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Speaker 1: Maurice Wilson spent twenty six years in the Navy, but
Speaker 1: now works with onward Ops, a nonprofit helping unify veterans
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Speaker 1: Peter Lanham was her battle buddy with onward Ops San
Speaker 1: Diego and helped her navigate her transition to civilian life.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Veterans, Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 2: this edition is Frank Wright. He is a US Marine
Speaker 2: Corps veteran of many battles in the Pacific Theater of
Speaker 2: World War Two, most significantly Guam and Ewojima. Frank Wright
Speaker 2: is also one of a very few surviving Marine raiders
Speaker 2: from World War Two. In a future episode, we will
Speaker 2: hear all about his service at Ewojima. Today, we'll learn
Speaker 2: about his service on Guam, and in this podcast, Frank
Speaker 2: will describe what it was like to be on the
Speaker 2: receiving end of a Japanese Bonzai charge. Then he gives
Speaker 2: us incredible detail into hand to hand combat against the
Speaker 2: Japanese and the mental and physical skill required to survive.
Speaker 2: He also explains how he survived hand to hand, fighting
Speaker 2: to bite, suffering a bayonet stabbing from a Japanese soldier.
Speaker 2: All of that is straight ahead, but up first, Frank
Speaker 2: Right tells us about landing on Guam in August nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four.
Speaker 3: When we went in there was a lot of coral.
Speaker 3: We cut our boots up and it was a very
Speaker 3: tedious type of landing. We landed on kind of a
Speaker 3: coral sand on it and our ships and the rocket
Speaker 3: ships were firing just ahead of us, and they were
Speaker 3: giving us our forward protection. All the way through into
Speaker 3: it was all flat land. We had a lot of
Speaker 3: mortars that came in on us from the shoreline and
Speaker 3: a lot of larger weapons that were coming from the
Speaker 3: islands onto us. As we came in and we got
Speaker 3: into some small pill boxes that was close to the shoreline,
Speaker 3: we went further further in the mud and water also
Speaker 3: got less spread than it had been before it and
Speaker 3: that took two three hours. I think it was a
Speaker 3: light landy I think compared to the area where we
Speaker 3: were released from thirtyes. I was in the twenty first
Speaker 3: Marines Regiment. We did not carry the boys and a
Speaker 3: enter tank guns on that island hopping, so we were
Speaker 3: only fired I think two shots. We shot one shot
Speaker 3: three shots and the other unit that was on that
Speaker 3: same tank road, they shot a couple. So it didn't
Speaker 3: pan out as uh as they had thought, but we
Speaker 3: did use it on the pill boxes. It was effective
Speaker 3: a little bit, but we found the flamethrowers were a
Speaker 3: lot more effacient than the poisonner tae gunways. So we
Speaker 3: got through that that area that that the ships had
Speaker 3: been shooting above our head over into the land coming
Speaker 3: from it, because they began to have a rise to it,
Speaker 3: and the flat land became a little hill, and we
Speaker 3: went into into there and we stopped at the top
Speaker 3: of the ridge on it. They told us after firing
Speaker 3: there that you're cleaning up those Japs. They were posted
Speaker 3: on the island right by the landing strip where we
Speaker 3: landed where we came in. They told us to bed
Speaker 3: down and we'd stay there for the evening before we
Speaker 3: take off on it. And I think they must have
Speaker 3: been waiting for something else. It seemed like we were
Speaker 3: going to be bed down quite soon, as opposed to
Speaker 3: any other landing that we went to. So but we
Speaker 3: stayed there that evening and just before dark we had
Speaker 3: a Monasai attack from the Japanese that had been anchored
Speaker 3: up in the area where we were supposed to take
Speaker 3: They came all at one time, and I talked to
Speaker 3: a guy over on Pea company, I think it was
Speaker 3: a Pea company. He said that they had four or
Speaker 3: five Japanese tanks that came in on their section on
Speaker 3: our section. We must have been on the far end
Speaker 3: of our section because because we didn't have any tanks
Speaker 3: in our company on it. It came in, it was
Speaker 3: just all around troops didn't have they didn't have any
Speaker 3: protection of tanks or didn't follow in on with the tank,
Speaker 3: so they just came in by themselves and it we
Speaker 3: killed them all.
