mookie2001
04-24-2006, 08:48 AM
Colonel Don Ezell was at the Battle of Okinawa in World War 2. He was there in the Chosin Reservoir when the Marines had to fight their way step by step down the road to Hungnam. He was there at Dien Bien Phu when the French garrison fell to the Viet-minh. He was at Khesanh when the Marines stood their ground against an overwhelming Vietcong force. Colonel Ezell has fought against troops from Japan, China, North Korea, and North Vietnam. He witnessed Russian troops looting the Mukden industrial complex in Manchuria and was ready to fight against them, too. He has lived in Texas, North Carolina, California, Oklahoma, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea. He admires the ingenuity of the Chinese, the courage of the Japanese, and the steadfastness of the Vietnamese, though he has fought against them. Colonel Ezell has played football at Texas Christian University and coached football in the panhandle towns of Memphis and Childress. He has taught at Duke University and has seen his brothers-in-arms fall by the sword. He has been married twice, widowed once and divorced once. His father died when he was three years old. He in turn has fathered and loved a daughter, only to have her die young as well. He has three brothers, the twin of one, who have all served their country in the armed forces. He has survived two of them, and lives just down the road from the remaining one. Colonel Ezell has seen men break down in the tide of battle, and he has listened to wounded men begging not to be sent home, not yet, not when their fellow soldiers still need them. Colonel Ezell likes to watch sports on television and eat Wolf brand chili out of the can. He makes the best damn martini I’ve ever tasted, and he is a good man. The oft-forgotten ideals of patriotism and brotherhood reside in his heart, and he may be one of the last Americans who can proclaim that he truly loves his country and has proved this love in the line of fire. He has merited 27 battle decorations and seven battle stars, including the Purple Heart. Colonel Ezell served in the Marine Corps for almost 30 years, and he has defended the principles of a country he ardently believes in by land, by air, and by sea. He now lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and he is my friend.
I interviewed Colonel Ezell over a period of five days, two days in October and three days in January—this I recorded using audio tape. I copied these tapes verbatim, and then I molded, edited, and organized the resulting transcript into the cohesive narrative which follows. I have done my best to preserve the integrity of Colonel Ezell’s words, in both the information he relates and his pattern of speech. This I feel is important, because this is really Colonel Ezell’s account of himself. I believe that this text is more than story, but less than a life. This is Colonel Ezell’s life retold by himself; it is a remembrance, a memoir, if you will. This narrative is a man’s view of himself, of his life, and of the world in which he lived. Hopefully by reading this, you will come to an understanding of Colonel Ezell the man, the role he has chosen to play in life, and how this part fits into the larger, world events occasioned in his lifetime. And even though I cannot pretend that this simple narrative can contain an individual such as Colonel Ezell, perhaps it can serve to capture briefly the aspects that make him who he is. Maybe you will find Colonel Ezell to be as unique and exceptional a human being as I do, I hope. And perhaps, most importantly, you will remember him, because some lives are not forged to be forgotten, and I, for one, will continue to keep Colonel Ezell as an inspiration, long after he is gone from this world.
Colonel Don D. Ezell, USMC
I was born in Jena, Louisiana. My mother (she arranged this all after) put on my birth certificate 1922. My brother Jeff said I was born in 1921. Whether it was in 1921 or 1922, I don’t know. But my birth certificate says April 27, 1922.
My father was Jeff Ezell, my mother, Pearl White. I had three brothers: Jeff, my eldest brother; Beeky came next; and my twin brother was Dee. My father was killed when I was three years old.
My mother raised us until she was remarried in 1928. We moved to Wink, TX, with my father H.L. Little, who worked in the oilfields.
All of us had the usual education—we all participated in athletics: football, basketball, and track mainly. In 1939, I graduated from high school, Wink High School, and I was given a football scholarship to TCU. My brother Beeky had previously received a scholarship, and Dee received a scholarship at the same time as me. We both played football. Dee was a guard; I was a halfback. In those days we played both ways. I played safety on defense.
