Category: War in the Pacific

Edwin (Ed) Cole Bearss (pronounced ‘bars’) was born June 26, 1923, in Billings, Montana, to Omar and Virginia Bearss.  He grew up on a 10,000 acre ranch, the B bar S, located 90 miles west of Billings.  The Little Bighorn Battlefield was 35 miles southwest of the ranch.  He had a younger brother, Pat, and there was a time Ed and Pat would ride together on horseback to and from the Sarpy Creek School a distance of six miles from the ranch.

Ed Bearss was born into a lineage of family members who served in the United States (US) Marine Corps.  His father, Omar, was a Marine in WWI. Omar’s cousin Hiram “Hiking Hiram” Bearss was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1901 for extraordinary heroism during the Philippine-American War (February 4, 1899 – July 2, 1902); Hiram Bearss was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1918 for his valor in WWI (1914 -1918).

Omar Bearss would read history books to his boys on subjects including WWI, the American Civil War, and the US Marine Corps.  Ed developed an intense interest in history that infused his life. Charles Crawford of the Georgia Battlefields Association said about Ed, “There was a Marine in Ed before Ed was ever in the Marines.”

On December 7, 1941, the National Football League was finishing its season. Three games were played that day:  the Chicago Bears (34) against the Chicago Cardinals (24), the Brooklyn Dodgers (21) versus the New York Giants (7), and the Washington Redskins (20) played against the Philadelphia Eagles (14).  During these three games public address announcers broadcast early reports of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, or paged government and military personnel to report to their units.

The Bearss family on December 7, 1941, was listening to the Chicago Bears playing against the Chicago Cardinals at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois.  

On April 28, 1942, Ed Bearss enlisted in the US Marine Corps.

Ed arrived at the US Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, California, on April 30, 1942.  After seven weeks training in Boot Camp Platoon 369,  he was assigned to the newly activated 22nd Marine Regiment (22nd Marines).  On June 18 the 22nd Marines began deployment to the WWII Pacific Theater of Operations.  In September 1942 Ed requested and was assigned to the 3rd Raider Battalion which was being formed in the Samoas.  [The Samoan Islands are an archipelago in the central South Pacific Ocean.]

In April 1943 when the 3rd Raider Battalion was based in New Hebrides (an island group off the northern coast of Australia now called Vanuatu), Ed was diagnosed with malaria and sent to New Zealand for six weeks to recuperate.

Ed didn’t return to the 3rd Raiders after convalescence but was assigned to the 2nd Platoon of  L Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.  The 1st Marine Division would deploy to New Guinea to plan the assault on Cape Gloucester in New Britain, Territory of New Guinea.

[The Battle of Cape Gloucester (December 26, 1943 – January 16, 1944) codenamed Operation Backhander had the objective to capture a major Japanese airstrip near Cape Gloucester and to defeat elements of the Japanese 17th Division in control of the area.  The battle was in support of Operation Cartwheel (1943 – 1944).  

Operation Cartwheel was a major Allied plan to neutralize and then to isolate and bypass Rabaul (far eastern end of island of New Britain) as the Allies moved northward towards Japan. 

Rabaul was a Australian naval base that was captured by the Japanese in 1942.  It became a major Japanese air and naval installation and was the most heavily defended Japanese fortification in the South Pacific.  It was also the assembly point for convoys of ships, known as the “Tokyo Express,” that would race south to bring troops and supplies to areas of conflict in the Solomon Islands.] 

On December 26, 1943, the 1st Marine Division would spearhead an attack at Cape Gloucester.

January 2, 1944, the Marines were driving eastward through dense jungle terrain.  Corporal Bearss’ platoon was advancing through the jungle — Ed was walking point — when they approached a creek that would become known as Suicide Creek.

In  the 2003 book Edwin Cole Bearss History’s Pied Piper by John C. Waugh,  Ed tells of being wounded as the Japanese, dug into the bank on the other side of Suicide Creek, opened fire:

“I was on my knees when the first bullet struck.  It hit me in my left arm just below the elbow, and the arm went numb.  It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer.  It jerked me sideways and then I was hit again, another sledgehammer blow to my right shoulder.  I fell, both arms shattered, and my helmet slipped down over my eyes.  I couldn’t see.  But there were now dead men  lying all around me.

It seemed a long time that I lay there, in fierce pain, pinned down by Japanese fire… Unable to stand it any longer and afraid of bleeding to death, I decided to risk getting up; the Japanese gun just in front of me was firing off to the right.  As I wiggled around trying to rise, another bullet grazed my butt and another hit my foot.  I quit moving…”

After lying in an area without possible rescue for what seemed like hours, bleeding, and afraid he was going to die, Ed decided to try to move again.  

“They [the Japanese] saw me [move] but couldn’t get their gun depressed fast enough before, without the use of either arm, I went over the lip of a knoll and slid down the other side, … I still don’t know how I did it.  If that ground had been level, I would be dead.  I realized then how important terrain was in a battle.” 

Having moved to a different position,  Lieutenant Thomas J. O’Leary and a US Navy corpsman named Hartman, crawled over to Ed and pulled him back behind the lines far enough so stretcher bearers could reach him and carry him to the battalion aid station.

