thedrifter
06-11-05, 05:40 AM
Ceremony at last honors the boy who went to war
Marker brings hero’s name home to Nashville
By LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writer
his story began more than 60 years ago, when a 14-year-old Nashville boy left to fight a man's war — as a full-fledged Marine, no less. He didn't live to tell his tale.
The story ended yesterday at Spring Hill Cemetery in Madison as three aging sisters remembered their brother, Pvt. Elbert Benard Alexander, who died — by official accounts a man and a hero — during the taking of Bougainville in the South Pacific in November 1943.
For Bernice Alexander, 85, Eva Hoffenkemp, 80, and Lenie Freeman, 74, yesterday's official dedication of a marker bearing the name of their dead brother was a bittersweet victory.
A burden was lifted because, at last, their lost sibling's sacrifice had been officially remembered. Now there was a place on American soil with his name scribed in stone, even if the body of young Pvt. Alexander, serial number 433730, was never recovered from the jungle-like domain of Bougainville, so very far from Nashville.
But the hard stone also made their brother's death official, and even after six decades, the sisters grieved, hugging one another, wiping tears away with folded tissues as his military service was recounted for a small gathering of family, friends and Marine veterans.
Missing from the ceremony was another sister, Frances Brown of Hendersonville, whose poor health prevented her from attending.
"It's like a 14-year-old left home for 60 years. You couldn't really feel like he was dead. He just left home and didn't come back,'' Bernice, who lives in Round Lake Beach, Ill., said later.
"The hardest part in losing someone whose body is never found is that you always keep hoping. We spent years after the war thinking, every time the door opened, it would be him,'' added Lenie, a retiree who lives in Dunedin, Fla.
Had he survived to the present day, their brother would have been 77 years old.
Claimed to be older, 17
Elbert Benard Alexander's tour of honorable duty as a Marine began with a lie. He fibbed about his age. Alexander told recruiters he was 17, born on Dec. 25, 1924.
In truth, his birth certificate reveals he was born in Nashville on Christmas Day 1927, making him 14 years old in September 1942, when he raised his right hand and swore to defend his country with his life.
At the time, Alexander, whose family had lived for many years at 937 1/2 Fatherland St., should have been a student at Nashville's East Junior High. But he apparently was never one who liked academics, because his attendance was spotty. His Marine Corps enlistment record, meanwhile, noted his pre-military occupation as "laborer."
Ten months before he signed up, the country had felt the sting of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Months later America was awash in patriotism, very similar to what happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Elbert Alexander, son of James Alexander, a foreman at Nashville Bridge Co., and the sixth child of nine siblings, apparently believed no enterprise was greater than the effort to defend his country.
The teenager was not alone. Thousands of underage veterans are believed to have fought in World War II.
However, even at "17," Alexander still needed the permission of at least one parent to support his ruse. Otherwise, military enlistees had to be 18 before they could join.
For the needed signature, he turned to his mother, Etheleene, who corroborated her son's incorrect year of birth. How he persuaded her to sign the enlistment document remains a mystery.
"He was very persuasive, is all I can say,'' recalled Lenie, who was 12 when her brother left for war.
Parents' lasting loss
The sisters said their parents never recovered from the loss of their brother.
"I was too young to understand it all, to understand what my parents were feeling. It's hard to explain why my mother would have signed that paper. I think the important thing to remember is neither my mother or my father had any idea what war was about and what he was going to,'' Lenie said.
"I think they thought he was going away to camp and that maybe he would get an education out of it."
James and Etheleene Alexander died in 1954, he in April at age 75, and she in August at age 55. Disease was the cause of death for the parents, but the sisters said a contributing factor was guilt. The couple is buried in Spring Hill, and their son's military service marker is now placed between their graves.
"It hurt them hard to lose Elbert,'' said Eva, who lives in Chicago.
"He was so young. You just couldn't believe his life was over at that age."
The question inevitably arises, didn't his superiors suspect the 5-foot-8, 135-pound Tennessee recruit was underage?
"Maybe they did, but maybe Elbert was special. Imagine the mettle of that 14-year-old kid to make it through Marine boot camp. Although he was young, he was a man, no doubt,'' said Fred Tucker, retired Marine major and Tennessee commissioner of Veterans Affairs from 1995 to 2000. Tucker arranged yesterday's memorial service for the family.
