HomeMy WebLinkAboutKyle - Oral History
Anne Boykin - WWII Kyle Aggie Warrior.doc
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WWII Kyle Aggie Warrior
MAJOR GENERAL WOOD B. KYLE. USMC (RETIRED)!
AN AGGIE WARRIOR'S OWN WORDS: THE OFFICIAL ORAL HISTORY OF
A MEMBER OF THE TEXAS A&M . CLASS OF '36
Wood B. Kyle accepted appointment as a Marine Second Lieutenant on July 11, 1936,
after graduating from Texas A&M. He served with the 2nd Marine Brigade at Shanghai
China from October 1937 until April 1938, served on the USS Lexington in 1939 and
1940, and served in the Pacific with the 2nd Marines during the World War II. When his
battalion commander was seriously wounded at Guadalcanal, Major Kyle assumed
command of the battalion, refusing evacuation for his own wounds. He was awarded the
Silver Star Medal for heroism during this campaign. He earned his second Silver Star
Medal for courageous leadership on Tarawa in November 1943, when he personally led
his men in an attack on the heavily defended central sector of the island. After
participating in campaigns at Saipan and Tinian, Lieutenant Colonel Kyle returned to the
U.S. in October 1944. He subsequently served tours in many locations, including
Washington D.C., Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, North Carolina and France. He was
Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam from March 1966 to March
1967, and received the Distinguished Service Medal. He served as Commanding General
5th Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force, Camp Pendleton, California beginning in April
1967, and retired from active duty'after 32 years of service August 31,1968.
Texas A&M 1932-1936
"(My family) moved from Tennessee, I think, to Texas, somewhere before the Civil War,
and resided there since. ... I was actually raised on a ranch in Hill County, in the middle of
the State, about 50 miles south of Forth Worth, Texas. I went to elementary school out on
the ranch, up to the 8th grade. I went to high school in Hillsboro, and after that to Texas
A&M in 1932, and I graduated in 1936. "
"You might be interested to know too that some of the people who graduated (from Texas
A&M) in those years- it is a kind of a remarkable record I think, for a school. Starting in
1935 the Marine Corps began to build up is officer strength, anticipating World War II I
guess, and they got permission from the Army, or the Army was willing to give the
Marine Corps some officers out of their ROTC units. So in ' 35 we had roughly 100- I
don't remember now- graduates from the ROTC units, who had gone to ROTC and came
into the Marine Crops, and four of them came out of Texas A&M, and three of those four
made general in the Marine Corps. Bruno Hochmuth... made major general, then there
was Ray Murray, who retired last year as a major general, and there was Odell- known as
Tex- Connolly, who retired a few years ago as a brigadier general... Joe McHaney retired
1 Oral history Transcript, Mr. Benis M. Frank, History and Museums Division, Headquarters u.s. Marine
Corps, Washington, D.C., PUBLISHED 23 February 1977, by the Director of Marine Corps History and
Museums, Headquarters United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 20380
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as a colonel a few years ago. He was the cadet colonel of the cadet corps in his senior
year, 1935. And the next year, 1936- which was the class I was in- again we had four
coming in from Texas A&M. Two of them never had a chance to advance. One of them
was Hollis Mustain, who was killed as a lieutenant colonel, leading an infantry battalion
on Iwo Jima. The other was Ed Hamilton, who I believe was a major at the time, and was
very seriously wounded on Bougainville: he was shot through the hip, and a year or two
later after a long time in the hospital he was retired for physical disability... So that
accounted for two of the class, and of the other two one of them was Ormond Simpson
who is in command of the 1 st Marine Division in Vietnam now as a major general, and I
am the fourth one of that class... Out of those two years, of eight people, five made
general, and two of them never had an opportunity to come up."
"(Texas A&M) is of course a military school, as it was then. One of the old land grant
colleges; one of the oldest military schools in the country. I think they have about as fine
a reputation in the field as anyone. Back in World War II as I recall they had more
officers in the Army from Texas A&M than they had from West Point."
"Well, as I recall now, the year I was graduated from Texas A&M- if you recall that was
back in the days of the Depression, and about the best job I could get I think would have
paid about $75 a month. The Army had a program which was called the Thompson Act, I
believe, and they were taking in about a thousand ROTC students for a year. I believe
they selected 10% to remain on active duty. These were the two things open- one of
course civilian employment, which wasn't very good, and to go into the Army you had a
10% chance of staying in the regular Army after a year. The opportunity came around to
apply for the Marine Corps, and I of course knew the people who had gone in the year
before- the ones I was mentioning a while ago- Ray Murray, Tex Connolly, Joe McHaney
and Bruno Hochmuth- so after checking with them I decided the Marine Corps was what
I wanted.. .It's really hard to say now why I made the decision. It was the best opportunity
I had found. I've never regretted it when I look back on it, but if you ask me why, it was
probably a matter of dollars and cents."
"(My first assignment) was simply duty in the Marine Corps Base in San Diego. It was
pretty simple in those days. I was platoon leader, and we had a routine. We had a parade
every Friday, and occasionally we went on what we called then landing exercises. As you
recall, back in those days we didn't have any amphibious equipment- none at all. The
landings were made off old battleships and some of the old transports that we had, and
the landings and ship-to-shore movements were made in the old motor launches, which
were nothing but liberty boats. That's all they were. The old 36 footers or the 50 foot
motor launch. Looking back, it was a rather primitive way of doing things, but that's the
way we did it. I would say it was a pretty easy life, and a pretty good life. The work
wasn't hard, there wasn't much money; you couldn't do much, so we were simply
concentrating on turning out a pretty good individual who could do whatever he had to do
in the time period. Which was rather remarkable when you look back on it. That was in
1936, and World War II started only a few years after that."
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I Anne Boykin- WWII Kyle Aggie Warrior.d~-==-= .___-=
China (Shanghai) 1937-1938
"They took the graduating class out of the recruit depot (at San Diego). .. and finally we
got most of the recruits out of the depot in the 6th Marines, mounted them out and
marched off to war. It's the same thing now. Last year (1968) to send out the 27th marines,
they had to take people from all the units in the 5th Marine Division, regardless of what
their MOS was, and converted them over to infantry and put them in the 27th Marines and
loaded them in an airplane. The only real difference that I can see between now and then
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is that we do it much faster now. When we mounted out the 27th Marines, we had one
BLT on the way in a little over 24 hours, and of course it didn't take them that long. It
didn't take them 24 hours to get them the States to Vietnam. In the case of the 6th Marines
mounting out in 1937, it took us three or four days to get on the way, maybe a little longer
than that, and it took us almost a month to get from San Diego to Shanghai China. We
had a lot of time on the ship to train. You don't have that anymore, you don't train on
these jet aircraft- you do it there in Vietnam. So I really think the only thing that has
changed these days is the speed of transportation."
