RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Weary Warrior I:
T. E. Underwood
The life of Thomas Ellis Underwood, from aspiring angler to combat Marine.
This article incorporates content from an earlier series, “Underwood v. Klonis,” first posted to 1stbattalion24thmarines.com in May 2014.
Author’s Note: This is the first section of a three-part series that aims to re-establish the identity of W. Eugene Smith’s “Weary Warrior” as Thomas Ellis Underwood of St. Petersburg, Florida, who served with Company B, First Battalion, 24th Marines in the battle of Saipan. In this installment, we will get to know “Ellis” and his family, as well as his experiences as a combat Marine in three major battles – and, finally, his death in action on Iwo Jima.
Who was Ellis Underwood?
Thomas Ellis Underwood – just “Ellis” to his family – was born in Parker, Florida on 16 May 1922.
He was a late addition to the family of George Alpheus and Cora (Crosson) Underwood, following Iva (1909), John (1911), Hazel (1913), and George Washington “Joe” Underwood (1915); only Alpheus Edison Underwood (1924) arrived later.[1] In 1925, the Underwoods relocated from Bay County to Pinellas and settled in St. Petersburg.
The Underwoods were a fairly typical blue-collar family of the era; George supported his family by working as a mechanic, while Cora kept the house. Iva married a man named John Wagner and moved to Texas, but came home a widow in 1931, bringing her daughter Isabelle. Hazel married in 1933 and moved across town. For the Underwood boys, employment took precedence over education; John and Joe averaged a year or two of high school apiece before going to work, and Ellis was not far behind them. Fortunately, he found a job that neatly meshed with his favorite hobby.[2]
Even in the Depression years, Florida was a haven for recreational fishermen and professional anglers, and St. Petersburg – located conveniently between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico – was a sportsman’s Mecca. Bait and tackle businesses sprung up to cater to the demand. One of the most popular was the Florida Fishing Tackle Manufacturing Company, founded in 1923 and acquired in the 1930s by brothers Jack, Carl, and B. T. Reynolds. In the late 1930s, the shop gained fame for their handmade Barracuda brand lures, which came in distinctively printed boxes. Soon, the Reynolds brothers were offering a complete line of equipment and expanded their operation to match. They increased their employee base, too; one of their 1940 hires was Ellis Underwood.
Eighteen-year-old Ellis made the respectable sum of $18 per week toiling over custom-built machinery making fishing rods and winding block line. His home was five miles from the factory, but only one mile from some of the best fishing in Tampa Bay. Joe also worked for Florida Fishing Tackle, and one can imagine the Underwood brothers on a day off from the factory, contemplatively casting their lures.[3]
By the summer of 1941, Thomas Ellis Underwood was a grown man. Although not exceptionally tall or brawny (he stood 5’9” and tipped the scales at 140 pounds), he was quite athletic and enjoyed team sports like baseball, softball, football, basketball, and boxing. When he wasn’t fishing, Ellis spent his leisure time swimming, hunting, or horseback riding. His short black hair offset a pair of piercing blue eyes set in a ruddy face, tanned by the Florida sun.[4]
Yet there were clouds on the horizon. The first hint of the storm that would envelop the family arrived in August 1941, when George Washington Underwood resigned from his job at the tackle factory and enlisted in the U.S. Army.[5]
Four months later, the United States was at war.
Answering The Call
The Underwood clan was soon heavily involved in the war effort. Joe quickly enlisted in the Army, while John Underwood took a job at the Tampa shipyards, alongside his brother-in-law J. G. Goss.[6] Ellis stayed on at the tackle factory for several months, winding rods at his machine as the rest of the country wound up for global conflict. In June, he registered for Selective Service and listed his employer as Sheffield Plumbing, but this job would not last long.
In October 1942, Ellis and Alpheus made their way to Orlando, parting ways at the recruitment office. Alpheus stood in line to speak to a Navy recruiter while Ellis joined the group waiting for the United States Marine Corps.[7] He was poked and examined, fingerprinted and questioned, sworn in, and told to remember his service number (486672). Within days, he was on his way to Parris Island.
