My Service as a WWII Navy Corpsman
By George P. Ripple
I served as a Navy corpsman in WWII and I was wounded on Bougainville. Here is some of my story.
I first enlisted in the V7 Naval Officers Training Program, July 1940. They weren’t drafting yet and war with Japan hadn’t been declared, but I knew it was coming. They called us 90-day wonders. The first part was direct practical training on the Battleship USS Wyoming. We sailed from New York down to Guantanamo Bay, the Panama Canal, and back via Norfolk, VA. There were groups of 12-16 of us. We’d eat and sleep in the same area. We slept in hammocks, swabbed the deck, and polished the 5” guns. The Marines taught us to march back and forth on the deck. At Norfolk, there were 3 battles ships that sailed together; the Wyoming, Arkansas, and Texas. We attended other Naval and Seamanship classes on board. This training lasted 6 weeks, till Aug 1941, before Pearl Harbor.
I passed all the midshipman course requirements, but failed the eye exam. I didn’t realize I needed glasses. After I got glasses, I went to the Tower at Great Lakes and asked them to take me back. I could “see good” then with my spectacles. But they said “no”. But it was probably a blessing; I would have been at the bottom of Pearl Harbor had I become an Ensign.
After the war started, I re-enlisted at Terre Haute, Indiana, May 25, 1942. I thought I’d be drafted and at least if I was in the Navy I’d get good hot meals and a bed to sleep in on board. This time I memorized the eye chart in the recruiting station. I didn’t want to fail the eye test again.
A day or two later, the other recruits and I rode the electric interurban together to Indianapolis Naval Center. After we got to Indianapolis, we took the train to Chicago in our own special coach that was full of Navy boys. Then we transferred to the elevated line and we went to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. They gave us two sets of whites and one set of blues. The blues were a dress uniform with a big front opening on the pants. There were 5 buttons up each side and 12-13 across. There was quite a problem if you were in a hurry to go to the bathroom. Today I’m sure they have a zipper. The next day we were formed into companies. I was in company 365.
First we had Boot Camp, which lasted 9 weeks. Before we had declared war, it had lasted 12 weeks. The barracks were 2 stories high with stairs at the end. They had steel pipes around where you could hook your hammock from one end to the other.
After my boot camp training, I went over to the Medical Training. We were all studying to be Corpsmen. I had taken a first aid course, so they let me come in as Hospital Apprentice, one notch above an Able-bodied Seaman. When I got into the Navy, I was one notch below Pharmacist Mate 3rd Class. After we had the courses in Pharmacology and other medicines we learned to do work in the Hospital at Great Lakes. Then we were assigned either to a naval ship, or to another part of the country at another training station where they required medical corpsmen.
After a confrontation with a hospital nurse, I was assigned to the Marines; or at least I think that’s why I got that assignment. I think 5 of us in the last part of the alphabet were assigned to the same Marine division just being formed; the 3rd Marine Division, 21st Regiment, Headquarters Company. All 5 of us went together to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and we were all assigned to the same medical group. Some were complete medical companies but we were attached separately to the Marine headquarters.
When we got to Camp Lejeune, it was almost like joining the Marine Corps. We were fitted with green Marine uniforms khaki colored shirts but a lighter colored khaki, and brown shoes to go with the green marine uniform. We already had black shoes and the Navy uniform in our sea bags.
When we had liberty, we’d go to Jacksonville or the smaller villages of Keenanville or Warsaw. Most of the time I’d go on the Marine bus to Warsaw and go to the railroad depot and send a telegram back home to my sweetheart, Vivian or my parents. (Vivian later became my wife.) You could send a standard telegram. The words were already there. All you had to do was push one or two buttons. It cost 25 or 35 cents. It cost more than a letter, but it arrived in an hour or two.
We’d go out as if there was a battle going on. My duties were to tell the Marines where the First Aid station was. Most of time it would be in the shade somewhere. That’s where I’d say the first aid station was. And if they had mosquito bites or some other kind of rash, they’d come on over to me. If I had the stuff in my medical kit, I’d use that to treat them. If not, I’d tell them to come into the Medical Tent back at Camp. Camp Leje
une was spread over several acres. And the training was very difficult. We’d march, sometimes with a backpack. We’d go on a 15-mile march and other times we’d take 2-3 days at it. We walked 15 miles and then another 15 miles back. Each time we’d sleep out in the open, (bivouac). We had to pitch our little pup tent each night. We’d put a piece of canvas on the ground. On top of that we’d put our green wool blankets that had USMC on them. Most of time the truck would come from Camp Lejeune and we’d line up and they’d fill our mess kits with us what we called slumgulleon. That was a stew of potatoes and carrots and beef. Cake or candy was dessert. I was at Camp Lejeune 4-6 months.
The announcement came that 10% of us, chosen by lot, could go home on leave for 5 days. I was one of the lucky ones. There were 18-20 corpsmen. I put my Naval uniform on, but I had the Marine Uniform in my suitcase so I could show Mom, Dad, and Vivian what a Marine uniform looked like.
My Brother, Ralph, came home from Pensacola at the same time I was there. Ralph was already an Ensign in the Navy Air and he had already learned to fly as a pilot. My sister Gwynth and her husband Hugh came to visit us at the train station. When it came time to change trains, for me to go back to Camp Lejeune, I got quite emotional, but I knew I didn’t have any choice but to get back on the train. I think they gave us leave because they knew we were going to get transferred from Camp Lejeune to Camp Pendleton, California, which meant we were going to go over seas. I told Ralph that and the very next day Ralph sent me a telegram. It said, “Brother we’ll meet again, I know we will” It helped me very much, because I could hear the stories about the other Marines who were sent to Guadalcanal.
It took the train 6-7 days to get all the way across the country to Camp Pendleton. We did not go in a straight line. They didn’t want anyone knowing when or how many troops were leaving the States. When the troop train made a station stop, the city’s ladies would hand pie or cake through the train windows. We played cards and shot dice every day en route.
Often times, there were steam engines and diesel engines hooked on the same train. We were put on the side lines many times, and we’d see the war material train going by, going like a bat out of hell. All the passenger trains and troop trains had to get on the siding to let the war material trains pass. They were going to the west coast seaports with their guns and tanks; all different kinds of guns, mortars, even Howitzers of different sizes. They took precedence over everything on the tracks.
