SgtMaj John J. Nagazyna USMC Ret.

[teufelhunde.ret]

 

Photo from recent ebay auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...e=STRK:MEWAX:IT

 

the story of one of the Corps unsung legends:

 

In the beginning, there probably was not any hint that John J. Nagazyna was destined to be an unusual and remarkable Marine.

 

On 29 July 1914, only weeks after an Austrian archduke and his wife were killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, all of Europe was on the verge of being plunged into the flaming cauldron of a war that would claim 15,000,000 lives. In New York, though, it was an ordinary day, and the Marine recruiter who signed Nagazyna into the ranks of the Marine Corps probably saw nothing but an ordinary 18-year-old. If the recruiter could have looked into the future and seen what it held in store for his new recruit, he wouldn't have believed it anyway.

 

That future didn't unfold right away. First, there was boot camp. For John Nagazyna, in the days before centralized recruit depots at San Diego and Parris Island, S.C., boot camp meant Marine Barracks, Naval Base, Norfolk, Va. It was there that Nagazyna was introduced to close order drill, the manual of arms and the general orders for sentries on post.

 

In common with a recruit of today, he was not permitted to refer to himself or even think of himself as a Marine until he had met the exacting standards of a hard-nosed, old-line drill instructor. Only then could John Nagazyna don the eagle, globe and anchor, pack his seabag and report to his first duty station, the battleship USS Michigan (BB-27), as a member of the ship's Marine Detachment.

 

Routine peacetime assignments ended abruptly in the spring of 1917. War had been raging in Europe for almost three years, but America had steered a careful course of neutrality. That neutrality had been severely strained in 1915, when the British passenger liner Lusitania had been sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, with numerous American passengers among the dead. Then, early in 1917 came the discovery that Germany had been secretly encouraging Mexico to invade the United States. That did it. On 6 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a Declaration of War against Germany.

 

Nagazyna found himself on the raw new base at Quantico, Va. Once there he took his place in the ranks of the 1st Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment, commanded by Major John Arthur Hughes, the legendary “Johnny the Hard.”

 

Johnny the Hard was no easy man to please. Hughes wasted no time in honing the battalion into a razor-edged instrument of war. Still favoring a gimpy left leg, a souvenir of a gun battle with insurrectos in the Dominican Republic the previous November, Hughes drove the battalion and himself without letup. When the battalion embarked for France in late September 1917, John Nagazyna was wearing the chevrons of a sergeant.

 

Once in France, the 6th Marines became part of the 2d Division, United States Regular, a hybrid division, half-Marine, half-Army. As part of the 2d Div's 4th (Marine) Brigade, the 6th Marines along with the 5th Marines and the 6th Machine Gun Bn learned the ins and outs of trench warfare in relatively quiet sectors. Firmly resisting requests to feed American troops into French and British units as replacements, General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), set about building an American Army.

 

The building and training came to an end in the spring of 1918 when the Germans launched their massive twin offensives designed to knock France and Britain out of the war before the weight of American numbers could tilt the balance. By mid-May the Allied front in France was reeling backward under thousands of high-explosive and gas shells and more than 250,000 German troops. Two weeks later the entire French 6th Army had collapsed. The Germans had taken nearly 30,000 prisoners and were driving hard for Paris. It was time for the 2d Div to go to war.

 

The 2d Div met the German attack head-on at a place called the Bois de Belleau (Belleau Wood), and John Nagazyna learned about war firsthand. He also found what may have been his natural element, for John Nagazyna was a born fighting man.

 

In the monthlong battle to wrest the shell-blasted woods and thickets of Belleau Wood from the Germans holding it, Nagazyna, now a gunnery sergeant, was always in the hottest part of the fight. In firefights that marked the struggle for Belleau Wood, he never failed to rise to the needs of the situation. On four separate occasions his fearless leadership in what was often hand-to-hand combat resulted in his receiving four Silver Star Citations. From the French government there was the Croix de Guerre, 1914-18, with palm and bronze star, each denoting an additional award.

 

Wherever or whatever the fight was, John Nagazyna could be found up front, storming a German machine-gun position with rifle and grenades, throwing back an attack or leading one. In World War I, gunnery sergeant was a fairly new rank, and Nagazyna helped create the leadership legends of the rank.