One year later, PFC Underwood was a proud member of Company B, First Battalion, 24th Marines – part of the brand new Fourth Marine Division. He could march for miles, live outdoors without complaint, maneuver a rubber boat in heavy surf, camouflage a position, lead a fire team, and had appeared as an extra in the Hollywood feature film Guadalcanal Diary – “like the real thing,” he wrote to his parents, though he was glad he only had to shoot the amphibious landing scene once.[8] He was capable with a rifle, dangerous with a carbine, and deadly with a bayonet.[9] His disciplinary record was clean (he carried three copies of the New Testament in his pack), as was his health (although he also brought along a pair of eyeglasses). He was, by any standard, an outstanding young Marine and ready to be tried in combat.
Photo from the 24th Marines "Red Book," 1943.
PFC Underwood first saw combat on the island of Namur; his company faced a Japanese banzai attack at dawn on 2 February 1944. No accounts of his actions in this fight are known to survive, but heavy casualties in his company – and a Corps-wide reorganization – meant many vacancies on the promotion list.[10] PFC Underwood was examined for promotion and re-graded with the MOS of 653 (squad leader) at Camp Maui on 1 April 1944. Although he lacked the second stripe of a corporal, Underwood could now lead a small Marine unit – probably a fire team of four – in combat. This was his role when he landed on Saipan; by the time he encountered the photographers on 8 July, he led a squad. And he was doing it well; on 18 July, he received his corporal’s stripes and a commendation from his division commander, General Clifton Cates.
During the brief interlude between Saipan and Tinian, Ellis sent a V-Mail off to his parents in St. Pete. “Just a few lines to let you know that I’m okeh,” he scribbled. “I know you have been looking for a letter from me for some time, but I haven’t had much chance to write until now. I’m on Saipan and have been since the first day of the invasion!” Although admitting that battle “was plenty tough and the fighting was rugged,” Ellis assured his parents that “it is pretty well mopped up now. In fact, I suppose you people at home know more about what is going on than I do.”[11]
Underwood was not far wrong in his assessment. George and Cora – and most subscribers of the St. Petersburg Times – knew where he was. Stanley Troutman’s photograph of Ellis drinking from the canteen ran on 24 July 1944. Coincidentally, on the very same day, Corporal Underwood was making his third combat landing on the island of Tinian. Fighting for this island lasted just over a week; at the battle’s end, Ellis joined the Baker Company survivors for a “gung-ho” photograph. Shirtless, bearded, and grinning, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a Japanese flag in his hands, Ellis Underwood looked every inch a Marine warrior.
Baker Company, First Battalion, 24th Marines on Tinian, 5 August 1944.
Photograph and identifications courtesy of veteran John F. Nash.
Ellis spent the winter at Camp Maui with the rest of the 4th Marine Division. Few specifics survive about this period in his life. Maui was rainy at this time of year, but there were nightly movies and a weekly chance for liberty call in one of the small towns around the camp. A few lucky Marines received multi-day passes and ventured over to Pearl Harbor for a bit more boisterous entertainment. As a veteran NCO, Ellis helped train the influx of new men who arrived to replace battle casualties. He continued to show promise as a leader; in November, he passed the test for a sergeant’s rating, but there were already enough sergeants in Baker Company, and his promotion had to wait.
As 1944 turned into 1945, training increased in complexity and intensity. More emphasis was placed on demolition work and knocking out mock bunkers. Rumors about another invasion were swirling, and old hands like Underwood scarcely needed an official word to be ready for trouble. Whatever lay ahead would not be pretty.
Deeply Regret To Inform You...
In St. Petersburg, George and Cora Underwood anxiously followed the news from the Pacific.
