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Burness Colon Jordan

NAME:
Burness Colon Jordan
NICKNAME:
SERVICE NUMBER:
955901
HOME OF RECORD:
346 S. Wrenn Street, High Point, NC
NEXT OF KIN:
Wife, Mrs. Frances P. Jordan
DATE OF BIRTH:
3/3/1918
SERVICE DATES:
4/11/1944 – 3/9/1946
DATE OF DEATH:
3/13/1979
CAMPAIGNUNITMOSRATERESULT
Iwo JimaC/1/24521PFC WIA
INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS:
Purple Heart
LAST KNOWN RANK:
Private First Class

Burness Colon Jordan entered the world in Randolph, North Carolina, on 3 March 1918. He was the fourth of seven children born to Allen “AJ” Jordan and his wife, Sarah Stokes; an older sister, Evelyne, died before Burness was born. The family had a farm in Randolph, and as the children reached working age they either pitched in as farm hands or found jobs in one of the county’s many hosiery mills. Burness followed this later path, joining the industry sometime in the 1930s. The work was good enough for Burness to strike out on his own; in 1939, he married Frances Pauline Allred at a ceremony in Danville, Virginia. The two made their home in Asheboro, and Burness went to work for Slane Hosiery in nearby High Point. Their first child, Harold, was born in May of 1940.

The first rumblings of war reached the Jordan home that October: Burness was required to register for the draft. He dutifully reported to the local registrar, who took note of his physical description (height, five feet ten inches; weight, 138; brown eyes and black hair and ruddy complexion) and marked him on the list of Local Board #4. The card was filed away; at the time, Burness may have thought he’d never see it again.

Jordan's Selective Service registration, 1940.

In April of 1944, however, his draft number came up. Burness was sworn into the service of the United States, and within a few days was on his way to Parris Island. There he joined the 9th Recruit Battalion; when he emerged at the other end of boot camp, he was Private Jordan, United State Marine Corps Reserve.

The Pacific campaigns of 1944 chewed up young men by the thousands, and the divisions grappling with the Japanese in the Marianas Islands sorely needed replacements. Private Jordan was one of those chosen to join the Fleet Marine Force, and by July was on his way to Hawaii with the Fifth Replacement Draft. He spent a brief period of time with a service battalion before receiving his assignment to a combat unit: First Battalion, 24th Marines.

Jordan joined the veteran outfit on 18 September 1944. He was one of nearly forty replacements assigned to Charlie Company, a hard-fighting outfit that had lost more than half of its men in the Marianas campaigns. Within a month, he was promoted to Private First Class and was beginning to find friends among the men in his company. PFC Harris Peterson was the first to sign Jordan’s souvenir scrapbook, and Pvt. Richard J. Miller joined him for a souvenir photo taken on liberty.

Jordan didn’t just find new friends in Hawaii – so many men were in the service, it hardly seems surprising that he located a few acquaintances from home as well. Privates Edgar Lineberry and William Dula, once fellow hosiery mill workers from Asheboro and now members of the 30th Replacement Draft, were attached to Jordan’s Fourth Marine Division. When the four Marines gathered for their picture, they had no idea what lay in store in the next few months.

Long after the war, Burness Jordan would tell his family a few stories about Iwo Jima.

There was the time he was pinned in a trench, with a persistent Japanese solider “trying to dig him out with gunfire.” Shots came closer and closer, until they were striking a rock beside him. He could hear every bullet crack off the rock, and waited uneasily for one to get through. Fortunately, none did. After waiting a long while, he slipped his helmet off his head, shuffled it down to his feet, and carefully raised it into the air. He hoped the Japanese would hit the helmet and, thinking him dead, shift their fire somewhere else. The Japanese were too clever for this ruse, however, and Jordan had to grit his teeth and wait until his tormentor gave up or was killed.

There was the time a young kid approached him with a question. (At 26, Jordan was older than most of his company.) The young Marine asked if Jordan believed in praying. The words were barely out of his mouth when a shot rang out and the young Marine dropped to the ground.

 

A souvenir photo of Dula, Jordan, Lineberry and Miller, taken in Hawaii sometime in 1944. The developer reversed the negative – a common error at cheap souvenir shops – and the print was a mirror image.

There was the time he tried to grab a moment of quiet, to take a quick drink of water or a bite to eat, only to have his provisions shot from his hand.

And there was the time he was in the shell hole with a few other men, and the mortar shell came in fast, and he saw that one of his friends was split in half before everything went black. It was 3 March 1945 – his twenty-seventh birthday. Jordan woke up in a hospital, his shrapnel-torn leg neatly bandaged. He later remembered that everything he saw had an odd yellowish tinge. From his hospital bed, he told reporter Lew Arthur how he survived:

PFC Burness Jordan showed me some notes he had taken while the sky was alive with exploding shells.
"With each close shot and each close blast," he wrote, "you are talking with the Heavenly Father. When death is staring you in the face, you realize that faith is necessary. You must then believe in God and trust in eternal life."
Jordan told me how he lay in his foxhole, rereading the thumbworn letters he already knew by heart, said how glad he was to have a chance to look over the worn and cracked pictures of those he loved – how glad he was to be able to think and dream of home that night.
"It may have been my last night to dream," he reflected, "so I started to pray again."

Three weeks later, he was out of the hospital and able to amble about. On 12 April 1945, PFC Jordan returned to Charlie Company – or what remained of Charlie Company. His unit had lost so many men killed and wounded that it had been disbanded near the end of Iwo Jima; most of the faces he saw were replacements, just like he had been the previous September. After his return, he learned to perform a regulation haircut, and when a vacancy opened in Baker Company, he became their barber. Frances sent him some barber supplies; in return, he mailed her his bayonet – stained, according to family legend, with dried blood.

A few of Burness Jordan's buddies in Hawaii. Photos courtesy of Darrell Jordan.

When the war ended, PFC Jordan found he still had some time to serve. He spent the last months of his enlistment with the 9th MP Battalion, chasing ship-jumping sailors and AWOL Marines around the Hawaiian Islands. Finally, on 9 March 1946, Burness Jordan was released from the Marine Corps. He had just turned twenty-eight years old.

In civilian life, Burness worked for the Service Distributing Company, Randolph Bonding Company (as president and treasurer), and, appropriately, for the Jordan Oil Company. His marriage to Frances stayed strong, and in 1959 they added a pair of twins, Darrell and Carol, to the family.

Burness Jordan died of a heart attack in 1979, at the age of 61. He is buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in his hometown of Asheboro.

Special thanks to Darrell Jordan for all images and biographical information on this page.

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