Gene M. Bednarz

Gene M. Bednarz, PFC, H-2-7, USMC

My Service in the Marine Corps

1943 - 1946

I became eligible for the military draft in February of 1943 when I turned 18. Since I was an engineering student in my second year at Ill Inst of Tech, I was given an automatic student deferment. Engineers were in great demand for a war that looked to continue for many more years. The deferment was welcome news to my Polish-born parents who agonized about the war daily ever since Poland was invaded by Germany in 1939. They were immensely proud to have their eldest son attending college, but fearful that when I came of age I would be pulled into the fray in Europe. The educational deferment calmed their fears.

As a live-at-home student, however, I found it very difficult to concentrate on my studies as my former high school classmates, and other boys my age were being inducted into the services. My grades began to suffer, and rather than possibly waste the money spent for tuition and books which my parents had scrimped and saved for, a solution became apparent when I was called before the draft board for a six-month review. I refused the deferment, and being adventuresome, I enlisted in the Marines. (I had seen the film “Guadalcanal” about the 1st Marine Division and I guess I wanted to be a hero. So much for the wisdom of an 18-year old!)

My parents were greatly disappointed, and I didn’t have it in me to tell them what I had done or why, so they never knew. I’ll never forget seeing my mother for the last time that warm, sunny August morning, waving a tearful goodbye as I turned a corner on my way to the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego. That image has stayed with me ever since.

After 3-months in boot camp and 3-weeks on the rifle range, I was sent to the Radio School in San Diego, a plum assignment. It was great duty. Fine California weather, classes during the day, family style meals with waiters bringing trays of well prepared food to our table, no marching or other military exercises of any kind, over-night passes to visit San Diego during the week, and 3-day passes to hitch-hike to Los Angeles and Hollywood over the week-ends.

And then in February of 1944, three weeks short of graduation, it all came crashing down, suddenly and tragically.

I received a telephone call from a neighbor in Chicago on a late afternoon, (our family did not have a telephone, few families in our neighborhood did) telling me my mother was gravely ill and I should come home as soon as possible. Surprised and apprehensive, I immediately applied for leave, and after the American Red Cross in Chicago confirmed the circumstances at home, I was given a two-week pass, plus a reserved, hard-to-get seat on a commercial flight to Chicago, for which I had no money. The boys in the squad room heard about it and took up a collection to pay for the ticket. Before I boarded the plane that evening, a Red Cross nurse tried to console me on the death of my mother. What? My mother dead? No that couldn’t be!! A mistake! She was 44, in the prime of life! No, not possible.

But it was true. I was told later her death was caused by a post-op accident. No one was at fault. There was no one to blame. Except maybe me.

The following months are a blur. I returned to San Diego and was placed in another radio class to complete the course. I made no friends and rarely left the base. After graduation in March, while many in my original radio class were sent to Omaha Nebraska for further training in radar and long-range communications, and promoted to NCO status, I remained a Private and was assigned to a combat infantry battalion based at Camp Pendleton. My radioman classification was apparently either ignored or not pertinent and I spent several months in training as an infantry rifleman; which in retrospect held me in good stead in days to come. I don’t remember much about that period except the long 20-mile hikes and overnight bivouacs in the hills. And, oh yes, the hand grenade practices, digging and sleeping in foxholes, fire-team deployment, etc.

In May ’44 the battalion was deemed ready for combat and we boarded an ancient French Luxury liner that had been inadequately converted as a troop transport. Terribly crowded conditions. Too many troops with too few facilities. (There can be as many as 1,000 men in a battalion.) With my last name starting with letter “B” I was always at the forefront of any line of troops that was aligned by alphabet. Most of the time it was a good thing. Being one of the first to board that ship was not one of them. I was assigned the lowest of a 5-tiered hammock, right over the propeller shaft housing. Beside the constant grinding noise and the rise and fall of the aft of the ship, there was a great deal of seasickness below decks. To avoid all that I spent almost the entire 30-day trip amid ship above deck. The weather was warm and clear, and the Pacific relatively calm, but sleeping on a steel deck was no fun. To help pass the time I took advantage of the pocket-book library on board and that was the beginning of a life long habit and love of reading. (Magnificent Obsession & My Son, My Son are two I remember reading.)

When we finally arrived at a South Pacific staging area, another marine and I were called out by name and told to bring along our sea bags. No explanation why. We then boarded another ship that took the two of us to a seemingly deserted beach on a small island, and told to wait there. It was raining and there was no visible activity. We alternately stood and sat there in the warm rain for what seemed like an hour, convinced someone had made a mistake, (the other marine was named Bartell…apparently the letter “B” had been the catalyst,) before an open jeep came racing towards us. The driver told us he would take us to our assigned posts; Bartell to the Message Center Section and I to the Radio Section of the Communications Platoon of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division!

What irony! If I had had the opportunity to pick any unit that I would have wanted join, it would have been the fabled 1st Marine Division and the heroes of Guadalcanal. And as a radioman after all! There surely were other radiomen further down the alphabetical list coming off that transport…. the letter “B” was again a good thing to have.

I was in awe! I had been selected to join the heroes of Guadalcanal, a name and event most Americans had heard and read about!!

