Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Nils Mockler. He's a US Marine Corps
Speaker 1: veteran of World War II and the Battle of Iwo Jima,
Speaker 1: serving as a combat intelligence scout with the fourth Marine
Speaker 1: Infantry Division. Mills. Mochler was born in Brooklyn in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. After living in New Jersey for a while,
Speaker 1: he moved back to Brooklyn until he joined the US Marines.
Speaker 1: His father was a World War I veteran who died
Speaker 1: just as the nation was about to plunge into the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. Moechler says, it was a very difficult time
Speaker 1: for the family.
Speaker 2: My father was a machine gutteran fress and putting most
Speaker 2: of the major battle and got a little bit of
Speaker 2: mustard gas and died in nineteen twenty nine. We stopped eating.
Speaker 2: We went from being the richest people in the neighborhood
Speaker 2: who were just as poor as anybody else. The difference
Speaker 2: was we had an indoor toilet. My father had been
Speaker 2: extremely successful. He was a bond trader, a partner in
Speaker 2: a major oil exploration company, and a financial advis One
Speaker 2: thing he knew he didn't have many stocks because he
Speaker 2: knew stocks were overvalued, but he had cars in the
Speaker 2: farm and a house. In February of nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 2: we were rich. By October of nineteen twenty nine, everything
Speaker 2: was worthless. So we went from steak and potatoes to
Speaker 2: potatoes and oat meal. The depression. If you look at
Speaker 2: the pictures of all the marines on you, well, you
Speaker 2: see the newspapers always wanted to shot of guys with
Speaker 2: their shirts off. We all looked like survivors from Auschwitz.
Speaker 2: You know, one hundred and forty pounds one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty five pounds was pretty chunky. I was one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty two pounds, and the other scout was maybe
Speaker 2: two or three pounds lighter and a couple of inches shorter.
Speaker 2: We were We just had gotten by with minimum food
Speaker 2: for all of our youth.
Speaker 1: Mochler was fifteen years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor December seventh, nineteen forty one. It's a day he
Speaker 1: still remembers vividly.
Speaker 2: I was walking back from the movies with I had,
Speaker 2: at that point in life, decided that girls were not
Speaker 2: only pretty good, but that they were anything in the
Speaker 2: world that we were walking back in Brooklyn, a fairly
Speaker 2: long walk. There was no air conditioning back then. A
Speaker 2: lot of people had their windows open. It was not
Speaker 2: a very cold day. And as we walked back from
Speaker 2: the movies, we heard people talking about Pearl Harbor. Japanese
Speaker 2: attached Pearl Harbor. And we got back and we got
Speaker 2: the radio and listened to President Roosevelt, who was all
Speaker 2: there was to politics then, and his you know, this
Speaker 2: is a day that we're live in infamy.
Speaker 1: Mochler enlisted in the Marines at the age of seventeen
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four, only after he tried and failed
Speaker 1: to join a year earlier.
Speaker 2: I was one hundred and twenty two pounds and forty
Speaker 2: three and they wouldn't take me in. I was one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty two pounds and forty four and they
Speaker 2: took me. So I was not supposed to be able
Speaker 2: to do long marches or anything else. I not only hasted.
Speaker 2: We ran every morning, and I came in first every
Speaker 2: single morning. Before. I hadn't been able to join the Corps,
Speaker 2: but I could join the State Guard. So I wound
Speaker 2: up with old Foggy Pay. When I was nineteen years
Speaker 2: old because they counted that time, so all of a
Speaker 2: sudden I was getting an extra three or four dollars
Speaker 2: a month, So officially I was a veteran as of
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: And why the Marine Corps?
Speaker 2: What else is there? It's that by far the best,
Speaker 2: the toughest that I it'd be nice to be someplace
Speaker 2: where I could go all out, and so the Marine
Speaker 2: Corps was the only thing. Nothing else.
Speaker 1: Soon it was off to boot camp, which was no
Speaker 1: problem for Mochler.
