thedrifter
11-18-08, 03:49 PM
Injured at Iwo Jima, Marine remained in foxhole
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:30 PM EST
By MIKE JAQUAYS
Contributing Writer
LEESBURG, Fla. -- World War II Marine Corps veteran Benjamin Ross recalled he was on a ship headed to invade Japan when they received word that the first atomic bomb had been dropped, and were ordered to turn around and go back to their Hawaii base.
The reaction among the Marines was one of confusion, Ross admitted.
“We heard something about an ‘atom bomb,’ but none of us knew what an atom bomb was at the time,” he explained. “I asked around but nobody seemed to know what was going on. That was the first we had heard of it.”
Ross grew up in Granville, N.Y., near the Vermont border. When he turned 17, with the United States drafting military personnel as the country was plunged into World War II, the soon-to-be high school graduate decided he didn’t want anyone else deciding for him what branch of the military he’d serve in.
“I didn’t want anything other than the Marine Corps,’ he said. “I thought I was pretty macho at the time, I guess.”
He graduated in June 1942 and joined the Marines shortly afterwards.
He said the training was “real rugged” as they prepared to go off to war with combat and weapon instruction. After basic, he trained at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where their commanders “picked our brains to see what they wanted to do with us,” he said. Ross was issued a questionnaire where he was asked to list his three preferred service destinations, and in each place he put one answer … he wrote that he wanted to go to the Pacific to fight the Japanese.
They went to Hawaii to prepare for their trip to the Pacific Theater of the war, taking a training mission to the island of Pellalu to secure it from enemy snipers and making practice landings on Maui. They trained for some five months there, Ross said, and formed the 5th Division before heading out for the invasion of Iwo Jima.
Ross said the ship to the island, located 700 miles south of Tokyo, took 60 days to arrive and in the meantime the Air Force launched devastating aerial attacks followed by relentless pounding by Naval battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers against the Japanese fighters there. He said they figured it would be another “easy” mission, much like their trip to Pellalu, once they finally landed at Iwo Jima in February 1945.
“After all the bombardments that had already taken place on the island, we thought they were pretty much bombed to smithereens and this was going to be a real cake walk,” Ross remembered. “We were wrong.”
His 32 days on Iwo Jima were something he’ll never forget, Ross said, but one he has a hard time expressing.
“It is really impossible to explain in words -- it was just the biggest mess I’ve ever seen,” Ross explained. “We got there and found a sharp incline with sand all around. They let thousands of us come on to the island and then the Japanese suddenly opened up on us. It turned real bad, real fast.”
He was in on the second wave of Marines landing on the island, following the first wave by some 30 to 45 minutes, he said. They were stunned to find the enemy forces they thought had been beaten down by the Air Force and Navy attacks were all the time hiding underground in a honeycomb of caves and untouched by the bombardments, Ross said. The numbers of Japanese hidden there were nearly overwhelming, as some 21,000 enemy fighters awaited the Americans on Iwo Jima.
For the next three days, Ross never ate or drank anything, lying prone in the sand on his belly, crawling around with his steel helmet often his only protection. He said the American fatalities in the battle were tragic; for every Japanese found dead during the early days of the fighting, they found 20 Marines, Ross estimated.
Ross admitted he was scared during those first few days of battle, but then an odd feeling came over him after that third day. He recalled suddenly the fear left him, and he simply concentrated on his mission. It was still very much a tense and constantly life-threatening situation, Ross said, but now he no longer feared the closeness to death -- an emotion to this day he still can’t explain.
He recalled suffering a shrapnel wound to his left hand and wrist, and dressing it up himself with assistance from the buddy in his foxhole. When an officer saw the injury, however, Ross was told to go back and see a medic so he could be sent to a hospital. He looked back down the rough beach he had struggled to cross, and decided to stay where he was, Ross said.
“I thought, there was no way I was going back down there,” he recalled. “I had a good foxhole and I was safe where I was. Besides, it was my left hand and I didn’t really use it that much.”
The Marines made their way to the northernmost end of the island, and then were ordered to head back south to meet up with troop ships that would take them off Iwo Jima. They lost a sergeant to a sniper, but other than that single attack the trip south was uneventful, Ross said. Leaving wasn’t quite as easy, however. On their arrival at the high ground to the south they could see the troop ships out to sea waiting to take them aboard, but there were Japanese still hiding in caves between them and the shore.