Speaker 2: There explain what a bonzeye charge is.
Speaker 3: The bonzie charges when they all come down a hill
Speaker 3: or behind the protection of a tank to give them
Speaker 3: protection from our shops and our people. They head right
Speaker 3: for you had killed all they could before retreating back
Speaker 3: up to the hill, but we always stopped them dead.
Speaker 3: They had started bedding down at that time, right here
Speaker 3: on top of the little ridge. Some of the guys
Speaker 3: had faced their foxhole for the evening and some of
Speaker 3: them were still talking and visiting aster what they had faced.
Speaker 3: And that was really our our units on the twenty
Speaker 3: first was the first real hand to hand stuff that
Speaker 3: we ran across on it, and at least I think
Speaker 3: it was my first one that really had a time.
Speaker 3: After the Japs came down and this guy from the
Speaker 3: pea Cups that I talked to, he said he had
Speaker 3: never been into one either. Was I attacked, And that's
Speaker 3: when a whole bunch came in and they had some
Speaker 3: tanks that let them down, and the Japs were behind
Speaker 3: the tanks and they did real close and then they'd
Speaker 3: run out from behind the tanks and do their damage
Speaker 3: to our troops. Must have been a hundred maybe maybe
Speaker 3: one hundred seventy five or something like that. They came
Speaker 3: running down at one time, and we just went at
Speaker 3: a two toenail opponents I attacked is well, you have
Speaker 3: training with it, you could. I was trained. I could
Speaker 3: fight with banets.
Speaker 2: Tell me what that's like hand to hand combat.
Speaker 3: Well, a guy running at you with a rifle and
Speaker 3: a long band ad which is like a large knife
Speaker 3: stuck on the end of a rifle and poking at you.
Speaker 3: You're trying to get out of his way. You tried
Speaker 3: to counter any type of maneuver that the enemy does,
Speaker 3: and if you lose, you usually lose your life. And likewise,
Speaker 3: when the Japanese loses the combat between the two of them,
Speaker 3: they usually lose their life. So you're fighting for your
Speaker 3: life and you don't usually go by the book all
Speaker 3: the time, because when they start running at you, and
Speaker 3: not just one, you know four or five will be
Speaker 3: on one marine. You know you've got to fight, and
Speaker 3: you've got to kill otherwise they're going to kill you.
Speaker 3: It's a hard thing to do if you don't have
Speaker 3: much ammanition. When I was training a lot and then
Speaker 3: say you do this, that and the other thing on it, they're, hell,
Speaker 3: why don't you just shooting? Don't sit there and fight?
Speaker 3: But that's not the way it is. They come down
Speaker 3: and most of the time they don't have enough ammunition
Speaker 3: because they're shooting. They're shooting off their rifles and they
Speaker 3: don't have too many pieces of ammunition left. Of course,
Speaker 3: we don't either because we are fighting for our lives too,
Speaker 3: and then those guys are so you have to fight
Speaker 3: with your bandet. Now I can see, you know, And
Speaker 3: at that time I could see why you didn't just
Speaker 3: shoot the bastard in the first place. On it, I
Speaker 3: followed I was before, and I knew what it was.
Speaker 3: And I thought bannets before and I knew what it was.
Speaker 3: I also ran out of ammunition too, And it's the
Speaker 3: worst kind of fighting because you're fighting for your life
Speaker 3: right there and you're not fifty yards away or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, that's real fighting, and you just don't go
Speaker 3: by the book all the time. I tried that a
Speaker 3: couple of times, and I had to get rid of
Speaker 3: him and the way that I thought and the way
Speaker 3: that he was fighting. If he was fighting a certain
Speaker 3: way with then I would be able to counter. I
Speaker 3: had been told on how to do a lot of
Speaker 3: countering stuff, but it's it's hell.