Speaker 2: I looked at boot camp as they're trying to get
Speaker 2: rid of the guys who can't make it. We had
Speaker 2: a really tough competent John instructor, combat veteran Guadalcanal Sergeant
Speaker 2: Kerr Sir. I said, okay, if you could do it,
Speaker 2: I can do it.
Speaker 1: And he did it all shortly after suffering an injury
Speaker 1: that still bothers him more than eighty years later.
Speaker 2: I was injured before I went to boot camp. I
Speaker 2: went off the roof of the boathouse and Prospect Park
Speaker 2: and landed on the base of my spine. So I
Speaker 2: was walking around with a damaged coccas which I have
Speaker 2: had ever since then, which has hurt ever since I
Speaker 2: missed one day, I went to Sick Baby because the
Speaker 2: other guys in the unit figured me and pushed me
Speaker 2: into going and made the appointment for me, and the
Speaker 2: cormin naturally took it for granted that I was dog
Speaker 2: in it. So they gave me the standard treatment apc
Speaker 2: ASPERN finobarb and codeine and the shot of mineral oil
Speaker 2: and pushed me out the door, and I say, to
Speaker 2: hell with you, I'll never see you again.
Speaker 1: Before long, the Marines decided Mochler might be a good
Speaker 1: candidate for a combat intelligence scout. It was an eye
Speaker 1: opening experience for him, to say the least.
Speaker 2: It was a cycle of six weeks. They would bring
Speaker 2: in a group of selected from everything east of the
Speaker 2: Mississippi and come out with a collection of very different individuals.
Speaker 2: One guy who had shot and killed his sergeant and
Speaker 2: wound up in Levenworth and then they did a retrial
Speaker 2: and the rest of He was a Marine raider and
Speaker 2: he was on guard duty on the beach and his
Speaker 2: sergeant came down, drunk out of his mind and fired
Speaker 2: on him with his Service forty five. And the guy
Speaker 2: was very proud of himself. He got his rifle off
Speaker 2: the shoulder. He said, I hit him through the cigar.
Speaker 2: He was there. We had one other eagle scout. We
Speaker 2: had a spook being run through the mu Matirebov his
Speaker 2: father was a general in the Circassian army, and as
Speaker 2: he said, the Circasians taught the Cossacks how to ride.
Speaker 2: And he disappeared and was at the end of the year.
Speaker 2: Training was assigned to the Radar School and the College
Speaker 2: of the Ozarks. And forty five fifty years later I
Speaker 2: saw his name on the first page of the New
Speaker 2: York Times. Just you know, there couldn't be two people
Speaker 2: named Matirbof, and there weren't. And I found a woman
Speaker 2: from the State Department, and she said, there was never
Speaker 2: any such thing as College of the Ozarks for Radar School.
Speaker 2: He's just being run through for cover.
Speaker 1: But Michael and many of the others were still barely adults,
Speaker 1: which means there was still a strong streak of mischief
Speaker 1: in them, including their work with dynamite during training.
Speaker 2: Dynamite was more fun. Dynamite is nitro and you use
Speaker 2: it and it's you know, Nitro was a vascular stimulant.
Speaker 2: You wind up with a headache a little bit if
Speaker 2: you handle it with sweaty hands, but dynamite was more
Speaker 2: fun to work with. But the TNT, the kind of
Speaker 2: guys we had. We had the one guy who was
Speaker 2: the was in Princeton and he swam butterfly no less,
Speaker 2: and they tried to recruit him for they told him
Speaker 2: there was a Marine Corps swim team even in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four. Ben Sicklin was the name Ronald Van Sicklin
Speaker 2: and another not case from California, biker John Dowd. They
Speaker 2: set us up to we wanted somebody well who'd do
Speaker 2: a live firing. So they were Dutch Royal rememberings. They
Speaker 2: were sappers from the Dutch into China. So they instructed
Speaker 2: us in like fools. They trusted us to take this
Speaker 2: block of TNT and we'd all practice with the snapping
Speaker 2: a cap on the fuse and measuring your fuse and
Speaker 2: timing how much you know, how long, how it would
Speaker 2: burn this day and whatever. So we got a very
Speaker 2: long fuse and they didn't find any fault with that.