We were driven to a long row of 6-man tents that had been erected side by side among tall coconut trees. The driver, who was the Battalion clerk, directed us to separate tents and left. There were four marines sitting on bare cots in the tent I entered. They gave me a cursory look but didn’t say anything. They were morose, somber, and sullen. I dropped my sea bag on an empty cot and sat there, feeling unwanted and totally out of place. (I was guilty of this same attitude towards replacements after we returned from the Peleliu campaign.)

As the days wore on the atmosphere gradually changed as tensions eased and the men relaxed. Conversation began to flow. I discovered that the Division had just returned from a tough campaign on Cape Gloucester in New Britain where the jungle was wet, steaming and unforgiving, and that some were “Old Salts”, professional career soldiers who had joined the Marine Corps during the depression years before Pearl Harbor. Also that the island we were on was a coconut plantation called Pavuvu, that it was the Division’s rest camp, and that the men all hated it. With good reason. It was rat and crab infested, and much too small for the Division’s personnel.

(Bob Hope and his entourage came to visit and entertain before the Division left for Peleliu. It was a non- scheduled spur of the moment thing at Bob Hope’s insistence. I sat on a hill about a mile from the stage. Bob Hope and his group looked about the size of ant, but exciting nevertheless.)

After practicing beach landings and simulated jungle fighting on nearby Guadalcanal (yes that Guadalcanal) the Division set sail for the Palau Islands, and on the morning of September 15, 1944 9,000 marines of the 1st, 5th and 7th Regiments invaded Peleliu. I was in the second wave.

Our officers appeared confident it would be an easy, two or three-day campaign, sort of like additional training maneuvers they said, but which turned out to be prolonged, unimaginable carnage instead. After thirty days of hell that have been largely been erased from my memory, the Army’s 81st Division relieved us. 1,252 had been killed and 5,274 were wounded, for a total of 6,526 marine casualties. Of the original 12 men (mostly 19 and 20-year-old boys) in the Radio Section, three were evacuated with grievous wounds, while four with lesser injuries (myself included), and five who had been incredibly lucky to be unharmed, returned to Pavuvu.

Fresh replacements were waiting for us. We ignored them, didn’t feel like we had anything to say to them. We needed time to return to normal, if we ever would. Eventually we did, sort of, the reticence dissipated and we became comrades in arms as we prepared for the next island assault.

It came six months later on Easter Sunday morning, April 1st 1945, (April Fool’s Day in the US), when the 1st Marine Division, along with 6th Marine Division and several Army Divisions invaded Okinawa. To our surprise and great delight, the landings were virtually unopposed. The Marines quickly secured the southern half of the island where heavy resistance had been expected, but did not occur. (Except for a deadly ambush of one of our patrols on April 12th, coincidentally the day President Roosevelt died).

The army on the other hand ran into a wall of resistance the army could not overcome. After several weeks with no progress, there was only one solution. Send for the Marines. Which is what happened. The army moved out, we moved in. My fellow veterans of Peleliu and Okinawa have often joked that compared to Peleliu, Okinawa was like a leisurely stroll in a park. And that was true while we were in the southern half of the island. The northern half was another story. Suffice it to say that while the combat conditions on Okinawa were not in any way close to the mayhem and chaos of Peleliu, Okinawa was no picnic. Our radio section was rife with replacements as radiomen serving along side riflemen were wounded and evacuated. I was lucky and came through unscathed, as did several other Peleliu veterans: Battige, Boisvert, Garner, and Sharp. With our Peleliu experience, we knew instinctively when to keep our heads down. Plus the infantry training I received at Camp Pendleton was also a factor. BTW, it was common practice to call each other by our last names, a by-product no doubt of incessant roll calls.

After Okinawa was secured around the middle of June the Division began intensive preparations for the attack on the main Japanese islands. We were particularly anxious about that. With the suicidal tactics the Japanese employed on Peleliu and Okinawa, we expected to encounter even more desperate suicidal defenses when we invaded the mainland. The Atom Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August resolved those concerns.

I don’t believe anyone who ever fought against the Japanese ever questioned the morality of using the Atom Bombs. It would have been immoral to have the bombs and not use them, to sanction instead the slaughter of untold thousands of marines and soldiers who would have invaded the Japanese mainland. Japanese civilians were killed? Weren’t the soldiers, sailors and marines who were killed not also civilians temporarily in military units?

The close friendships and bonds we developed thru shared dangers on Peleliu and Okinawa did not wane after we returned to civilian life. We stayed in touch, visited many times over the years, got to know each other’s families. The wives also bonded. We also got together at many of the 1st Marine Division reunions, usually held in a major city on or near August 7th, the anniversary of the Guadalcanal landings.

I have never had any nightmares, nor lost any sleep because of the savagery of Peleliu and Okinawa, but I have often thought of my mother and prayed for her forgiveness. I’m sure she not only forgave, but also watched over me and kept me safe, not only on Peleliu and Okinawa, but also during all the intervening years.

I returned to IIT under the GI Bill in the fall of ’46 and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. (My father was delighted.)

My wife Gloria and I have three grown children and 10 grandchildren. All live within a 30-mile radius and visit often. Or Else!

Bednarz, Gene M.

PFC, H-2-7, USMC