Ed received medical treatment at military facilities in the South Pacific and would eventually arrive back in the US for continued medical care and rehabilitation.  During his hospitalization Ed would spend countless hours reading history books.  After 26 months recovering from his war wounds, Edwin Cole Bearss was discharged from the US Marine Corps on March 15, 1946.  [But for those of us who have known a US Marine, “Once a Marine always a Marine.”]

Ed Bearss graduated from Georgetown University in 1949 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Foreign Service Studies.  In 1955 he would earn a Master of Arts Degree in History from Indiana University.

After working at the Naval Hydrographic Office and the Office of the Chief of Military History, in 1955 Ed sought a position working for the National Park Service.  He was assigned to the Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi, as a historian.  

In 1957 a young schoolteacher born in Brandon, Mississippi, arrived at the Vicksburg National Military Park with a US Civil War question about Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Meridian Campaign.  Her name was Margie Riddle.  Her question and their discussion involved a campaign “cannonball,” and she was proved correct on the issue.  Ed and Margie were married July 30, 1958, and they would be a formidable team in the field of American Civil War history.

In 1958 Ed would be promoted to Regional Historian for the Southeast Region of the National Park Service working out of Vicksburg.

While at Vicksburg, Ed studied Civil War maps and located what he thought was the sunken Union gunboat United States Ship (USS) Cairo (named after Cairo, Illinois).  A ironclad warship,  she was sunk on December 12, 1862, when clearing mines in the Yazoo River for the planned attack on Haynes Bluff, Mississippi.  [It was the first ship sunk by a mine that was remotely detonated.]  Along with Don Jacks, a maintenance man at the Vicksburg National Military Park, and Warren Grabau, US Army engineer and geologist, the USS Cairo was located buried in Yazoo River mud.

With support from the State of Mississippi the ship was salvaged and can now be viewed at the USS Cairo Museum at the Vicksburg National Military Park.

In 1966, Ed, Margie, and their three children moved to Washington, D.C.,  where he became the Historian for the National Park Service’s historical sites.  In 1981 he was named Chief Historian of the National Park Service.  He held the position until 1994. 

In the 1990 Ken Burns miniseries The Civil War, Ed Bearss was featured as one of the Civil War historians.

After retiring from the National Park Service Ed Bearss continues to share his love for history and vast knowledge by leading battlefield tours, writing, lecturing, participating in Civil War Roundtables, and encouraging remembrance of our national history.  He has received numerous awards and has been called by many “A National Treasure.”

In an earlier quote from Ed Bearss in this story about his wounding and survival at the 1944 Battle of Suicide Creek, he said, “I realized then how important terrain was in a battle.”  On his battlefield tours today he says, “You can’t describe a battlefield unless you walk it.”  

Thank you to the Bearss family, Robert Desourdis, and Nova Science Publishers, Inc., for use of the Bearss family photograph.

Thank you to the US Marine Corps University Research Center for assistance in the research for this story.

Thank you to Dr. Vernon L. Williams, Military Historian and Professor Emeritus of History, at Abiliene Christian University, Abilene, Texas.  He is the Director of the East Anglia Air War Project.

I first met Ed Bearss on a 2006 History America Tours cruise  “Invasion of Italy.”  The tour started in Valletta, Malta.  We sailed on the Clipper Adventurer to Sicily where we walked WWII Allied invasion beaches and visited battle sites.  The ship then sailed from Messina, Sicily, to the mainland of Italy, and the tour travelled north with excursions to the WWII battle sites of Salerno, Monte Cassino, Anzio, the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial, and other WWII history locations.

After daily trip excursions with Ed,  I was filled with information about WWII.  I became a member of the “Ed Bearss Fan Club.”   I learned a great deal about WWII from him and was motivated to pass on the history I learned to others interested in WWII history.  In 2015 I started my website World War 2 History Short Stories and named Chief Historian Emeritus of the National Park Service Ed Bearss as one of the people who inspired me to undertake the project.

Jack Miller Fletcher was born September 21, 1925, in Spur, Texas (240 miles west of Dallas, Texas).  After the December 7, 1941, surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Jack went to Dallas to join the United States (US) military.  After the train with new recruits left Dallas with a destination of California for military training, Jack’s father stopped the train at Sweetwater, Texas (212 miles west of Dallas), told the military authorities that Jack was underage to enlist, and took him home.  Later in 1942 after Jack turned 17 years old, his father signed the paperwork permitting him to enlist.  Jack left high school a semester before graduating and joined the US Navy.  [Jack had three older brothers who also served in WWII].

[While in California training, Jack learned a young lady he dated in Texas was in Los Angeles.  Her name was Gypsie Ann Evarts Stell.  They spent a night dancing the jitterbug to the Les Brown Band of Renown Orchestra at the Los Angeles Hollywood Palladium.  Gypsie would change her name to Phyllis Coates and became the first Lois Lane in the television series Adventures of Superman.]

Jack trained as a US Navy hospital corpsman and was assigned to the US 3rd Marine Division.