There were 5 of us corpsmen. We went from Great Lakes, to Camp Lejeune, and now to Pendleton. More corpsmen got added at Camp Pendleton, but we were the nucleus of the group. There may have been maybe 20 of us Corpsmen at Pendleton.
We had live bullets in training at Camp Pendleton. The bullets were fired 2 or 3 feet off the ground. The Marines were crawling on their bellies. They had noise bombs like firecrackers, but they were much louder than that. Since I was a corpsman, I didn’t have to go through this. I could get over to the side, under the tree and watch the Marines crawl though the mud and dirt with the live bullets flying over.
One of the noisemakers ricocheted off a tree and bounced right back between legs of one Marine as he was crawling on his belly. It blew one leg off and very deeply wounded the other leg. I heard him screaming in pain, and I went over with my medic kit. I took my tourniquet and I tied it around the stump of his leg. It might have been 3-4 inches above his knee where noise bomb hit. His other leg was bleeding severely, and I only had one tourniquet, so I grabbed my belt and pulled it off and tied it as tight as I could around his other leg that he still had. His name was Snyder. I had to loosen the tourniquet on his remaining leg, I think only once. You can’t leave it that tight, or no blood gets down to the bottom of his leg. I don’t know which one he lost. I had to release it to see the blood come out to save the rest of his leg. All the other Marines had to move on. They couldn’t ‘t give him any help. And when he yelled for the corpsman, (that was me), I came over to help him. I did my duty there.
That same day the Navy Chief said, “Ripple you take the rest of the day off and go into town.” That meant I could go into Oceanside from Camp Pendleton. So I did. I got the most beautiful steak you ever saw in the restaurant. I couldn’t eat a bite of it. I didn’t know what to do with it after I’d ordered it. I thought I could eat it, but I couldn’t touch it. When I put my knife and fork on the steak, there were too many similarities. I think I must have drunk 2 or 3 more glasses of beer after that, cause I couldn’t eat the steak.
Yes, I saved his life, to put it in blunt words. He only had to lay there how many minutes do you think? And that was only the start of the whole damn thing. Although it was an awful thing that happened to him, he didn’t have to face the Japanese later like I did.
A few weeks later, when we were on the troop ship heading for the South Pacific, the same Chief that gave me leave said, “Come over here, Ripple, I want to talk to you.” He said, “We are going to try to get you a Meritorious Advancement.” “What’s that all about, Chief?” “Oh, you know what that’s about.” “Well, I just did what I was taught to do.” “I know that, but you had quick thought in applying the second tourniquet.” “Yes, but I’d been told that before also. That if you had to; jerk off your belt. And I remembered that much.” Before we left camp Pendleton, I was a 3rd class Pharmacist mate and I got promoted to 2nd class.
After we spent several months at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, several times small destroyers would anchor out off Oceanside, the city nearby. We’d practice climbing down the net they’d hang over the side of the destroyer. Then we would climb off the net into smaller boats. Some of these were Higgins boats, the same kind of assault boat that we later used out in the Pacific. Then we’d come ashore in California and “Take the beach”. It was if we were landing in harms way on an island in the Pacific.
After several months at Camp Pendleton of simulated battle conditions, we could tell that our training was about over and the scuttlebutt was awful strong that we were leaving the United States. This happened in Nov and Dec 1942.
So in the latter part of 1942, I suppose about November or December, I wrote Vivian a letter and told her to come out to California and we’d get married. But I knew that because the war was going strong at that time, she’d have to wait 30 days to get on the train. There were only about 10 passenger seats available per day from Chicago for civilians and she was a civilian. We were already engaged. I can’t tell you when I gave her the ring. I think it was after I got lucky in a poker game at Camp Lejeune and had the money to go buy a ring at a well-known jewelry store there.
A few days later, I called and she said she’d already gone down to the Indianapolis Union Station and got a ticket on the Santa Fe Chief. She hired a round trip taxi to the train station from her Aunt Maggie’s where she lived, to get there just before midnight in order to be first in line to get that ticket. Vivian was living in Indianapolis working at Hamilton Harris, a wholesale outlet of mainly tobacco and candy. The Santa Fe Chief was the fastest you could go. I think it took 46 hours to Los Angeles, California. Then she had to ride the San Diegan from Los Angeles to San Diego
I’m waiting for her down in San Diego station, but no civilians could get on the train from Los Angeles to San Diego. It was all sailors, soldiers, and marines. So they wouldn’t let her on, despite the fact that she was ready to get married. That didn’t make one bit of difference. The needs of the war came first. So she and about 4-5 other girls paid 10 bucks apiece for some guy with Cadillac or a big Buick to ride from Los Angeles to San Diego. She had all new clothes when she came. For a moment it was hard to recognize it was her. But I was very glad to see her and I think she was glad to see me.
Since we were strongly engaged, the very next day we got the license and got the blood test as quick as we could. On January 10 we got married at Camp Elliot. There were 4 people at the wedding and we were half of them. So the Chaplain from Camp Pendleton came all the way down to Camp Elliot to marry us. There was a fourth person, the piano player. He was also a sailor. He played Ave Maria; I think that’s what Vivian asked for. The Chaplain made arrangements for him to be present. He was the witness. The unusual thing about this was, that the chaplain was from Brazil, Indiana, and our hometown! I think I got 3-5 days leave to get married.
We made arrangements for a room in Oceanside, CA. A Mexican family had a room that you could rent for weeks at a time. We rented the front bedroom.
Vivian very quickly got a clerk job. She worked for the Navy at the Shipbuilding Yard where they made wooden mine sweepers. She was already in the Civil Service working at the Con Can Powder Plant north of Terre Haute. The metal boats would attract the magnetic mines but the wooden mine sweepers wouldn’t. The mines would be placed in a harbor to prevent the enemy ships from coming in.
So they gave us one nights leave. They told us the day before, “Get your stuff together we’re shipping out tomorrow.” They don’t want to tell too far ahead of time because the word would get out that the Marines are leaving. It was very secret. They didn’t even tell us where we were going.