Speaker 2: And there was the dump, and out in the dump
Speaker 2: there was an old ice box. Because I guess they're
Speaker 2: getting moodered and getting refrigerators. So one of us was
Speaker 2: to go out there and the other two go alongside. Right. Well,
Speaker 2: while they were talking, we all walked over the box
Speaker 2: and got a few more blocks of TNTs. Fatigue jacket
Speaker 2: has a good s back pockets. I got one in each.
Speaker 2: I think John got two, so instead of one, we
Speaker 2: had at least four or five blocks of tnt So
Speaker 2: we went out there and Ronnie was setting his one
Speaker 2: little charge. We took ours and put it with them,
Speaker 2: and then you had a fuse lighter you pulled on,
Speaker 2: you lit it, and then we ran like hell to
Speaker 2: the group back there. You know, what are you doing
Speaker 2: one little block and why you were running? But it's
Speaker 2: cast in stone. If you say hit the deck, you
Speaker 2: hit the deck. I don't care if you're in general.
Speaker 2: So everybody went down and we had an extremely satisfying
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole area around where that ice box
Speaker 2: and call it was just nobody ever said a word
Speaker 2: about it. That was the kind of the nutcases they
Speaker 2: were looking for.
Speaker 1: In the fall of nineteen forty four and his units
Speaker 1: sailed to Hawaii and trained on Maui until it was
Speaker 1: time to deploy. He says, everyone knew they were going
Speaker 1: to Ewojima, even the local newspapers, but nobody knew that
Speaker 1: much about it. That would change in February nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: and we'll hear all about the landing at Ewojima in
Speaker 1: just a moment. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Nils Mockler. He's a US Marine Corps
Speaker 1: veteran of World War II and the Battle of Ewojima.
Speaker 1: Around Christmas nineteen forty four, he and many other Marines
Speaker 1: departed Hawaii for Ewojima, fighting would begin less than two
Speaker 1: months later. Despite being just eighteen years old, Moechler witnessed
Speaker 1: the opening of the battle plans aboard his ship, and
Speaker 1: he tells us about that moment and coming ashore on
Speaker 1: Ewojima on D plus one, I was probably.
Speaker 2: The youngest person to sit in on the ohso secret
Speaker 2: opening of the document that officially was going to be
Speaker 2: Abo Jima. And the map of Ebo Jama spread out
Speaker 2: about like that, and on the map there were two
Speaker 2: lines like this one all the way up on the
Speaker 2: north east end of the island. D day we take
Speaker 2: the beach, we take the airfield, we take the dormant volcano,
Speaker 2: and about half of the rest of the island. That
Speaker 2: was D Day D one. We take the rest of
Speaker 2: the island and we had absolute control of the air.
Speaker 2: No worry about any kind of strafing or bombing or
Speaker 2: anything else. We've got it, and we're going to use
Speaker 2: a tactic that has not been used since World War One,
Speaker 2: a rolling barrage. The artillery was set up and fire
Speaker 2: in a line across the entire sort of plateau. There
Speaker 2: was no beach on that part of the island, There
Speaker 2: was just rocks, and the infantry would advance behind this
Speaker 2: rolling barrage. So they didn't use the term. But what
Speaker 2: I got out of it is the two easiest days
Speaker 2: in Marine Corps history. We would go in dressed like
Speaker 2: this with a wool blanket, a shelter. Half the two
Speaker 2: pieces would go together for a pup ten, a poncho,
Speaker 2: one canteen of water, metal helmet, first aid kit, bayonet, sheath, knife,
Speaker 2: and your mess kit all hung on the fabric belt.
Speaker 2: You carried them one rifle, about seven pounds of semi
Speaker 2: automatic rifle, one or two clips of ammunition.
Speaker 1: Some of the.