Second Battle of Guam (July 21 – August 10, 1944).  The island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean Mariana Islands had been a US possession since 1898.  The Japanese captured the island in the First Battle of Guam (December 8 – 10, 1941).

Jack landed on Guam several days after the initial US assault on July 21, 1944.  

While on Guam Jack tells the story of a local family who asked his help to deliver a baby.  He hadn’t received training in that area, and all he knew was what he had seen in American movies when an actor would say  “tear up the sheets and boil some water.”  The family followed Jack’s instructions.  Jack was organizing his torn sheets and boiling water when a family member delivered the baby.  The sheets that were torn up were never needed, and Jack learned that they were the family’s best ones that had been buried with other valuables in December 1941 so the Japanese could not confiscate them.

After the US capture of Guam, the island was used for training exercises in preparation for the Battle of Iwo Jima.

In Jack’s 2013 oral history interview with the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, he tells a story of the unimaginable bravery and courage of a fellow hospital corpsman who died in a training accident on Guam on December 3, 1944.  The hospital corpsman’s name was David L. Demarest.  He was 20 years old.  During the training exercise the shell of an anti-tank 105mm gun fell short and landed in the midst of the marines.  David Demarest’s jaw was blown off in the explosion.  In an attempt to prevent himself from swallowing his tongue after the injury,  David took a safety pin and put it through his tongue and then pinned his tongue to his cheek.  In spite of his serious injury he continued to treat the wounded and the dying until he too died.  Jack said 30 – 40 marines were killed or wounded in the exercise.

Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19 – March 26, 1945).  Jack was assigned as a hospital corpsman on a US Navy attack transport ship (APA 89) named the United States Ship (USS) Frederick Funston.  APA 89 had transported troops from Guam to Iwo Jima for the battle.  Her troops were initially held in reserve and landed on Iwo Jima February 27, 1945.

Jack spoke of two medical treatments that became available to treat casualties on Iwo Jima; the availability of penicillin and whole blood saved many lives.

He also tells of the unique medical challenge of open wounds that became contaminated with the island’s volcanic ash.  Jack says it could turn a wound gangrenous in 24 hours.  That resulted in many amputations.

Battalion aid stations on the beach became targets for the Japanese.  It was decided to move American medics and casualties as quickly as possible out to ships for treatment.  Jack still gets emotional when he speaks of being surrounded by dying and wounded men as he worked to save lives.

In Jack’s 2013 interview he shared the tragic story of a marine he treated on the USS Frederick Funston.  His name was Sergeant (Sgt) Charles C. Anderson, Jr., who was assigned to the 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division.  His two legs and arms were blown off when a mortar landed between his legs on Yellow Beach.  The young marine remained conscious during part of his medical treatment, and Jack said Charles would make jokes wondering if he could get dates after the war.  The medics were able to keep him alive for 16 hours before he died of his wounds.

The death of Sgt Charles C. Anderson, Jr., was an especially sad one.  In one of WWII’s dramatic ironies, the captain of the USS Frederick Funston was Charles C. Anderson, Sr.  A father signed his own son’s death certificate.

On March 8, 1945, the USS Frederick Funston left Iwo Jima waters to transport the casualties they had on board to Guam for further treatment.

Jack was on Guam when he heard US President Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.  He said he and many of the men “cried like babies” when they heard the news.  

Training had already begun on Guam for the planned Invasion of Japan scheduled for November 1945 when he heard WWII had ended.  Their objective would have been to land on Kyushu, Japan’s third largest island.

After WWII ended it became a priority to transport American military personnel back to the US.  The plan called Operation Magic Carpet (October 1945 – September 1946) returned eight million Americans from the Pacific, European, and Asian Theaters.  Jack was assigned to the operation and made three Pacific crossings with US repatriated military personnel.

Jack was discharged from the US Navy in November 1946.  His three brothers survived WWII and returned home, but his younger 17 year old sister, Joyce Ann, had been killed in an automobile accident in Texas during the war.

Jack spoke of having nightmares for several years after WWII ended.

After WWII Jack used the GI Bill to attend Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.  He graduated in 1949 with a Degree in Agriculture.

In 2012 Jack was invited back to Spur, Texas, to receive his high school diploma.  After seventy years he officially graduated from high school.

During WWII Jack learned about Australia when he traded beer rations with Australian soldiers.  He would later move to Australia and began a business that changed the field of agriculture in Western Australia. The Australian government awarded him the Order of Australia Medal for his work.  For more information on Jack’s legendary career in the agriculture industry see http://www.cbs7.com/content/news/Sul-Ross-alum-Jack-Fletcher-receives-Order-of-Australia-medal-416627143.html and https://www.tradeearthmovers.com.au/features/1507/jack-fletcher-the-texan-kimberley-king.

Jack Miller Fletcher’s full interview can be found in the digital archives of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.  He was interviewed by museum oral historian Floyd Cox.  The link is http://digitalarchive.pacificwarmuseum.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16769coll1/id/4236/rec/1.

Thank you to WWII historian and researcher Sue Moyer.