"That was during the time prior to World War II, or course, and the Japanese had invaded
China. It was the Sino-Japanese War, as it's referred to. If I am not mistaken it started
when- in 1932? Well, at this particular point in time, which was 1937, the Japanese had
landed around Shanghai and were slowly closing in and taking over all the Yangtze River
Valley around Shanghai. It got to a point where they thought they needed a little more
protection for the International Settlement in Shanghai... Of course; Greater Shanghai in
those days was made up of the International Settlement and the French Concession which
joined each other in one big central area of Shanghai. Outside of that it was the
Chinese.. .Soochow Creek was on the north Side.. The Wang-po River that came up from
the Yangtze to Shanghai formed the east side-I guess- of the International Settlement.
Soochow Creek headed west, a little northwest, and that was the boundary on that side. I
don't think there was any particular terrain feature on the west side that marked the
International Settlement. That was the British area. They controlled' that part. But of
course the Settlement was made up of the British, the Americans and the Italians, and
then of course the Japanese had a small area that was across Soochow Creek. I don't
remember the name of it any more. But these were the principal countries that made up
the International Settlement... so, we stayed there along Soochow Creek for. .. By the
time we got out there it was I guess about July- June, July or August. And we stayed there
until the following spring."
"I was in command of a machine gun platoon in the D Company, and I spent the bulk of
my time up on a bridge on the Soochow Creek- the Markham Road Bridge- because that
was one of my areas to cover, and I had machine guns up and down Soochow Creek for
about a quarter mile each way. Most of my time was spent down there, except when we
would rotate back into the barracks. It was real good training... It was pretty much
routine. We were manning the Soochow Creek.. and the Japanese were moving through
the northern area, the Chinese section, across the Creek. The Yangtze-koo was further on
down... And we watched the whole advance of the Japanese Army come through there
and take that over. They took it almost block by block... We got our first look at war. "
It was a pretty good life out there. Shanghai was I guess one of the greatest cities on earth,
it was second to Paris in those days. Really a wonderful spot. As I recall we were getting
3 or 4 to one, so our pay was really increased about this much. And you lived very well
there. The first few months- I'd say the first month or so- we lived in the barracks. All the
officers did, we lived in the leased school, and we swayed there for a little while until we
got things organized, then we started letting the officers out, to live out of the barracks.
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Some of us rented an apartment for a while. There was Tex Connolly, Jack Miller- now
Brig Gen Miller-he lives down the road here.. .. We only lived there about two months,
and then the man owning the place came back, so we moved out, and then we moved
down to the Park Hotel in Shanghai, which I think was the best foreign hotel in Shanghai
at that time. This hotel would compare to the hotels we have in San Francisco. It was a
beautiful hotel. We moved into the Park. Jack Miller and I had a room together. We go
two rooms, one was a living room, the other was a bedroom, and we ate two meals a day
there, breakfast and dinner at night. We had lunch in the barracks. And all this cost us as I
recall about $45 a month in US money, in this beautiful hotel, with breakfast and dinner.
For about 45 cents extra you could eat up in the skyroom, and that was a seven course
meal. You couldn't really beat this."
WWII (Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan & Tinian) 1941-1944
Guadalcanal (12/41- 1/43)
"After landing here in San Francisco, I went on to San Diego. I had a month's leave,
which I suspected wasn't much good anymore, so I called in and of course they told me to
report in, which I did, and joined the 1 st Battalion 2nd Marines... at Camp Elliot. We were
training there, and we stayed there until July when we mounted out. Then just before we
departed from there the 6th Marines came back from Iceland into Camp Elliott, and then
as I recall a short while later they mounted out to go to the Pacific. I came in there in
December of 41, and joined the 2nd Marines... We stayed in Elliott until the 1 st of July, I
think it was, when we mounted oul to go to the Western Pacific. I guess we were on
board ship for about a month, and there was a lot of indecision, which got to be rather
funny. They mounted us out initially to move to the Southwest Pacific, preparatory to
going into Guadalcanal. About the time we loaded out the Battle of Midway was building
up. Looking back on it in later years, I think what really happened was that they decided
to hold us aboard ship somewhat in a reserve status, I guess you might say, until they
could see what happened out at Midway, where this battle was going on. And, I don't
really recall now when the Battle of Midway was. I think it was in June or July.
So, we stayed on board ship in training. Of course, when I say we stayed on board ship, I
mean we would go through a phase; go out and have landing exercises, then we would
come back in and stay in quarters a few days, and then we would be told that we were
going to unload. So we would unload partially, and before we could get the ships
unloaded they'd say' load it up again.' We went through this exercise three times. ..
Finally, about the 1 st of July of 1942 we sailed from San Diego, and went directly from
there to the first stop we made~ which was in the Tonga Islands-Tonga Abu. That's south
of the Equator, somewhere below the Fiji Islands...We rendezvoused with (the First
Marine Division) in the Fijis and had a rehearsal landing for Guadalcanal. After that was
over we sailed again and went Northwest, and ended up in Guadalcanal on the 7th of
August, 1942.
My regiment- the 2nd Regiment- wasn't supposed to land on Guadalcanal, actually. We
were scheduled to go to the Santa Cruz Islands. They took us into Guadalcanal as a
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reserve in case they needed us. Eventually, they decided to put us over on the Tulagi side
of that operation. Tulagi was about 30 or 40 miles across the channel from Guadalcanal
proper. So we went over there on that. The actual landing on Tulagi- the first landing- as I
recall now was with the raider battalion. I guess it was the 1 st Raider Battalion, which was
commanded by Merritt Edson. Lew Walt was in that battalion. They landed on Tulagi;
also at least one battalion of the 5th Marines landed there... And they decided to land my
battalion- at this point I was the battalion executive officer. I was made executive officer
before departing from San Diego, Stan Fellers had been transferred, and he was
regimental executive officer, and Robert E. Hill had taken over the 1 st battalion, known as
"Bunker." Bunker was a major then, and I was a captain, and I was battalion executive
officer. They decided they would land us on the Island of Florida, which was in this
island complex. Florida was the big island, and Tulagi was the next smallest, then there
were the islands of Gavutu and Tanambogo. So we landed on Florida, opposite each end
ofTulagi. We sent one company over on one,end ofTulagi; we sent B Company over
there- and the remainder of the battalion less this company landed on the opposite side of
Florida, and walked across to the beach south of Tanambogo.
