hbharrison
02-19-11, 04:38 PM
THAD ALLTON/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL Topeka, KS Feb 18, 2011
Jim Freel holds a group shot of his platoon he came ashore with on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. Freel was wounded by a piece of shrapnel that remains in his neck. A photo of Freel in a dress uniform is to the left, and his brother, Billy Bob Freel, who was killed in fighting at Okinawa a few months later, is to the right.
By Steve Fry
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
After Marine Pfc. Jim Freel was hit by shrapnel during heavy fighting on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, the first day of the battle 66 years ago today, his mother got a telegram informing the family he had been wounded.
During the following three months, he was recovering, eventually arriving at stateside hospitals. Freel, who wasn't keen on writing letters, didn't send a follow-up telegram or note to tell his mother he was recovering and would be returning home on a 30-day leave.
But when she didn't hear anything from him, she assumed he had been gravely wounded.
Two months after he was wounded, he hitchhiked his way across much of the United States to get home to Topeka.
She didn't know where "I was until I walked up, and she fainted," said the 87-year-old Freel.
But the Freel family did get bad news while Jim Freel was on leave.
"I was home when my mom got the telegram that my brother was killed," Freel said. "She cried and cried for several days."
Billy Bob Freel, a Marine veteran of island fighting at Guadalcanal and Peleliu, was killed in action at Okinawa. American troops landed there on April 1, 1945.
Billy Bob Freel, who was 14 months younger than brother Jim and who had to have his mother sign his enlistment papers in spring 1942 because he was only 17, was killed May 7, 1945, three days after his 21st birthday.
Jim Freel was 19 when he followed his younger brother into the Marines on Feb. 1, 1943, two years before Iwo Jima. Freel was among the few Marines to earn his jump wings as parachutist. After finishing parachute training school in San Diego, he was assigned to Company K, 3rd Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment.
He was assigned to the same platoon as Pfc. Ira Hayes, who was in an Iwo Jima photograph that would go down in history.
"He was a little short Pima Indian kid," Freel said of Hayes. "He was always on a diet," but would go off the diet by eating crackers.
The two took part in the capture of the islands of Vella Lavella and Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.
"I did a lot of patrols" on Bougainville, Freel said.
Bougainville marked the point where the adventure went out of the war for Freel. That is when he first saw a Marine killed in battle, he said.
Freel and Hayes, who he described as quiet, went on liberty together. Before returning home to Arizona, Hayes bought an officer's green uniform, apparently to wear while on leave, Freel said.
Freel and Hayes were around each other for six to eight months, then the parachute troops and the Marine raider units were reassigned to be the core of the 5th Marine Division.
Freel was assigned to D Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment of the 5th Marine Division. Hayes was assigned to E. Company.
Hayes would become famous after photographer Joe Rosenthal shot the photograph of him, four other Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. The enormously popular photograph was printed many times over, twice recreated as a postage stamp and was sculpted as the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.
At Iwo Jima, U.S. Navy ships had pounded the island for weeks, and American bombers dropped tons of explosives on the island before Freel and the Marines loaded into amphibious craft called alligators to land on the beaches. Freel, a Browning automatic rifleman, was in the second wave.
At the beach, Freel crawled over the side of the alligator and waded ashore through waist-deep water. Suribachi, a 563-foot peak, was to his left. He was crawling across the sand when Japanese artillery and mortar fire hit him and other Marines. Freel was about one-third of the way across the narrow neck of land connecting Suribachi to the rest of Iwo Jima.
"I was flat on the ground," Freel said. "I got hit. It felt like a bee sting."
His hand was covered in blood after he put it up to his neck. A corpsman put a bandage around the wound, then he was evacuated to the beaches, where the Japanese shelled the wounded, killing some.
Freel was aboard a hospital ship when the flag was raised on Suribachi. Ships blew their whistles to celebrate the moment.
A quarter-inch piece of shrapnel had struck him in the right side of the neck, coming to a stop at the back of his neck. It remains there today.
In fighting on Iwo Jima, almost 5,400 Marines were killed and 17,400 were wounded. Nearly all of the 23,000 Japanese defenders perished. In Freel's company of 200 men, only four weren't wounded or killed by the end of the 36-day battle.
Freel, who graduated in 1941 from Topeka High School, returned home to become a Topeka police officer, retired 26 years later as police chief, then worked 20 years as a special agent for the U.S. Department of Labor, investigating organized crime and racketeering in San Francisco and San Diego. He retired in 1992.