Speaker 2: Tell me how you were wounded in hand to hand combat.
Speaker 3: After that first seizure we had with the jets, as
Speaker 3: we first landed on the twenty first, we started hiking
Speaker 3: further up the island. We worked until we got up
Speaker 3: around Agat, city of Agat, which was bombed tremendously. The
Speaker 3: Japanese had retrieved back or not toward the city of Agat.
Speaker 3: We were in that particular area, we were told to
Speaker 3: buncle down again and stay there because we were going
Speaker 3: to wait there for another unit that was coming to
Speaker 3: headquarters unit I think it was that was coming from
Speaker 3: our right as we kept going up to the island,
Speaker 3: so we started bending down in that particular area on it,
Speaker 3: and the headquarters was to our right, and they were
Speaker 3: they were coming in with more ammunition and more tanks
Speaker 3: and the unit to reinforce our troops. As we went
Speaker 3: further north on it. So we were told to stop
Speaker 3: and dig your hole. So we stopped. We started digging
Speaker 3: our hoes on it.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: UH in the area that we were the had the
Speaker 3: sand coral sand and uh and pieces of corals had
Speaker 3: been broken off and stuff. And so therefore we had
Speaker 3: to use our knives as well to help dig the hole.
Speaker 3: We couldn't use that, just a little of our little
Speaker 3: shovels that we had. So we pulled in that uh
Speaker 3: area and we started digging our holes and and then
Speaker 3: I'd take my gun hole knife and break the ground
Speaker 3: up with my gungco knife. And then now a gungole
Speaker 3: knife is shorter than a bayonet, and it was just
Speaker 3: like a big bowlo knife on it had about a
Speaker 3: fourteen inch blade to it and good size handle, so
Speaker 3: you could do a lot of digging on it. So
Speaker 3: that's what we were doing, at least I was doing.
Speaker 3: And I put that knife in the ground and turn
Speaker 3: it and it would break up the soil. And then
Speaker 3: I'd pulled off with the a little shovel that we
Speaker 3: had if we carried, and then I'd put that amount
Speaker 3: of dirt and pack it around the foxhole that I
Speaker 3: was digging on it and it kind of made a
Speaker 3: little berm on that that you could really get down
Speaker 3: into your foxhole and hang your rifle on top of
Speaker 3: that and do some long shooting if you had to.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that was what I was doing with the dirt.
Speaker 3: Then we could hear the Japanese up on them on
Speaker 3: the hill we were coming through again, I think it was,
Speaker 3: And then we were on Assan Road that came down
Speaker 3: from the top of the hill on it, and it
Speaker 3: was coming down the hill toward toward the landing that
Speaker 3: they were doing. Our troops were coming in. Edwards group
Speaker 3: was coming in with had a lot of heavy stuff
Speaker 3: on it, a lot of acclaim throwers and heavy machine
Speaker 3: guns and light machine guns. So they were getting a
Speaker 3: lot of reinforcements on it from that area. And we
Speaker 3: were right above them, and we could hear the Japanese
Speaker 3: up on the top part of the hill. We hear
Speaker 3: tags were going up and down the hill the star
Speaker 3: in the mortar, and then then they stopped it, and
Speaker 3: so he didn't know if they were coming down or what.
Speaker 3: They were drinking saki and getting drunk on it and
Speaker 3: had a lot of nerve left in in my guess,
Speaker 3: and they sat down a bunch of Japanese tanks down
Speaker 3: the hill, and they came in first, and they started
Speaker 3: shooting at us, and we were carducking as much as
Speaker 3: we could from that, and the tank kept coming well.
Speaker 3: But that time the tanks were arriving from down below
Speaker 3: us on our right, and they were coming ashore, just
Speaker 3: coming ashore, and then just came ashore, and they went
Speaker 3: right straight on up the hill to meet that force
Speaker 3: of tanks that was coming down the hill. And that
Speaker 3: turned out when they met that turned out to be
Speaker 3: the biggest tank paddle in the old South Pacific, right
Speaker 3: there in front of us on it, and boy, they
Speaker 3: leave forward on it, and a lot of action between
Speaker 3: the two enemies there, the Japanese enemy and our enemy
Speaker 3: towards them. So anyway, the Japanese turned tail and went
Speaker 3: back up on the hill where they were doing all
Speaker 3: that drinking and stuff, and our troops went right after him.