When we did leave, we rode the train from Oceanside down to San Diego to get on the troop ship. Our whole group, all us corpsmen left together. We didn’t know when we got on the train, where it was going or where we were assigned. Vivian and another girl, (both worked side by side at Pendleton, the Marine Base), saw the train leaving at about 7:20AM. I told Vivian we were going out the next day but I didn’t know if it would be by bus or train. But we left on a little train. We were only going from Pendleton for a short haul. So we were all in our uniforms. I got out between the cars, in the vestibule where the cars are hooked together. I see more than one car parked, but I saw Vivian. The friend parked her car for Vivian’s benefit so she could see anybody waving to her on the train. But there’s more than one sailor waving to her, all the troops were waving to her. She told me later that she never did spot me. But I spotted her, and I waved real big, but I couldn’t get her attention. The train was moving maybe 15 mph. That wasn’t a joyful thing for me or for her either. But I wrote her in a letter later on, that I saw her and the car parked there. We’d only been married about 3 weeks when I left for the war in the Pacific.
So when we got to San Diego, they let us off the train and we got on Marine buses. The buses drove into the ballpark. Although they counted noses when we got on the train, they wanted to be very sure they got the right number of noses. In other words, some of the men were likely to go AWOL to avoid going over seas.
The troop ship was called the Mormacport. It had been made over to take 3-4 times as many passengers as it would have normally. It had 4 bunks on top of each other. If you didn’t watch during the night you’d kick the kid above you. It was very hot. It was modified mainly to carry the men, rather than for their comfort. We didn’t get 3 meals a day, we only had 2; but they were pretty big. Some of us corpsmen had a few classes on what our duties were going to be.
The band played every night on deck and that was very reassuring. But some marines dived at night into the deep Pacific Ocean. Several others waited until we were at camp in New Zealand to commit suicide with their own guns.
The troop ship began zigzagging only a day or two out of San Diego. We didn’t stop anywhere. We didn’t go very fast, maybe 11-12 knots. And after 16-17 days of slow ocean going we reached our destination. It was February 20, 1943. They told us later, it was Auckland, New Zealand. I kept thinking maybe we would go to Australia. I didn’t think we would go directly to the line of battle, but I didn’t really know and I of course had no control over it whatever.
When we were ready to disembark, the New Zealanders had a band there to welcome us. All the Marines were carrying everything they owned in their sea bags. And the same way with us Corpsmen. They played the “Star Spangled Banner”, “God Save the Queen” for the British Commonwealth, and some other marches.
Soon as we left the ship, they put us on a narrow gauge train and we went north as far north as we could go. We were in the northern most island, near the Tasmanian Sea, where it was more tropical. It was more like some of the islands we were going to be going to later.
When we lived there, we had 4 men in each little wooden hut. There were 4 beds in it, one in each corner. It was A-shaped. It was a lot better than living in a tent. We all went to a central building for our meals. For the first few days we were on dry rations. But then they contracted pretty quickly with the New Zealand authorities. We had a lot of cheese and beef and also lamb, if you wanted lamb.
The New Zealanders were very friendly to us because they knew we would protect them if the “Yellow Bastards” came further south. You’ve got to remember that the Japs were heading to the northern part of Australia. But the New Zealanders knew that if Australia fell to the Japanese, then New Zealand would be next.
All four of the men in my hut were corpsmen. We were very close to the medical station. We could just go 100 feet and do our duty at the medical station. One day the doctor told me, “Ripple, treat that old man over there.” A New Zealander had walked into camp from the little town that was 2-3 miles away. He was almost having an asthmatic attack. So the doctor fixed up a needle and told me to insert it, and I did.
We had 1 or 2 Corpsmen that lived right out with each company of Marines. Most of the time I was in the Headquarters on duty in the first aid station, the “Medical Station” they called it.
When we got leave, we’d ride the train back to Auckland and visit the museums. I think the beer taverns may have gotten more traffic than the museum. It was a very beautiful city. It had streetcars just like Los Angeles and San Francisco, but it was very British. All the traffic moved on “the wrong side of the road”. Whenever we’d go to the movie, the first thing we’d do is we’d hear the organ play, “God Save the Queen”. We’d have to stand up before we could sit down. But you could get into the movie for 15-25 cents
Often times some of the New Zealanders would come down to the camp recreation hall and serve us tea and crumpets. This would happen about 8 o’clock in the evening and then they’d bring in a Jew’s harp player. He’d sing some of the songs handed down from Great Britain and they’d sing lots of the Scottish songs too, even some from Ireland. Other nights they’d have a concertina, which is a small accordion.
It certainly was a break from the military routine, where we were learning to fight the enemy and we were going on 15-mile or 30-mile marches. It was very rough living, but it toughened all of us up. I think we must have trained in New Zealand about 6 months.
Nov. 1, 1943, was D-day. We left by destroyer from Guadalcanal and headed towards the central Solomon Islands, namely Bougainville, which was 150-200 miles north. There must have been 6-8 different large islands and100 smaller ones. We didn’t know where we were going, but we knew we going to a hot place. You just knew it. It was obvious. Our group, the 3rd Marine Division, hit the beach at Empress Augusta Bay, Bougainville, on Nov 1. I wasn’t in the very first landing. It was a day or two later. I was with 21st Regiment.
You crawl down the net on the side of the destroyer. You can’t see above or below. You don’t know when you’ll reach the bottom. The Higgins boat is crashing into the side of the Mother ship. Legs are getting crushed. People are getting crushed. They died in vain. Instead of hitting the Japs, the ocean got them instead.
The destroyer, “the mother ship”, has it’s engine on and ready to leave soon and it’s not coming back to get you.
You get in the Higgins boat. You can’t see where you are headed. All heads are down. If you stick your head up you might be hit by gunfire. You have absolutely no control over the situation. You are on your knees, praying. Your M16 rifle and 80# pack on your back. The boat circles until you are told to attack. The boats come in waves.
There are 30-40 men crowded into the boat. There is one coxswain who steers the boat, seated up high but protected by a boilerplate. He gets the orders by two-way radio on when to hit the beach. And there are 2 corpsmen on board.
