thedrifter
06-21-07, 06:43 AM
Published on Thursday, June 21, 2007
Area Marines served in world wars
Roy Parker
The ignominious sacking of Marine Gen. Peter Pace after one term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff affords a timely excuse to write some good things about the U.S. Marine Corps.
Two historical events drove my thinking.
One was the news 65 years ago that the under-construction World War II base for Marines in Onslow County had been named for John Lejeune, the only Marine general to command an Army division.
That tied in with the news item from 90 years ago about the opening of a World War I Marine recruiting station at the Fayetteville post office.
I have been unable to find any mention of any Marine recruit from Cumberland County who served in the Great War of 1914-18.
But, of all things, a young Army officer from Fayetteville actually served in the Marine brigade that made history in World War I as part of the Army’s 2nd Division.
And, to round the circle, who was commander of the brigade, and then the whole Army division? Why, one-star Marine Gen. John Lejeune.
James Cooper was just out of the Army’s training school for officers in France when the Marine brigade sent out pleas for junior officers. The tiny prewar Marine training schools weren’t providing enough second lieutenants for the expanding Corps.
And so it came to pass that James Cooper was among junior officers of the 4th Marine Brigade who won commendations and headlines in the New York Times for exploits in the fight that ranks with the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli as a defining moment in the 232-year history of the Marine Corps.
That would be the epic battle in the summer of 1918 when the 2nd Division with its Marine brigade blunted a last-gasp offensive of the German army at storied French places called Chateau-Thierry, Bouresches and Belleau Wood.
Cooper was cited for leading his men against Germans entrenched at the village of Bouresches.
Another young man associated with Fayetteville died in action with Marines at Chateau-Thierry.
David Graham was the oldest son of Dr. Alexander Graham, who started his family in Fayetteville in the 1880s and who went on to be North Carolina’s premier public school administrator of the early 20th century.
David’s younger brother, Frank Porter Graham, also enlisted in the World War I Marines and rose from private to second lieutenant. He would survive the war and go on to be president of the University of North Carolina system, a U.S. senator and United Nations ambassador.
The legends of the 1918 battle are many.
My favorite is the alleged reply of a Marine sergeant who arrived on the battlefield just as the French were preparing to retreat. They invited the Marines to join them. “Retreat, hell,” the sergeant replied. “We just got here.”
Dozens of Cape Fear men served in the Marines in World War II, fighting in bloody island-hopping battles in the Pacific Theater.
Sgt. Joel “Jay” Carter of Parkton lived a charmed life in a two-year career of amphibious warfare, participating in invasions and battles at Guadalcanal and Cape Glouchester Island before his luck ran out on the bloody beaches of Peleliu. Six hours after storming ashore, he was severely wounded in his legs.
At least two Cumberland County men died as fighting World War II Marines.
Cpl. Lacy John, 21, of Route 4, Fayetteville was killed in action in 1944.
John had started in the prewar Marines in the much-sought-after assignment as an Embassy Guard in the U.S. embassy in London.
The fightingest Marine of all could have been Cpl. Rufus Lamar Walters of Fayetteville, who was killed in action in May 1944, “as the 1st Marine Division fought on another Pacific Island.”
Walters managed to enlist in the Marines at age 16 in late 1940. He fought with the division in all of its Pacific actions at Guadalcanal, Tarawa and then Saipan.
Three veterans of Guadalcanal from the Cape Fear were pictured after they participated in action on the Southwest Pacific island of New Britain.
An official Marine Corps photo taken on the island shows Cpl. Harvey P. Yates, 20, of Route 2, Chadbourn; Sgt. Douglas L. Davis of Route 2, Lumberton; and Pvt. William A. Graham, 23, of Route 2, Whiteville.
Marines from the Cape Fear fill other rolls of honored dead.
Young Earl Clayton Tew died in action in Korea on August 7, 1952, with the 5th Marines of the 1st Marine Division, in one of the fitful shootouts that marked much of that year along battle lines that hardened to become the cease-fire boundaries in 1953. His name is on the Korea monument in Freedom Park in downtown Fayetteville.
My family’s Marine Corps history includes my cousin Joe Harris, who died on Okinawa in the Pacific War, and uncle Will Buffaloe, who as a 1920s teenager served in the crisply-uniformed Marine detachment on board the USS Asheville, a gunboat of the fabled Yangtze River Patrol in China.
Roy Parker Jr. can receive e-mail at roypark2@aol.com.
