USMC Photo.

George Smith's long-suffering squad had one final bit of bad luck on the last exercise. As they rowed for shore, someone on the beach fired off a green star cluster – the signal to abort the landing. The transport ships had departed, and Smith's boat was forced to attempt a landing anyway. Through sheer luck, they landed on a small stretch of sand flanked by sharp rocks and facing a steep cliff. After an uncomfortable night on the beach, the squad was recovered by landing craft. With the failure of the night landings, the idea of raider platoons “just sort of fizzled out. Shortly after our rubber boat landing, we quit breaking away for special training and nothing more was said about 'raider' training.”66 This was an immense relief for the Marines. “We never used those boats in combat,” said Smith. “Thank God. We would have been massacred.”67

Exhausted A/1/24 Marines on Aliso Beach, November 1943. Collection of the author.

The final training challenge for the Fourth Division was a full-scale amphibious landing on San Clemente Island. The individual regiments had practiced landings along Aslito Beach, but the assault on San Clemente was designed to involve every element of a real combat situation. As the Marines boarded their attack transports for the 102 kilometer voyage, they got their first look at what an extended stay aboard the cramped vessels would be like. “Our compartment was a converted cargo hold that had been fitted with canvas bunks,” wrote Orvel Johnson. “There were several rows of bunks to cover the width and length of the compartment. There were five bunks in each tier, one above the other with 18 to 21 inches between them.... Aisles between the racks were narrow, not more than 2.5 feet wide.... For anyone that was claustrophobic, this must have been awesome.”68 Most men took refuge on the deck, where the air was fresher.

The Marines climbed down nets into their Higgins boats three at a time. Thirty-six men could fit in each boat; usually half a rifle platoon plus an attached machine gun team.69 With live naval shelling from Task Force 53 howling overhead, the boats held a circular holding pattern until their formation was all accounted for, then began chugging towards the beach. Despite heavy swells, most boats managed to reach their assigned landing zone at the correct time. “Ramps were dropped and we came out at a run heading into the beach for protection from mock enemy rifle and machine gun fire.”70 Unfortunately, the exercise was far from over. Johnson's company ran into a knee-high cactus patch which grew so thickly that “our advance came to a screeching halt. The thorns, up to 2 inches long, sliced right through our dungarees, leggings, and boondockers and of course our skin. Some who had run right into it were immediately bloodied.”71 After trying to clear a path with machetes and bayonets, the order was given to hold up the advance. Inexperienced sailors struggled with equally inexperienced Marine tractor crews; a Marine LVT collided with a large landing ship, and some ships refused to recover craft except those they had launched, which resulted in several tractors being lost as their fuel ran out.72 The weather worsened, and many landing craft capsized or broached on the beach.

Johnson's company received word to vacate the island to make way for a planned air strike. Rushing to get off the island only made the situation on the beach worse; Johnson's boat was driven back up onto the beach and only the cool thinking of his platoon sergeant saved the load of Marines and sailors for serious injury as the craft rolled onto it's gunwales. Finally, an amphibious tractor clanked ashore, and Johnson and his comrades were on their way off the island. Such was the confusion offshore that their return to ship was delayed by several miserable hours.

The LCVP rocked and pitched as we slide into troughs between the swells and were hit by wild waves. Eventually everyone was seasick even the sailors. The first ones to get sick attempted to vomit over the side but with the constant wind and erratic movements of our craft vomit was often blown back into the face of the sick Marine or into the boat. No one was immune to seasickness that day. The smell of diesel fumes and exhaust gases added to our misery. I was never so sick or miserable in my life than in that landing craft while awaiting the return of the LaSalle.73

As the exhausted Marines climbed back up the cargo nets and collapsed onto the decks of the transports, most correctly surmised that combat was only a short way away. Within three days, the Division was “combat loaded” aboard their transports, awaiting orders to move. The 14th Marines were the first to weigh anchor and steam west; a week later, just after dawn on January 13, 1944, the remainder of the division sailed under the Golden Gate bridge, bound for Operation Flintlock. There, on the shores of Roi and Namur in the Kwajalein atoll, they would put their training to the supreme test – and set a record as the first American combat unit to deploy directly into combat from a Stateside post. They had left Pendleton for good – small detachments of clerks remained behind to wrap up the administrative aspects of their months in California, and would be waiting for their comrades at a new camp in Maui.

For many, the last days at Pendleton were marked by intensely personal feelings. “A sad time in a lot of ways – the ending of almost a year of good times in California, for one thing,” wrote Phil Wood. “It’s hard to explain my state of mind right now… perhaps not even necessary, because it’s so traditional. Take equal parts of nervous apprehension and the most poignant nostalgia, and you have it. Wondering, not knowing, even fearing what is to come, yet glad that it will be soon. Yes, fearing - not bullets or pain, but that through them I may somehow lose the great happiness that I have come to identify with life. For I have had much more than my share - I sing instinctively.”74 The Marines were as ready for combat as they would ever be – physically fit, proficient in their jobs, proud of their unit, and confident in their cause. Yet as they left their final phase of training for the uncertainty of combat, some could not shake feelings of unease. Gunner George Smith was sitting on the San Diego dock with his friend and ammunition carrier Steve Hopkins. The two had become very close in the short time they had served together. As they gazed at the ships that would take them into combat, Hopkins turned to Smith and said, “I know I'm not coming back.” Jokingly, Smith replied “Yeah, if I lived the life you did, I wouldn't expect to come back either!”75

Less than a month later, Stephen Hopkins became the first combat fatality of Company A, 24th Marines.

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NOTES AND CITATITIONS

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