A great souvenir of Corporal Bill Logan’s service, kindly provided by his son Brad. This document was probably given to Logan shortly before the regiment demobilized at Camp Pendleton in October 1945, as it has a mix of signatures from veterans returned from rear echelon assignments plus new replacements who joined C/24th Marines just before the end of the war. Most are machine gunners, and are either Logan’s long-time comrades (Glenn Buzzard, Mike Mervosh, Don Marston, Sil Paulini, Wallace Taylor, Carl McMahan) or, probably, junior Marines from the squad he would have led into combat in Japan. A few riflemen signed the paper as well, as did the platoon corpsman, PhM2c Andrew Kane.
Many of those who signed appear in this photo below, also from the Logan family, showing the remnants of Charlie Company after the battle of Iwo Jima. The circled Marine may be Bill Logan, but as Brad Logan says “I should emphasize that the man circled on it is not necessarily Dad (I am not sure and my wife is convinced it is not). For all I know, one of us kids made the circle, thinking it was him but not confirming that with Dad.”
The identities of most of the men in this photograph remain unknown – if you have any further information, please leave a comment!
donald f mckay, MD, mayor orting washington
Benny J. Gilliam is one of the signatures and was my father. He was almost one of the members of Charlie Company to walk off Iwo Jima . The island had been declared secure but there was still fighting. Benny was leading a demolition squad of replacements to flank and knock out a sniper position. They were moving from one shell crater to the next when their movement was spotted and they were attacked with knee mortars. One of these rounds landed in their shell hole and exploded behind Benny. The others of the squad were too inexperienced to continue alone so they pulled back bringing Benny with them. After a two month recovery in Quam, he was given a choice of assignment and his was to return to his Charlie Company where he had been since boot camp in Nov 1943. At the time of these signatures, the end of the war still appeared far off.
Steven,
Sorry for the long delay in replying to your post about my Dad’s divisional commemorative with your father’s signature but I just now came across it. If you have any information about your Dad that mentions or references mine, I would appreciate getting it. I note that among your father’s photographs on the Photos page of this website that my Dad is the marine on the sixth row down, second from the right.
Brad Logan
Hi Brad. I hope all is well. It’s been a long time since we last corresponded here.
I have recently retired and am working on a couple of bucket list items.
The first item item concerns your Dad’s divisional commemorative. I would like to obtain a higher-resolution photo. I Thought a list of those signing might help identify someone in my dad’s photos as they were both created at about the same time on Maui. Maybe Geoffrey would database list and include mouse-over pop-ups with the commemorative. I want to have a poster printed.
The second item has has been developing over many years. I describe, at length, below. I apologize if this is not really of interest to you, but I thought it might be.
Like so many veterans, Dad only told certain details of their experiences. I have watched and re-watched many hours of battle films of Dad’s pacific battles, frequently wondering where exactly Dad had been. I remember once asking him if he had fought through the “meat grinder” and he replied, “When I went through there no one had named them yet”. Well, that was Dad. And like some other of Dad’s one-liners, that remark has stayed with me these many years as I still watch films and still wonder exactly where he had been at a particular moment.
Anyway, a couple of years ago, I set out to see just how finely I could map my dad’s battle experiences. I figured it was out there via the internet so I set out to find it. This proved to be a bit more of a challenge than I anticipated.
The most granular details I eventually found were company-level dispatches from lower-echelon officers reporting up the chain to headquarters. While I found portions of these, I never found a convenient and complete source of this material. This may have just as well. These dispatches are arduous to read and navigate. It could be too much detail for me to process without some better structure.
I am finding the USMC publications the best materials, the most beneficial book being their “24th Marine Regiment Military Report – Iwo Jima” which documents Reg/Bat/Co positions and movements, day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour. I have not found a similar USMC publication for Tinian, Saipan, or Roi-Namur but will look if this works out for Iwo. Along those same lines, do you know of any books written by Charlie” company veterans?
