those guys. So I came home with the thought of entering the Marine Corps at seventeen. My father died when I was nine, so my mother was a widow running our farm, and wouldn’ t sign my enlistment papers. She didn’ t know much about war and we didn’ t have any strong military influence around our community. She needed me on the farm and she was clear about that. I respected her wishes, but as it goes, I went to bed one night and woke up the next day a man, 18 years old, and no longer in need of parental consent. I told her I was going to go into the Marine Corps. She was not happy with that at all, but I was 18 and I wanted to enlist.
After boot camp, the first place we ended up was an island called New Caledonia. It was owned by the French, but served as a replacement center where the Marines came in before being sent out to various divisions. At that time we had a first, second, third, and fourth division. They would send Marines out to fill the vacancies of those who had been wounded or killed. Initially, they sent a group of us from New Caledonia to Guadalcanal. That’ s where I volunteered to become part of a flamethrower demolition specialist group.
We had never seen a flamethrower before forming this unit. We never trained with them. We never had them at our disposal. We had a manual that told us how to take it apart and how to put it back together, but no proven method for how to use it. We were left asking ourselves, what’ s the procedure? How do you strap this 70 pound thing on your back and do something with it?
We had no one and nothing to tell us so we had to figure it ourselves.
They selected six of us from my company, C Company, and assigned a gunnery sergeant to be our immediate supervisor. It was his job to train us on how to operate the flamethrower.
FACING A DUG-IN ENEMY, MARINES QUICKLY FOUND THE FLAMETHROWER TO BE AN EFFECTIVE WEAPON.
At first we used what we called a phosphorus gel. It was a powder that we mixed with gasoline that turned it into a sticky gel with phosphorus in it so that if the burning phosphorus hit something or someone, and you tried to brush it off, it would spread and become worse. Whatever it hit, it stuck and burned. Unfortunately, we discovered that it was very difficult to get on target because you couldn’ t aim it. Our gunnery sergeant didn’ t like the stuff, so he began experimenting with other types of fuel.
We tried kerosene, motor oil, and diesel fuel; anything to get a mix that would get a little distance with the flame. Our sergeant didn’ t like the 80-octane gasoline because it didn’ t burn long enough. One day he came in with a jeep carrying a 55-gallon drum of 13-octane airplane gasoline. None of us knew where he got it, or how he got it, and none of us were eager to ask either. We just kept mixing the various types of fuel to a point that we could fire it from the flame thrower and get a stream that went out about 15 or 20 yards in front of us.
When we were training with the flamethrower, we learned rather quickly that you don’ t fire into the wind because you would get hit rather than your enemy. We also found out that if you shot at the enemy’ s body, at shoulder level, wind resistance would limit the effectiveness of the weapon. It would burn out before reaching the target. That’ s why our gunnery sergeant came up with the idea of firing at the ground and letting the flame roll over the ground because the wind resistance wasn’ t an issue. I don’ t know if any of the other outfits learned to use the flamethrower that way, but it proved effective for us.
After we took Guam in July or August, we boarded a ship bound for Iwo Jima. We were a reserve unit for the 4th and 5th Divisions, each comprised of roughly 20,000 soldiers. We were there as a backup in case they needed us and were told that we would probably never get off ship. We had just taken Guam, which was the largest of the Mariana Islands and were
8 AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY