William Ronald Ragsdale
| NAME: William Ronald Ragsdale | NICKNAME: Bill, Rags | SERVICE NUMBER: 433627 | |||||
| HOME OF RECORD: 703 Craighead Avenue, Nashville, TN | NEXT OF KIN: Wife, Mrs. Mina Eloise Ragsdale | ||||||
| DATE OF BIRTH: 10/22/1920 | SERVICE DATES: 8/25/1942 – 6/28/1944 | DATE OF DEATH: 6/28/1944 (officially) | |||||
| CAMPAIGN | UNIT | MOS | RATE | RESULT | |||
| Roi-Namur | HQ/1/24 | 055 | PFC | Rear Echelon | |||
| Saipan | A/1/24 | 055 | Corporal | MIA | |||
| INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS: Purple Heart | LAST KNOWN RANK: Corporal | ||||||
This biography also appears on MissingMarines.com
William Ragsdale was born in Columbia, Tennessee, on 22 October 1920. Much of his youth was spent in Nashville, living in a crowded house on 8th Avenue South – with his parents William and Harriet; siblings Lois, Henry, and Mary; his uncle James Rogers and great-aunt Lois Rogers. William Senior worked as a railroad fireman, and little Bill grew up with a fascination for machinery. Despite his somewhat gangly appearance – he eventually stood six feet, two inches tall, but tipped scales at just 160 pounds – Bill was also quite athletic, playing baseball, softball, and basketball. He was reputed to be an exceptional swimmer, too, and competed on a Nashville city swim team for three years running.
Ragsdale graduated from Nashville’s Central High School in 1939, with course credits in algebra, geometry, typing, and bookkeeping to his credit. He also took wood shop and mechanical drawing – which he evidently hoped to turn into a career, for he enrolled at Vanderbilt University in 1940 to study drawing. He left after only four months, however, and took a job with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad as a locomotive mechanic. In the L&N machine shop, Bill Ragsdale could tinker to his heart’s content as defective or damaged train components crossed his work bench. He learned to fix broken parts and worked his way up to installing them on the locomotives themselves.[1] At home, he could talk shop with his father: William Senior was an L&N engineer.
Of course, Bill had interests outside of work – and chief among them was Miss Mina Eloise Friedli. Although Eloise and Bill went to different high schools (she was graduated from West End High), their homes were less than a mile apart, and they likely met at social functions around the neighborhood. Their friendship grew into romance, and by late 1941 they were thinking about a wedding.
In January 1942, as the United States struggled to find its wartime footing, Bill Ragsdale’s life was at a decided high point. He earned a promotion at L&N Railroad, leaving the machine shop to become a fireman – in addition to a pay raise, Bill got to ride the rails from Nashville to St. Louis, New Orleans, and Atlanta. And on 24 January, he and Eloise were married in a small ceremony at South End Methodist Church, surrounded by family and close friends. They planned a brief honeymoon before settling into a home of their own at 1218 Seventeenth Street South.[2] Rings were exchanged along with vows, and Bill treasured the engraving on his gold band: “Bill from Eloise.”
Tragedy soon followed joy. On 1 February 1942, William Senior collapsed on the job after straining to pull a locomotive throttle. He was hospitalized with a hernia so severe that surgeons had to operate on his intestines, and finally died after two weeks of struggle.[3] Bill must have returned to work at the railroad a somewhat subdued young man with a healthy appreciation for all the dangers of his job. He had something else to occupy his mind, too. On 16 February 1942 – the day his father died – Bill Ragsdale registered with Selective Service.
Bill kept his job at the railroad for several more months before making a monumental decision. On 25 August 1942, he walked into a Nashville recruiting office and volunteered for service in the Marine Corps Reserve. He likely expected a train trip to Yemassee, South Carolina and training at Parris Island – but instead was shipped to a new installation at New River, North Carolina for duty with the 6th Separate Recruit Battalion. Bill’s education, especially his typing courses, were noted by classification officers, and in October 1942 he was posted to the First Separate Battalion (Reinforced), a brand-new experimental unit then forming at New River.
Private Ragsdale soon found a home in the battalion’s Company A, where he worked in the skipper’s office. As a clerk for Captain Irving Schechter, Ragsdale had a finger on the pulse of the company’s training activities and possible movements; he was also in charge of maintaining the muster roll and keeping the pay records. The tall Tennessean quickly became a familiar face to all in the company and was christened “Rags” by his new buddies.[4] His genial nature made him a popular figure around camp – ” a great guy,” in the words of fellow clerk Robert Johnston.[5]
After a few months at New River, the First Separate Battalion was informed that their experimental training was no longer required.[6] They crossed the country to Camp Pendleton, California, and were redesignated as the First Battalion, 24th Marines. Ragsdale trained at Pendleton from March to December 1943, mixing office work and record keeping with field exercises and conditioning hikes. His clerical work stood out, and in the fall of 1943 Lieutenant Colonel Aquilla J. Dyess plucked Ragsdale out of Able Company to work at battalion headquarters. Dyess, a notorious hard-charger, pushed his men hard to ready them for combat as 1943 drew to a close.