I lettered two years at TCU. In those days we played freshman ball; that would be, 1940. In ‘41 and ‘42 I lettered. And then the war came, and after the ‘42 year, Dee and I joined the Marine Corps—March 2, 1942. The reason we joined was a couple friends had joined the Marines and had gone into the Officer Program, which we went in to. They left us in school until we could complete our degree.
It wasn't just me who signed up—about 30 of the TCU football team signed up for the same program, because we thought that we would be left there, in school. And we were—we were left there to play the football season out before we were called out. Firstly, we had to report to a college that had a Marines Unit, and I went to UTA over here—North Texas Agricultural College at the time—in Arlington. We went over there for a semester, and then in November 1943 we reported to Parris Island, South Carolina, for boot camp.
Boot Camp
Parris Island is surrounded by water, of course. It was captured by the United States Marines from the Confederates—the Confederate Marines—back in the Civil War , and from then on it's been a Marines base. It's got lots of sand fleas, and the ocean, and the boondocks, and all… It's a great training ground. It's 15 or 20 miles across, I guess .
I would imagine that, most of us were athletes and everything—that's one of the things—Marine officers mostly came from athletic teams. If you'll check you'll find that Notre Dame had a tremendous number of Marine officers—all athletes. And TCU had at least 25 or 30 of the team that went into the Marine Corps. They concentrated on that quality of man for an officer. They wanted, not just a college man, but a college athlete.
Well boot camp, you go into a platoon of 'boots'. And the platoon is trained by what you call a ‘DI’, or drill instructor, probably a gunnery sergeant, and his assistant, who may be a buck sergeant. The DIs in those days, they tried to find something wrong with you, so they could punish you. They'd inspect your hut that you were living in, and say, your bed wasn't properly made, where they could throw a quarter up and have it bounce back in their hand. They might make you run a mile with a rifle above your head, or do 150 pushups, or something like that.
A platoon is about 45-50 men. And they take you through, these two guys, through the various stages of your training. You had your bunkmate, you know—two to a bunk, top or bottom, and you got real close with him because you made up your sack and everything with him. You had guys next to you, in your squad, you know. Three or four squads in the platoon. You knew your bunkmate better than anybody else. You knew your squad next. Then there's the platoon. After that, you were so busy working together under that DI, that you didn't have time to know very many of those in the next platoon. You may meet a couple of them, that you had played football against or something, in another platoon down the line. My bunkmate was, Baugh...Jim Ted. Jim Ted Baugh it was. We were classmates at TCU, and then bunkies in the Marine Corps. He was killed in Iwo.
Boot camp is extremely physical—long, forced marches, combat exercises, and so forth. Marines brag that an enlisted man has reached 90% of his maximum fighting efficiency when he has finished boot camp. Whether he does or not—I don't know, but I think the infantryman probably does. Boot camp is all infantry training. You get familiarization with these other things—artillery, and air, and so forth. But you're not a trained Forward Observer , or gunner, or anything for a crew-served weapon, except the machine gun.
You learn how to use the M1 rifle, of course, and the machine gun—light and heavy machine guns. You learn to use rifle grenades and hand grenades—all basic infantry training. Of course, the Marines’ training in rifle marksmanship is two weeks long itself. You're down at the range learning to fire and hit the target that you're firing at—which is a pretty important thing. We had 100-200 and a 500 yard firing line. Now they've added a moving marksmanship—utilizing a scoring system, moving against the enemy and firing at targets that move and so forth.
But they didn't have that up until after World War 2. The Marines went back to training and said that's one thing—we trained them very well for hitting a target that was standing still, but we've got to train them for moving targets, and while they're moving and so forth. So that's been included in the marksmanship training now.