Everyone is sick. There’s a blue haze from diesel fuel hanging in the air. The smell is enough to make you gag. The boats are circling and even hit each other. It’s rough and everyone is getting seasick. You are not just frightened, but terrorized. The boat is littered with vomit and excrement. One brave Marine stands on his knees and reaches over the gunwale to quickly fill a bucket with saltwater and rinses the deck. You hope it’s sea water hitting you in the face and not something else.
You hope the first wave of Higgins boats were successful in landing. There’s only one or two on the beach at a time waiting to reverse course and go back to the mother ship.
The boat, hopefully, gets to shore. The waters and the beach are littered with bodies. Bodies are being washed in by the current. You can't tell if they are alive or dead. The coxswain can’t help the Marines who have been shot by the Japs. The coxswain tries to negotiate his craft around the dead bodies of Marines who have given their lives. But he must go over some of the dead or wounded to get to shore. This is the reason for dog tags. You couldn’t identify the dead after the Higgins boat went past. The coxswain must get the boat to the assigned spot on time or the assault may fail. The island must be taken regardless of the cost in casualties.
Some of us slip and fall flat impeding the exit of others. I saw “a few good men” blanched, shaking uncontrollably from the horrific fright, unable to move voluntarily even after being ordered to advance. How did we get to shore without drowning? With 80# on our backs?
When we were on the Higgins boat, we were concerned only about the assault underway. But after one or two days of combat, you realize that if you survive this assault you have at least one more ahead of you. You may eventually not care if you live or die. You might take foolish chances. And of course you won’t be bothered by another hellish nightmare if you die.
Can you imagine what tremendous effort these courageous Marines must exert to overcome such terror?
What a price we had to pay in beautiful young men. We were all expendable. But the vicious Japanese killing machine had to be reversed.
We climbed down the nets on the destroyer into Higgins boats that took us ashore. We called it “taking or attacking the beach”. And it turned out it was almost exactly like the practice runs. We went ashore in waves 30-40-60 minutes apart. It’s all planned ahead of time. Then the Officers on the ship would adjust it at the last minute depending on the positions of marines who had landed a day or 2 before, how far inland they were, and whether there was room for us to follow with our attack. I know that by the 3rd day we were landing. We landed in a place where the other marines had been and had advanced a few miles inland.
Part of the beach was ours already, if the Japanese didn’t try to come to get it back. The Japanese weren’t shooting at us when we hit the beach. The first group of Marines had pushed them back. We were maybe 2-3 miles from the advance. The Japanese hadn’t had time yet to reinforce themselves. The part of Bougainville where we landed was not firmly held by the Japanese so it was easy for the Marines to push them on back into the jungle. But it got very tough later on, particularly when they sent enforcements from the islands that they already controlled further up 30-40 miles.
The point men were the most vulnerable. Of course the Japanese would shoot at the point man first. He’s a sharp shooter. He had two buddies, maybe more than that, and they would be moving through the jungle, and they’d move in a wedge with one Marine at the point like a bunch of ducks flying in an inverted “V”. They are moving very, very slowly. They’d move a few feet and then stop, and they’d repeat that procedure until the men behind them would come up closer. Remember that the machine guns were moving behind them, but these were mostly assault riffles, M16’s and BAR’s, (Browning Automatic Riffles), and generally there were 2-3 in each squad. That means out of 8 men, 3 of them had a BAR. It would fire almost like a machine gun, and it was one mean weapon!
The Japanese would first spot the BARman wherever he was, and they could distinguish it pretty quickly by the gunfire. It made a different sound from the M16 riffle. Some of those boys gave their lives readily. The Japanese tried to kill the men carrying the Browning Automatic Riffles because it was like a machine gun. It was awful, how quick the bullets would come out of that gun. I’m guessing at least 8 or more bullets in a clip. But he had several clips. Behind him was another Marine with several more clips. Beyond that heavy backpack, some of those boys were carrying ammunition for the BARmen. They worked maybe 6-8 feet apart when they’d move through the jungle. And of course if the BARman goes down, they’d expect the Marine right behind him to pick up his gun and keep firing.
At first the Japs were pretty easy to push on back, because there weren’t very many of them. There were only a few and very sparsely located. But that changed pretty quickly when they later determined to make a stand to hold their ground.
When the Marines came ashore, they had to get all the supplies and guns to defeat the enemy. That took some time and a lot of effort. They had Caterpillars to pull some of the guns. They had smaller tanks and amphibian tanks. The amphibians were like Caterpillars but they were open for transportation and they could move right through the swamps. If they got into 2-3 foot deep water they would float. The amphibian was specifically designed for use in open water and also in real muddy swamps.
A lot of the island was swamp. That was difficult thing to take too. The weather would be 90-95 degrees. It was very close to the equator. If it hadn’t rained already two times, it was going to rain again within an hour or two. But one good thing, that within an hour or two, the sun would come out. When it rained, it would just pour down in sheets. This island was only a very few feet above the level of the ocean. A lot of the time, there was no breeze whatever. After the rain, if you could, some of the men would take most of their clothes off, and all you had to do was lay them on a bush and that hot sun would dry them out in 15-20 minutes. I don’t think they all took their clothes off at the same time. It would have been a rough deal if the Japanese had come in and you didn’t have your clothes on. I don’t know if it was the rainy season. It must have been. But if there was any dry season, I wasn’t aware of it.
Most of my time was spent in the first aid station. Much of the activity was maybe 3-4 miles on further into the jungle ahead of the medical station. The Marines would move further inland after a day or 2 or more. And at one point, our first aid station would move further to keep up with the Marines. In other words, it was mobile. Our first aid station was only a simple tent. But we had several lockers for the medicine, particularly all different sizes and kinds of bandages to place over the gunshot wounds that the Marines would get.
I worked right with a doctor. He was a Naval Officer. The doctor over us was a Lieutenant Commander. He’s got two and a half stripes and he has another doctor under him. Our Commander’s name was Horace L. Wolf. I made very good friends with him. I wrote him 2-3 letters afterwards.
We had another doctor who was a full Lieutenant, but he was subject to Doctor Wolf’s orders. Dr. Wolf was a young man, maybe 31 or so. He was Jewish. The other man under him was a specialist in cancer. I remember him saying, “What in the hell is a cancer specialist supposed to do out here in the jungle.” He shouldn’t have been there. He was transferred later.