Ragsdale was likely as anxious to get into the fight as any Marine in the battalion. However, he would have to wait for his chance. When the 24th Marines boarded transports in January 1944 – a trip that would land them directly in combat in the Marshall Islands – Ragsdale and a handful of other men were detailed to stay behind at Camp Pendleton. They were tasked with wrapping up the battalion’s business in California and helping move all records and belongings to a new location: Camp Maui, in the territory of Hawaii. The camp was little more than an open field when the rear echelon arrived, and only partially built by the time the combat units arrived from the successful Operation Flintlock. Spring months were spent in camp construction and cleanup, training replacements, and preparing for the next invasion. Ragsdale also celebrated a promotion to corporal on 22 March 1944.
Operation Forager, the planned conquest of the Mariana Islands, began on 15 June 1944 with the amphibious assault on Saipan. Ragsdale and BLT 1-24 came ashore late in the day, marched through the shattered town of Charan Kanoa, and took up positions near a road junction for the night. They were shelled heavily that night and the next morning; one of Ragsdale’s fellow clerks, Corporal Robert L. Hunget, was killed, along with the new battalion commander Lt. Colonel Maynard C. Schultz. It was a rough introduction to the realities of combat – and worse was to come. Before the end of the battle, more than 350 members of BLT 1-24 would be wounded, and 83 killed in action.
The total of dead ultimately increased by two: PFC Robert G. Thompson and Bill Ragsdale.
It is not known for certain exactly when and how Ragsdale met his end. The battalion muster roll – a document which Ragsdale himself had experience maintaining – reported him as missing in action on the morning of 23 June 1944. On the previous day, BLT 1-24 was ambushed on the slopes of Hill 600, and after a fierce late afternoon fight was forced to withdraw 200 yards while under fire. “A perilous and strength-sapping day,” in the words of Frederic A. Stott, costing the battalion over fifty casualties.[7] Ragsdale might easily have become separated from his unit in the chaos, or hit and left behind.
However, Marine Corps casualty reports tell a different story. Officially, Ragsdale is noted as missing as of 28 June 1944 – the day BLT 1-24 returned to the front lines after a few days of much-needed rest. Combat was not quite so heavy, but the battalion still suffered three killed and ten wounded, and spent an uncomfortable night with one flank dangling “in the air” beside a Japanese-occupied hill.
Ragsdale’s disappearance mystified his friends, too. Robert Johnston had a habit of checking in with “Rags” every morning; one day, he found the foxhole empty. “It was the weirdest thing,” he said in 2015. “One morning we went looking for him, and he was gone. We figured he went off to fight the war by himself or something. For years at reunions, someone would ask ‘Whatever happened to Bill Ragsdale’? He just took off someplace and we never saw him again.”
So complete was the mystery that Johnston was not aware of Ragsdale’s death until many decades after the war.[8]
News that Bill was missing hit Nashville in the fall of 1944. Eloise tried to stay optimistic, but her hopes would have dimmed as the months passed. Finally, in May 1945, her dreams of a long life with Bill were crushed by an official Finding of Death.
Corporal William Ronald Ragsdale, 433627, was originally reported wounded in action and evacuated from Saipan, Marianas Islands, on 28 June 1944. When a search of all medical facilities failed to locate him, he was changed to missing in action and subsequently to “declared dead” upon receipt of the following recommendation from Division Commander: “The possibility of [his] having been captured is so remote that this Headquarters recommends official determination of death.”[9]
A memorial service was held at South End Methodist Church, where Bill and Eloise were married just three years before. She would eventually move on with her life, remarry, and raise a family. Towards the end of her life, Eloise became curious about what became of Bill, and set about trying to locate his grave. She passed away in 2008, without learning the rest of the story.
On 6 July 1944, the remains of an American serviceman were found somewhere on Saipan. The body had no means of identification and was rapidly decomposing past the point of recognition; observers could not even determine his branch of service. He was brought to the nearest cemetery – run by the 27th Infantry Division – and wrapped in a blanket for burial. A clerk filled out the requisite Graves Registration Form #1 (“Report of Interment”) noting the location as Grave 441, Row 2, Grave 2. He also took note of a gold wedding band around the man’s finger, with the inscription “Bill from Eloise” still legible. The ring was placed in a Red Cross bag and buried with the dead man.
This body, designated as “X-6,” was exhumed in 1948 and transported to the Army Graves Registration Service Mausoleum in Manila. Anthropologists carefully charted the man’s teeth, which were heavily filled, and noted remnants of light brown hair. The wedding ring was also examined, but no connections to identity could be definitively drawn. Finally, in February 1950, the dead man was laid to rest in Fort William McKinley Cemetery, Manila.[10]
His case was closed for the next 72 years.
In the spring of 2022, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency released the following statement:
After thorough historical research, it was determined that X-6 could likely be identified. On Jan. 15, 2020, Unknown X-6 was disinterred and sent to the DPAA Laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, for analysis.
To identify Ragsdale’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
[1] William Ronald Ragsdale, Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD.
[2] “Miss Friedli, Mr. Ragsdale To Be Married,” The Nashville Banner (24 January 1942).
[3] William R. Ragsdale Senior, Certificate of Death.
[4] Interview with George A. Smith, 2009.
[5] Interview with Robert Johnston, 2015.
[6] The short-lived Separate Battalions were conceived as a self-sustaining commando force, based on the Raider model but with built-in pack howitzer batteries and additional support structures. They were intended to land on remote beachheads and conduct independent long-term operations without requiring a large fleet in support. The concept was scrapped in early 1943.
[7] “Saipan Under Fire” (Andover: Frederic Stott, 1945), 10.
[8] Johnston interview 2015.
[9] Ragsdale OMPF
[10] “Unknown X-6, 27th Division Cemetery, Saipan,” Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD.