thedrifter
11-11-06, 08:02 AM
Walton Farmer - Marines
Daily Herald
When Walton Farmer of American Fork was 18, he had his finger cut off so he could join the Marines.
It's a story he tells with relish. As a 6-year-old growing up on a farm in Boise, Idaho, he was helping his father and brother load hay into a barn with a pulley one day when the cable kinked.
Farmer reached out to straighten the steel cable and his hand was pulled into the pulley, mangling his pinkie. Primitive medical care left him with a lump of flesh where his finger had been.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the military rejected him because of the deformity, but when he begged a recruiter to help him join, the man told him to cut the remains of the finger off, which Farmer had a doctor do.
Soon thereafter, Farmer was a Marine, spending a year and a half in the South Pacific.
Life in the war wasn't quite what he'd imagined.
"On Guadalcanal we would spot pockets of Japanese and annihilate them," he said. "We were jungle fighting with machetes and bayonets. I came and did what we were there to do. I was thoroughly psychologically prepared (by boot camp)."
Illness likely saved his life, he said. He got malaria six times.
"My outfit was the first wave into Iwo Jima," he said. "I missed Iwo Jima because of malaria. Iwo Jima was a slaughterhouse."
On the island of Guam, Farmer and 270 other soldiers were ordered to secure a gully. No one knew 400 Japanese soldiers were hiding inside. A friend from Boise who had joined the Marines with Farmer went to get some gun shells. A few minutes later, Farmer looked up to see a Japanese soldier 10 feet away.
Just then, his friend crested the hill and asked where he should set the shells, his last words.
"The Jap shot him in the heart and killed him," says Farmer, looking at a photo of his friend, Victor Longhurst, and a photo of Longhurst's small son, who was waiting for him in Idaho.
"Only 65 of us came out alive," he said of the fight in the gully. "I went through all that and came out without a scratch."
-- Caleb Warnock
Ellie
Daily Herald
When Walton Farmer of American Fork was 18, he had his finger cut off so he could join the Marines.
It's a story he tells with relish. As a 6-year-old growing up on a farm in Boise, Idaho, he was helping his father and brother load hay into a barn with a pulley one day when the cable kinked.
Farmer reached out to straighten the steel cable and his hand was pulled into the pulley, mangling his pinkie. Primitive medical care left him with a lump of flesh where his finger had been.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the military rejected him because of the deformity, but when he begged a recruiter to help him join, the man told him to cut the remains of the finger off, which Farmer had a doctor do.
Soon thereafter, Farmer was a Marine, spending a year and a half in the South Pacific.
Life in the war wasn't quite what he'd imagined.
"On Guadalcanal we would spot pockets of Japanese and annihilate them," he said. "We were jungle fighting with machetes and bayonets. I came and did what we were there to do. I was thoroughly psychologically prepared (by boot camp)."
Illness likely saved his life, he said. He got malaria six times.
"My outfit was the first wave into Iwo Jima," he said. "I missed Iwo Jima because of malaria. Iwo Jima was a slaughterhouse."
On the island of Guam, Farmer and 270 other soldiers were ordered to secure a gully. No one knew 400 Japanese soldiers were hiding inside. A friend from Boise who had joined the Marines with Farmer went to get some gun shells. A few minutes later, Farmer looked up to see a Japanese soldier 10 feet away.
Just then, his friend crested the hill and asked where he should set the shells, his last words.
"The Jap shot him in the heart and killed him," says Farmer, looking at a photo of his friend, Victor Longhurst, and a photo of Longhurst's small son, who was waiting for him in Idaho.
"Only 65 of us came out alive," he said of the fight in the gully. "I went through all that and came out without a scratch."
-- Caleb Warnock
Ellie