I don’t think Dr. Wolf was a surgeon. He had just come out of medical school and he hadn’t had time to practice yet, so the Navy grabbed him. The other doctor’s name was Utkowitz. Neither of those doctors treated me after I was wounded.
I was wounded December 11, 1943. Dr. Wolf, my commanding Officer, said, “Ripple, take 6 men with you” and he told me which ones it was going to be. Each two boys had a litter and I was leading them. We had orders to go on up to a hill, which might have been a knob in the jungle, up maybe 15-20 feet. It was a little bit of high ground where the Japs were putting up a resistance. The firefight had already occurred, and they had retreated somewhat. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until we got there.
We picked up the Marines; the 3 wounded ones. We laid them on the stretchers. I think maybe an hour and a half or two hours had passed, when the Japanese attacked again and we were right in the midst of it. And there was no place to hide. There were some foxholes around there, but the one that was closest to me already had two boys in it, one on top of the other. That was the only shelter I had, but I knew I had to get down on the ground and get down quick.
The Japanese started pumping mortar shells right back on us from the reverse side of the hill. We couldn’t see over the hill. We thought we had already taken the hill but they attacked. So they were firing the mortar shells from deeper in the jungle over that little hill and they were falling in right in amongst us.
Of the seven boys that went up there, two of them stayed there. Two of them got lethal shrapnel. (Roman died that day). So five of us came back. I think I was the only wounded one. But the other corpsmen that went up with me, they attended to me, rather than the Marines that we went up to get.
So after the mortar shell hit me, the shells keep on hitting, which is an awful feeling. But you know that wherever the first mortar shell hit, the next one is not going to hit in the same spot. It’s going to hit 15-20 feet away. It depends on how many guns they have on the other side of the hill, but the second mortar shell is not going to hit in the same place because it sweeps. They shoot over the hill and then they tilt the gun so that the angle of the gunfire when it lands is 10 feet to the right. Then they’d move 10 more feet to the right. So you’d hope that one shell would not hit right on top of the other. But they were so damn close that it was a scary thing. But I was on a stretcher, so I couldn’t run.
There was blood flowing out of about three sides of me; both arms. I should say, right arm and left hand. And I didn’t even know I was wounded in the thigh. I didn’t know that until some way I put my hand down by my body, and I wondered what all that liquid was there. It was red blood.
That’s about all I could remember, other than Shorty Harrison, one of my buddy corpsmen from Camp Lejeune, who had been with me all the time. I’m in pain, yelling and cussing and I don’t know what else. Each corpsman has two little morphine tubes. We’d been told; don’t give anyone more than two of those. I think 4 or 5 would cause death. But you weren’t supposed to give any more than two. So Shorty Harrison, my friend, who had been working, living there right beside me, gave me two. Then I used some more foul language and I said, “God damn it, Shorty, give me one more! I don’t care what else happens, I need another one!” His answer was, “They told me only to give you two.” And I said, “I want one more! Take one out of my kit.” He did that, and he gave it to me. And by that time, the first two that he’d given were having an effect. But when he gave me the third one, I think I must have been relieved of pain within 5-10 minutes. And then I began to float on clouds so to speak, cause I had 3 units of morphine in my body.
So they carry me. I’m on the stretcher, we called them litters, but my own corpsmen buddies were taking take of me. Within a few minutes, an amphibian tractor took me. They put me in there, and some way or other, some of the Marines may have helped some of their buddies. I think there were three of us wounded there in that amphibian. He chugged along all the time. We went a few hundred feet on down the hillside, but other mortar shells were still hitting. But finally we got out. I was almost out of it, almost unconscious. But time doesn’t mean anything to me, cause I’m full of morphine.
But I remember riding in the amphibian when I woke up a little bit. It must have taken at least an hour or hour and a half before he starts going real slow through the jungle. Then he’s crawling back to the first aid station. And some way they got the word to keep on going. I saw Dr. Wolf and I said, “See you back in the States”.
We went maybe a mile and a half further straight into the whole medical battalion, medical company. And that’s where they tied up my wounds a little better. It was like a real small mobile hospital. So it was maybe 3-5 hours from when I was wounded to when I reach the medical company, a whole medical company; not just a bunch of corpsmen.
They cut away some of the dead skin. My hand was almost blown away, disconnected in other words. The mortar shell had blown out an inch and a half in the radius of my right arm. It was an awful wound. I think the doctor put it in a plastic cast. I laid outside the tent and there must have been 4-6 of us there that were wounded. I don’t know that any of them were wounded more seriously than I was. I can’t remember that.
(The medical records states: three units of plasma were given and wound dressed with sulfanilamide powder. Tourniquet applied for one hour loosened every 15 minutes. Gas gangrene antitoxin 10,000 units given. Tetanus toxin given. Both hands and forearm in casts.)
The morphine, tourniquet, and plasma were given by “Shorty” one of the other Corpsmen at the site where I was wounded. The rest of the treatment must have been was given at the “Regimental Field Hospital Company B, 3rd medical Battalion” because that’s what the record says.
We were evacuated further the next day. It was very quick. They took us over to a real small airport, me and at least two other boys. I think it was like an ambulance, but it was an airplane, not a helicopter. They didn’t have those until Korea. I keep thinking there were 4 boys on it, but maybe there were only two. We fly even further to a real mobile hospital on the island of Vella Lavella. In the airplane it was only an hour and a half up in the sky. (Medical Record says the flight left 2 days later for Vella Lavella.)
When I got to Vella Lavella on the airplane, I think I was on the outside. When the plane landed, they didn’t come to me first. There were other men lined up there in what they call triage. They didn’t always take the nearest one. It was the one they had to help, or he would die right away. I know I laid in the hot sun for a while. I don’t know if it was 30 minutes or 3 hours. I don’t think I was fully conscious.
When they did get to me, the doctors were amazed when they cut the cast away. They said, “Wiggle your fingers.” And they were amazed that I could do that. I said, “I can’t extend them but I can fold them. I can’t lift them.”
But the wound on my right arm wasn’t very nice.