Speaker 2: Guys who were warriors had a couple of bandoliers that
Speaker 2: they would drape over their shoulder. I don't know that else.
Speaker 2: We got two k rations, which are inedible. The cardboard
Speaker 2: boxes looked like they'd been dipped in paraffin, and the
Speaker 2: story was that the box tasted better than the food
Speaker 2: inside were terrible. That was our complete preparation. So we
Speaker 2: came in and we had the Coastguard professionals serfment and
Speaker 2: the guy put the thing right up. I walked out
Speaker 2: and stepped into the sand and sank up over the
Speaker 2: tops of my shoes, but dried not a drop of water. Perfect.
Speaker 2: Headquarters was only up two levels. It was not really
Speaker 2: a beach, should be a level spot and then a
Speaker 2: wall of what passes percent It's black, heavy, almost like
Speaker 2: class bees and gets into everything. So the headquarters company
Speaker 2: was set up in a giant crater, and the headquarters
Speaker 2: consisted of the captain, the first sergeant, and a guy
Speaker 2: with a switchboard about the size of a toast orban screen.
Speaker 2: The plug in they try to reach the guys who
Speaker 2: were going to be advancing for another day, and that
Speaker 2: was it had a fly over the top for a
Speaker 2: rain and a camfliers net over the top of that,
Speaker 2: and that was headquarters Company.
Speaker 1: Says the Japanese response to the landing was fierce, heavy.
Speaker 2: Enough that the you dug a hole as much as
Speaker 2: you could in the sand and got into it. And
Speaker 2: there was no real plan for what to do after
Speaker 2: day d one, so just do without sleep for about
Speaker 2: two or three days. And the standard was, you know,
Speaker 2: what the hell is going on? And remember there was
Speaker 2: no real radio commune communication. The radios weighed about thirty
Speaker 2: pounds in a rubber pack with six foot antenna, so
Speaker 2: they were targets and so there was no real communication
Speaker 2: except you know, you could walk up and yell in
Speaker 2: somebody's ear, and that was about it. So the first
Speaker 2: couple of days it was just get in a hole
Speaker 2: and stay there.
Speaker 1: That's Nils Mochler, a US Marine Corps veteran of World
Speaker 1: War Two and the Battle of Ewojima. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Mochler describes combat life in the foxholes and being surrounded
Speaker 1: by death. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Nils Mockler. He's a US Marine Corps
Speaker 1: veteran of World War two and the Battle of Ewojima,
Speaker 1: serving as a combat infantry scout with the fourth Marine
Speaker 1: Infantry Division. We now pick up Mochler's story as he
Speaker 1: describes getting off the beach and moving inward and upward
Speaker 1: on Ewojima, and he remembers a devoted chaplain who stood
Speaker 1: out during the battle.
Speaker 2: They moved me up all by myself, following up by
Speaker 2: the end of the airport and the right about where
Speaker 2: the ridge started. And with the tunnel system, which we
Speaker 2: did not know about. We thought they were just hiding
Speaker 2: out in caves, and we kept waiting for them to
Speaker 2: come around from the other side of the island and
Speaker 2: to make a charge at the beach. So I was
Speaker 2: a trip wire, and so I was just on the
Speaker 2: card duty for like six hours at night. But the
Speaker 2: rest of the night I would be up because we
Speaker 2: expecting we're going to see a whole line of Japanese
Speaker 2: come running at us. So who was up And very
Speaker 2: briefly I had a guy in the next hole to
Speaker 2: me who had a guitar and he was a chaplain
Speaker 2: and I found out afterwards he was the chaplain for
Speaker 2: the whole division. He was there for one day. Earl
Speaker 2: Dian Sneery the officers had their insignia under their lapels
Speaker 2: so they could see was a pin on top. Nobody
Speaker 2: could tell what rank he was or because he was
Speaker 2: a chaplain. And he went down to the beach and
Speaker 2: requisitioned a couple of pocketfuls of little bottles of Napoleon
Speaker 2: brandy and then went to visit the uh the wounded.