You learn to use the weapon and all before that, but when it comes to really learning your weapon, when you go out on the range and you're actually shooting targets, it's about two weeks. Then you go into your competition firing. You have three qualifications—marksman, sharpshooter, and expert. I've forgotten what those scores are, but every Marine has to qualify in one of those. I was a sharpshooter in the rifle and an expert in the pistol.
A lot of the stuff that I went through in those days has been cut out. When the war was over, they redesigned the thing—officers have to go through boot camp, and they're the ones designing the program. So they don't go into it blindly. They know what the men thought was good and what they thought was bad, because they thought the same thing. So the improvements, I'm sure, were really great. The training right now is better than it's ever been, I would say, because that's the way the Marines are. Their splendid reputation is really based on the standards and the quality of the men, plus the standards of the training—it's nothing else.
I think the Marine Corps prepared you very well for combat. Their training is outstanding, both physically and mentally—they test you. You don't wear an eagle, globe, and anchor in the Marine Corps until you're through boot camp. You have no liberty or anything else. When you finish boot camp, you're graduating. You're then a Marine—you then can wear the eagle, globe, and anchor. That's the first time they allow you to put that on yourself.
After boot camp, we reported to what they call OCA, Officer Candidate Applicant—in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. They called us up to Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia, as they needed us. As these officer classes finished, they filled up a new one, see. It was all staggered out. We were in a holding pattern sort of thing there in Lejeune.
I went about February of ’44, I guess, to OCS in Quantico. When I finished, I got my commission. Then I reported for duty in the field at Camp Pendleton, in Oceanside, California.
Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. E.P. Melton. Her father was head of the Santa Fe railroad. Jean and I met at TCU when we were freshmen, but I didn't start going with her until I was a junior.
I proposed to her by letter after I was commissioned, and she flew to, well she came to Washington, and we were married in the chapel there in Quantico. Dee was my best man—he came up from Hollywood, Florida, where he was going through navigation school at the time.
It was a common practice, all these guys getting married when they expected to go overseas. If they were going to get married, they usually got married there, or went home to get married.
We honeymooned in Washington for three days before I went back to school in Quantico. When I graduated, I was assigned to field duty at Camp Pendleton in California, so we had about ten days together traveling from the east coast to the west coast. We went to Fort Worth to see her family, and we went out to west Texas to see my mom and dad.
We lived out in Oceanside, California, where Camp Pendleton is. There, I joined the 6th Marine division, in the infantry. But before I was even assigned, I was transferred—I had put in for flight training, and I was transferred to Marine Wing Service Squadron One at El Toro, in San Diego, California. I played football there on weekends, pro ball.
El Toro
I would alternate playing—we couldn't go to games away from home because we were tied up on the base—I played both for Los Angeles and for San Diego. They were really just making up teams, but they would have games, and all. And I didn’t go by my name; in fact, I think that the service didn't want you to go by your name. I believe I was “Johnny Green from Tulane”, because that was the number on the roster of the jersey they happened to give me. But you got 100 dollars a game, see, and that was a lot of money in those days. A month's pay for a lieutenant was 150 dollars, so if you pick up 100 dollars every once and while, that’s not too bad.
The teams would have one night a week that you would have to report, so that you could get a few plays, and so forth, and know what the coaches were going to expect from you during the game. You see, everyone was in real good physical condition because you were going all the time in your work, as far as the Marine Corps was concerned. Being in shape wasn't that big of deal. As far as I know, every one of the players was in the service—they were Army, Navy, Marines.
I guess they had some civilians, too, but they'd pick up other guys from the bases wherever they were playing. Say they were going up to San Francisco: well, there were football players up there, too. Once you played for one team, you were on the league roster—they knew where they could get football players. They would call you up and say, “Can you play this Sunday? We require a meeting on Thursday night. You have to be able to make that meeting.”
And you would say, “Yes.” And they would say, “Well I understand that you play”—this position, and this position, and maybe this position—“Come in this Thursday, and we'll set you up and give you a playbook that you could look at and familiarize yourself with.”