Pvt. Alexander was assigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 9th Marine Regiment, part of the 3rd Marine Division. In early July 1943, the unit arrived at Guadalcanal, an island in the South Pacific that had only recently been taken by the Allies through fierce fighting. There, it trained for about four months.
Its next destination was Japanese-held Bougainville, the largest of the chain of Solomon Islands east of Papau New Guinea. Allied forces desperately needed an aircraft landing field there to support bombers headed for Tokyo.
Japanese attacked patrol
On Nov. 1, 1943, E Company of the 2nd Battalion was among the first wave of Americans to land on the island. Fighting was intense, but the Americans made steady progress inland.
According to Alexander's service record, about midafternoon of Nov. 7, 1943, a 30-man patrol from E Company was attacked. Two Marines were immediately killed, another wounded and five became separated from the group, including Alexander and another private, James Pitts from Texas.
As the action continued, four other American deaths were recorded and another man was wounded.
The platoon's leader, 1st Lt. Thomas P. Hunter Jr., later stated in a report of the firefight that Alexander and another private were in the rear of the column, helping carry the Marine dead off the Piva Numa Numa Trail.
Another member of the platoon, Pfc. Marion E. Powell, reported that he last saw Alexander by the bodies of the dead soldiers. "When we moved out I noticed he joined the column, but left it almost immediately and crossed the trail in the direction of the enemy, evidently seeking out a sniper. The column soon moved out and I lost sight of Alexander in the dense foliage,'' Powell wrote.
Over the next three days, three of the five missing Marines straggled into camp, but Alexander and Pitts were never seen again, and efforts to locate their bodies were unsuccessful. Their remains have never been located.
The fighting on Bougainville raged for weeks. Hundreds of Marines lost their lives, and three of the dead were later honored with the nation's highest combat honor, the Medal of Honor.
Elbert Alexander had been two months shy of his 16th birthday when he became missing in action.
Was his body hidden by the jungle?
Was he captured and killed elsewhere?
These are some of the many questions Pvt. Alexander's sisters have asked over the years.
Along with: Was their brother scared? Did he ever get homesick? Did he ever regret his decision to enter the service?
These are questions that will die with them, the sisters understand.
"We'll never know, but at least this gives us a kind of closure. More than anything, what is important is that he has been honored.
"He deserves to be honored. He was a boy from Nashville who went to war."
Ellie
Marker brings hero’s name home to Nashville
By LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writer
his story began more than 60 years ago, when a 14-year-old Nashville boy left to fight a man's war — as a full-fledged Marine, no less. He didn't live to tell his tale.
The story ended yesterday at Spring Hill Cemetery in Madison as three aging sisters remembered their brother, Pvt. Elbert Benard Alexander, who died — by official accounts a man and a hero — during the taking of Bougainville in the South Pacific in November 1943.
For Bernice Alexander, 85, Eva Hoffenkemp, 80, and Lenie Freeman, 74, yesterday's official dedication of a marker bearing the name of their dead brother was a bittersweet victory.
A burden was lifted because, at last, their lost sibling's sacrifice had been officially remembered. Now there was a place on American soil with his name scribed in stone, even if the body of young Pvt. Alexander, serial number 433730, was never recovered from the jungle-like domain of Bougainville, so very far from Nashville.
But the hard stone also made their brother's death official, and even after six decades, the sisters grieved, hugging one another, wiping tears away with folded tissues as his military service was recounted for a small gathering of family, friends and Marine veterans.
Missing from the ceremony was another sister, Frances Brown of Hendersonville, whose poor health prevented her from attending.
"It's like a 14-year-old left home for 60 years. You couldn't really feel like he was dead. He just left home and didn't come back,'' Bernice, who lives in Round Lake Beach, Ill., said later.
"The hardest part in losing someone whose body is never found is that you always keep hoping. We spent years after the war thinking, every time the door opened, it would be him,'' added Lenie, a retiree who lives in Dunedin, Fla.
Had he survived to the present day, their brother would have been 77 years old.
Claimed to be older, 17
Elbert Benard Alexander's tour of honorable duty as a Marine began with a lie. He fibbed about his age. Alexander told recruiters he was 17, born on Dec. 25, 1924.
In truth, his birth certificate reveals he was born in Nashville on Christmas Day 1927, making him 14 years old in September 1942, when he raised his right hand and swore to defend his country with his life.
At the time, Alexander, whose family had lived for many years at 937 1/2 Fatherland St., should have been a student at Nashville's East Junior High. But he apparently was never one who liked academics, because his attendance was spotty. His Marine Corps enlistment record, meanwhile, noted his pre-military occupation as "laborer."