There was a Japanese sea plane base located there, and we took it. They had all departed
before we got there. We were supposed to go ashore and spend the night, and the next day
we were going to go back to our ship, and set off for the Santa Cruz Islands. Well,
somebody got a little worried and we never made it. We moved from Florida to Tulagi,
and having landed to spend one night we ended up spending almost six months in the
area, with almost nothing in the way of equipment and supplies. In fact we didn't have
anything, we landed just as lightly as we could, because we'd thought we just would
make this landing on Florida, cross the island, take this seaplane base, and then from
there we'd load back aboard ship and go to Santa Cruz, so we went in with practically
nothing. Then we were shifted from there over to Tulagi, and we never saw our ship
again. We tried to unload the ships, but we only unloaded partially. Before we could get
everything off there was a threat of an attack, so they pulled them out of there.
So ours sailed off and went to the Hebrides, I guess, taking everything we owned with
them. We were left on Tulagi with practically nothing. I didn't even have a poncho, and
very little food or anything else, but we managed to get a little bit ashore. By the time we
got into Tulagi the fight was over, there wasn't much left there. There hadn't been much
of a force there, really. It was a pretty rough fight, but there hadn't been much of a force
there. I never quite understood why this occurred, except that I guess the threat which was
known to be in the area convinced them that they had better put some more troops ashore.
We stayed there on Tulagi from August 7 until the 1 st of November, and at this point they
moved us across to Guadalcanal. The 1 st and 2nd Battalions of the 2nd Marines were over
on Tulagi. The 3rd Battalion of the 2nd had been moved into Guadalcanal earlier-I don't
know when it was, but I think in August- and then on the 1 st of November they decided to
take the 1 st and 2nd Battalion into Guadalcanal, and they moved the 3rd Battalion back over
to occupy Tulagi at that point. . .
We moved over to Guadalcanal on the 1 st of November I think it was- right about then-
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and they sent us out to the west end there, across the Matanikau River. We had an
offensive going on at that point, up in that direction, and we went up there, and I guess we
really got in our first fight about the 8th or 9th of November. I think it was on the 10th of
November that Bunker Hill, who was the battalion commander, was wounded by artillery,
and I took over the battalion from him. That was the 10th of November, and it was the
same day that Gen. Vandegrift ordered a withdrawal back from the west of the
Matanikau, ordering everybody back to the perimeter around Henderson Field, because he
had heard of a very sizeable Japanese task force, with quite a number of transports,
heading down towards Guadalcanal, and it appeared at this point in time that we wouldn't
be able to stop them. So he pulled us all back, across the Matanikau. We pulled back over
a period of about two or three days to the airfield at Lunga Point. Some of that Japanese
force did get through, and some of the transports unloaded out near Point Cruz, but not a
real sizeable force. We saw two big Naval battles there, I think, at this point when we
were withdrawing. I don't remember- I think it was on the 11 th or12th of November. We
pulled back across the Matanikau, down a few miles and went up on the ridge-line, just
up from the beach. One of the big battles occurred, one of the big Navy battles. We could
see the firing, and the ships blowing up out there. Of course we had no idea who was
winning the battle. We sat there and watched it. We would see the guns fire, and once in a
while we could see an enormous explosion, and these explosions would light up the
whole area, just as bright as day for an instant. Many ships blew up. Fortunately most of
them were Japanese, and we found out later on, but some of them were ours too...I don't
know whether to call that one of the battles of Savo Islands or not. Of course there was
one real early in the operation- the'first battle of Savo Island occurred on either the 8th or
9th of August, just after we'd landed. That's the night I think we lost four cruisers- in the
first battle.
Well, as I say we withdrew then from the Matanikau River, west of the Matanikau, and
went back, and my battalion, along with the rest of the 2nd Regiment moved to the east
side of the Lunga Point Airfield, along with- what was that, the llu River over there? We
stayed there for a short while- a few weeks- and then we started back toward the
Matanikau, and we moved back around the old fighter strip that they had up there for a
while, and then eventually moved up on to the Matanikau River and crossed it again. We
stayed there until January of '43, I guess it was. We moved more of our forces up there,
and my battalion eventually went up the river. My battalion went up the Matanikau River
and eventually- I think about January- I was relieved by an Army outfit, the 25th Infantry
Division, I think, that came in there. ..Of course the 6th Marines had come in the
meantime too. They had finally mounted out and came in. They were up there with us,
west of the Matanikau, in fact they relieved my battalion up there. I am trying to think
who it was. I think it was Ray Murray who had the battalion that was adjacent to mine. I
guess Cloud relieved me up there west of the Matanikau. Then we went up the Matanikau
and went on the ridge line way up the Matanikau. We moved up there- I'll never forget
this, it was Christmas Day when we moved up there - and we stayed a little less than a
month, I guess. The 25th Division, which had landed after the Americal (Division), they
relieved me on this ridgeline. One regiment passed through my battalion up there, and
they were making a kind of envelopment there at that time. Right after that we pulled
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back to go down to Wellington, New Zealand.
(We were at) Paikakariki, yes. We went over on the old President Jackson. ... We were in
a pretty sorry state really, for the first three months or more after we got to New Zealand.
In the first place, we had malaria almost 100%, among those of us who had been serving
in Guadalcanal. Consequently we only had about maybe half of the people available at
anyone time for duty, just from illness, from malaria. And those who hadn't contracted
malaria on Guadalcanal, if they hadn't come down with it they eventually did after they
got to New Zealand. I was one of them- I never came down with Malaria in Guadalcanal,
but I did after I got to New Zealand. This of course was a tremendous handicap. And
then, some of the outfits down there really let go, they really weren't disciplined, some of
the unit commanders and everybody else took off on leave, and of course the troops did
likewise. That was the case with a few outfits. Most of them I think carried on a pretty
good schedule, and they were pretty good. They seemed in good shape. My battalion was
in very good shape. I gave them ample liberty, but I didn't let them take extra liberty
without accounting for it. And other than for malaria we were in pretty fair shape. But
half of them at anyone time were down with malaria. But they gradually came out of this,
so that after we were there 3 or 4 months, we were in good shape, and then we improved
rapidly after that, so that by the time we left there I felt we were in good shape. Thinking
back on it now, as I recall, I thought we were probably in as good shape or in better shape
than we ever were during the war.