Speaker 3: They got up as far as they could up there,
Speaker 3: and then they were called back because a lot of
Speaker 3: our company was getting in need of fuel and stuff
Speaker 3: because they had just come in off of the off
Speaker 3: of the ships and stuff and had not been fueled up.
Speaker 3: Whatever they do to those portions of the troops, so
Speaker 3: they had orders a lot to follow, so they didn't
Speaker 3: follow them up and they went back down the hill
Speaker 3: to the headquarters area to help them if needed. I
Speaker 3: left the Japs up in the top of the hill
Speaker 3: or where we were without their tank protection, and so
Speaker 3: they all togethered again up there, and they came roaring
Speaker 3: down the hill and they were hollering and yelling and
Speaker 3: stabbing and in four or five Japs to maybe one
Speaker 3: or two guys in their boxhos, and it was a
Speaker 3: pretty big doings there. It was the largest on the island,
Speaker 3: I think. Anyway, as they were fighting, I got a
Speaker 3: couple of them that came down that didn't want to
Speaker 3: run on further down to the headquarters company and had
Speaker 3: it down there. They stopped over there and they started shooting,
Speaker 3: and and they ran out of ammunition as well as
Speaker 3: I did, and we were just hand to hand. This
Speaker 3: one was it was a very good fighter. They started
Speaker 3: at me kind of fast, poking and how and then
Speaker 3: I started backing up. As I was backing up on it,
Speaker 3: I tripped on that burm that I had been building
Speaker 3: up around my foxhole, and I started going down and
Speaker 3: as I was losing my composure like that. That jet
Speaker 3: took advantage on it and poked me with in the
Speaker 3: stomach with manat. It didn't go too deep, but it
Speaker 3: went in enough to cause me pain, and that court
Speaker 3: bled a lot anyway, as I went down, hooked me again,
Speaker 3: pushed it in to go deeper, I guess, and I
Speaker 3: just about that time, guy in the foxhole next to
Speaker 3: me on it sell the position that I was in
Speaker 3: and he shot the jet. I fell on my back
Speaker 3: down into the box show and whatever it was that
Speaker 3: the jeb had it, he shoved the last fund and
Speaker 3: he fell right on top of me in the box
Speaker 3: hoole cause I went down and on my back, my
Speaker 3: hand went over and hit that congo knife that it was.
Speaker 3: I hadn't I just stuck into the ground on it.
Speaker 3: It was just waiting for me to keep working on
Speaker 3: my fox show. I felt that and I knew I
Speaker 3: knew what it was because I had cared it for
Speaker 3: a long time. So I came up with it and
Speaker 3: then I slashed his throat and you start bleeding and yelling,
Speaker 3: and god, you know, that's a heck of a lot
Speaker 3: difference than killing someone that's fifty yards away and stuff
Speaker 3: right there. You hear them yelling at your at the
Speaker 3: and your face and screaming and they smell a fish
Speaker 3: and sacky. You hear them screaming and yelling of pain. Boy,
Speaker 3: that's that's hurts That hurts you. You know, you hate
Speaker 3: to do that, your human being, but you gotta you
Speaker 3: gotta do what's needed. Sometimes you fast and sometimes you slow.
Speaker 3: You stick them and they're yelling at you, and there's
Speaker 3: something that the guy has to get used to. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I was there as Jeff was on top of me.