Those Japanese were refusing to let up on American ground and air forces approaching from the south, so Ross asked a captain whether they should help roust the enemy there.
“He said, ‘no, there’s only one place that we’re going,’ and he pointed out to the troop ship,” Ross recalled. Soon, they made their way out to the ships, climbing up the netted sides to get aboard, and were ordered to throw their ammunition and weapons overboard for safety.
Ross said he held fast to his, ignoring that order just in case of another enemy attack as they left the battle zone.
It was the end of March before the island was secure, leaving 6,800 Americans dead and 18,000 wounded, while the Japanese lost nearly 20,800 with only 200 taken alive as prisoners.
The Marines returned to Hawaii for a couple of months, and Ross said they trained a little but mostly recuperated from the Battle of Iwo Jima. He remembered a pleasant scene at their Hawaiian base, as an officer one day drove up with a jeep loaded with cases of cold beer for the Marines.
“He told us to relax, because we had done enough for the time being,” Ross said.
Soon, new orders came in, and the Marines were headed back to the Pacific front to land at Japan. That trip was not completed, however, as the atom bomb was dropped when they were on route and the ship was sent back to Hawaii, Ross said. They eventually landed in Japan when it was deemed safe, and spent most of their time disarming the Japanese and collecting their weapons.
He said they found one of the most striking sights as they drove through the rolling hills of the Japanese countryside, only to suddenly encounter a brown, desolate plain. He found out later that was ground zero for one of the atom bombs, Ross explained.
They didn’t find much resistance from the Japanese military nor civilians when they arrived, he said.
“They were easy to get along with for the most part,” Ross recalled. “There were a few that looked at us scornfully but most of them couldn’t bow to us enough. One guy was driving a truck and waving to us so much he almost drove off the road.”
That was a major change from what he found on his first encounter with the Japanese, Ross noted.
“It was really the complete opposite of what we found in combat in Iwo Jima, where both sides knew it was a kill or be killed situation,” he said.
Ellie
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:30 PM EST
By MIKE JAQUAYS
Contributing Writer
LEESBURG, Fla. -- World War II Marine Corps veteran Benjamin Ross recalled he was on a ship headed to invade Japan when they received word that the first atomic bomb had been dropped, and were ordered to turn around and go back to their Hawaii base.
The reaction among the Marines was one of confusion, Ross admitted.
“We heard something about an ‘atom bomb,’ but none of us knew what an atom bomb was at the time,” he explained. “I asked around but nobody seemed to know what was going on. That was the first we had heard of it.”
Ross grew up in Granville, N.Y., near the Vermont border. When he turned 17, with the United States drafting military personnel as the country was plunged into World War II, the soon-to-be high school graduate decided he didn’t want anyone else deciding for him what branch of the military he’d serve in.
“I didn’t want anything other than the Marine Corps,’ he said. “I thought I was pretty macho at the time, I guess.”
He graduated in June 1942 and joined the Marines shortly afterwards.
He said the training was “real rugged” as they prepared to go off to war with combat and weapon instruction. After basic, he trained at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where their commanders “picked our brains to see what they wanted to do with us,” he said. Ross was issued a questionnaire where he was asked to list his three preferred service destinations, and in each place he put one answer … he wrote that he wanted to go to the Pacific to fight the Japanese.
They went to Hawaii to prepare for their trip to the Pacific Theater of the war, taking a training mission to the island of Pellalu to secure it from enemy snipers and making practice landings on Maui. They trained for some five months there, Ross said, and formed the 5th Division before heading out for the invasion of Iwo Jima.
Ross said the ship to the island, located 700 miles south of Tokyo, took 60 days to arrive and in the meantime the Air Force launched devastating aerial attacks followed by relentless pounding by Naval battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers against the Japanese fighters there. He said they figured it would be another “easy” mission, much like their trip to Pellalu, once they finally landed at Iwo Jima in February 1945.
“After all the bombardments that had already taken place on the island, we thought they were pretty much bombed to smithereens and this was going to be a real cake walk,” Ross remembered. “We were wrong.”
