ELMER JESPERSON - A MARINE IN WWI 

KILLED AT THE BATTLE OF BELLEAU WOOD

Ninety-nine years ago this month [September 4, 1921], the body of my great uncle Elmer V. Jesperson, was re-interred at the Binghampton Cemetery in Tucson, Arizona.  He had been killed in battle three years earlier in France.  Flags were ordered at half-mast for three days by the mayor of Tucson to pay respect for this young man.

The Marine Corps Muster Roll for the 43rd Company 5th Regiment, June 1918, for “Jesperson, 271933, Elmer V.” asserts, “11-12 Participated in 2 attacks against enemy.  13 killed in action in Bois de Belleau. G.O. 100 does not apply. Character excellent.  Buried on Field of action exact location or date unknown.”  I translated this to mean that on June 11th and 12th Elmer participated in two attacks against the Germans in the battle of Belleau Wood. On June 13th he was killed in action and at some point was buried on the battle ground in the woods.  I have been unable to decipher the meaning of “G.O. 100 does not apply”. [If you know, please contact me.]

Elmer, my grandmother’s brother, was killed in France in WWI and we had been told he was killed at Chateau-Thierry on the banks of the River Marne.  Close, but not quite correct.  We have access to a lot of information regarding most of the earlier wars and, thankfully for me, this includes WWI.  In researching the battle in which he was killed, I discovered a lot about my great uncle, even though his name was never mentioned.

I learned that the 5th Marines is the most highly decorated regiment in the Marine Corps—and it is due to this particular 3-week battle. The fighting these Marines did in the Battle of Belleau Wood has become a key component of their lore and brought about the nickname Devil Dog.

The  French Army retreated that latter part of May before the Germans who were marching steadily forward. After capturing Chateau-Thierry and Vaux on their march to conquer Paris, the German Army moved into Belleau Wood, which stood on high, rocky terrain that hid innumerable gullies.  Urged to turn back by retreating French forces, Marine Capt. Lloyd Williams uttered the now-famous retort, “Retreat? Hell, we just got here.”

At four in the afternoon of June 5th, the troops were given the order to attack Belleau Wood at 5 p.m. The Germans must be driven out.  Only the officers realized it was almost impossible.  General Albertus W. Catlin wrote, “I had perfect confidence in the men; that never faltered.  That they might break never once entered my head.  They might be wiped out, I knew, but they would never break.”

Once they reached the woods, the Marines charged the German machine gun nests, screaming their blood-curdling yell. There were machine gun nests everywhere—on every small hill and plateau, in every ravine and pocket, behind piles of cut timber, and even in the trees. The guns were well placed to cover all zones.  No spot was safe from their spray of bullets. But the Marines never faltered.  They attacked those nests with rifles, automatics, grenades, and bayonets.  The most effective method was to run to the rear of each gun in turn and over-power the crew.  But each flanking position was covered by another gun which had to be taken immediately.  It was a furious dash from nest to nest, with no time to stop for breath. In the thick of the melee the wild yells of the Marines were mingled with the constant crackle of rifle fire like bunches of firecrackers exploding.

“It has been a living hell,” Lt. Clifton Cates wrote to his mother. “We were shelled all night with shrapnel and gas shells… It was mustard gas and a lot of the men were burned.”

Lt. Col. Frederick May Wise wrote, “… I came upon one of those German machine-guns camouflaged behind a brush pile. Dead Marines lay in front of it. Dead Germans lay about it. A strange silence held in the woods. The youngster in command told me of the terrific fighting they’d had.  Foot by foot they had pushed their way through the underbrush in the face of a continuous machine-gun and rifle fire.  Snipers had shot them from brush piles on the ground; from perches high in the trees.  Germans they had left sprawled on the ground for dead as they went on, had risen and shot them in the back…. ‘Whenever we took a machine-gun nest, another one opened up on their flank. That happened many times. The second one would never fire a shot until we had taken the first. Then they opened up on us.’ ”

Casualties were terrible.  Lt. Col. Wise continued, “At the battle’s end I lined the men up and looked them over. It was enough to break your heart.  I had left Courcelles May 31st with 965 men and 26 officers—the best battalion I ever saw any where. … Ten months I had trained them. I had seen them grow into Marines. Now before me stood 350 men and 6 officers; 615 men and 19 officers were gone.”

