Boom.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day.  I want to tell you about a 20 year old U.S. Marine who was fighting for his country in April 1945 on Okinawa, a long slender island a few hundred miles south of Japan that was being seized by an American armada as a staging point for the expected invasion of Japan to end WWII. 

The Marine was a radioman and he was atop a ridge line in the pelting rain of an electrical storm, transmitting coordinates to offshore ships for their fire control.  Suddenly there was a tremendous noise and he was stunned and momentarily lost the ability to move.

"I remember looking down and seeing sparks arcing between the radio and my fingertips," he said decades later.  Lightning had struck his radio's fully extended antenna.

When his senses returned he checked himself out, determined that he was uninjured, got up and ambled about for a few minutes until his stupor wore off and then went back to work transmitting coordinates in the thunderstorm.  That was one of the few stories that Marine ever told about the grim Pacific War.

The Marine was my Dad, who passed away in 1986 when I was in my early thirties.  I still miss him terribly.

Ker-plunk.

As we close in on Memorial Day, I want to tell you about a 19 year old U.S. Marine who was fighting for his life on the night of September 15, 1944 on Peleliu, a 3-mile by 6-mile island 500 miles east of the Philippines. That was the first day of the amphibious assault by the First Marine Division so we could wrest the airport on this coral speck from the Japanese and safeguard General MacArthur's right flank as he took back the Philippines. 

 

The issue was in doubt that first night on Peleliu, and the Marine was in a foxhole not far from the beach as rounds passed by overhead, listening to the land crabs who shared the hole with him scuttle about. Suddenly something plunked into the hole from above in the darkness. 

 

Grenade? The Marine clambered about the bottom of the hole frantically, feeling the ground with his hands for the object so he could pitch it back out. 

 

"I was never so afraid in all my life," this strong, brave man said decades later. It turned out to be a coconut, clipped off an overhead tree by passing bullet.

 

That was one of the few stories that Marine ever told about the grim Pacific War. The Marine was my Dad, who passed away at age 61 in 1986.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

I hated losing you when you were just 61 in 1986, Dad. I'm glad one of my three sons was held in your strong hands, and I'm sad the other two never encountered you.

I salute you as the father of six, husband to one, son, brother, combat marine, attorney, intellectual, liberal, volunteer, difference maker, fearless example and principled person.

In times of trouble I think of you, Dad, and ask myself what you would have done. I love you.

Hey Danny Lamberton

Hi youngest son Dan. As you know, you haven't spoken to me, or anyone on my side of the family, in over half a decade because you are the victim of Parental Alienation Syndrome, perpetrated upon you when you were a minor by your Mother Sharon Rogers and her coterie of "professionals," when she involved you in our divorce proceedings early this decade. You should know that some people consider PAS to be a form of child abuse, and I am sorry that I was unable to protect you from it.

In my unending (at least until you turn 21 like your two similarly-situated brothers) attempts to contact you, I am inviting you to lunch with me at 12 noon on Veterans Day next Wednesday, November 11th, at Westover's Lost Dog Cafe. Bring anyone you'd like (like Jimmy Rogers and/or Johnny Lamberton). As you undoubtedly know, your Mother knows your address but refuses to give it to me, so I must resort to these entreaties on the Internet.

We can start our brand new father-son association during that noon hour next week. It will be the first day of the rest of our lives. Quite frankly son, I'm 57 now and you and your brothers just might be running out of time.

Since it will be Veterans Day, I'll tell you everything that I know about my Dad, your grandfather, James Wilson Lamberton, who died of lung cancer when he was 61 while I sadly watched him depart from this sphere, before you were born. I wish you could have met him!

Among his many other notable achievements he was a war hero, serving during World War II with the First Marine Division at the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa. Both were terrible, bloody affairs.

He waded ashore at Peleliu on September 15, 1944 as a 19 year old boy and he once said to me in response to yet another wondering, inquiring little boy question that I impetuously put to my strong father about his wartime experiences, "The division had 15,000 Marines and took 5,000 casualties. Imagine, Peter, lining up all in a row and looking to the left of you, and to the right of you, and knowing that one of the three of you was going to get hit."

It was one of the few things that he ever said about that horrific battle. I was and continue to be awestruck at the sacrifices that he and others like him made for us.

Come on Veterans Day and I'll tell you everything I know about this hero that you never met.

In Remembrance

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there.

My Mom died in 1999, so I haven't had much association with this holiday for awhile. She met my Dad at a USO dance in 1943, during the depths of World War II.

My Mom made airplanes in California during the war. She was a hero.

My Dad was a hero too, who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa. You all know those two horrific Pacific battles, right? At Peleliu, my Dad was manning the line with 45 rounds for his carbine as a 19-year-old while his 1st Marine Division suffered 33% casualties. You all stand in line at Starbucks to special order your $4.00 lattes to be "extra hot;" the Marines stood in line at Peleliu to fill up their canteens with water from fuel drums that was oil-laced. In the 118 degree heat, they tried to drink it anyway. He died in 1986.