My Dad got to Charlie company one month before they pulled out of San Diego to fill one of the last open spots on the roster. Dad described C-company (and the whole 4th Div.) as a tough bunch. Shortly after his arrival, the company made a 20-mile forced march that put Dad in sick-bay for 3-days. He always said he survived the war because of those hardened veterans that looked out for him in the start. He felt so much more fortunate than the green replacements whose first experience in battle were places like Saipan and Iwo Jima.
I understand your dad was part of a machine gunner squad. Dad told that he was initially assigned to a machine-gun squad. Someone eventually decided he was just “too light in the britches” to carry any part of a machine gun into battle. It may be that your dad was one of those mentors to whom Dad felt he owed his survival.
From the stories he did tell, he must have ended up splitting duties between rifleman, demolition squad and “runner”. I vaguely remember a story of running as fast as he could across a Saipan cane field when a mine detonated just behind him, so close that it catapulted him forward and into the air but without otherwise injuring him.
Oh well, I did not mean to bore you or to ramble but I guess I am on a quest. If you have any materials that would help, I would be obliged. Meanwhile, I will look forward to hearing from you. Best Regards, Steve
Steve,
I am sorry this reply is so late, despite Geoff having given me a heads-up about your query. Dad spoke very little about his wartime experiences and then only when he was in his 80s with a few terse stories about close-calls, some of which took the lives of men near him (in one case, a man with whom he had been conversing who was killed by a sniper). With one exception, he never gave the names of any veterans with whom he served. The exception is Red Seagraves, who had served with Dad as a rifle regiment trainer at Camp Matthews and was, perhaps, the only one to join Dad with C Company, 1/24/4. Red was wounded on Saipan and became a jeep driver for an officer, which kept him out of harm’s way for the most part (of course, on Iwo, “harm’s way” was everywhere). Red’s wife and my mother became pen pals of sorts, exchanging long letters every Christmas and finally, in the late 90s, my folks visited them at the Seagraves home in Washington (my oldest brother, Bill, happened to live near Seattle, which was close to the Seagraves). At one point during the visit Mom and Mrs. Seagraves overheard their husbands sharing war stories on the porch or deck. Mom said she heard then of things Dad had never told her and, when she conveyed this story to me, said “you don’t know how lucky you are to be here”.
I, too, became obsessed with the campaigns Dad was in and have now read a couple dozen accounts, including Lt. Col. Bartley’s official USMC account “Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic” (1954), a good hard back original of which I found on Amazon. I have those of Saipan and Tinian as well. Those and every book I could find about the battles, though I have never found one written by a C Company 1/24/4 veteran. I do not know if you are familiar with that part of the Operations Report of the Iwo Jima campaign referred to as “Annex George”, which is divided into seven parts, one of which is the “Narrative of Operations” (in effect, this is the After Action Report). There are mentions of C Company throughout, including one on 8 March that notes a count showing only 40 men of C Company on the line. I think this was the day of the only organized Japanese counter-offensive during the battle, which succeeded in penetrating the line to the headquarters of an element some distance to the left of the 1st Battalion. I had found it online and downloaded it and could share it with you if you send me your email.
As for the commemorative with the autographs, the original is in the hands of my brother Brent (I have four, and a sister). He sent me the version I shared with Geoff that he posted to this website. I am certain that Brent obtained the highest resolution scan of the document he could. Indeed, I was surprised that all autographs are legible since I had not seen the framed version that always hung in Dad’s shop at home (Mom probably wouldn’t let him hang it in the living or dining rooms…hanging from peg board along with hammers, saws, and other tools seemed appropriate). When I had last seen the original I thought it was so faded that few autographs would be legible. I shared a print of the scanned version I have with Iron Mike Mervosh, with whom I corresponded and ultimately visited at his home near Camp Pendleton the year before he passed away. I had first called him to introduce myself and he instantly remembered Dad and which of the 31 of C Company who posed for a photo on Iwo on 16 March, when the island was declared secure. I sent him a print of my version of that, also posted by Geoff to this website, and he identified all but seven or eight of the men, an invaluable contribution to history. Geoff and I have since identified a couple more. Anyway, feel free to contact me at the email below if you want pdfs of the Annex George.