 

Among the Marines of the 95th Company, “Gunny” Nagazyna was the one who gave encouragement, set an example of leadership, drove home an attack or put a boot in a backside to encourage a laggard. It wasn't wise for anyone, anyone at all, to get in Gunny Nagazyna's way.

 

If Nagazyna found his calling as a fighting man, it was a good thing, for there was still fighting to do. After the bloodletting at Belleau Wood, there was barely enough time to fill out the depleted ranks of the Marine brigade with fresh replacements before the brigade was thrown into battle again. This time the objective was the huge bulge the German spring offensives had driven into the Allied lines to within 18 miles of Paris. The brigade's task was to smash in the south side of the German positions around Soissons and deny German access to the vital Soissons-Chateau Thierry highway.

 

The 5th Marines and their Army comrades of the 9th and 23d Infantry regiments started in style on 18 July 1918. Rolling forward behind a pulverizing artillery barrage, leathernecks and doughboys caved in the German lines and sent the defenders reeling backward until the day's final objective, the town of Vierzy, had been secured. The price had been high. The job of finishing the Germans off would fall to Lieutenant Colonel Harry Lee's 6th Marines, assigned the mission of seizing the town of Tigny and sealing off the all-important highway beyond.

 

Promptly at 0830 on 19 July 1918, the 6th Marines launched its assault. The Germans were waiting. The lead platoons were greeted by a veritable wall of high-explosive shells and a blizzard of machine-gun fire. To Sgt Don Paradis, 80th Company, 2/6, the incoming German shellfire “was so great that it seemed like a black curtain.” To Sgt William Scanlon of the 82d Co, “The machinegun fire encountered before the town of Borsches [sic] [at Belleau Wood] was bad, but the fire now is a thousand times worse. It is like a hailstorm.”

 

Casualties were immediate and heavy. By noon LtCol Lee had to report that his rifle companies had been reduced by 30 percent. Well-directed fire from German 77 mm and 105 mm field guns was shredding the advancing ranks. Every inch of ground was being paid for in blood. A report received from Johnny the Hard Hughes indicated that the strength of 1/6 was barely more than 100 effective men. Every officer in the 95th Co was killed or wounded. The attack was grinding to a halt.

 

Then John Nagazyna took over. Raising his personal war cry, something along the lines of a maniacal howl of rage mixed with the bellowing of an enraged bull moose, Nagazyna stormed into the teeth of the stuttering Maxim guns, shooting, bayoneting and bludgeoning anyone and everyone who stood in his way. Like a wild man, the enraged gunny scooped up other Marines from shell holes and battered German gun positions, slamming them into the German lines, ripping those lines open in a slashing thrust. Not until the last German had been killed or driven from the lines before Tigny did Nagazyna stand panting and exhausted, rifle tightly clutched in his fists.

 

The shell that finally got him was an ironic afterthought. Maybe some unknown German gunner had one last shell to fire off. More than likely it was just sheer, blind chance. In any event, Nagazyna went down with a shell fragment in his left leg, to be carted off by an Algerian Tirailleur and deposited in a French hospital. Nagazyna's mother in Brooklyn, N.Y., was informed that he had been killed. Later the mistake was corrected with a telegram, leading Nagazyna to remark, “I can't figure out whether headquarters was sorry I wasn't dead or sorry they made a mistake in reporting my death.”

 

For his actions at Tigny on 19 July 1918, Nagazyna would receive the naval service's second highest award for valor, the Navy Cross. The citation would read in part, “He set an example of personal bravery and determination as to inspire his men to success.” The Army would present him the Distinguished Service Cross, while from the French there would be the Medaille Militaire, awarded only to generals, admirals and noncommissioned officers for exceptional acts of bravery. A gold star for his Croix de Guerre would follow.

[teufelhunde.ret]

rest of story here: http://www.military.com/NewContent/1,13190...zyna-P2,00.html

[jim2]

Another good article on him.

 

http://www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck/top...j_nagazyna2.pdf

[teufelhunde.ret]

Today being the 94th anniversary of the start of the Belleau Wood campaign, a most appropriate time to revive this old thread for newer members to see... the price paid by so many Marines...

[teufelhunde.ret]

Posting these pic's on behalf of forum member "BigJohn#3RD", who recently came upon them...

[teufelhunde.ret]

.

[teufelhunde.ret]

.