After the battle, the French general renamed the wood “Bois de la Brigade de Marine” in honor of the Marines’ tenacity. The French government awarded the 5th and 6th U.S. Brigades the Croix de Guerre.

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels wrote, “In all the history of the Marine Corps there is no such battle as that one in Belleau Wood. Fighting day and night without relief, without sleep, often without water, and for days without hot rations, the Marines met and defeated the best divisions that Germany could throw into the line.

“The heroism and doggedness of that battle are unparalleled. Time after time officers seeing their lines cut to pieces, seeing their men so dog-tired that they even fell asleep under shellfire, hearing their wounded calling for the water they were unable to supply, seeing men fight on after they had been wounded and until they dropped unconscious; time after time officers seeing these things, believing that the very limit of human endurance had been reached, would send back messages to their post command that their men were exhausted.

“But in answer to this would come the word that the line must hold, and, if possible, those lines must attack. And the lines obeyed. Without water, without food, without rest, they went forward—and forward every time to Victory.”

Sources used:

Ancestry.com. U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007.

Brigadier General Albertus W. Catlin, USMC. With the Help of God and a Few Marines: The Battles of Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. 1919.

Collin Hoeferlin (Communications Specialist), “The Battle of Belleau Wood,”  MarineParents.com, Inc.

Michael E. Ruane, “The Battle of Belleau Wood was bloody, deadly and forgotten. But it forged a new Marine Corps.” Washington Post. May 31, 2018.

Wikipedia articles “5th Marine Regiment”,  “The Battle of Belleau Wood”

                                    

ROLAND L. HAMBLIN

WW2 PILOT BASED OFF USS BLOCK ISLAND

THE ONLY CARRIER LOST IN THE EUROPEAN THEATER 

“I think the most scared I ever was, was one time we were way up in the North Atlantic and we were searching a 200-mile-strip for German submarines,” explained my uncle. Roland Hamblin was a pilot in World War II, based off the jeep carrier USS Block Island.  Used specifically against German subs, jeep carriers were about half the size of the big carriers in the Pacific.  They had a flight deck that was 550 feet long and about 60 feet side to side.  

“I was assigned to Squadron VC-55.  We flew bombers and fighters and flew both depending on what was needed.  We were assigned to anti-submarine warfare.  I was hoping for the South Pacific where all the action and glory was, but knowing the Navy, they sent us to the North Atlantic. There were hundreds of German submarines and they were all along the convoy routes destroying hundreds of ships.  They sent us out in the carrier with five destroyers in front of us to protect us from the submarines and a squadron aboard with about 100 aircraft, F4Fs and TBFs.  We had machine guns and rockets and acoustical torpedoes that would home in on the submarines and seek it out.  So we had everything we needed to fight the German submarines.

While searching for submarines, we stayed up about four hours. That meant we could fly about 100 miles, and then we would come back. I was way out as far as I could go and it was a very cold day.  All of a sudden my engine just cut out, and I didn’t know what was wrong. We fly about 3,000 feet so we could see 

the submarines and not be too high or too low. You just drop like a rock when your engine goes out. I gave a quick prayer, I said ‘Heavenly Father, help me.’ Two words came into my mind: ‘Carburetor Heat.’ On my dashboard there was a little pull out knob that was labeled Carburetor Heat. That turned the hot air from the cylinders right onto the carburetor. I turned the knob and just like that, the heat hit it, and my engine started right up. By that time my heart had leaped up into my throat.

Later on when we were off England, we spotted a German submarine and started chasing it. We chased it for nine days and nine nights. We attacked it and it submerged. The next day we made a search around the area where it had gone down. We marked the spot with green dye marker. He would have to come up in a hundred mile area. All day he would stay submerged, and then he would have to come up at night. This went on for nine days. He was going south, thank heavens, instead of north. I was out flying patrol that day and was coming in to land. I noticed that the carrier was going right through this green dye marker.

I came in and reported to the Captain, ‘You just went through the green dye marker.’

He didn’t say much, but just as I climbed into the shower, we got hit by two torpedoes. If you get hit by a torpedo on a ship, it is just like a rock rattling in a can. I hit the floor, then the ceiling, then bounced off the floor again. I jumped out of the shower and grabbed what I could and ran upstairs to the ready room and I reported. About then we got hit by another torpedo. We were told to abandon ship.

