The Gunners of Able Company
George Smith, Howard Haff, and John Franey met at Parris Island as “boots” in Platoon 849. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. They served together in the weapons platoon of A/1/24 – Smith as a machine gunner; Haff and Franey as mortarmen – and shared good times on liberty along with the horrors of combat.
“Gunga” Smith and “JJ” Franey were knocked out of the war on Saipan; “Howie” Haff took a bullet on Tinian. All three returned to civilian life and went their separate ways. Their combined photograph collection spans from 1942 to 1945 and a few years beyond – a short period in their long lives, but one which was never forgotten.
John Franey passed away in 1996. Howard Haff and George Smith reconnected shortly before Haff’s death in 2003. These photographs were passed from family to family and ultimately given to the author by Smith, who passed away in August 2021.
- Served With: Able Company (Weapons Platoon)
- Collection Timeline: 1942 – 1952
- Locations: Parris Island, New River, Camp Pendleton, Hawaii
Parris Island: Platoon 849
JJ Franey was a great guy from Trenton. When we first reported to Parris Island, first of all they stripped ya naked for a medical inspection. They did different things, painted numbers on you with Mercurochrome or iodine, I don't know what the hell they were. And they hit ya with shots in both arms. Poor JJ walks up, puts his arms down, and went out like a light. He was right out! Man, it was funny.
And the guy said, well, might as well give it to him while he's on the deck, so they punched him up. We brought him to, and away he went. He was a great guy.
New River: The First Separate Battalion
Our recruit platoon had its training cut short and was sent north to New River, North Carolina in December 1942. We were told we were to be the nucleus of a special new unit that became the First Separate Battalion, Reinforced. Our recruit platoon formed Company A, with twenty-four of us making up the weapons platoon. We were quartered in oblong pasteboard huts, great for perfecting our knife throwing technique. They were unfinished on the inside and heated by a kerosene stove – when it worked.
Camp Pendleton: The 24th Marines
The train pulled in to Pendleton late Saturday night, and they told us on Sunday morning just to get the lay of the land. The Third Marine Division had been at Pendleton, but several months ago, so all the animal life regenerated itself. There must have been a thousand snakes – and this guy is one of the thousands! I took that picture, and that's as close as I ever got to one of them suckers.
Every time we were playing around in the bush, I was petrified because I just don't like them.
We were out in the boondocks for a month and a half, living in tents. We had our own little kitchen in a stream bed, and believe it or not we could go down in the morning and ask for two eggs sunny side up, and we'd get them. The cooks were great. Our officers had a table set off to the side where they had their mess, but they had to get in line like us. When it came time for chow, they would be hiding behind the tents so they could get in line as quickly as they could! We really had a conspiracy to keep them in the back of the line and make them suffer, but they got onto it and they'd hide between the tents. It was really a great time.
!["Swab Jockey [corpsman Charles Hearn], Hall, Fritz, Palmer, Spohn."](https://i0.wp.com/1-24thmarines.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/porch2.jpg?fit=1500%2C963&ssl=1){kind=link}
Claude Henderson, Leo Ksiekievicz, Bill Imm, Wilbur Plitt, Edward Hackett
Jowers, Hurley, Smith, Hall, Kerr
We were the rubber boat company for the battalion. You know how they lured us into this? Pendleton had a lake alongside of the dispensary. They took us down there on a Sunday. Sun's shining, it's nice and warm. We thought, hell, this is great!
Then they put us down on that beach and like to killed us.
"Our infamous rubber boat brigade. Holy Jesus.... I liked it to a certain extent, but the water was so damn cold, particularly at night. We’d go out past the breakers, play around a little bit, then come back. One night, we tried to get out three or four times and just get beat to death. It’s dark – no moon, no stars, no nothing – and all of a sudden it got blacker, and I looked up and maybe twenty feet above is a little white line where the breaker crested. It picked the boat up and threw us God knows where. Gann’s in charge of the boat and he says “take a head count.” I realize the machine gun’s missing and I thought I would have to pay for it, so I went underwater to check. I come up and Spohn says “I’ll go down and try.” Meanwhile Gann’s counting, yelling “We’re missing one, who the hell’s missing?” It was a big mix-up. Finally he figured out everybody’s there – and the hell with the gun."