Tarawa (2/43-12/43)
(Preparations for Tarawa was) the usual training we'd been doing. Toward the end
we did of course concentrate on assault of fortified positions and this type of activity. We
got word of what we were going to do, and of the type of island we were going to land on,
so we did pretty good training, as I recall now; in this type of thing- actual assault of a
fortified area. I really think the troops were pretty well trained...1 don't think that
anybody in the Marine Corps ever thought (that Tarawa would be a piece of cake.).. No,
no, we never thought it'd be as bad as it was. I guess the thing we didn't anticipate there
was the difficult to get on shore. We thought we could get up to the beach, which didn't
happen. That was probably the greatest surprise of the whole thing, and it upset the
operation, it upset the landing more than anyone thing- the inability to get to the beach. ..
We did not somehow have very good information on the depth of the water. We thought
we could cross the reef and we couldn't- we just couldn't get in at the time we landed. At
high tide possibly we could have. I don't remember exactly what the tidal state was, but it
was close to noontime, and we simply couldn't get close to that beach. My battalion was
the first reserve battalion for the assault regiment- you might recall that the 2d regiment
made the assault. Three battalions in assault... The 2nd battalion of the 2nd landed in the
center. This was commanded by Herb Arney. He was killed in the water. The 3rd battalion
of the 2nd landed on the extreme right, near the end of the island, and that was under the
command of John Schoettel, who was later killed on Guam.
Of course they were loaded about half, you might say, in amphibian tractors, and about
half of them were in boats. Maybe it was two thirds in amphibian tractors and one third in
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boats- something like that. Of course the amphibian tractors got in there, but the boats
simply couldn't make it. My battalion was in reserve for the 2nd Regiment, so just after
the landing occurred, Shoup who was then in command of the regiment. . . told me to land
in the middle on top of the 2nd battalion shortly after the thing was underway, because he
had lost contact with the 2nd battalion, and Herb Arney was killed in the water, and never
got to the beach. The executive officer was Howard Rice. In moving in on that beach he
had been driven off to the right by machine gun fire, which was something that happened
to quite a few of them. Howard Rice actually landed over in the 3rd battalion already, but
he had no communications, so Shoup really couldn't communicate with the 2nd battalion.
He could communicate with Jim Crowe, who was in to the left. He was all right.
Schoettel for some reason had elected to stay in a boat and try to make it. He couldn't
make it. He got hung up on a reef, about 1,000 yards from the beach, and never did get in
to join his battalion. Mike Ryan was a company commander in the 3rd battalion. He
actually took over and ran the battalion. Mike, you know, is now a major general. They
too had very little communications. So Shoup told me to land in the middle- to transfer to
amphibian tractors- get the troops out of the boats and put them in amphibian tractors and
land in the middle.
So this we did. It was the first time anybody ever made a transfer from landing craft to
amphibian tractors without a plan. The only plan was that somewhere in the orders it
said' Be prepared to do this if required.' So we gathered up all the amphibian tractors we
could find that would run, and started transferring. I had a little conference out there in
the boats, I got the company commanders together, and we planned the transfer and
landing. We had a couple of real red-hot company commanders- one of them was Maxie
Williams, who retired a year ago down in Puerto Rico, and the other was Willy Bray, who
died about two years ago of leukemia, he was a colonel then. ... Well, both of them were
real fine people. Willy Bray had A company and Maxie had B Company.. Another fellow,
McLlanahan, who was a good officer, had C company. So we held a little conference out
there in the boats.... As I recall Maxie landed on the right, and Willy Bray landed on the
left and McClanahan of the C Company was supposed to go in behind them.
We gathered up all the Amtracs we could find that could run and we got all three
companies loaded up, most of them anyway. We lined up and started in. I couldn't find
one to get in myself. We finally caught.. a mobile dump that was coming in, an LV AT -1,
loaded with ammunition, two boys in it. I think they belonged to the 2nd Battalion, so they
came chugging through and I stopped them. They were still running. I took two radiomen
and two or three officers and myself and got into that L VT. So we landed right on top of
the 2nd Battalion- what was left of it. Part of the 2nd Battalion had been driven off to the
right, and landed with the 3rd Battalion. There was a pocket in there, between the 2nd
Battalion and the 3rd Battalion beaches and they never could join up. ... There wasn't
much left of the 2nd Battalion. Their headquarters had just disappeared. Lefty
Morris. . . was a company commander in the 2nd Battalion, and he was the senior one
remaining in the battalion. So, shortly after I landed I found him in there. So we
consolidated the two battalions right on the spot, which was kind of a natural process. It
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wasn't planned, or anything else. People who went in there were simply picked up-
anybody we could find- and we joined them up, and carried on the fight. In the afternoon
of the second day we went across the island to the far side and cut it in two. Again, Maxie
Williams and Willy Bray were the two that took their companies across first.
I found out later- Maxie told me he had men from either 12 or 14 different units in his
company, including four or five sailors that he had joined up along the way. They were
boat crews that had gotten ashore. And he'd picked them all up and organized them, and
got this company together. He didn't have much of his original company left, but he had a
pretty sizeable coinpany now. They went across late in the afternoon of the second day,
and they got a little perimeter on the other side of the island, and held it that night, the
second night. That I think rather did them in (the Japanese), because we cut them in two
there, and they never did get back together. We had a few fights that night on both ends,
but after that it was a matter of mopping up.
Then a funny thing happened to me that night too-this was the second night in there. We
were up the whole night prior to the landing, so when we landed we were minus one
night's sleep. We had spent one night ashore, so this was two night's sleep we were
missing. The third night over there in this little perimeter we had on the far side of the
island, I was sitting down in an old tank ditch there- an antitank ditch- and Major Hal
Thorpe, who was my S-3.. .Hal was a real fine officer. I think he had polio later on, didn't
he? Well, we were sitting down there in this tank ditch, somewhere around the later part
of the night, and we talked to each 'other to stay awake and then we both went to sleep. I
woke up I don't know how much later- maybe an hour or so later- and I looked around,
and he was asleep, and I started looking around, and everybody was asleep. So I got up
and started checking around there. Everybody was asleep, so I thought I'd wake Hal and
start waking up people. I started walking up to the ditch. This was near the beach. I
started walking there, and everybody around was sound asleep, and I kept going (laughs
softly), and I \yent around the entire perimeter, and everyone to the last man was asleep.
