Mike Dush Mervosh

Enlisted at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 16 September 1942; boot camp at Parris Island. Transferred to Training Camp New River, North Carolina in December 1942.

Assigned to machine gun platoon of Charlie Company, First Separate Battlaion (Reinforced) on 24 December 1942.

Outfit: C/1/24th Marines
Rank: Corporal
MOS: 653 (Machine gun squad leader)

“I was on the island maybe an hour or two, and a Japanese enemy was about twenty feet away. And he was at fixed bayonets and so was I. Looked like he wanted to fight with the bayonet. I said, “This guy is out of ammo.” I cranked one him off and shot him right in the face. When I opened the bolt of his rifle, he had three rounds in the clip and a round in the chamber. So I dishonored him. According to the code of honor by the Japanese, I should have fought him with the bayonet. But I’m here, and he’s not.”

Campaign Narrative

Outfit: C/1/24th Marines
Rank: Sergeant
MOS: 653 (Machine gun squad leader)
Important Events:
June 28, 1944 – slightly wounded in action (shrapnel in leg); not evacuated.
July 3, 1944 – sick (diagnosis unknown); evacuated to field hospital.
July 12, 1944 – returned to duty

I think the most memorable thing about Saipan was towards the end, the point where the enemy was hopeless. The civilians were in the caves with them. We had our loudspeakers, with our Marine interpreters that spoke Japanese, and pleading with them to give up. And of course they brainwashed the civilians – that we’d rape them murder them…. The women would throw the babies off the cliff, a couple hundred feet down in that coral there, and they’d jump right after the children. The Jap soldiers, some of them, would have to push off the civilians. It was a horrible sight. That blue ocean, that blue sea in no time at all became the red sea, you know what I mean? I just hated to see all those women and children going that way.

Campaign Narrative

Outfit: C/1/24th Marines
Rank: Sergeant
MOS: 653 (Machine gun squad leader)
Important Events:
August 1, 1944 – sick (diagnosis unknown); evacuated to field hospital
August 4, 1944 – returned to duty

There wasn’t enough beach to land. I landed in a bunch of coral. Getting out of that [LVT], jumped over the side, we’re up to our chest in water, had the rifles in our hands. That’s the time when one of my machine gunners got shot right in the chest, and I grabbed a hold of him and pulled him up on the ledges of that coral there, and all I could do is stuff my finger in his chest – because he was gasping there, and I called the corpsman to come over there and he said, “He’s gone.”

Campaign Narrative

Outfit: C/1/24th Marines
Rank: Platoon Sergeant
MOS: 600 (Machine gun NCO)
Important Events:
February 22, 1945 – slightly wounded in action (deafened, shrapnel splinter across eyelid); not evacuated
March 3, 1945 – slightly wounded in action (shrapnel, face), not evacuated

I’ve been asked many times when I talk to Marines and different groups about seeing the flag raising on Iwo Jima, being as I was there. I said no, I was too busy killing and fighting the enemy and saving my rear end. That was the other part of the island. I could sense that we weren’t getting any incoming fire from the rear, so I don’t know if that was a Jap flag on Mount Suribachi or our flag, so I pulled out the binoculars. I seen it was our flag, and it was just a matter of seconds when the snipers, maybe two snipers, there must have been a half a dozen rounds, and one caught the side of my cartridge belt, almost tore it off. My doggone exhilaration wasn’t seeing the flag – my exhilaration was they were piss poor shots!

Campaign Narrative

Promoted to Gunnery Sergeant on 31 May 1945. Transferred to Headquarters, Fleet Marine Force Pacific, on 13 June 1945 for duty with Third Guard Company, Marine Barracks, Naval Ammunition Depot Oahu.

Returned to C/1/24th Marines on 2 October 1945 for return to United States. Transferred to Bainbridge, Maryland for processing and discharge. Honorably discharged on 7 November 1945.