There were maybe 5 doctors and they were supposed to know what they were doing but some of them had only been there a few days. They shouldn’t have put the plaster cast over the whole thing. They should have let it bleed. When I got to the mobile hospital on Vella Lavella, they did a laboratory test. My arm was full of Bacterium welchii, which is the bacteria that causes gas gangrene. It wasn’t of a lethal nature yet. It hadn’t had time, I believe.
There was a fat little doctor there. Most of time he was running around in his white shorts. That’s all the clothes he had on, because it was so awfully hot there, particularly in the daytime in the mobile hospital. There’s no air conditioning. We’re in tents, and the tropical sun is beating down on us, whether we were patients or corpsmen helping the doctor.
I’m sure the commanding doctor was a surgeon. There might have been two or three other doctors under him. They had a conference, I was told some days later. These young doctors under him thought that the arm should be removed at the shoulder or they might lose the patient entirely. The head doctor said, "fill him full of penicillin." They had already given me some, and he said give him the extreme limit of penicillin and we’ll make a decision in the morning. And the next day, when they did the laboratory test, they could see that the penicillin was doing the job. The gas gangrene had not spread. But they had to cut away a lot of foul flesh. And the scars are still there in my right arm. They saved the patient’s life.
I remember that at Vella Lavella, there were some Naval nurses. And I hadn’t seen a living female for I don’t know how many months. And when they did some of the surgery on me to cut away the dead flesh, one of he girl’s names was Beth or Bess. She worked right beside the Naval Doctor there. This was where the whole thing was touch and go, or life and death if you want to say it that way. Beth said, when they gave me the anesthetic to cut away the flesh, I was cussing and crying at the same time. But she was holding what fingers I had left on my hand, and crying right along with me, as I was cussing those Yellow Bastards. That was the nature of the anesthetic. I think it was sodium pentathol. They don’t use that any more. I don’t know how much longer after that they used it, because it had hellish side effects. I don’t want to tell you some of the hellish dreams I had during the surgery. But I wasn’t in pain. I must have been in awful pain before they put me under. It was the standard treatment at the time, and it was a damn sight better than ether. And they didn’t have ether out there anyway.
(Medical Record says Diagnosis: Fracture. Compound. Radius. Thumb, middle and ring finger, multangulum minor & cuneiform bones. Gas bacillus infection. Bacillus welchii left hand and right arm. Surgery under sodium pentathol. Both casts were removed. Right forearm wound was foul and dirty with great numbers of Bacillus welchii. The wound was excised with 2 longitudinal incisions to within 8 cm of the elbow. There was an 8 cm gap in the radius and further surgery was done. Wound was packed with sulfanilamide powder. Penicillin (25,000 units) directly into the wounds. Both hands and forearm again immobilized in plaster casts. Penicillin intravenously (50,000 units) and subcutaneously (25,000 units).
Every day there was another blood transfusion, for I don’t know how many days in a row. Then after 5 days of blood transfusions, there were both blood transfusions and plasma. The blood was leaking out of me almost as fast as it was going in. And that’s not a good thing at all.
I was in the mobile hospital at Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands. I must have been there 2-3 weeks or so.
(Medical records state: “Bacterium welchii negative the day after surgery and casts removed for drainage. Total of 5 blood transfusions over the 13 day stay. Penicillin 1,315,000 units total. Gas gangrene antitoxin 80,00 units total. Sulfadiazine 450 grams total. Reapplied casts to both hands and arms.” At Vella Lavella 13 days and then transferred to mobile hospital #8 for another 14 days. Location of #8 is not specified.)
After a while at Vella Lavella, a very small hospital ship came in. They made weekly trips up to Vella Lavella, to the mobile hospital and moved the patients on further south. This time they took me all the way down to Noumea, New Caledonia, controlled by France. I think we were on this little hospital ship a day and a half or two days. I don’t think I got any transfusions on the ship.
(Medical records say left Mobile Hospital #8 on 1/8/44 on the Evacuation Transport Ship USS Pinkney, APH-2, and arrived at Mobile Hospital #7 at Noumea, New Caledonia on 1/11/44. Shrapnel still in left hand but can’t be removed without damage to the hand. Replaced one cast and put lighter splint cast on other arm. Patient not physically fit for duty outside continental US and will require more than 120 days hospitalization and convalescence.)
This brings us to February of 1944. I knew when I left on the airplane from Bougainville, that I was going to be on my way back to the United States. We headed back to the States on the USS Monticello. I got just pass-through kind of treatment. They treated other guys, but my wounds had started to heal. And there was no treatment to give, maybe just change the bandages. The ship was Italian, one of Mussolini’s ships. When he surrendered, we got some of the ships that belonged to the Italian Navy. They converted this one over to a transport ship.
(Medical Record states: Sailed back to the States from New Caledonia on 2/9/44, on the USS Monticello, AP-61, Transport Ship. After 15 days arrived at Oakland Navy Hospital on 2/24/44.)
We came into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge and docked in Oakland. I don’t know that there was any kind of ceremony. (There was no one standing of the bridge welcoming us back). We were pretty strong in the war yet. It was 1944. We hadn’t won yet. After we landed, they rushed us to the hospital. There was no fanfare.
(The shrapnel hit Dec 11, ‘43 and the transport ship arrived back in the States Feb 24, ’44. So it actually took a total of 71 days to get back to the States after being wounded.)
The Navy sent my parents a letter that I was injured. It was about a month after I was injured. My wife, Vivian, should have been notified first, but I never saw a letter to her. I have the one that was written to my parents. It only said that I was wounded and under the best care the Navy could give. My Mother had to tell my wife that I was injured.
The Navy was pretty slow in sending the message home. I think the records were a little slow in recording the marriage because I got shipped out from Camp Pendleton. When I went over seas, it wasn’t very long after we got married. But the records were slow to keep up with the marriages, and injuries, and even death. The communications were not at all like they are today. There was lots of communications coming in from all directions; Army, Navy, and Marines. It depended on where the injuries took place. I’ve heard of 3-4 letters coming home to the wife or girlfriend, but the young man had already been killed in action. But it took the letter 3-7 days to get back to the United States.
Vivian wasn’t there to greet me. Even if I had written a letter, I didn’t know when or where the ship was going to dock. After I got to the Oakland, I knew I was going to get transferred to another hospital. But I wasn’t sure when or where.