Ha! Everybody was asleep. I kept waking them up, and I finally found the company
commanders and a few of the officers and got them up there to get these people awake.
But I went around the entire perimeter and there wasn't a man awake in the whole outfit.
This was of course the third night without sleep. ...
We were relieved in that area I think on the third day, late in the afternoon. Bill Jones,
what did he have? The 1/6? He had a battalion of the 6th. Was it the 1 st Battalion? He had
landed up on the end of the island, where the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd had landed. They
came down that back side of the island, and came in and relieved us. It was late
afternoon, just about dark, on he third day ashore, then moved through us and set up their
line just below us, down toward that tail of the island. When they got to us, we had
cleaned up the main part of the island. After that the fighting was' all down in the tail of
the island. ... We stayed there another day or two, and then we loaded up to come back to
Hawaii, to go to the Parker Ranch. It would have been early December when we got back
to Honolulu, I guess. We landed on Tarawa on the 20th of November. We spent about five
days there, we loaded out, came back, and went into Honolulu and Pearl Harbor first of
fAnne BoyJ5in -wV'iiIKyle Aggie Wa!!!2r.doc
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all, and then we went over to Hilo.
I had malaria. I really didn't have malaria on Guadalcanal. I never came down with an
attack while there. I was in New Zealand for about a month or so, I guess, before I ever
had an attack. And all of a sudden I came down with an attack. After that, I had it every
month or so. I would be down for a few days with it every time- getting attacks, fighting
them off with quinine. They always left me very weak... We lost quite a number of
people (on Tarawa). I lost I guess about 40% of the outfit...I don't recall now the
numbers, but it ran about like that (for all the battalions). Nnnno, I don't believe so. I
don't recall now the numbers, but it ran about like that- on the average the battalions lost
about 50%.
Saiuan (12/43-8/44)
Well, let's see, we came back from Tarawa- this was early December- and moved over to
a camp there at Kamuela, on the big island of Hawaii. When we moved up there wasn't
any camp to speak of. It was one of those situations where the canvas was piled in one
stack and the lumber was piled in another, and all you had to do was put it together and
you had a camp. We trained there until we mounted out for Saipan, which I think was in
June. I forgot the day of the landing- when was it anyway? Late June? (June 16th). We
trained all over the big island, probably one of the greatest training areas on earth, that
Parker Ranch, with virtually unlimited space. You could do most anything you wanted
there. Pretty much a variety of terrain, everything, that mountain area up there. Hilly area
and desert area. '
Oh, I guess it was about three months before we were to leave there for Saipan. My
battalion-the 1 st Battalion of the 2nd Marines- for some reason I'll never understand was
selected to do a special operation on Saipan. I got called up by the division, and they told
me tot go over to Pearl Harbor and report to the V Phib Corps, I guess it was, in General
Holland Smiths' Headquarters, and receive instructions on this operation I was to
conduct. So I went over there and reported in. Of course General Holland Smith was the
commander, and General Graves Erskine was the chief of staff, and General McQueen...
was the G-3. They called me in and they told me what the operation was, which I hadn't
known before then, and told me what my job was going to be. This came as somewhat of
a shock. Essentially it was to land the night before D Day on the opposite side of the
island from where the main landing was to occur, on beaches in Magicienne Bay and then
we were supposed to proceed during the night up to the top of Mount Tapotchau, which is
the highest mountain in Saipan, generally in the center of the island. We were to proceed
up there and take the top of the island, direct air strikes and naval gunfire towards
Japanese movements around the island. While I was over there we started working on the
plans. The plan was that we would go out aboard APD's, the old converted destroyer
transports, and we would make this landing in rubber boats... What we had to do actually
was- these old APD's would only carry 120 men total, so the first thing I had to do, which
I did while I was in Pearl Harbor working with Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jones, I think he
was, an Army officer who was in the G-3 with General McQueen...
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Anyway, what we had to do was to reorganize the battalion and form it into 120 man
companies which we could fit in these APDs. I have five APDs assigned to all the
battalion, and in addition to the battalion we had one company of the Force Recon
Battalion assigned to go with it. That company was commanded by Marine Captain
Merwin Silverthorn, General Silverthorn's son. So altogether we had six ships. I would
say one of them held the recon company, and the other five would hold the battalion. So
we sat down to reorganize things, and we drew up a new T/O for the battalion. What we
did generally was- we formed three rifle companies of 120 each- that is officers and men-
and the other two companies we divided up battalion headquarters into two parts, that is
the part that was going, and we put half of it with these other companies, and then we put
the machine gun units and the mortar units. As I recall we had a rifle platoon for each one
of these companies. This was the five companies. We had three rifle companies, and we
had the other two, which were a combination of headquarters and weapons company-
mortars and machine guns. That of course wouldn't use the entire battalion, so we just
had to take the rest of the people and form them into another echelon which would come
along with the regimental headquarters as they moved out. Another part of the
deployment was that we would not try to take ashore any of our heavy weapons. All of
these- that is the mortars and the heavy machine guns, as well as all of our ammunition,
food and so forth- would be placed aboard aircraft carriers, all packaged for air drop for
us once we reached our objectives.
So this kind of outlines the training that we had to do for the next few months. Since we
were going to land at night in the dark of the moon, in rubber boats from these APDs, and
then move from the beach up to the top of the mountain, and then at that point we would
be resupplied with heavy weapons and ammunition, and all of our resupply would come
in by airdrop. We were heavily augmented with people who controlled the air and naval
gunfire. We had a Navy air liaison team, and two or three naval gunfire teams. As I recall
now we would have three cruisers in direct support of the battalion. I had the shore fire
control team handle each one of these, so there was a,lot of fire power available. After
making the plans we went back, I went back to the big island-Kamuela- and we were
detached from the operational control of the unit and placed on the V Phib Corps for
training and operations, but remained administratively under the division. So we
embarked on our training program then for two or three months, as I recall. We knew it
was going to be at night, in the dark of the moon, so we quit training in the daytime
altogether. We turned the clock around, and started working in the afternoon about dark,
and we worked through the night training, secure before daylight, and we would get our
sleep in the daytime.
