Woodrow Barfield
| NAME: Woodrow Barfield | NICKNAME: — | SERVICE NUMBER: 299267 | |||||
| HOME OF RECORD: 2220 Lee Street, Hollywood, FL | NEXT OF KIN: Father, Mr. Randolph “R. D.” Barfield | ||||||
| DATE OF BIRTH: 12/24/1920 | SERVICE DATES: 10-15/1940 – 2/27/1968 | DATE OF DEATH: 5/14/2003 | |||||
| CAMPAIGN | UNIT | MOS | RATE | RESULT | |||
| Roi-Namur | D/1/24 | 651 | Sergeant | ||||
| Saipan | HQ/1/24 | 651 | Sergeant | ||||
| Tinian | HQ/1/24 | 651 | Sergeant | ||||
| Iwo Jima | 4th Amphibian Truck Company | 927 | Sergeant | ||||
| INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS: — | LAST KNOWN RANK: Sergeant (WWII) Sergeant Major (Retirement) | ||||||
Woodrow Patterson was born in Gurley, Alabama, on Christmas Eve of 1920. He was the second of three children born to George Alva Patterson and Minnie Mae Martin, but the only one to survive past early childhood. The Pattersons split in the 1920s; Minnie re-married to Randolph Barfield, and gave birth to a daughter, Marjorie, in 1928. Shortly after Marjorie arrived, the family relocated to Florida and settled in the small town of Hollywood, just outside of Fort Lauderdale. At some point in the 1930s, Woodrow adopted his stepfather’s surname.
Aside from a minor political imbroglio in 1932 – Randolph and Minnie’s names appeared, and then disappeared, from a recall petition levied against the town’s mayor – the Barfields passed a seemingly quiet, ordinary life in Hollywood. Woodrow attended school in Hollywood and South Broward until he turned fifteen, then went to work – first as a newsboy for the Hollywood Sun-Tattler, and then as a truck driver. He volunteered for the Marine Corps on 15 October 1940 and, like thousands of young men before him, was packed off to boot camp at Parris Island. It took two months to transform the nineteen-year-old trucker into a Marine; with the Eagle, Globe and Anchor on his collar and his sharpshooter’s badge on his chest, Private Barfield reported to the Marine Barracks at Quantico in December, 1940. Four months later, he was on duty with the Marine Detachment at Port of Spain, Trinidad – a post he would hold for more than a year.
Barfield was a private first class when Pearl Harbor was attacked; in early 1942 he was advanced in rank to corporal, and in the late summer received his third stripe as a sergeant. Though the upward mobility was a benefit, Trinidad was nowhere near the seat of war against the Germans or the Japanese, and as the legend of leatherneck prowess in the Pacific grew, many men in rear-echelon encampments began clamoring for transfers. Barfield may have been one of these, though his progress towards combat was slow – in October 1942 he joined the guards at the Naval Air Station in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and another five or six months would pass before he joined an outfit destined for the Pacific.
Sergeant Barfield’s new assignment was to Company D, First Battalion, 24th Marines, a heavy weapons company in an infantry battalion; during training at Camp Joseph H. Pendleton in San Diego, he learned the role of heavy mortar section leader. In combat, Barfield would directly oversee the actions of two squads, each equipped with an 81mm mortar, on top of providing assistance to the section officer, Second Lieutenant Charles R. Bechtol.
The invasion of Namur, Barfield’s first exposure to enemy fire, was something of a letdown for the hard-chargers in the mortar section. The heavy weapons were difficult to transport and time-consuming to deploy, and as such did not land until several hours after the assault units. By the time the ammunition was unpacked, the tubes sighted in, and radio communication to headquarters established, it was too dark for Barfield’s men to fire safely. They were slightly mollified with a brief bombardment of enemy lines the following morning, but the battle was over within hours. Several months were spent training at Camp Maui, during which time Barfield’s Company D was disbanded and reassigned to battalion headquarters.
Sergeant Barfield had a very different experience in his regiment’s next engagement on Saipan. For the landing on 15 June 1944; he was placed in command of a boat group; within two days, both of the platoon’s officers – 1Lt. Waldo C. Lincoln and 1Lt. James R. Donovan – were wounded and evacuated. Leadership devolved onto the senior NCOs, and some responded to the task better than others.
In the brief interlude between the battles for Saipan and Tinian, Captain George D. Webster was charged with drawing up a list of promotions. He planned to offer a commission to one of the mortar section sergeants, but decided to ask some of the enlisted men for their opinions on the matter. One of the men he interviewed, PFC John C. Pope, gave a blunt assessment of the leadership qualities he’d witnessed under fire:
A lesser-ranking sergeant named Barfield saw the situation, stepped up, and started to shout orders in a voice none of us had ever heard from him before. Instantly every man responded and we were a bunch of fighting Marines. We turned the enemy back into a sugar cane field from which they had just emerged.
(Although Pope’s testimony did not result in a commission for Woodrow Barfield, he noted with satisfaction that the other sergeant did not receive one either.)
Sergeant Barfield fought one more campaign with the mortar section – Tinian, from late July to early August 1944 – and returned with the 4th Marine Division to Camp Maui. Later in the fall, Barfield and seven other Marines received orders transferring them to the 4th Amphibian Truck Company. He packed his seabags, bade farewell to his buddies in the mortar section, and reported to his new outfit on 1 November 1944. Barfield served with the truck company during the battle for Iwo Jima, and ultimately through the end of the war.
Woodrow returned home to Hollywood in 1945, but ultimately decided to make the Marine Corps his career. He served as a DI at Parris Island, taught advanced infantry courses at Quantico, went to Korea with the Fifth Marines, and attained the rank of sergeant major before retiring in 1968 – a full 28 years in uniform. He married Mary Irene Randall in 1948; the two raised four children of their own, and stayed together for fifty-five years – 43 of which were spent in Oceanside, California.
Complications from COPD finally led to Woodrow’s death on 14 May 2003; he was survived by Irene Barfield, their four children, eleven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. He is buried in Eternal Hills Memorial Park, Oceanside, California.