They loaded me onto a stretcher to board the ship and when they take me off the ship I was also on a stretcher. But they didn’t want me to fall when I came down the gangplank. Then the Naval ambulances came and took us across the Oakland Bay Bridge to the Oakland Naval Hospital. Each one would take 2-4 boys. I was just sitting in the ambulance. There might have been 1-2 others that were on stretchers till we were assigned to different wards.
I only stayed at Oakland 7-10 days because that was where the Navy classified us. Those that needed plastic surgery or bone surgery, like me, were sent to San Diego Naval Hospital. We were sent there because the sun shined down there most of the days and that was necessary for the healing of bones and for the plastic surgery too. The amputees went up further north to Seattle I believe. Certain of the Naval Hospitals had very good doctors in certain specialties, like amputees. There were men with tropical illnesses; Dengue fever and I don’t know how many other kinds of fevers from the flies and insects from the islands where they were. I think they had malaria pretty well controlled by that time, but there were other kinds of fevers. Malaria disabled the boys and they had to send them back for treatment. They must have been sent to another hospital.
I remember riding the A-train from the hospital to a beer tavern in San Francisco with some other boys. After a few beers I had to go to the bathroom, but both my hands were in bandages. I didn’t think about this when I first went into the tavern. I had to ask another man to help me. At first he thought I was a little weird but then he realized that it wasn’t a put-on and he helped me.
From the Oakland Naval Hospital, we rode a hospital train with 2-3 coaches attached to a passenger train going south to Los Angeles and then on further down to San Diego. I think it was hooked onto a regularly scheduled train. But there were medical attendants on board there. I think they must have been Navy Corpsmen.
(Medical Record states: Arrived at San Diego Naval Hospital 3/4/44). Each different ward had different types of injuries. The burn patients were at San Diego Naval hospital. They were there was because they needed plastic surgery, just as I did. There were a lot of men who had been burned or where there was an explosion on board ship. A few had been ordered to fight forest fires while they were still young Marines. Some of them were on the same ward that I was on. I remember one of the boys that was burned while he was fighting a forest fire. He couldn’t close his eyes. His eyelids were burnt. They were going to build him some new eyelids some way. He must have come within an inch of losing his life. He lost the top of his ear too. They had to build him an ear.
I called Vivian on the telephone but it was very expensive to call. She took the train to Los Angeles and when she got there she couldn’t ride the train on down to San Diego. I’m waiting at the train station in San Diego cause I knew what train she’d be on. One or two trains came and she wasn’t on them. So the next thing I know I’m sitting on the bench waiting on her, and she came in from the opposite side from where the train was. She and 3-5 other girlfriends or wives, got a ride in a Lincoln or Old Buick from some kid “running a business”. He could take about 4-6 women. She had to pay $10 cash and he drove them the 100 miles to San Diego.
She was as happy as she could be. She had clothes that I had never seen before. I hardly knew who she was. I don’t remember what the words were. I supposed they were something like “I’m sure glad to see you”. I think we got a hotel in San Diego for a night or 2. I hadn’t seen her in 14 months.
So we tried to find a place to live in San Diego. I knew I was going to stay in San Diego for the treatment. Vivian would look for a job there. At the hospital, there was a sailor and he said, “Well you can stay at our place”. His wife lived on the San Diego Naval base. So we lived with them for 3-7 days. Then I read in the San Diego paper that there was an apartment for lease. That’s when we went to live in Mr. Coburn’s double decker house. He must have had about 3-4 apartments down and 3-4 up. It was up on Third Street in San Diego. It had a 2-4’ kitchen and the dining area was all in one room. It had Murphy bed, (flips up into the wall to give floor space).
I was a long time in the Naval Hospital in San Diego. My surgery didn’t come for several months until the wounds had pretty well healed. I could see how they were performing the plastic surgery on the burn victims. And they had to replace the skin where there were awful scars from shrapnel wounds like I had.
Shrapnel is broken up pieces of mortar shell. When it explodes, it goes in all directions. All around you. They are sharp jagged pieces of steel. It goes in all directions and if it lit on a man, he’s done right there; it would blow him apart. So I got 20 feet away from it. The next time it hit it would be 20 feet away from the previous hit, but you didn’t know exactly where it was going to land next. It’s just a piece of jagged hot steel. And it’s whirling when it comes. It comes real fast and loud. It does awful damage.
They cut into my left hand 2-3 times to remove shrapnel from it. But the tendons had locked around it. If they were to pull it away, the tendon would be damaged. So they left the shrapnel in. Three of my fingers are the same length. My middle finger does not stick out because one of my knuckles was driven back. The bones were all jumbled. When it healed, there was nothing further they could do. I don’t have an opposing thumb. The thumb has no motion in the joint. It’s not fixed, but I can’t move it. Every time I had therapy, they said, “touch each finger”; but I couldn’t.
On my right arm, about 1.5 inches was shot away from the radius. So the hand was turned inward; it is twisted over at a 45 degree angle. This little small bone, (ulna), was the only one that was still holding the hand onto the arm. We were well aware that it was going to need bone surgery and plastic surgery both.
So on the left hand it is the thumb and fingers, and on the right hand it is the wrist.
I was at San Diego Naval Hospital altogether, 14 months. They did the surgery on my right arm in stages. First they did a skin graft. They took skin from my stomach and used it to cover the wound on my wrist. Then they gave me convalescent leave. After I came back they did a bone graft to replace the bone that was shot away from my lower arm.
(Medical Record from San Diego Medical Hospital: 3/4/44 to 9/13/44 4 plastic skin surgeries of right forearm & abdomen. Diagnosis changed to deformity of right forearm.) They had to get the skin from somewhere, to make it look normal, and to cover the wound, which was 3 inches long. So they got the skin from my stomach. First they made a flap of skin on my stomach. They had Vaseline or something like that to keep the skin separate. After a few days, when they could see the skin had little blood vessels in it; they attach the flap to the top of the open wound on the lower arm. So my right arm was attached to my stomach. I think it was attached about 10 days. But my arm was still crooked when they cut it away from the stomach. They didn’t put the bone in until some time later. All this skin surgery must have taken 4-5 operations over a period of time, maybe 10 days to 2 weeks, with 3 weeks in between.