We moved down to the other camp, down into the Parker beach area. There is a beautiful
hotel there today, I understand. This is where we did most of our basic training and
landing, in rubber boats, up and down the west side of the big island there, because
initially we had only one or two ships at a time. Eventually, we were able to get all the
ships assigned. Then we went into a pretty concentrated training program, going out and
making night landings, initially on the west side of the island. From there we moved up to
Kauai, which is next to the northernmost island. We found a good place up there; there
I[Anne Boykin- w\jviTRYi8AggT~-W~rior.doc
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was a small beach in a bay that somewhat resembled the area that we were going to.
Pretty high hills in there, nothing like where we were going, but about the best we could
find. So we spent quite a bit of time training there, and making landings at night, with
these six companies. Our plan for the landing was that first of all the recon company
under Captain Silverthorn would be unloaded about an hour before the remainder of the
battalion, they would be off the beach, stop their boats and then they would send their
swimmers ashore. They would find the beach, and then they would mark it with lights, of
course they had radios, to try to direct the remainder of the battalion. The battalion was to
land in a column of companies, which was about the only way we could do it. So the
other five ships out there with the five companies would unload, and would be towed in
these rubber boats to about a thousand yards off shore. They'd cast off and we would
proceed on in to the island in the rubber boats, to try to find the beach.
It's quite hard at night, and we had to practice this a number oftimes until we got to
where we could every time get all except one company on the correct beach. Every time
one company went astray- we never knew which one was going to go astray, but at least
we lost one of them every time. They just couldn't get there, for some reason... When we
left the ship we towed rubber boats, and we had 10 rubber boats per company, and they
would hold- they had 12 people in each boat, and that's 120. We towed five of these
behind a landing craft, with just a tow line running back through each one of them and
tied to it, and when we reached the point where we cast off from the landing craft, and of
course controlled by radar from the ships, and they watched us on their radar, so they
would direct the landing craft to what they thought was the proper point to let us go
ashore. We cast off, and we kept them together, we kept them really in two columns. We
kept the boats tied together with these towlines, but never untied them. We would
proceed to the beach in two columns of rubber boats so to speak, tied together, five in
each one. Of course everything went well until we reached the surf line and then we
ended up spilling out of the boats, and before we got in there the boats turned over
frequently, but this way you could land the company intact to get ashore together. It
worked out fairly well, except that there was one company every night because a ship had
put it off in the wrong place, didn't direct it properly or something like that.
(Regarding having trepidation about the exercise) Oh yes, certainly we did. Somehow
though I always felt that they would cancel it before executing it.... And it was,
eventually. General McQueen said he constantly pleaded with General Smith to cancel it.
It would be virtually impossible to get the men ashore. .. Of course we were supposed to
land and get up there during the night. Well, of course we never would have made it at
night. Ifwe'd gotten ashore, at all, we would have probably gotten a ways in, but
probably not very far. And then another thing that turned out later was, that this was
really the most heavily defended part of the island. This was really where they had
anticipated the landing, so the area was heavily fortified. We were quite happy that the
thing was cancelled. It was cancelled quite late, in fact so late that all the shipping had
been assigned for the movement over.
So, we finally ended up going out to Saipan on the APDs, because that's how we planned
~ Anne Bgykin - WWllliY!EL6~gLe=,Warrior:doc
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to make the landing. All the other ships had been assigned, and there wasn't anything left
for us. So we made he trip out there on the APDs in Corps reserve, then we were landed
actually on D plus 1 day. There was a bit of confusion there... We received a message
from the Corps that we would be landed in' the 4th Division area, and would report in for
operations. They'd been having a pretty difficult time- they were on the right side. This
was the initial word put out. Somewhat later we got word to actually go in. We were told
to go into the control vessel in boats, and transfer to amphibian tractors there and that we
would land and report to the 2nd Division, which was, of course, our Division. This was a
change from earlier instructions. So we left the ships, we unloaded from the ships. I
reported in on the central control vessel, which was what I was supposed to do, transfer to
amphibian tractors, and move on in. I told them when I went in there- I think it was a
commodore or somebody in command there, and when I went in I told him, I said" I am
supposed to plan to land in the 2nd Division area and report back in for duty." And he said
"No, we just got word that we are supposed to land you in the 4th Division area and on
their beaches," whatever the number or color was "that's the word we just got, you are
supposed to go in there." I asked him ifhe knew why, and he said no, he didn't. But he
understood that you couldn't land on the 2nd Division beaches. Some problem up there.
(Charan Kanoa).
Charan Kanoa was almost in between the two divisions, but slightly on the 2nd Division
side. So I thought this was probably the thing we were supposed to do, he had the latest
word, mine was several hours old. So, we transferred to amphibian tractors, and we
landed on down in the 4th Division'area. We landed and got ashore in good shape. I
landed right behind the division CP. By the time they were in I had walked up a few
hundred yards and ran on to the chief of staff of the 4th Division to report for duty. That
was General Rogers- a colonel then. He said, 'Well, come on over to talk to General
Schmidt' -Harry Schmidt. So we went over, he was sitting in a hole about 50 yards away,
so I got in the hole and talked to him for a while. I told him the situation and he said that
apparently there had been an error, that initially we had been supposed to go to the 4th
Division, and that there had been a change. He said, "This is the word I got but the
control vessel didn't get it." He said, "We'll report to the 2nd Division that you are here."
He got the message out that we had just landed there, and were coming up the beach,
back to the 2nd Division. He suggested that we take offup the beach and join the 2nd
Division. So we proceeded to do this. This was quite a hike up the beach, and the artillery
fire was pretty heavy there... He had told us to be prepared to fight our way through,
because the area between the 4th Division and the 2nd Division hadn't been cleaned out. So
we proceeded up the beach there, prepared for a fight, but we never really encountered
anything, except that we encountered artillery fire on the way up.
We finally made out way back, and I reported in to the 2nd Division there, somewhere late
in the afternoon on D plus one Day, reported into the division command post. Of course,
we were still organized for the rubber boat landing. I still had my own companies- I had
five 120 man companies and I had the recon company still, under Silverthorn. And we
didn't have any heavy weapons or anything, they were all on the aircraft carriers. .. The
next day we managed to have our weapons brought in from the carriers and dropped to
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us.. And they came in, and came in too low despite the fact that my air liaison officer was
out there screaming at them every minute to not drop, they came in under 300 feet,
dumped them all out. We had learned of course in the exercises and operation training
that if you dropped them under 300 feet the parachute wouldn't open before it hit the
ground, and it didn't. So we lost practically every heavy weapon we had right there,
destroyed.