            In the Navy through report, the first thing you hear is the boatswain’s whistle. Then a voice comes over the air saying, ‘Now hear this, now hear this’ and then you would get your message. Everyone was listening closely and it said, ‘General Quarters, General Quarters.’ That meant for everyone to report to their battle station wherever it was. Our station was in the pilot’s ready room. We waited there until we got the call to abandon ship. I had my Mae West [life vest] on. I went to the side of the deck where I should have gotten off, but the wind was blowing that way. You couldn’t even get to the edge of the flight deck there were so many people. So I went around to the other side.

The only problem was that when we got off the ship, it was drifting our way. It was drifting about as fast as I could swim. The carrier was about 60 feet high and everything was floating around in the water, so you went down a rope into the water. Once again, I prayed and I got the impression, ‘Swim back, swim back.’ The ship drifted on past us, because we were right behind it then. About that time the stern went down. It just slid right under us. If we had been any closer, it would have sucked us under with it.

We thought we were safe, but then when it got down about 200 feet, all the depth charges that had been set for 200 feet started going off. There were explosions all around us. Big old geysers of water. Once again, I prayed and Heavenly Father helped me. I got the impression, ‘Get your feet up, get your feet up.’ I floated up above all that debris from the explosions. There were terrible sharp concussions and the water was covered with oil, so the sharks didn’t bother us.

This happened about 8 o’clock at night and we got picked up at midnight. Thank goodness we were in the South Atlantic where it wasn’t nearly as cold. We wouldn’t have lasted as long in the North Atlantic.

Besides hitting the carrier, the submarine torpedoed one of the destroyers. We saw the torpedo go by; it was an acoustical one and hit the destroyer right in the screws. One of the other destroyers went to take care of the ship that was hit and the other two destroyers went ahead and found that German submarine and sunk it. It had stayed down as long as it could and when the carrier passed over it, it gave up and came to the surface and fired everything it had. It couldn’t submerge any more, the batteries were run down and it was exhausted. So they finally sunk the sub. Then they pulled up in the area where we were.

I got over to one of them about 11:30 that night and wanted to get aboard and they said, ‘Sorry we can’t take you. We just can’t take any more survivors.’ Then they continued, ‘If you can get over there to the other one, they will probably pick you up.’ So we went over to the other destroyer and they said to come up. That was one of the hardest things I have ever done was to climb aboard that destroyer.

There was another person climbing up the same time as I did, and I thought he was Black.  When I got up and looked at myself, I realized I looked just like he did.  We were covered with oil. They gave us a shower. It was a salt water shower which was all they had. They gave me a t-shirt, and that was all I had to wear for four days until we got to Casablanca [Morocco].

We had six planes up at the time we were torpedoed. They sent them to the nearest land, which happened to be the Azores. There was no landing strip in the Azores at the time, so they all tried to land in the water and coast up to the beach. One of the pilots took his life jacket and little lifeboat, and he was picked up by a PBY the next day.  We thought he was the only one to survive.”

My uncle blamed the sinking of the ship on the Block Island’s captain for crossing into the green dye. Additional reports state: “With three kills credited to her squadron, she was an experienced anti-submarine unit, but she remained the only US carrier lost in the European theater.” Barrett Tillman, Wildcat: The F4F in World War II. The attached destroyer Ahrens, built and equipped to carry a crew of 200, picked up 674 survivors, nearly weighing its deck down to sea level.

“The 277 survivors left in the oily brine full of stinging Man of Wars had to swim for four hours to reach the Paine.  One reported that when the depth charges went off, it felt like getting an enema with a telephone pole.  Most were too exhausted to climb up the rope ladders and had to be pulled up by strong-armed crewmen.  Then they collapsed when they tried to stand on deck.  Any clothing, oily-soaked, left on them was cut off and thrown overboard.

Thirteen men from the Block Island were lost. Four of the six Wildcat pilots left in the air also died that night. The Block Island survivors arrived in Casablanca on June 1st and were issued marine khakis and kept in isolation to keep news of the ship’s loss from leaking out.” D-Day followed five days later, June 6, 1944.