Ellie
Area Marines served in world wars
Roy Parker
The ignominious sacking of Marine Gen. Peter Pace after one term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff affords a timely excuse to write some good things about the U.S. Marine Corps.
Two historical events drove my thinking.
One was the news 65 years ago that the under-construction World War II base for Marines in Onslow County had been named for John Lejeune, the only Marine general to command an Army division.
That tied in with the news item from 90 years ago about the opening of a World War I Marine recruiting station at the Fayetteville post office.
I have been unable to find any mention of any Marine recruit from Cumberland County who served in the Great War of 1914-18.
But, of all things, a young Army officer from Fayetteville actually served in the Marine brigade that made history in World War I as part of the Army’s 2nd Division.
And, to round the circle, who was commander of the brigade, and then the whole Army division? Why, one-star Marine Gen. John Lejeune.
James Cooper was just out of the Army’s training school for officers in France when the Marine brigade sent out pleas for junior officers. The tiny prewar Marine training schools weren’t providing enough second lieutenants for the expanding Corps.
And so it came to pass that James Cooper was among junior officers of the 4th Marine Brigade who won commendations and headlines in the New York Times for exploits in the fight that ranks with the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli as a defining moment in the 232-year history of the Marine Corps.
That would be the epic battle in the summer of 1918 when the 2nd Division with its Marine brigade blunted a last-gasp offensive of the German army at storied French places called Chateau-Thierry, Bouresches and Belleau Wood.
Cooper was cited for leading his men against Germans entrenched at the village of Bouresches.
Another young man associated with Fayetteville died in action with Marines at Chateau-Thierry.
David Graham was the oldest son of Dr. Alexander Graham, who started his family in Fayetteville in the 1880s and who went on to be North Carolina’s premier public school administrator of the early 20th century.
David’s younger brother, Frank Porter Graham, also enlisted in the World War I Marines and rose from private to second lieutenant. He would survive the war and go on to be president of the University of North Carolina system, a U.S. senator and United Nations ambassador.
The legends of the 1918 battle are many.
My favorite is the alleged reply of a Marine sergeant who arrived on the battlefield just as the French were preparing to retreat. They invited the Marines to join them. “Retreat, hell,” the sergeant replied. “We just got here.”
Dozens of Cape Fear men served in the Marines in World War II, fighting in bloody island-hopping battles in the Pacific Theater.
Sgt. Joel “Jay” Carter of Parkton lived a charmed life in a two-year career of amphibious warfare, participating in invasions and battles at Guadalcanal and Cape Glouchester Island before his luck ran out on the bloody beaches of Peleliu. Six hours after storming ashore, he was severely wounded in his legs.
At least two Cumberland County men died as fighting World War II Marines.
Cpl. Lacy John, 21, of Route 4, Fayetteville was killed in action in 1944.
John had started in the prewar Marines in the much-sought-after assignment as an Embassy Guard in the U.S. embassy in London.
The fightingest Marine of all could have been Cpl. Rufus Lamar Walters of Fayetteville, who was killed in action in May 1944, “as the 1st Marine Division fought on another Pacific Island.”
Walters managed to enlist in the Marines at age 16 in late 1940. He fought with the division in all of its Pacific actions at Guadalcanal, Tarawa and then Saipan.
Three veterans of Guadalcanal from the Cape Fear were pictured after they participated in action on the Southwest Pacific island of New Britain.
An official Marine Corps photo taken on the island shows Cpl. Harvey P. Yates, 20, of Route 2, Chadbourn; Sgt. Douglas L. Davis of Route 2, Lumberton; and Pvt. William A. Graham, 23, of Route 2, Whiteville.
Marines from the Cape Fear fill other rolls of honored dead.
Young Earl Clayton Tew died in action in Korea on August 7, 1952, with the 5th Marines of the 1st Marine Division, in one of the fitful shootouts that marked much of that year along battle lines that hardened to become the cease-fire boundaries in 1953. His name is on the Korea monument in Freedom Park in downtown Fayetteville.
My family’s Marine Corps history includes my cousin Joe Harris, who died on Okinawa in the Pacific War, and uncle Will Buffaloe, who as a 1920s teenager served in the crisply-uniformed Marine detachment on board the USS Asheville, a gunboat of the fabled Yangtze River Patrol in China.
Roy Parker Jr. can receive e-mail at roypark2@aol.com.
Ellie