The Howard Hansen Story of WW2

M: Did they really?

H: Yeah. Some of the fellows from back east or around there, relatives sent them

deals that showed Eleanor telling the people in the United States that the Second

Marine Division should be two years over in the islands before they were brought

back into the U. S. because they were hired killers! She said that! Now can you

imagine us wanting to be two years over there after the war! That's what she said.

We didn't like that very well. She stayed that one night, and they had some fancy

home. This camp was on some kind of ranch at one time. There was a home there.

The generals and that used it for their headquarters. I had a working party one morning

and we had to go up there and clean that out. Of course, she left, but somebody

wrote in there - in the bathroom - the heads - "Eleanor piddled here" [Laughter].

I had a second lieutenant, he hadn't been with us very long, he was a professional.

He always took a notion we had to go up that darned mountain after we got over our

having fun all the time. Been there for a couple of months, then we got on schedule.

Every morning he'd take a notion to go up that mountain. It was a long ways up

there. Several times we had to go by the first battalion camp, just off from ours, and

one morning we went by there and there was a wild boar hanging there butchered.

"Aw, Lieutenant, hold it." I was a sergeant then, and I said, "Let's make

arrangements to get that off that tree cause it would look a lot better in our camp.

These guys are just going to eat it." "Oh, I don't know." We were going up that

darned fence row, got up there quite a ways. There was a barbed wire fence, a

pasture coming along the hill, and there was sheep on it. And all at once - the

lieutenant was first, I was second (I was platoon sergeant), platoon behind - I said,

"Hold it a second." "What do you want, Sarge?" "Watch that little dog", a little dog

about that high, short haired, black dog, "Watch that little son-of-a-gun! Just watch

him!" That little fellar would go up to a big ewe, get her by the throat, pull her

down and kill her. And 1 said, "See those others around there? He's already done

that to them." "Oh, my God! Can't we do something about that?" I said, "Yeah, we

can do something about that, Lieutenant." I reached in my pocket (we weren't

supposed to have any ammunition with us), I had a round, put in my 30.06 and I

blasted that little sun-of-a-gun. Then it was "My gosh! Thank goodness! Sarge, that

was a good shot!" I said it had better be. When we started up the hill again, he put

his hand up, "Halt!" We all stopped. "Sergeant, where did you get that round of

ammunition? You aren't supposed to have any ammunition." "Sir, I found it down

the trail; you walked right over it." Of course, I had it in my pocket the whole time.

I said, "Now, I'm sorry I had it, found it." He said, "Why?" I said, "All we've been

eating is mutton!" Lieutenant, you don't have that stuff, but all we've been eating

is mutton stew, mutton stew. And," I said, "I'm getting sick of it and look at what

I did!" He said, "I'm glad you did, I'm tired of stew, too." He had quite a big

problem, that lieutenant. He had never roughed it at all like the average guy would.

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M: You told me earlier that conditions in New Zealand weren't so comfortable, besides the mutton.

H: We lived in eight-man tents. Same kind of weather that we have here in Oregon in

the winter time, no snow, but it was wet and cold; and we didn't have no blankets.

No mattress and no wood floors. It was miserable. I found as much paper as I could

cause I knew that if you put paper on your cot, cold air wouldn't come up through

so bad. That was worse than any concentration camp - well, not worse - but bad enough.

M: How long were you there?

H: Nine months. It took that long to get replacements and recuperate, to get everybody

ready to fight again.

M: Still the same unit? But getting smaller.

H: Oh, yeah. That's the reason we got the replacements. To replace everybody that

got killed. [Doesn't remember the numbers.] And then we hit Tarawa. The lieutenant

I had then lives in Oakland now -- heck of a nice guy.

A funny thing -- the man who bought the house behind me back here [in Beaverton, Oregon],

named Bill. In the hospital right now, in bad shape. St. Vincent's (blockage of his intestine),

but his ship took us in on Tarawa! I met him here about four or five months ago. So many

ships I was on - so many islands - might have been the Middleton. I know later the

Middleton took us in on Saipan, but I didn't pay too much attention to the names of the

ships.

Anyway, on Tarawa, we was on this big ship, a transport, about seven miles out, and

we had to get into a ramplighter they had then, with the front dropped down. Of

course, our company was in the first wave. My platoon was in the first wave on Red

Beach, just to the right of a long ramp running out where they load stuff on to take

to the island. Kind of a dock ran out there 600 yards - that far out they had coral -

you couldn't come in on boats, you had to come in on ramplighters and rendezvous

out there seven miles to pick up our amphibious tractors to get on to hit the beach.

When the first wave hits, you go right in on the beach with them. In the amphibious

tractor, the lieutenant looked at me and said, "Sergeant, don't you have any nerves?"

I said, "What?" "Don't you have any nerves, at all?" "Yeah, I got nerves, why?" He

was shaking like a leaf. He said, "I'm scared to death." Not the word they usually

used in the Marines. He said, "You're not even shaking; not even disturbed." I said,

"Lieutenant, let me clue you in on our deal. This is my third one." I said, "When

you go through two of them, it's just like going to the bathroom. You don't get

scared." He never forgot that.

But anyway, I looked behind when we got right on the beach, looked back when they

were coming in on the ramplighters and dropping them off 600 yards on the coral

because they couldn't come in, and that water out there was just like rain from the

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