And so hell, you'd have a stadium full of people—they didn't know that those were a couple of pickup teams playing out there. It was a promotional deal, was what it was. Of course, the teams did represent the towns, the area. You could see why they wouldn't want to use different names and numbers every week. So they had those stock number and names, you see, for the fans’ benefit.
I don't remember any name I used except that one in San Diego, because that's where I played most of the time. Well, I was in San Diego during football season, so I guess that carries us up to spring of 1945.
Okinawa
I was assigned to Air FMFPac in Hawaii. That’s Aircraft Fleet Marine Force, Pacific.
We went on the Okinawa operation . I want to say Okinawa was April 1-July 1. The Okinawa battle was the largest amphibious assault in history, you know. It was even larger than D-Day, in Europe. There were so many ships, you couldn’t imagine.
I worked as an Aerial Observer for the 1st Marine Air Wing, and then with the 13th Marines, 5th division. How that worked, being an Aerial Observer, was you've got your glasses; you can recognize people you see, and so forth. With Cole-Morgan binoculars you can see 15 miles. You have several sets of glasses that you can use, and it gives you a real good picture of what you're looking at. And you have your maps and so forth; you're trained to use them. And you sit back there, looking at the ground, looking at the map, orienting yourself, and so forth, seeing everything from up in the air. You know how it looked yesterday; you see if there's something different, over there what the enemy has, and all. And if there is, you go directly over there, “Let's check this out.” If it's something that you think that should be destroyed, you call in Air, Artillery, or Naval Gunfire, whichever's the appropriate weapon to use.
Anyway, the danger in Okinawa was, the Japanese were sending over aircraft to dive into our ships. And boy, there was anti-aircraft fire going all the time. So it wasn't like previous operations in which you support an operation, support the ground troops by preparing the beach and so forth, and lifting your fires inland when they land, and that. The Navy was having to defend themselves, because of the kamikazes.
In fact, I had a real good friend who was killed on one of the ships—Punk Smith, who was a tackle out here, at TCU. And I didn't know at the time that he was aboard one of the ships, but he was a Combat Cargo Officer—every ship has a Marine detachment on it, to direct how to load and unload the cargo. They make the liaison with the unit that is going to be loaded on that ship. They teach the Marines how to load their vehicles and how to make their plans. They make a diagram, an actual diagram of where the vehicles are placed, and they're numbered. And, when they call for a number, you look that number up, and then they'll tell you what page to go to—which is one of the hulls, see. You know, and they may have a hull that has five levels. So you go in, and of course, the earliest equipment has to come off first, so you have it in the upper hulls. If they need something down below, you have to shuffle the equipment and all, and open the hulls up, see, so the booms can go down. Say it's the third or fourth hull down, you've got to move a lot of gear off, because when you load that hull, every inch of space is taken, even on top of the hulls. You'll have equipment—you have to move all that off so that your boom can go down in there and pick up whatever equipment there is. It might be something that's loaded in boxes, or it might be a vehicle. Either way, those Combat Cargo Officers are integral to the operation.
As an Aerial Observer in Okinawa, sometimes we had to stay away because there was so much flak in the air; other than that, there wasn't any difference at all than in any other battle. You'd go in, and check out the ground. They'd send you off, and you'd call Naval Gunfire in, and stuff like that. When I wasn’t up in the air, I was on the ground as a Forward Observer, right with the troops—with the infantry.
All of it's the same—you see, supporting arms kill most of the people. Many people think that most of your infantrymen are killed by rifle fire. They're not. But that's what they're scared of—they're scared to go up there. In the Marine Corps, we teach what's called “fire-and-movement”. You move up, you’re zigzagging, and firing, and keeping the enemy down. That keeps as much fire off as you as possible, see. You can't run but so far; you're going to get tired. So you hit the ground, roll over, fire a few times—don't stay in that position or you'll draw enemy fire, because they can hit a target laying down a lot easier than one running. While you're laying there, you fire, but you don't stay there very long—you get up and start moving, and as long as you have good fire and movement, you'll reach the enemy with minimum casualties.