Tom Hurley was married. When we got to California, Anne said she was coming out. One Sunday morning, Hurley wakes me up and says Anne’s in town – she came cross country by bus, went to Los Angeles, then got the train to Oceanside. She hustled them a place to stay, and they got a little two-room tourist cabin with a kitchen. We would go on liberty Friday night, and Franey and I would stop at the grocery store to buy what we could. We’d drop it off at the Hurley's, go up to LA and come back Sunday. That night she would have a dinner for us. That's what kept us civil down there!
Claude, Claude, poor Claude. Claude wanted to become an NCO so bad. Claude was from Virginia – a really, really nice guy…. We found out he had a blouse with corporal stripes on, and had it in his seabag, and boy nobody would let him go! He wanted to become a corporal, and sometimes he sorta acted like a corporal before he was.
The sad part, Haff told me – going into Tinian, Claude evidently got hit in the throat. Haff didn't see him get hit, but when Haff was on the hospital ship he looked over and saw Claude. He spoke to him and then realized that Claude couldn't talk He died that night. It was a shame… he wanted to become an NCO so bad....
Claude Henderson received his coveted promotion to corporal on 27 April 1944 and led a mortar squad in combat on Saipan.
As his company weathered a massive banzai attack on Tinian, Corporal Henderson “immediately moved to the front lines and, despite withering enemy fire, skillfully directed a fierce mortar barrage against the onrushing Japanese. Assuming a position on the firing line when enemy units advanced two close for further mortar attack, he unhesitatingly exposed himself to hostile fire and furnished cover for a corpsman administering blood plasma to a casualty, firing his weapon with deadly effectiveness until he himself was mortally wounded.”
Henderson died aboard the USS Heywood. He received a posthumous Silver Star for gallantry.
"That's Steve Hopkins' publicity picture. He was a great kid. His father was Harry Hopkins, at the White House. You know how you say things sometimes you're gonna regret the rest of your life? We were sitting on the dock in San Diego getting ready to go out to Roi-Namur, and Steve said 'Yeah, I know I'm not coming back.' And big mouth me, I said "Yeah, if I lived the life you did I wouldn't expect to come back either!'
"Sometime after dark – it always seemed to me about midnight for some reason, and against all rules that anyone moving at night gets shot – our gun was ordered forward. At this time the only organized resistance was a pillbox directly in front of A Company. The distance between our lines was no more than 25 yards. We trotted up and started to set up the gun. I saw somebody moving off to our right near the beach and ask Hoppy to cover him. Hop just turned to bring up his weapon when I saw the muzzle flash and Hop went down. He hung on till he reached the hospital ship the next morning, and they buried him at sea."
Overseas
I saw the shell hit.
Both Hurley and I escaped with nothing; a couple guys in front of us got killed, a guy alongside of us took a piece of shrapnel to the shinbone. It shook me a little goofy. I could not control my emotions. I started to cry. I wasn't hurt, you know, nothing.
That's really what kept me out of combat, not the wounds that I got.
George Smith, Howard Haff, and John Franey were all seriously wounded during the campaigns for the Mariana Islands. JJ was hit in the chest by shrapnel on Saipan, while Howie was shot in the shoulder on Tinian. “Gunga” Smith suffered two severe blast concussions within twenty-four hours on Saipan, and was shot through the left wrist on 22 June 1944. Although twice wounded – he was sliced by a Japanese bayonet during the battle of Namur – Smith tried to return to Able Company, but the emotional scars were too great. After a stay at a convalescent camp, he was assigned to duty at the Lualualei Naval Ammunition Depot where he served out the war.