My Uncle was at the same battles, and others, only he was a shipboard Marine. He slept on clean sheets every night, and Japanese pilots tried to kill him every day. He's a hero.

Because these men are leaving us at such a prodigious rate, I only know one other World War II veteran currently. I only spoke with him once, and I treasure the memory of our conversation.

A soft spoken, droll man, he grew up in New York City, just like me. Although my friend was self deprecating about his World War II experience, it transformed his life. He only told me about it because I asked him directly.

At 18, he was mustered into the Army, given basic training and sent across the Atlantic to fight the Nazis. He was crossing the ocean enroute to a replacement depot in England when the Allies stormed Hitler's Fortress Europa on June 6, 1944. You all knew that date, right? D-Day was the greatest undertaking by the greatest generation.

One small town in Virginia with a population of 3,200 had half of its contingent of 38 National Guardsmen killed on that day at Omaha Beach. Go see their legacy at the D-Day Memorial in Bedford someday. Somehow, I don't think that any of you ever will. (Left: Framed by the mountains of Virginia, a Bedford Boy breaches the Atlantic Wall.)

Although my friend was a thousand miles away from Normandy, he got a D-Day Service Medal because he was at sea on that day. He laughed about this because that's just the way the Army is. He paid his dues later, serving with a tank destroyer unit in Patton's Third Army hunting Tigers. Ever hear of the Battle of the Bulge? He was there. A buddy of his was killed there, standing right next to him. It is his family lore that my friend wound up with the Luger of the German who did that.

He didn't tell me about that part though. Rather, he alerted me not to be surprised if I ever went to Europe and noticed that a lot of French girls around my age looked exactly like him. He loved that joke. He also told me about his purple heart, earned on the day when the Nazis surrendered in 1945. He happened to roll his jeep driving down the road and wound up in the hospital. He laughed that if the accident had happened one day later, no purple heart.

He's a hero. I hope you get well, my friend.

What's done is done. Books.

As the second month of the new year rolls in, it's past time to change the favorite books section on my profile page. I actually look at the profiles of bloggers I read to try to discern things about them because, after all, I actually know very little about most of the bloggers "I know."

Books are important to me. Recently I started reading again after a desultory period where I wasn't reading much. I finished a 700 page book on the Korean War. (Does that sound like fun reading or what?)

It inspired me to begin an eleven hundred page book on the Korean War. It's exciting! The green U.S. forces have just gotten the bejeezuz kicked out of them by the North Korean army but the day of reckoning is coming for the overconfident Commies. But what is the saying about pride? Watch out, Mac!

I'm thinkin' that the U.S. doesn't "win" the war in this book either.

I always list a Shakespeare book in my profile as a favorite, and change it every year. Two years ago it was Othello, because it is my favorite Tragedy. I love the Moor's profound words about peace:

Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.
Good signior, you shall more command with years
Than with you weapons. I:ii

If only W had the wisdom to know that the threat of shock & awe is so much more efficacious than actually delivering it, because when delivered its future effect is dulled it through its use (attrition) and, having withstood its onslaught, the recipients realize that they survived it after all and they start looking for weaknesses in the deliverers. (As in the dolts in charge. "Bring 'em on!")

Last year I listed King Lear, my second favorite Tragedy. Anyone who knows my personal situation (3 estranged sons for whom I paid every cent of support, am furnishing full college tuition and fees for, and who don't deign to speak to me or any of my relatives) will see the irony and truthiness in this quote:

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. I:iv

(Hey, Danny, please meet me at Elevation Burger in Falls Church at noon on your birthday later this month and I'll buy you, and whoever you bring [your brothers maybe] a burger and a malt.) (Mmm. Elevation burgers.)

Macbeth is my choice for this year. "What's done is done." III:ii

Furthermore, I always list a war book. Man's history seems like a miserable liturgy of wars. Two years ago it was Hell In A Very Small Place, the Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall, the best war book bar none. Last year it was Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, the best small unit combat book bar none. This year it is Breakout The Chosin Reservoir Campaign Korea 1950 by Martin Russ.

Its jacket says the book is The riveting saga of one of the most heroic battles in American history. It is that indeed, and more. The book masterfully tells of the beleaguered First Marine Division's breakout from the clutches of practically the entire Chicom Army, as the divison travelled precariously over 90 miles of a solitary mountain roadway back to the safety of the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet's guns at the port of Hungnam (North Korea) in sub-zero temperature. The Marines mauled seven elite Chinese divisions in the process. Thank you Oliver Smith (a Marine general). Boo on you Ned Almond (an Army general).