There’s one thing about the Americans; there was never any time that we thought we were going to lose the battle. That makes me recall something that Chesty Puller said one time. When he was surrounded by the enemy, and they were firing from all directions, he sent a message, "The sons-of-bitches have me surrounded. We can't fail to kill them now."
Near the conclusion of Okinawa, the flag was raised on something called Shuri Castle. Shuri Castle was the center of the Japanese lines, and this was an old fort, that had been made many years before, but it survived our fire support, and everything else. We felt just like the people did on Iowa Jima; when we saw that flag go up, we knew the battle was just about over.
North China
After Okinawa, we went into Japan for awhile—maybe a week or so, not any longer. Then we were peeled off and sent into north China. We flew into China at an old Japanese air base, Nan Yu-An; it's a little village outside Peking, now Beijing, of course. There we took the surrender from the Japanese, and started isolating them into holding areas for repatriation.
The Japanese soldiers were surrendering, but they knew how bad they treated prisoners; they didn't know how we were going to treat them. We told them, “We're not even going to keep you in prison. We're gonna take you home and let you go, see.” So, they were pretty good at obeying us, because they had a feeling that we weren't going to kill them. But in the back of their minds was what they had done and how they treated prisoners—they couldn't help but fear capture. And a lot of them, whether it was going to be just for a little while, or if it was going to be a full escape or what, they dressed up in these Chinese civilian clothes, or maybe even Chinese military. And you know the Japanese looked very much like the Chinese, at least to us Americans. One of our ways of catching them was, make them take their shoes off—Chinese wear slippers, sort of like house shoes, and their toes are all together. But the Japanese wear thongs, and their big toe and the rest of their toes, are separated. We’d locate them every time by making them take their shoes off. If we thought a Chinaman may be Japanese, we said, “Take your shoes off,” and catch them every time, by that big toe.
After we came into north China, we had to go up to Mukden, which was in Manchuria, and take the surrender of the Japanese up there. The Russians had come in, and they had surrendered to the Russians. So we had to confront the Russians. And they didn't want us to come in, but we told them we were coming in or else. And I’m sure that they decided that they had stolen all the factories and machinery equipment and everything that the Japanese had there in Manchuria and sent it back to Russia, which was what they built their peacetime economy later on. The Russians were as curious about us as we were about them—we could look at them, looking at us, back through their binoculars. But there wasn't anything exceptional went on except between the high commands. We were told to show some strength, which we did. We had a lot of troops and airpower and so forth. And the commanding generals talked tough to them, and the Russians decided it would be in their interest—I’m sure they told them it would be in their interest if they moved out of here peacefully. But we were ready to go, if —well actually, there's a lot of difference in the attitude of people now and then. We wanted to get the war over, and if it meant to whip the Russians and go home, it was fine with us. But it never came to anything, of course.
Well, in China, north China, we went in there, and we were supposed to pacify, as far as the Communists and the Nationalists were concerned. We stood in between them. If the President of the United States had not pulled us out—the Marines out—of China, there probably would never been a Chinese Communist empire. It would be Chinese Nationalist, because we supported the Nationalists, and stood between the two.
After the Japanese surrendered, the Chi-Com and the Chinese Nationalists got their uniforms. But you couldn’t tell them apart—they both wore the same uniforms. They had a little sign up here on the breast, a patch, and I often wondered what it was. And I said, “What do they have on that? What does it say up there?" And my houseboy said, “Well, the Chi-Com says, ‘I am a Chinese Communist,’ and the Nationalist says, ‘I am a Chinese Nationalist.'” So, we always had a Chinese interpreter with us to find out what it said on those uniforms. I picked up a little bit of Mandarin, in those days, but I've forgot most of it now.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.