Freel and his wife, Helen, have been married for 14 years and live in Topeka.
Jim Freel holds a group shot of his platoon he came ashore with on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. Freel was wounded by a piece of shrapnel that remains in his neck. A photo of Freel in a dress uniform is to the left, and his brother, Billy Bob Freel, who was killed in fighting at Okinawa a few months later, is to the right.
By Steve Fry
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
After Marine Pfc. Jim Freel was hit by shrapnel during heavy fighting on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, the first day of the battle 66 years ago today, his mother got a telegram informing the family he had been wounded.
During the following three months, he was recovering, eventually arriving at stateside hospitals. Freel, who wasn't keen on writing letters, didn't send a follow-up telegram or note to tell his mother he was recovering and would be returning home on a 30-day leave.
But when she didn't hear anything from him, she assumed he had been gravely wounded.
Two months after he was wounded, he hitchhiked his way across much of the United States to get home to Topeka.
She didn't know where "I was until I walked up, and she fainted," said the 87-year-old Freel.
But the Freel family did get bad news while Jim Freel was on leave.
"I was home when my mom got the telegram that my brother was killed," Freel said. "She cried and cried for several days."
Billy Bob Freel, a Marine veteran of island fighting at Guadalcanal and Peleliu, was killed in action at Okinawa. American troops landed there on April 1, 1945.
Billy Bob Freel, who was 14 months younger than brother Jim and who had to have his mother sign his enlistment papers in spring 1942 because he was only 17, was killed May 7, 1945, three days after his 21st birthday.
Jim Freel was 19 when he followed his younger brother into the Marines on Feb. 1, 1943, two years before Iwo Jima. Freel was among the few Marines to earn his jump wings as parachutist. After finishing parachute training school in San Diego, he was assigned to Company K, 3rd Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment.
He was assigned to the same platoon as Pfc. Ira Hayes, who was in an Iwo Jima photograph that would go down in history.
"He was a little short Pima Indian kid," Freel said of Hayes. "He was always on a diet," but would go off the diet by eating crackers.
The two took part in the capture of the islands of Vella Lavella and Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.
"I did a lot of patrols" on Bougainville, Freel said.
Bougainville marked the point where the adventure went out of the war for Freel. That is when he first saw a Marine killed in battle, he said.
Freel and Hayes, who he described as quiet, went on liberty together. Before returning home to Arizona, Hayes bought an officer's green uniform, apparently to wear while on leave, Freel said.
Freel and Hayes were around each other for six to eight months, then the parachute troops and the Marine raider units were reassigned to be the core of the 5th Marine Division.
Freel was assigned to D Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment of the 5th Marine Division. Hayes was assigned to E. Company.
Hayes would become famous after photographer Joe Rosenthal shot the photograph of him, four other Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. The enormously popular photograph was printed many times over, twice recreated as a postage stamp and was sculpted as the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.
At Iwo Jima, U.S. Navy ships had pounded the island for weeks, and American bombers dropped tons of explosives on the island before Freel and the Marines loaded into amphibious craft called alligators to land on the beaches. Freel, a Browning automatic rifleman, was in the second wave.
At the beach, Freel crawled over the side of the alligator and waded ashore through waist-deep water. Suribachi, a 563-foot peak, was to his left. He was crawling across the sand when Japanese artillery and mortar fire hit him and other Marines. Freel was about one-third of the way across the narrow neck of land connecting Suribachi to the rest of Iwo Jima.
"I was flat on the ground," Freel said. "I got hit. It felt like a bee sting."
His hand was covered in blood after he put it up to his neck. A corpsman put a bandage around the wound, then he was evacuated to the beaches, where the Japanese shelled the wounded, killing some.
Freel was aboard a hospital ship when the flag was raised on Suribachi. Ships blew their whistles to celebrate the moment.
A quarter-inch piece of shrapnel had struck him in the right side of the neck, coming to a stop at the back of his neck. It remains there today.
In fighting on Iwo Jima, almost 5,400 Marines were killed and 17,400 were wounded. Nearly all of the 23,000 Japanese defenders perished. In Freel's company of 200 men, only four weren't wounded or killed by the end of the 36-day battle.
Freel, who graduated in 1941 from Topeka High School, returned home to become a Topeka police officer, retired 26 years later as police chief, then worked 20 years as a special agent for the U.S. Department of Labor, investigating organized crime and racketeering in San Francisco and San Diego. He retired in 1992.
Freel and his wife, Helen, have been married for 14 years and live in Topeka.