The Marines, in this epic battle, with their successful fighting withdrawal (they brought their casualties, and their dead, out) provided the one shining moment for American arms in the Great Bugout from North Korea that Johnnie Walker's Eighth Army engaged in when the Chinese entered the Korean War, stunning the overconfident Americans and routing our forces. This disaster greatly dimmed General Douglas MacArthur's (Army--Old Soldiers Never Die, They Just Fade Away) final legacy.

Ken Burns' The War is coming

A couple of posts ago I published a B&W picture of my Uncle Harry in Colorado as he looked during WWII. My life has been a search for heroes, and he is a hero.

Star on his high school football team, shipboard Marine during WWII in charge of AA fire onboard his light cruiser protecting the flattops, bronze star recipient, Princeton grad, farmer and geologist, father of three lovely daughters and a son, devoted husband, I was very grateful to be afforded the chance to see him again earlier this month in Durango, Colorado. He fought at the first and second Battle of the Philippine Sea (the first one being the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, the second one being the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where the Japanese very nearly pulled off a stunning surprise), the China Sea raids, the Iwo Jima landing, and the First Carrier Air Strikes at Tokyo.

His ship was off Peleliu when my father, who was also a WWII Marine, was fighting in that bloody island battle. Many shipboard Marines were sent ashore as replacements for the heavy casualties incurred onshore, and I have read my uncle's journal entry where he expresses relief upon learning from lightly wounded Marines transferred to his ship from the raging battle that they knew my father and he was unhurt so far.

Jim is alive! is the notation my uncle made about his brother. Those were the days when boys barely out of their teens had such concerns, eh? (My father was nineteen when he served his time in the hell called Peleliu.)

Here is a picture of my father during WWII. You could see these pictures in the Navy Log at the Navy Memorial in DC on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the Archives at Seventh Street. He also fought on Okinawa, and was posted to China immediately after the war to confront the Communists in an attempt to bolster our fatally corrupt ally Chiang Kai-shek.

Ken Burns has produced a film on World War II which singles out the Battle of Peleliu as prime examples of a sanguinary battle that was strategically worthless, the brutality of the war, and how little Americans actually know about World War II. (Peleliu bled the First Marine Division white. It also was the Marines' introduction to the new Japanese strategy of eschewing wasteful banzai charges and making the Americans root them out from their fortified entrenchments one by one, which proved hideously costly at Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.)

If you want to know the ordeal that young Americans went through at Peleliu, read The Devil's Anvil by James Hallas. Your next twenty-miler won't seem so bad.

And yes, I thought my father, who died in 1986 at age 61, was a hero too. Did a family member of yours serve during WWII? Look his or her service record up.

Peleliu. You should know this.

My youngest child graduated from a boarding school in the Northeast on Saturday. I am proud of him for doing so because he has had a rough time. It apparently got a little rocky for him at the end up there at the school but he made it through. Congratulations to him.

Here's an artist's rendering of him done a few years ago. Don't you think he probably is now a handsome young man? (That's my boyhood photo next to his portrait. I always thought we had similar looking eyes and mouths.)

For his graduation, I sent him a card, some money, a few photos of what I have been up to, an old card of a Jet football player (when I was growing up on Staten Island, my parents had season tickets for the Joe Namath-led New York Jets at Shea, hence my affinity for Jets players), a first-day issue stamp of the1st Marine Division and a book by Bill D. Ross called Peleliu: Tragic Triumph.

The book is about the 1st Marine Division's 1944 battle against the Japanese on the island of Peleliu in the Palaus, a chain of islands about 550 miles east of the Philippines. The Army's 81st Division saw combat there as well.

Mostly it was a Marine fight. My Dad was a 19-year old corporal in K35 when he fought the Japanese there. It was awful, fighting in 110 degree heat on sharp coral with the stench of rotting bodies everywhere. The Marines took over 5,000 casualties in a division of around 15,000 men. They annihilated the Japanese garrison of 13,000 troops pretty much to the last man because no mercy was shown by either side in the war in the Pacific. The Japanese refused to surrender and didn't take prisoners themselves as a rule.

Peleliu was the first place where the Japanese eschewed the wasteful tactic of banzai charges and made the Marines come root them out of their fortified caves, one by one. These tactics were later famously applied on Iwo Jima and Okinawa (where my Dad also fought), but they started on Peleliu.

Ross' book's title is based on the fact that the savage fight was unnecessary to the nearly simultaneous reconquest of the Philippines. Bloody Peleliu easily could have been bypassed and left to wither on the vine. I bet you never heard of Peleliu. It was quite a fight.

I was always proud of my Dad. My youngest son never met him because my Dad died three years before my youngest child was born. I hope the book teaches him a little about what kind of special men those World War II combat Marines were.

I haven't seen my youngest son nor spoken with him for quite awhile but I wish him luck. I love you son.