Speaker 3: The guys from headquarters came up further and they started
Speaker 3: chasing them up as on road American tanks had driven
Speaker 3: the Japanese tanks up further too. There were things quieted
Speaker 3: down a lot. Darkness was starting to appear on us,
Speaker 3: and I just stayed there with that Jap on me
Speaker 3: until the next morning and everything was going. Then pretty
Speaker 3: soon the secure squads started coming around and they're picking
Speaker 3: up the guys that had turned them over that were dead,
Speaker 3: and the other guys had Corman up there trying to
Speaker 3: pull them out too. So anyway, they started getting the
Speaker 3: people that had been wounded and getting them and they
Speaker 3: kind of missed me a little bit because they thought
Speaker 3: it was just a Japan down there, but they didn't
Speaker 3: realize that it was laying on top of a marine.
Speaker 3: So finally somebody I said, hey, here's one underneath that
Speaker 3: dead Jap. So they pulled him off, and then then
Speaker 3: he got me. I had not seen my wound or anything.
Speaker 3: I couldn't see it until that next morning. Then they
Speaker 3: found him and they found me, and they pulled him off,
Speaker 3: and they did they broke the stuff there on a
Speaker 3: fox shole, and I started bleeding again on it, and
Speaker 3: I got up, and then the guy said, hey, he's
Speaker 3: alive underneath it. Just pulled him off, or they pulled
Speaker 3: that off him off, and then he pulled me out.
Speaker 3: By that time the wound had coagulated a little bit.
Speaker 3: They didn't do too much to me, and then said
Speaker 3: he just called a corman over, and a corman came
Speaker 3: and he wiped all the blood off around the area
Speaker 3: and located me another we called them blouses, and another
Speaker 3: blouse and from a dead marine chocked that old bloodied
Speaker 3: one off and put another one on. He bandaged me
Speaker 3: up and he puts some I think it was sulfur.
Speaker 3: He puts something on it, and put that powdered in
Speaker 3: the sage on that, and I put the jacket jacket
Speaker 3: or a little jacket or blouse we call it on
Speaker 3: and stayed there and I waited, and they started pulling
Speaker 3: other people out. Then somebody came by and said, we
Speaker 3: got to go. They need all the help they can
Speaker 3: on those pill boxes that they're uncovering back there. I
Speaker 3: just fall in line with them, kept going also because
Speaker 3: it didn't hurt. I guess the feeling finally got into it,
Speaker 3: but it didn't hurt too much. I started walking further north.
Speaker 3: I got to put a little bit further north on it,
Speaker 3: and ran into another bunch of pill boxes and stuff,
Speaker 3: and we started cleaning them out as much as we could.
Speaker 3: Must have broken open my wound from that bandet, and
Speaker 3: so one of the guys up here hollered, and here's
Speaker 3: the guy who's got something wrong with his stomach. So
Speaker 3: I got to get a corman over there. So they
Speaker 3: called up on one and the guy from the headquarters
Speaker 3: heard and it came up. I've been doing a little
Speaker 3: research on it, and I found out that the corman
Speaker 3: it came up from headquarters to finish my wound. I
Speaker 3: ran across him in San Diego with the Raider Battalion
Speaker 3: reunion who we had down there, and I found out
Speaker 3: that he was as the one that take called from headquarters.
Speaker 3: They went up there, and now he's the one that
Speaker 3: told me how to treat that uh won. He said
Speaker 3: what he should have done was he should have taped it.
Speaker 3: The first guy should have put that powder into stuff
Speaker 3: and taped it. You had show that the wound would
Speaker 3: not be an open and he would heal a heck
Speaker 3: of a lot better.
Speaker 2: That's Frank Wright. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of
Speaker 2: World War Two in the Pacific Theater and one of
Speaker 2: the last surviving Marine Raiders. After much of Guam was
Speaker 2: secured following the major combat operations, Wright was still sent
Speaker 2: out on patrol to find remaining Japanese soldiers on the island.
Speaker 2: Despite his lingering injury. For the next few months, he
Speaker 2: healed and did a lot of training, months of training
Speaker 2: for their next battle. They didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 2: but their next battle would come six months later and
Speaker 2: take an even bigger toll on a small but critically
Speaker 2: important island called Ewogima. We'll bring you that story soon.
Speaker 2: I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: This is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
Speaker 2: a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
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