PART SEVEN
Collected From the Four
Corners of The County
Histories, Documents,
a Diary, Some Newspapers
This final part started out with one or two documents, then began to grow, taking on a life of its
own. It's kind of like an Appendix
because it explains or supplements things in other parts of the book. But I don't like the word Appendix, so it
became and remained Part Seven. We start
off with the story of some Marines in a heavy artillery battalion who used to
be forgotten.
A Battalion of Marines fought on Tulagi, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan,
Eniwetoc, and Guam.
They rated five Battle Stars and two Unit Citations and yet they called
themselves "The Forgotten Battalion."
They claimed, with good cause, that nobody in the States ever heard of
them. I say, let's fix that here and
now. With the help of Sergeant Bill
Miller's article published in Leatherneck
(a magazine of the United States Marines) loaned to me by Stan
Holloway, here is a short essay to help
us remember The Forgotten Battalion.
The Forgotten Batallion
Andy Chesnut provided us with some brochures and a book
titled This is The American Legion…. I drew the following article from that
material.
The American Legion
The Aleutian Front likely has had the least written about it
of any of the campaigns of World War II.
It has been mentioned several times in the stories in this book but we
interviewed no one who was stationed there in a combat unit for the entire
duration. Those few who remember the war
at all don't recall hearing or reading much about what went on in Alaska and on
the Aleutian Islands. It seems the strongest contender in that
particular area of the war was the weather.
A copy of the Winter 2000 edition of National WW II Memorial, a newsletter of
the World War II Memorial Society, recently came into my hands. It contained an article about that campaign
which I have summarized here.
The Aleutian Front
Darwin Nealey loaned me Brian Garfield's book The Thousand-Mile War -World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians to educate
me on the only war front that included on-going combat on American
territory. The following poem, printed
in Garfield's book,
is included here
in memory of The Whitman County men who served on land and sea and in the air
in the Aleutian Theater of War.
Aleutian Summer of 1943
One of the biggest issues to be dealt with on the home front
during the war,
besides a pervasive fear of a massive invasion of our shores, was
rationing of certain items, not the least of concern being sugar, the first
commodity to be limited. While we were
compiling information for this book I found a booklet in my mailbox, a gift
from a secret prayer pal who obviously knew my interest in things of World War
II. Here's a recap of what was in that
booklet, following a brief AP wire story out of Washington, DC published
early in January 1942.
Sugar Rationing
Not only was there a Forgotten Battalion, there was an
entire "Forgotten War" during World War II. While seeking material from which we could
write a brief summary about what has been termed "The Forgotten War,"
Gil Low, a
regular at the Pullman Senior Center, asked me
if I would like to borrow a book titled The
World At Arms, a Reader's Digest History of World War II. In all of the book's four hundred and eighty
pages, only seventeen pages were devoted to "The Forgotten War," a
telling detail. But those seventeen
pages were enough to give us the following essay. Bob Clegg read it for me and made some
adjustments, for which I thank him.
The Forgotten War
America's
Chaplains spent uncountable hours counseling and guiding servicemen and women
and encouraging them to persevere and endure the difficulties inherent in going
to war. We included the following story,
taken from The Chaplain's Prayer Manual, in honor of all the Chaplains who
served the people of Whitman County in World
War II.
Four Chaplains
Rifle Company E, Second Battalion, 161st Regiment
was a Washington State National Guard unit formed in September, 1940 in Pullman . The men were from Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, many of
them Whitman County
residents. Carlyle E. Ragsdale, a
member of Company E and a native of Colfax, wrote and produced a video of still
shots with sound and narration that he called The Little Picture, likely in contrast to an official Army
production titled The Big Picture.
Lester Bishop, also a member of Company E, kindly loaned me The
Little Picture and the following summary is composed from several viewings of
it. Written words cannot fully express
what the sounds, sights, and narration presented, but we offer these words as a
tribute to Carlyle Ragsdale, now deceased, who spent twenty-three years putting
his video together and to the Whitman County men who
gathered in September 1940
for one year of peace-time service. Ultimately Company E was assigned to the 25th
U.S. Infantry Division, not to be returned to State control until after the end
of World War II, five full years later.
Company E
The following document is the text of the Diary Bryant Smick
kept from June of 1944 until April of 1945 while he was in a POW camp in Germany. It is an amazing recounting, but even more
amazing is that it was not confiscated nor did he lose it somewhere along the
line. His Diary was written in a very
small, slim notebook provided in a Red Cross parcel. The notebook also contains some drawings he
did to keep his mind off his circumstances.
It in no way told all that happened in prison, since he had to be
circumspect about what he committed to writing in case the Diary was found and
read by guards.
Bryant Smick recently added these words: "I do remember
a let down feeling and thinking to myself, here I am in a POW camp feeling very
sorry for myself. Why am I here? Will people think I'm a coward for not fighting
until the end? Should I have tried
harder to escape? Will the people in St. John ever
speak to me again? I'm tired to
death. I've made it this far without
being killed, maybe I can rest and sleep away this
terrible feeling. Even though I'm in
this drab looking camp (color it gray) and not locked in a cell I still feel
the pangs of claustrophobia. Barbed wire
all around, guard towers, guards we called Goons or Ferrets, some vicious
looking dogs, all kind of closing in on me.
I also knew I was not in a game.
One wrong move and I'd be dead. I
didn't come that far dodging death to get killed in
such a God-forsaken place. Talk about
rules. For instance, if a shutter
cracked open at night before lights out, the tower guards simply shot through
the window. We lost one man that I know
of that way."
His Diary is reprinted here in its entirety by his
permission. A few words added for
clarification are placed in [brackets.]
The last line was added in 2001, clearly echoing the heart-felt feelings
of all Smick's
generation who saw the war come to a close.
The Diary
One of the people I interviewed and asked for a picture for
this book asked me in return
if I would put my picture in the book and tell my story. It seemed only fair, I guess, so here it is, a child's view of
what WAR meant.
A Child's View of War
Colfax veteran Merle Merry saw the effects of war in Germany with his
eyes and with his camera as he traveled eastward into the heart of the
battle. He saved those precious photos
in an album which he let me leaf through.
Merle generously let me pick out some photos that are representative of
his European tour. They are published
here along with a narrative to explain what his photographer's eye saw so many
decades ago.
European Photodocumentary
One of the people interviewed for Tribute told some Whitman County people
about the project. "Do you think
they would be interested in some newspapers?" she was asked. Well, the newspapers, which were quickly
forwarded to us, were copies of The
Seattle Daily Times, The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, and one issue of the Yakima Morning Herald, all published between Monday, August 6, 1945 and Saturday, August 18, 1945. What a priceless set of historical documents
were suddenly placed in my
hands!
The following are headlines, excerpts from stories, and
tidbits from advertisements, comics, and movie ads that reflect the life and
times in America during
those thirteen world-changing days.
Newspapers
Conclusion