Speaker 2: There was a giant bunker who was into the hillside,
Speaker 2: so that's where the high command was and where the
Speaker 2: hospital had been set up. And he would check with
Speaker 2: the corman to say, who could use this, you know,
Speaker 2: so somebody's just gotta legged it shot up. Bless you,
Speaker 2: my son. And then he disappeared and we took me.
Speaker 2: I tried to find him for years. And then guy
Speaker 2: was in charge of the association in New York Capital
Speaker 2: District who was really good on computer and he found
Speaker 2: a way of penetrating the the family site and found it.
Speaker 2: I don't know what his rank was when he retired.
Speaker 2: He died in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Milkler also went into detail about the Marines he was
Speaker 1: attached to as an infantry scout. He says this battle
Speaker 1: hardened group didn't readily welcome the new guy, but he
Speaker 1: stayed focused on his job.
Speaker 2: For me most of the time boredom, waiting for something
Speaker 2: to happen and go out and find the freaking tanks
Speaker 2: to go out. And the tankers had no use for
Speaker 2: anybody from company headquarters. They were already set. They knew
Speaker 2: where the CBS had set up. Send somebody out if
Speaker 2: it was welding or burning, that could fix their tank.
Speaker 2: But they had set up their own communication for ammunition
Speaker 2: and fuel and everything else. They had no use for
Speaker 2: the headquarters company at all. Is again on Maui, the
Speaker 2: tankers were down right down by the ocean on the
Speaker 2: level ground, and the division was halfway up the mountain
Speaker 2: of Haliokola, and so they had come out as a
Speaker 2: combat unit. Nineteen forty two, early forty two to Caledonia.
Speaker 2: Were all the young men from Caledonia were in England,
Speaker 2: and the girls welcomed them, and the food was great,
Speaker 2: and they were all regular marine, so a lot of
Speaker 2: them were earning over forty five or fifty dollars a month,
Speaker 2: which was five or six times what Australian soldier, sailor
Speaker 2: or marine would get. So they loved no cal and
Speaker 2: they had absolutely no respect whatsoever for the commanding officer
Speaker 2: of the headquarters company, and no use for me as
Speaker 2: a buck private. What the hell are you doing here?
Speaker 2: But I started off, You just walk out like a
Speaker 2: block or two. And I was the first tank that
Speaker 2: was disabled, and they had dropped their skate patch so
Speaker 2: they could get up and get into it. Because a
Speaker 2: couple of hundred feet away there were people standing there
Speaker 2: with rifles waiting to shoot anybody who looked important. You
Speaker 2: know what their ideal was to get to wound somebody,
Speaker 2: get them down and have Corman come out, try to
Speaker 2: take care of them, and little bears come to pick
Speaker 2: them up, and then they would have a real target
Speaker 2: worth working on. We didn't realize that they had telephone
Speaker 2: conversation between the different supposed caves that we had knocked
Speaker 2: out the day before. It took a while to get that.
Speaker 2: Never got to fire or shot. Nobody did I know
Speaker 2: of delivery shot at me. I did not want to
Speaker 2: look important. I didn't walk around carrying a pad or
Speaker 2: anything like that. I left the rifle on my shoulder
Speaker 2: the same thing. I don't know about all of the officers,
Speaker 2: but most of the officers ducked their forty fives and
Speaker 2: picked up on them one because otherwise you were a target.
Speaker 2: The carmen took the cross off their helmets and got
Speaker 2: a regular camouflage cover. That was the only camouflage we
Speaker 2: had was on the helmets, and they would carry m ones.
Speaker 2: They might not know which end the bullet was supposed
Speaker 2: to come out of, but they know if they didn't
Speaker 2: have one, that they were different. So I looked unimportant
Speaker 2: and I'm here.
Speaker 1: Battle during the daytime was often difficult because the Japanese
Speaker 1: were invisible, often hiding in caves and tunnels. Night time
Speaker 1: was something else, with Mochler and the other Marines keeping
Speaker 1: a very tense watch in preparation for Japanese attacks on
Speaker 1: their foxholes.