Ten months before he signed up, the country had felt the sting of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Months later America was awash in patriotism, very similar to what happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Elbert Alexander, son of James Alexander, a foreman at Nashville Bridge Co., and the sixth child of nine siblings, apparently believed no enterprise was greater than the effort to defend his country.
The teenager was not alone. Thousands of underage veterans are believed to have fought in World War II.
However, even at "17," Alexander still needed the permission of at least one parent to support his ruse. Otherwise, military enlistees had to be 18 before they could join.
For the needed signature, he turned to his mother, Etheleene, who corroborated her son's incorrect year of birth. How he persuaded her to sign the enlistment document remains a mystery.
"He was very persuasive, is all I can say,'' recalled Lenie, who was 12 when her brother left for war.
Parents' lasting loss
The sisters said their parents never recovered from the loss of their brother.
"I was too young to understand it all, to understand what my parents were feeling. It's hard to explain why my mother would have signed that paper. I think the important thing to remember is neither my mother or my father had any idea what war was about and what he was going to,'' Lenie said.
"I think they thought he was going away to camp and that maybe he would get an education out of it."
James and Etheleene Alexander died in 1954, he in April at age 75, and she in August at age 55. Disease was the cause of death for the parents, but the sisters said a contributing factor was guilt. The couple is buried in Spring Hill, and their son's military service marker is now placed between their graves.
"It hurt them hard to lose Elbert,'' said Eva, who lives in Chicago.
"He was so young. You just couldn't believe his life was over at that age."
The question inevitably arises, didn't his superiors suspect the 5-foot-8, 135-pound Tennessee recruit was underage?
"Maybe they did, but maybe Elbert was special. Imagine the mettle of that 14-year-old kid to make it through Marine boot camp. Although he was young, he was a man, no doubt,'' said Fred Tucker, retired Marine major and Tennessee commissioner of Veterans Affairs from 1995 to 2000. Tucker arranged yesterday's memorial service for the family.
Pvt. Alexander was assigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 9th Marine Regiment, part of the 3rd Marine Division. In early July 1943, the unit arrived at Guadalcanal, an island in the South Pacific that had only recently been taken by the Allies through fierce fighting. There, it trained for about four months.
Its next destination was Japanese-held Bougainville, the largest of the chain of Solomon Islands east of Papau New Guinea. Allied forces desperately needed an aircraft landing field there to support bombers headed for Tokyo.
Japanese attacked patrol
On Nov. 1, 1943, E Company of the 2nd Battalion was among the first wave of Americans to land on the island. Fighting was intense, but the Americans made steady progress inland.
According to Alexander's service record, about midafternoon of Nov. 7, 1943, a 30-man patrol from E Company was attacked. Two Marines were immediately killed, another wounded and five became separated from the group, including Alexander and another private, James Pitts from Texas.
As the action continued, four other American deaths were recorded and another man was wounded.
The platoon's leader, 1st Lt. Thomas P. Hunter Jr., later stated in a report of the firefight that Alexander and another private were in the rear of the column, helping carry the Marine dead off the Piva Numa Numa Trail.
Another member of the platoon, Pfc. Marion E. Powell, reported that he last saw Alexander by the bodies of the dead soldiers. "When we moved out I noticed he joined the column, but left it almost immediately and crossed the trail in the direction of the enemy, evidently seeking out a sniper. The column soon moved out and I lost sight of Alexander in the dense foliage,'' Powell wrote.
Over the next three days, three of the five missing Marines straggled into camp, but Alexander and Pitts were never seen again, and efforts to locate their bodies were unsuccessful. Their remains have never been located.
The fighting on Bougainville raged for weeks. Hundreds of Marines lost their lives, and three of the dead were later honored with the nation's highest combat honor, the Medal of Honor.
Elbert Alexander had been two months shy of his 16th birthday when he became missing in action.
Was his body hidden by the jungle?
Was he captured and killed elsewhere?
These are some of the many questions Pvt. Alexander's sisters have asked over the years.
Along with: Was their brother scared? Did he ever get homesick? Did he ever regret his decision to enter the service?
These are questions that will die with them, the sisters understand.
"We'll never know, but at least this gives us a kind of closure. More than anything, what is important is that he has been honored.
"He deserves to be honored. He was a boy from Nashville who went to war."
Ellie