When I got out of the hospital, I got sent to what they called the transit unit – a place they kept you until they assigned you to another unit. Sergeant Yaniga [from A/1/24] shows up and becomes the first sergeant of the transit unit. We never really got along. He calls me in and I thought “Here we go again, we’re gonna have a problem."
He said, “Look, there's a garrison up at Lualualei. It's a good place, and if you want to go I'll make sure you get there." It was better than hanging around and they'd declared me unfit for combat. I said “All right.” Sure enough, it was a great place. I rode horses there on mounted patrol.
Yaniga became first sergeant of that garrison, and he got us back to the States with the 4th Marine Division. So however I disliked him, he did do me a favor.
The Postwar Years
George Smith and Doris Craig married in 1947, and stayed together until her death in 2020.
To the right of George are his former A/1/24 comrades Tom Hurley and J. J. Franey.
“This was our first liberty when we came back to Los Angeles. These three were cooks… Larson on the right, great guy, a tough kid. And Hurley. He and I stayed close until he died. It was they Haywood Hotel in LA. I’ll never forget that. They threw us out of there a couple of times!”
(Smith, Henry Hufnagle, John Nash, Michael Graziadei, Tom Hurley, Robert Larson)
My father served as a marine during WWII. I have photos, telegrams, etc. that I would like to add to the site. How do I contact the site administrator?
Hi Tina!
You can contact me at webmaster@ablecompany24.com.
Thanks, and happy Memorial Day!
Geoff
Thank u so much for posting these. My grandfather Howard Haff told me so many stories and these pics help paint the mental image. RIP Howard love u!!!!!
Hi Kelly – glad you found them! My grandmother’s cousin was Howard’s platoon leader until he was killed on Saipan. There are some more pictures of Howard over in the section “Phil Wood’s Pictures” – apparently they got on very well. Most of these photos came from George Smith; he was good friends with Howard from the 1940s and still loves telling stories about their adventures during and after the war.
I’m working on biographies of every marine from this battalion; if there’s anything you’d like to contribute to Howard’s, please let me know!
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My friend’s father, Henry R Schramm, passed away today in the Portsmouth, NH area. He was with 1- 24 on Tinian and retired out of the Corps early in the 1960s as a GySgt. The funeral service will take place in Hanover, NH where he lived for many years while working at Dartmouth College. I do not have any details yet, but if the Rand Funeral Home has a website, they might be posted there.
SF-Master Guns Warren Coughlin
Mr. Coughlin – thank you very much for letting me know about Henry Schramm’s passing. I will keep an eye out for any obituaries and will update his biography page here on the site accordingly. Odd to think, I may have run into him many years ago – I have some family up near the Hanover area and used to visit Dartmouth in the summers – and never knew.
Thank you again and, if you have a chance, please extend my sympathies to your friend.
Best,
Geoffrey Roecker
Thank you for publishing these photos and stories. My grandfather was Amedeo Izzo. It is really fun to get a glimpse into his life as a young man.
Hi Geoff, Robert Tierney’s daughter here. If you are putting together information on the 24th Marines, I have all my dad’s photos and memorabilia.
The Wisconsin Veteran’s Museum has an oral interview with him and many scans of his photos.
About 5 years ago my youngest brother was walking past the museum on his lunch break, looked up and saw dad on one of the large banners in front of the museum. We had no idea they had chosen him for the honor. The banners will be up for many more years. Smaller banners are used for educational purposes. The picture they used is one of him holding his BAR, I think in Hawaii.
I recognized so many names in this article. Dad took one of us (7 siblings) to each of the 24ths reunions. So most of us had met George Smith and many of these other men. Sorry to hear of George’s passing.
Thank you very much for this website. It’s an invaluable tool to researchers and armchair historians alike. The day to day reports were amazing. I’m trying to learn as much as i can about Plt Sgt Parker McBride (later Gnry Sgt) from Able co. Was trying to pick him out in photos but i’m not sure. I may also be able to contribute to his biography if interested. Thanks again