Speaker 2: I was not afraid twice when it came up close
Speaker 2: and personal, when there's a machine gun fire coming in
Speaker 2: front of me, and I hid behind something very substantial.
Speaker 2: And I realized when I was hiding behind his combat wire,
Speaker 2: which is about as thin as the the wire coat hanger,
Speaker 2: and I was trying to hide behind that and trying
Speaker 2: to get down inside the helmet. I laughed about that.
Speaker 2: I still think it's just funny, but no, you couldn't
Speaker 2: really dig a hole. It was cave in. Seventy five
Speaker 2: millimeter cannon came in cardboard like mailing tubes about about
Speaker 2: yay long, and they were all over the place and
Speaker 2: you could take them and put them in keep the
Speaker 2: hole from so you're not lying in the sand. You're
Speaker 2: on a couple of these. But the deepest hole I
Speaker 2: could dig was about that deep. So I was out
Speaker 2: of machine gun ranger. But at night I would just
Speaker 2: I would sit up all night, and they weren't really holes.
Speaker 2: Farther out with the front line troops, it was dirt
Speaker 2: and they could dig real fox holes where two or
Speaker 2: three guys could get in. But on the beach you
Speaker 2: were basically sleeping in a little shallow trenches.
Speaker 1: Mockler says some of the most sobering moments of his
Speaker 1: time on ewo Jima involved observing the ever growing cemetery
Speaker 1: of American service members.
Speaker 2: The drama was that I had to go down to
Speaker 2: the company headquarters at least twice a day, so that's
Speaker 2: four trips back and forth, and the first was before
Speaker 2: the flag went up. I started in the cemetery was
Speaker 2: small enough to walk around. The cemetery grew by more
Speaker 2: than the thousand feet a day. So after about day
Speaker 2: four or five, Uh, there was a path through what
Speaker 2: I could go through and smell what somebody who'd been
Speaker 2: out in the sun for a couple of days after
Speaker 2: being blown up and wrapped in a poncho and buried
Speaker 2: in cinders, what the cemetery smelled like. And the greatest
Speaker 2: registration guys could sit and eat their really terrible food
Speaker 2: with that smell. And they were the hardest work and
Speaker 2: they had the second worst job on it. The worst
Speaker 2: job was one of the other scout, Drew. He stayed
Speaker 2: on the ship for seven days. Then when he came in,
Speaker 2: they put him on a professional group going out and
Speaker 2: finding par bodies and body parts. Well in handling parts
Speaker 2: of what had been an eighteen year old high school
Speaker 2: kid two or three hours ago was in pieces now
Speaker 2: and trying to put them together with the dog tags.
Speaker 2: And the cemetery was shelld regularly, so they have to
Speaker 2: go back through and try to put the pieces back together.
Speaker 2: It wasn't you know. They didn't shell the cemetery deliberately.
Speaker 2: They just shelled everything so but they'd hit it. So
Speaker 2: these guys would have to go back through these nice
Speaker 2: neat trenches. They had made with a white stick with
Speaker 2: the serial number written on it and put the pieces
Speaker 2: back together and hope they got the right ones. So
Speaker 2: I figured that a lot of families got a bus
Speaker 2: back at the end of the war with something in it.
Speaker 2: But it might not have been their kid, could have
Speaker 2: been part of him, been part of somebody.
Speaker 1: Else, as you might guess. The most indelible moment of
Speaker 1: the battle for Mochler and so many other marines was
Speaker 1: the flag raising on Mount Serabachi four days into the battle.
Speaker 2: The most trilling thing in my life. I was as
Speaker 2: far away from the volka know as you could be
Speaker 2: and still see it, and I was up probably looking
Speaker 2: for food or water or whatever. But I don't even
Speaker 2: know what time of day it was. It was just
Speaker 2: one more day. And then all of a sudden I
Speaker 2: realized that everybody out in front of me on the
Speaker 2: tremendous open beach has stopped moving, and they all have
Speaker 2: their backs to me. Up there on the volcano is
Speaker 2: about half a postage size flag. And to realize that
Speaker 2: we had that cursed volcano, that we had not just hope,
Speaker 2: but that we really were gonna make it. And again,
Speaker 2: I don't know if anybody else had been made a
Speaker 2: worthy two day battle plan because there was no communication.