His 32 days on Iwo Jima were something he’ll never forget, Ross said, but one he has a hard time expressing.
“It is really impossible to explain in words -- it was just the biggest mess I’ve ever seen,” Ross explained. “We got there and found a sharp incline with sand all around. They let thousands of us come on to the island and then the Japanese suddenly opened up on us. It turned real bad, real fast.”
He was in on the second wave of Marines landing on the island, following the first wave by some 30 to 45 minutes, he said. They were stunned to find the enemy forces they thought had been beaten down by the Air Force and Navy attacks were all the time hiding underground in a honeycomb of caves and untouched by the bombardments, Ross said. The numbers of Japanese hidden there were nearly overwhelming, as some 21,000 enemy fighters awaited the Americans on Iwo Jima.
For the next three days, Ross never ate or drank anything, lying prone in the sand on his belly, crawling around with his steel helmet often his only protection. He said the American fatalities in the battle were tragic; for every Japanese found dead during the early days of the fighting, they found 20 Marines, Ross estimated.
Ross admitted he was scared during those first few days of battle, but then an odd feeling came over him after that third day. He recalled suddenly the fear left him, and he simply concentrated on his mission. It was still very much a tense and constantly life-threatening situation, Ross said, but now he no longer feared the closeness to death -- an emotion to this day he still can’t explain.
He recalled suffering a shrapnel wound to his left hand and wrist, and dressing it up himself with assistance from the buddy in his foxhole. When an officer saw the injury, however, Ross was told to go back and see a medic so he could be sent to a hospital. He looked back down the rough beach he had struggled to cross, and decided to stay where he was, Ross said.
“I thought, there was no way I was going back down there,” he recalled. “I had a good foxhole and I was safe where I was. Besides, it was my left hand and I didn’t really use it that much.”
The Marines made their way to the northernmost end of the island, and then were ordered to head back south to meet up with troop ships that would take them off Iwo Jima. They lost a sergeant to a sniper, but other than that single attack the trip south was uneventful, Ross said. Leaving wasn’t quite as easy, however. On their arrival at the high ground to the south they could see the troop ships out to sea waiting to take them aboard, but there were Japanese still hiding in caves between them and the shore.
Those Japanese were refusing to let up on American ground and air forces approaching from the south, so Ross asked a captain whether they should help roust the enemy there.
“He said, ‘no, there’s only one place that we’re going,’ and he pointed out to the troop ship,” Ross recalled. Soon, they made their way out to the ships, climbing up the netted sides to get aboard, and were ordered to throw their ammunition and weapons overboard for safety.
Ross said he held fast to his, ignoring that order just in case of another enemy attack as they left the battle zone.
It was the end of March before the island was secure, leaving 6,800 Americans dead and 18,000 wounded, while the Japanese lost nearly 20,800 with only 200 taken alive as prisoners.
The Marines returned to Hawaii for a couple of months, and Ross said they trained a little but mostly recuperated from the Battle of Iwo Jima. He remembered a pleasant scene at their Hawaiian base, as an officer one day drove up with a jeep loaded with cases of cold beer for the Marines.
“He told us to relax, because we had done enough for the time being,” Ross said.
Soon, new orders came in, and the Marines were headed back to the Pacific front to land at Japan. That trip was not completed, however, as the atom bomb was dropped when they were on route and the ship was sent back to Hawaii, Ross said. They eventually landed in Japan when it was deemed safe, and spent most of their time disarming the Japanese and collecting their weapons.
He said they found one of the most striking sights as they drove through the rolling hills of the Japanese countryside, only to suddenly encounter a brown, desolate plain. He found out later that was ground zero for one of the atom bombs, Ross explained.
They didn’t find much resistance from the Japanese military nor civilians when they arrived, he said.
“They were easy to get along with for the most part,” Ross recalled. “There were a few that looked at us scornfully but most of them couldn’t bow to us enough. One guy was driving a truck and waving to us so much he almost drove off the road.”
That was a major change from what he found on his first encounter with the Japanese, Ross noted.
“It was really the complete opposite of what we found in combat in Iwo Jima, where both sides knew it was a kill or be killed situation,” he said.
Ellie