Memories from Iwo Jima, Guam and Guadalcanal

Jonathan Riley

DIGBY COURIER

NovaNewsNow.com "In my own opinion, any one of those troops who had their feet on Iwo Jima is a hero."- Joe Rosenthal, AP photographer

There’s one man in Digby who doesn’t need to rent the movie “The Flag of our Fathers.”

Russell Farrell was on Iwo Jima, a tiny island in the South Pacific, for the bloodiest battle in the history of the U.S. Marine corps.

He saw the American flag flying over Mount Suribachi. “We were glad to see that flag flying there. We were taking fire from that hill.”

Farrell, who now lives in downtown Digby, was all over the South Pacific during the Second World War.

He was wounded three times and received two Purple Heart medals. For his third injury he was awarded a Gold Star.

Those medals and others were recently stolen from a package he sent through the mail to his daughter in California.

The medals may be gone but his memories are as vivid as ever.

He had been in the Army before the war but signed up with the Marines after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in1941. “Why? Because Eleanor Roosevelt called me and said he was having some trouble down there in Guam and Wake Island,” jokes the 86-year-old retired machinist.

His first taste of combat was “mopping up” on Guadalcanal in September 1943.

On July 21, 1944 he was awoken at 6 a.m. for his D-Day breakfast off the coast of Guam. “You could have what ever you wanted – steaks, eggs, it was all there,” remembers Farrell.

He landed by amphibious tractor and the first thing he saw was that all the coconut and palm trees had been blown down by the American bombardment.

No sooner had he landed and headed up the beach than he and his men started taking fire from the rear – Japanese soldiers were shooting at them from a pillbox hidden in the sand. A Marine wiped them out with a flamethrower.

Farrell was three days on Guam trying to get up the hill on Aga Point when something hit his knee and opened it up. “I don’t know if it was a bullet or shrapnel. You don’t look around and try and figure that out, there was so much blood you just knew it was bad.”

He and another 14 wounded men were getting a ride to the beach on an amphibious tractor when the Japanese started shelling them – the tractor driver got out and told the wounded men to take shelter.

Farrell rolled himself out of the truck and under a coconut log until a second tractor came for them. The Japanese meanwhile had blown up the first tractor.

Farrell thought he was going home but instead was sent to a hospital in the New Hebrides.

There he saw Bob Hope up close – in the bed beside Farrell was a Marine in a cast from his toes to his chest and Hope asked, “What did you do, get run over by a tank?” “Yes I did,” was the honest reply. Farrell also saw Francis Langford and Jerry Colonna there.

He rejoined his unit in Guam and was with them when they landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945.

Almost 6,000 U.S, Marines died there and of the 200 men Farrell landed with, only 60 left the Island.

He remembers the sea around Iwo Jima was filled as far as he could see with troop ships and battlewagons. The Americans threw 60,000 men against the Japanese’s 25,000 on an island only five miles long and two miles wide. “We thought we’d be there two days but the whole darn thing lasted a month. “There was no place with shelter, no rear of the battle. No matter where you were, you were going to get hit,” says Farrell.

That’s why he was so happy to see the flag on Mount Suribachi.

An American Press photographer, Joe Rosenthal, captured the raising of that flag and the resulting image was used on millions of posters promoting war bonds. The recent movie “The Flag of our fathers” tells the story of the photo, the flag and the men who raised it.

For Farrell it just meant he’d be safer. He was with a group that captured one of the island’s two airfields when he looked back and saw the flag. “We thought that was one place we wouldn’t get shoot at from.”

He earned his second Purple Heart while rescuing a map for his lieutenant. “It blew under one of our tanks and I called them and asked them not to fire but they did – just as I bent over to get the map. They had been waiting for the Japanese to open a big steel door on the mountain and they couldn’t afford to miss the chance.”

The blast from the gun bounced Farrell off the ground and gave him a concussion.

After that trip to hospital in Saipan, he returned to the battle in Guam where he was jut about hit by a mortar shell. “And the war was over for me.”

Farrell’s second marriage was to Alice Anderson, originally of Annapolis County and when they retired, they moved from Massachusett’s to Parker’s Cove, where they lived for 27 years.

jriley@digbycourier.ca

• 
• 
• View the gallery