After the second day ashore we were in pretty good shape, we had reorganized, and put
the battalion back together in the way it was supposed to be, and we were then ready to
go. I forgot how long it was, but shortly after that we moved out of the division CPo They
kept us there in reserve actually a day or two, and then we moved back up and joined the
2nd Marines, who had the area assigned to the South along the beach, including the town
of Garapan. So we wound up with our regiment down there, and proceeded in the attack
to the town of Garapan. We were the second battalion in from the beach. As I recall now,
there was one battalion to the left of us, and we were the next battalion in. So we fought
up to Garapan, to the north end of that, up to the harbor area. At that point, the 2nd
battalion was kind of squeezed out of the operation, because the coast cut back into it
sharply there. Then on the right of us I think the 6th Regiment came in, up in the hills a
ways, and the 8th was going up from the center. So north of Garapan we were rather
squeezed out. . . So, having been squeezed out of there, they then loaded us out in trucks,
and we went across the island to the other side, and we were attached to the 4th Division-
we met them over there.
This was when I got my first look at Magicienne Bay, because on our first day over there
we were actually unloading just inland from Magicienne Bay, in about the area where we
would have had to come through had we landed over there. So I got a pretty good look at
the terrain at that point... Yes, as good as you could get, but there was one problem there.
In those islands there is a constant cloud cover, and it seemed that every time they went
on a photo mission over in that particular area a great part of it was covered with clouds.
We had a number of photographs, but about three fourths of them would be clouds and
you could see only part of the area. Actually, we had good coverage of the beach itself,
but inland the photo coverage was very poor, because most of the area was covered with
clouds every time. You just couldn't see what the terrain looked like.
We moved north from there, I would say inland from Magicienne Bay, and we came
under the 4th Division over here. Again we moved north quite a ways, and then turned
back to the left, and went back down to the beach on the east side of the island. If you
recall, we had a very sizeable Banzai attack there on the Army- was it the 27th? The night
attack came (and) it broke through. I think it hit the 6th marines and some of our artillery.
Yes, they hit our artillery. The night after they had made this Banzai attack we were up on
the ridge line in the center of the island. After they made this attack the next morning we
were directed to jump off with the other regiments of the 4the Division and move down to
the coast, which we did, and we actually moved down just in the rear of the area where
they had hit the 27th Division. The Japanese survivors of that Banzai attack were still in
there, throughout that area, pretty well disorganized and demoralized. Quite a sight to
1-
~ B~Y.!5in -W\NlIl<yle AggieWarMor.doc -== ~:~===---=-
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remember, and that took a few days to clean them out.
After moving down to the beach there, we again turned south along the beach, and went
clear to the end of the island, down in the beach area. That's down in the area where all
the civilians that were left were to be found, many of them had just drifted into that
particular part of the island. They were up there in hills and cliffs, and we had quite a
difficult time getting them all out of the cliffs, which was quite a terrible sight... Yes, it
was fierce. The disheartening thing was that you really couldn't stop these people, you
couldn't get them to surrender. ..Most of them were unarmed. In fact, most of the soldiers
that we ran into up there were not armed- a few of them would be armed- except that
every darn one of them had a hand grenade, they always saved a hand grenade and this
was the thing that you had to be very careful about, because if you closed in one of them
and you got close to him he'd thrown a grenade at you. It was a pretty ticklish proposition
to try to capture the soldiers. Now the civilians- most of them were unarmed. .. You
couldn't get in to stop them, but once you go in there and got hold of them you could
bring them out all right. But the problem was just trying to get them, to get up to them,
they'd be up on a cliff, and it was very difficult to get them. We had the same experience
later on in Tinian- the same thing we had in Saipan. And that I guess just about ended the
actual operation there (in Saipan).
Tinian (8/44-10/44)
That was pretty easy for us initially because they selected the 4th Division to make the
initial landing, and the 2nd Division was supposed to come in behind them, which was the
way it was executed. They selected a couple of very small beaches there at the south end
of Tinian, close enough to be covered by our artillery from the south end of Saipan. The
4th Division made the initial assault, and moved in, and on the second day the 2nd
Division came in. The plan there was that the 4th Division would land, and this being on
the south end of the island, and they were then to make a turning movement to the right,
and then the 2nd Marines coming in would pass behind them, going across the airfield
there to the opposite side of the island, and then they would turn right, and then they
would both proceed up the island, the 4th Division on the right, and the 2nd Division on
the left. I was real lucky again in that I got selected to be the left flank battalion of the 2nd
Division, which meant that I was the left flank battalion of a corps-turning movement,
and this is quite a thing to keep up with, in fact we never did quite catch up, I think,
throughout the whole operation, because with two divisions turning if you happen to be
on the end of that it's like being on the old "crack the whip," you know, when you were a
kid. And that's the way I felt through most of the operation. It seems like we were on a
dead run practically all the time, and we never quite advanced rapidly enough to keep up
with General Watson. The first day in there it was D plus 1, we moved out across the
airfield, and stayed there during the night, and the next day we moved on over to the
beach and started north. The initial problem was that it was a cliff area, just north of the
airfield, we advanced up to that and found that in that area you couldn't get up the cliff,
so we had to come way back inland for about a mile to find a place where we could go up
the cliff, and this was behind one of the other battalions- I believe the 2nd Battalion. We
had to go up the cliff behind them, and get up on top of the thing, and then go back over it
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again to get into our zone of action which was along the coast, and then proceed north
from there. There was some pretty good opposition there, shortly after we went up this
cliff, and going north. Here it was very difficult for us, we had to fight trying to clean out
a place. Again we picked up a number of civilians over there. They had kind of
accumulated on that side of the island, and we were picking them up as we went through
there- quite a sizable number of them.
So we proceeded up north, being on the left flank, ... with the remainder of the force until
it was almost at the end. And again at the end we had to move up into that northern
plateau there. We moved up along the beach, so we were actually under this big plateau
that was up at the end of the island. And there again we ran into this thing- civilians
jumping off the cliff, so this time we were down under the cliff so we could get a lot of
them out of caves, but again a lot of them were jumping off the cliff and killing
themselves. But, that all in all I guess was the was the easiest operation we had. We
didn't encounter too much. Two or three strong points we never did clean out. That's
about all there was of that operation for us, because the bulk of the opposition was in the
center of the island, and toward the other coast in front of the 4th Division. After that was
over we again went into a camp for a few weeks. At this point I was detached to come
home, because the 1 st Battalion had been over a little over two years. We had gone into
Guadalcanal on the 7th of August 1942. So all of us that went over initially with the
battalion were detached and went back home- which was not very many people, only four
or five officers and maybe 50-odd men. A number had been transferred over the years,
and many had been lost.