Speaker 2: I mean the way you talk to somebody is you
Speaker 2: woke up and yelled to him. Whoever got the idea
Speaker 2: of getting that big flag from I think it was
Speaker 2: a wreck to lst. Somebody founded a big piece of pipe,
Speaker 2: and Joe Rosenthal, who had more combat experience than any
Speaker 2: of the guys who raised the flag, grabbed his camera
Speaker 2: and went up. A week or two later, when the
Speaker 2: film had gotten back to New York City and the retouchers,
Speaker 2: it sharpened it up so you could see the figures
Speaker 2: a little better, I know, because that was standard procedure
Speaker 2: that that's what they had done. That we got any
Speaker 2: idea what was going on the way we found out
Speaker 2: was a the military version of the DC three flew
Speaker 2: over the whole section of the island, dropping tiny copies
Speaker 2: of Time magazine about that big with no advertisements, and
Speaker 2: telling the world all about what was going on on
Speaker 2: Ewo Jima. So we found out what was going on
Speaker 2: on a just how you know, I had an idea
Speaker 2: because I had to go through the cemetery every day,
Speaker 2: and I could see each time I would go out,
Speaker 2: there'd be jeeps coming back regularly with bodies in those
Speaker 2: special racks, and was ignorance, and we all stunk to
Speaker 2: high heaven. You put them boots on and eighteenth or nineteenth,
Speaker 2: and you took them off in April. We came in
Speaker 2: a bunch of high school kids, and we left as
Speaker 2: a bunch of old men. And on the way there,
Speaker 2: the Navy treated us like dirt. And we got on
Speaker 2: the ships to go home, and they treated us like
Speaker 2: as if we were some kinds of damn heroes. But
Speaker 2: when we came in, the horizon was ringed with ships.
Speaker 2: It looked like you could walk from one to the other.
Speaker 2: And we got ready to go back to Hawaii, back
Speaker 2: to Maui, and we had three small transports Liberty ships
Speaker 2: filled his cargo ships and they racks the way they
Speaker 2: stacked you up to sleep, and we waited for the
Speaker 2: other ships, and then we took off with just the
Speaker 2: three we came back with. Out of a tank battalion.
Speaker 2: We came back with one tank. It could still function.
Speaker 2: And we got back to Maui and they would take
Speaker 2: the survivors and put them all in the tents at
Speaker 2: the end of the tent row, so there'd be a
Speaker 2: company street with dark tents all the way, and then
Speaker 2: three or four at the end of the company street.
Speaker 2: And this is after they had brought in replacements. One
Speaker 2: of the battalions in the fifth Division had something like
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifteen or one hundred and thirteen whatever
Speaker 2: percent casualties.
Speaker 1: Now eighty years later, Nils Mochler emotionally considered what he's
Speaker 1: most proud of from his service in the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: during World War Two.
Speaker 2: I was a decent part of the best god damn
Speaker 2: fighting group in the world, and I never took a
Speaker 2: step back. I never tried to be John Wayne, and
Speaker 2: I never did anything stupid. And I came through the
Speaker 2: bloodiest battle in the bloodiest war in history and came
Speaker 2: out with nothing worse than ringworm. Determination that I couldn't
Speaker 2: win everything, but I would never step back from any
Speaker 2: kind of challenge. So I got myself decent occupation and
Speaker 2: moved up each time whatever I went any place, and
Speaker 2: had two excellent wives, and I'm still ready for whatever
Speaker 2: comes Alone.
Speaker 1: Mills Mockler is a US Marine Corps veteran of World
Speaker 1: War Two and the Battle of the Ugma. He served
Speaker 1: as a combat intelligence scout with the fourth Marine Division.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: This is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
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