First the flesh wound had to heal before they would do any bone graft. So they gave me a 30-day leave, (9/13/44 to10/28/44). I'd been in the San Diego hospital already 3-4 months. (It was actually 6 months according the Medical Record).
So when we got to go on leave, Vivian couldn’t get on the same train that I was on. It was so full of Army, Navy, and Marine personnel; that they wouldn’t take any civilians. But she got on a different train the next morning. And darn if we didn’t both arrive at Chicago about the same time. We go on the train down to Terre Haute and then home to Staunton, Indiana.
When I was home, they had a very big gathering. All the brothers that could were home to greet me and mother and father. I had 3 brothers in the service; Ralph, Bob, and Carl; and Rolland in the Red Cross. Ralph was in the Navy Air at Pensacola, FL., as a flight instructor. Bob was with the Army Corps at Oak Ridge on the Manhattan Project. Carl was in training for the Army. But they all were home to greet me.
I’m home and after 2-3 days I bought a black 1936 Chevrolet Coupe. It had knee action. After we got the car we had to apply for gas stamps. They gave me a break and they knew it. With the Naval Orders, the Ration Board gave me enough stamps to get all the way to California. And it was one page of green stamps. I think gasoline was 15 cents a gallon. They had kind of an oddball thing on the steering wheel. They called it a “love knob”. It was like a gearshift. I could guide with my left hand, but the right wasn’t much good to me. So I had to drive with one hand most of the time. But I could shift gears with the other. But I couldn’t hold onto the steering wheel. Vivian hadn’t learned to drive yet.
After the 30 days leave, I got back to the San Diego Naval Hospital, so they could do the bone graft. The skin all healed first and then they started in all over again. And of course, for about 2.5 inches, there was no bone there. The mortar shell blew part of the bone away from the radius.
After the skin surgery was finished then they could shorten the arm. How they were able to shorten it without cutting the blood vessels is beyond me. But they were able to do it. They shortened the ulna, which let the hand go back over to the right and into the proper position. When they shortened the arm, they had enough bone to replace part of the radius. They put it through an entryway that they made, and joined it right against the radius. They were taking X-rays, and they could see what they were doing. As soon as they could see that it was located right, then they took more X-rays and put it in a cast again.
A few of the nights, especially after some important surgery, Vivian would get off early from the shipyard and she’d come to the hospital. If I was able to walk, we’d go out in the sunshine somewhere and sit under a shade tree in the yard of the hospital.
And the left hand had healed almost without any kind of surgery. The way it healed it made so much scar tissue that they couldn’t put the bones in place like it was originally. I didn’t have that much motion in that hand. But it was a damn sight better than the right hand.
I had to write left handed for a year and half. After I learned to write left-handed, and I got my right hand pretty well back in order, I could come back to writing right-handed. And of course I’m right-handed today. I don’t think I could write left-handed any more now.
The doctor told me after I had the surgery, I think in San Diego, “It’s a good thing you weren’t a piano player or a clarinet player or you would have had real trouble.” And I said, “I had it in mind to be a surgeon like you. But that was denied me. So I can’t play the clarinet, neither can I play the piano, and neither can I be a surgeon. I had aspirations beyond that doctor, I was ready to be a doctor like you are.” I forgot what he said then, if anything.
After the bone surgery healed, they took x-rays every week or 10 days. I was about 24-25 then and of course I was eating like a horse and the sunshine and the more or less active life, helped to get as strong as I could be. And they were amazed, when they put the larger piece of bone in there and they put some chips beside it, and the bone fused. The radius bone fused with the bigger piece and the 2-3 little chips and they all made a suitable union. In the whole process, they had to shorten the wrist; I have an immovable wrist in the right hand. But that’s all right too. It’s better than an artificial arm or no arm at all.
I came very close to amputation on the right side. I think it might have been below the elbow, but it might not have been, because they had to remove so much decaying flesh. There was not enough circulation. And further, there was gas gangrene. That was one reason why it took so long before they could do the skin surgery or the bone surgery, because the secondary circulation had to develop. Even today, there is not as much feeling in that arm. (Medical Record from San Diego Medical Hospital: 10/28/44 to 2/2/45. Reconstructive surgery of wrist. Excised ulna and transplanted chips onto radius. 1/29/45 X-ray shows increasing growth of bone graft. 2/2/45 end of record.)
They didn’t do anything with my leg. All they did was keep the bandages on it. They didn’t know until 25 years later that there was shrapnel in my abdomen too, quite a bit of it. One day I began to urinate blood. It scared the daylights out of me. I knew something was severely wrong, but I didn’t really have any pain. I went to the local Veterans Hospital and the urologist x-rayed my abdomen, and he found a piece of shrapnel imbedded in the ureter leading from the kidney to the bladder. Some way it migrated, and one of the sharp edges cut into the ureter. They didn’t know how to save the ureter and remove the shrapnel, so they just gave me 5-7 days bed rest. But I quit urinating blood. And the doctor said, “if this happens again, you get over here immediately!” I guess they would slice me open to have a look. But fortunately it never happened again.
In 1976, we found out that a large vein and an artery in my upper leg had joined together, (anastomosis). They had to put in a plastic shunt to correct the circulation in my left thigh at the VA hospital in Indianapolis.
As recently as July 2002, almost 60 years later, my right wrist started giving me trouble again. I got a bone infection, osteomyelitis, in my right wrist. The doctor who treated me hardly spoke English and she had no concept of World War II. She misdiagnosed the infection as eczema and gave me cream to put on it. After lots of mental anguish I had to show the doctor my WWII medical records and original pictures of the wound to convince her that it was war related. Eventually I got the proper treatment of intravenous anti-biotics for more than 3 months.
But I’m still here and a lot of my good buddies are not. So many beautiful boys lost. I think of them every day; but there isn’t a Memorial Day, Independence Day, or Veterans Day that goes by without me thinking of the other corpsmen that gave their lives. But of all the things I’ve done in my life, being a Navy Corpsman is the thing I am most proud of.
Dictated 7-29-02, taped 4-10-04 through 11-16-05, transcribed and summarized by his daughter, Linda Ripple Jackson 6-18-06
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