Reflections on the ost- Vietnam eriod & a Marine Corps Career
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Il~~~y.'sl!l.:WW II KYl!L~~gieW Clrrior.doc
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Well, I'll tell you- I was impressed with the Vietnamese people. I'd lived out there in the
Orient a few times, in China, in Japan, and got to know those people fairly well. I think
the country (Viet Nam) has one of the greatest potentials of any country in Asia. In fact I
feel that the Vietnamese as far as overall capabilities are concerned, as a people, are
second to the Japanese in the Orient. They are industrious people, they are hard workers,
and they are smart, and they are persistent. You know this because after all the North
Vietnamese and South Vietnamese are the same people, and we know how persistent they
are. It's most unfortunate that the country has gotten into this mess all during these years,
they never had the opportunity really to develop. I think they can get the thing under
control, they can get the war to stop, and if we continue to support them out there in the
future, I think we'll see one of these days that Vietnam will be one of the great countries
in Asia. In fact I think it will probably be as great a country as Japan is, after they've had
the time to develop. Of course Korea too is another country with a tremendous potential.
They are developing now, and I think the Vietnamese will develop in the same way, and
we will have a real fine country over there one of these days. It's going to take a long
time, of course. They've been at war for how many years? I don't know, almost forever.
So this is going to take time, but they will develop once they can stand on their own feet,
and be a real fine country, and really fine people, if they just have the chance to do it.
We have had a lot of problems back there (in the 5th Marine Division at Camp Pendleton).
I guess people were the main problem- we never had the people we needed. We were
particularly short for a long time in officers and NCOs, which meant that we were weak
in leadership, and that always means that you've got a lot of problems, which you
wouldn't have if you had enough well trained leaders around. There are ample statistics
that prove this- I used to gather them when I was in Pendleton- and we found that there
was a direct correlation between, say the number of platoon leaders, officers and the
AOL rate. There was a long time when we had no officer platoon leaders, and we had all
kinds of AOL problems, but once we got enough officers in some of the units, the AOL
rate used to go down. So it was just a matter of leadership to control these boys. This
plagued us all the time because many of our people were short timers. Of course we had a
high percentage of people who came back from Vietnam, and they didn't look forward to
coming into the division and hiking through the hills of Pendleton after hiking through he
hills of Vietnam for a year. But with proper leadership you could overcome this, and we
did, where we had enough leaders. The big problem was getting enough individuals there
who qualified to lead these units. ..
(We had) completely inadequate space facilities. And of course you had those old World
War II barracks in much of the area, and there were many Quonset huts. Very poor
facilities, inadequately supported by Headquarters Marine Corps, inadequate funds. Of
course the military construction program is years behind.
We can thank Mr. McNamara for lots of this, because he deferred construction for years;
for some years he cut it out completely. Of course he had problems too- he needed money
for other things- but this went on for so long that we are now years behind in our military
~ Anne~2Y1sLrl"=-WWlIlSyleAggl~jNarrLQr~Qog._~~
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construction, trying to get adequate housing for these people, or even adequate
maintenance. Essential maintenance has been deferred down there for years. Yes, this was
a problem, very poor facilities and no hope of it getting any better in the next few years
either. And this is not only at Pendleton. It's the same situation in many other places in
this country, and President Nixon is going to have a hard time getting his all-volunteer
armed forces under those conditions. He might not get it, in fact.
But, as I say, if you can get proper leadership you can overcome a lot of these things. For
instance in the re-enlistment programs down there, several months before I left there the
commandant was trying to get a 20% re-enlistment of first termers. My boss out in Pearl
Harbor, Brute Krolak, said they ought to get 30%. I thought we could get 20%; I didn't
think we could get 30. We started working on this, and finally got everybody behind it,
and in a few units got to going well, and provided the leadership to show the rest that they
could do it. And when I left there we were getting about 30% re-enlistment of first
termers. It amazing what you can do as soon as you can get the proper leadership. If you
had just enough good officers and NCOs to provide the leadership for these kids, you can
solve most of your problems.
I am convinced that the kids today are much better than they've ever been- certainly they
are better educated, and I think as a rule they are much more highly motivated. They are
not naturally more intelligent- we know people don't change that way- but their education
is so much greater than it was 20 or 30 years ago; they know so much more, and this in
itself provides a motivation. Just to be educated naturally provides a motivation.
I really think that one of our problems today is a problem in the universities and colleges:
the students are ahead of the teachers. These teachers have not devoted enough time,
these professors are not working hard, they are not providing a challenge to these kids,
and they are not keeping them occupied-gainfully occupied.. .Ifyou keep them going,
provide the leadership, and you make it available to them, and encourage them to learn
the right things, not the other things, you wouldn't have problems with them. You
wouldn't have it in the Marine Corps, you wouldn't have problems if you just kept them
going, gave them something to do, kept them gainfully employed. ...1 found it to be this
way during the last year before I got out. We had about 5% of them that were in trouble.
This is based on statistics I gathered there and kept up with. When I came in the marine
Corps in 1936 we had about 5% that were troublemakers, and it's still the same, it hasn't
changed.. ..
Well, I got to the point where these problems kept coming across the desk, and I kept
thinking back... that's about the third or fourth time this one's appeared. Thinking back
to the time when I was at Lejeune, and then again when I had command of the 3rd
Division (in Vietnam). I was getting a little tired of solving the same problem all the time.
Well, not so much that, but 1- I don't really know why I decided to retire then, to tell you
the truth. I don't know what I'd do if I had to do it over again, but I felt that I'd had about
all the good jobs I could expect to get, and I didn't really look forward to going back to
Washington on one of those tours again. I suppose if I had stayed around I could have
[lAnne B~yl<in- WWIIKyleAggie ~9r.doc
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Pag~
made three stars eventually, if I had lived long enough and kept my health, maybe. ...
I've always thought a great deal of the Marine Corps, I've felt it's one of the greatest
military outfits that anyone has ever had iri modern times, and I think it is.
Albert S. Kyle, BSEE Duke, MBA, MP A Harvard
Andover, Massachusetts