Iwo Jima Vet Leighton R. Willhite recollection

[fraukriegbaum]

Published: February 18, 2010 10:33 pm

 

On 65th anniversary of start of battle for Iwo Jima, WWII veteran looks back at his time on Pacific island and toward return trip

 

By Howard Greninger

The Tribune-Star

 

TERRE HAUTE — Each year, when the calendar flips to Feb. 19, Leighton R. Willhite remembers his part in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.

 

“It is embedded in your mind. I spent all my time away, since I was 18 and drafted in October 1943 right out of high school. I never saw home again until the war was over,” the graduate of Montezuma High School and now an 84-year-old Rockville resident and business owner said.

 

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, which went from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945. The battle was immortalized by Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of six men raising a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, the second flag raised over the island.

 

Willhite, a 19-year-old U.S. Marine corporal, served as driver of a Sherman tank on Iwo Jima. Willhite remembers seeing the first U.S. flag raised over Mount Suribachi.

 

He was at the base of that mountain, about a quarter of a mile away, doing a job few could stomach – picking up and loading bodies of dead Marines onto a flatbed truck.

 

“I would not have seen that second flag, the one in the photograph, if not for the corpsman saying, ‘Hey, look, they are taking the flag down,’ and then they raised that one. It meant nothing right then to me, it was just another thing happening on the island,” Willhite said.

 

At that same time, while picking up the dead, his lieutenant yelled over to him.

 

“‘Willie, I want to show you this one,’” Willhite recalls the officer saying, speaking about one of the dead Marines.

 

“I said, ‘I don’t want to see any of them. I have already seen enough of them.’ I had seen my share already. He [the lieutenant] said, ‘Well, it’s Sergeant Basilone.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know a Sergeant Basilone.’”

 

About 15 minutes later, Willhite was ordered to return to his tank. “I asked then, ‘Who was Sergeant Basilone?’” he said.

 

Willhite then learned that Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone was a U.S. Marine awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Guadalcanal during the war. He was the only enlisted Marine in World War II to receive the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross.

 

Basilone was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of Iwo Jima, after which he was posthumously honored with the Navy Cross.

 

Willhite plans to return, for the third time, to Iwo Jima next week. He will be among 30 Marines to visit the island. Willhite will travel with his son, Chad, of Gainesville, Fla., and with friend George “Sonny” Carey of Clinton.

 

Also going is Terre Haute resident Brian Mundell, who is taking his son, Jason. Mundell, a World War II history buff, visited Iwo Jima two years ago with Willhite. “It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Japanese only allow a small number of people to go one day a year,” Mundell said.

 

In the early days of the Battle of Iwo Jima, Willhite, serving in the 5th Tank Battalion, 5th Marine Division, remembers driving toward the island’s beach.

 

“It was scary as hell,” Willhite said. “They dumped us out in about 4 feet of water. I was the driver and I could see wrecks every place of landing craft that had been hit. When we hit the beach, there was a world of land mines there. Many of the other tanks were hitting them. I was fortunate.”

 

Out of 14 tanks that landed, only three made it off the beach, he said. Even then, one of the three tanks was hit and disabled after leaving the beach. “Don North, a tank commander, lost part of his leg and the driver was hurt,” Willhite said of that tank. “I still see Don occasionally. He is from Illinois.”

 

That night, the two surviving tanks remained together on guard duty. “It was lit with flares all night. It never got dark. We stayed in the tank, two of us, and the rest of the crew got under the tank. We got hit five times that night by mortars.” he said. “We didn’t sleep any, of course. We didn’t have anything to eat or drink because we had not taken anything with us. We were told it would only be a one- or two-day operation.”

 

Instead of 2,000 Japanese soldiers, as had been expected, U.S. Marines faced 22,000 soldiers hiding in at least 16 miles of underground tunnels on the island that is 51/2 miles long and 2 miles at its widest part.

 

While Willhite avoided land mines on the beach, his tank was hit twice by land mines while on Iwo Jima. His first was while heading down a ravine at hill 362A, he said.

 

“It was about 6:30 in the morning and they put an infantryman in the tank and he was going to show us where the [machine gun] fire was coming from. He asked, ‘We won’t have any problems, will we?’ I said, ‘No, we never have any problems, don’t worry.’

 

“We hadn’t gone down by the hill probably 30 feet until I hit a land mine that blew the track off and the bogie wheel right from under me and about turned us over,” Willhite said. “That [infantryman] exited that tank, I don’t know how, and started running back up the hill. I don’t know if he made it, but I bet they never got him back in another tank.”

 

Because of Japanese small arms fire, Willhite was forced to stay inside the tank for several hours. The temperature reached nearly 105 degrees inside the tank before a second tank was brought it, linking to his tank with a chain, to pull him out of harm’s way.

 

He would spend 27 days on Iwo Jima before heading to Hawaii. Even that, Willhite said, had its hazards.

 

“The ship had bedbugs on the thing. After the first night, I had bites all over me,” Willhite said. “To wash our clothes, we had to drag them behind the ship. I wanted to make sure mine were really clean, so I let them drag all night.

 

“My clothes were gone in the morning, all chewed up,” he chuckled. “The Navy had to give me a pair of pants.”

 

 

 

Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 (812) 231-4204 or [email protected]