They had last seen Ellis in February of 1943; two years later, the newspapers were carrying reports of a major battle at a place called Iwo Jima. The Underwoods knew that Ellis’s regiment was involved in the fighting, and as veteran parents, they knew that he would be too busy to write for a little while. February turned into March; the battle continued with unabated and unprecedented fury, and every day the newspapers told of heavy casualties. Still, George and Cora waited for Ellis’s customary letter letting them know he was “okeh.” The battle ended. The war moved on. And there was nothing from Ellis in the mailbox.
Finally, on 27 March, a letter arrived for the Underwoods. The return address was a Marine Corps unit, but it wasn’t from their son. An unfamiliar Major was writing to inform them that Ellis had been wounded in action, but returned to duty – “which indicates that his injuries were not serious.” The major hoped that Ellis would “communicate at his earliest opportunity” and offered assurances that further reports would be forwarded without delay.[13]
We can only guess at George and Cora’s reaction to this news. Certainly, they were relieved that Ellis hadn’t been seriously hurt and may have assumed that his lack of communication was due to his injury. They awaited the promised letter “at his earliest opportunity.”
It never came. Two days later, a Western Union telegram crushed the family’s hopes.
Ellis had indeed been wounded in action on Iwo Jima. As his company fought through the area around to Quarry, something dealt him a heavy blow on the head, raising a nasty contusion.[14] He was evacuated to the battalion aid station, then to the beach, and ultimately to one of the transports offshore. Corporal Underwood returned to duty a few days later as his company rested in reserve, sporting an ugly bruise but otherwise fit for action. He was issued another carbine and took command of a squad that probably contained more than a few raw replacements. On the first day of March, First Battalion attacked Iwo’s “Meat Grinder” complex, a hellish jumble of hills, gullies, and crags with names like “Hill 382,” “Turkey Knob,” and “The Amphitheater.” Baker Company waited in supporting positions for two days before taking over the Turkey Knob front from an exhausted Charlie Company. They lost heavily on 3 March and realized the next day would be more of the same.
As Baker Company attempted to advance on D-plus-13, a fortified position manned by determined Japanese troops opened fire, stopping the forward movement. Corporal Underwood took charge of the situation, deploying his under-strength squad for an attack on the enemy. As he did, a Japanese bullet struck and shattered his carbine in his hands. “Undaunted by this narrow escape, he picked up a Browning Automatic Rifle and continued to lead his men in a successful assault,” recalled a battalion officer.[15] This valorous act would be his last. A shell fragment tore into his back, and Thomas Ellis Underwood’s life ended on 4 March 1945. He was twenty-two years old.[16]
A few days after his death, Underwood was buried in Row 29, Grave 1406 of the Fourth Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima. His personal effects were carefully cataloged and sent to his parents.
Over the next year, the Underwoods received a series of letters from the Marine Corps, informing them of the decorations their son had earned: the Victory Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the Purple Heart (with Gold Star; one for each Iwo wound) and the Bronze Star with Combat V Device for his valor on Iwo Jima. His Saipan photograph ran once more in the St. Petersburg Times.
Cora Underwood received her son’s decorations and personal belongings, but she never really recovered from his death. She died in December 1946, at the age of sixty, and was buried in St. Petersburg’s Sunnyside Cemetery. Two years later, her boy Ellis was brought back from Iwo Jima and laid to rest nearby. In the next two decades, Joe, George, and Hazel joined them in a growing family plot; Iva was buried there, too, after her death in 2000.
Ellis and his immediate family are gone – but his legacy remains.
Continue Reading
Introduction
Part III
Footnotes
1. A third Underwood daughter, Cora Evelyn Underwood, was born in 1917 but died in infancy.
2. Accounts differ as to Ellis’s level of education. A 1948 newspaper article stated he “was graduated from SPHS in June 1942,” but he does not appear in the St. Petersburg High School yearbooks after 1939. His Marine Corps personnel file indicates that he completed two years of high school and left in 1940.
3. The few surviving extracts of Ellis’s wartime letters contain numerous references to fishing and how much he missed catching trout at “the Pass.”
4. Thomas Ellis Underwood, Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD.
5. George served from 16 August 1941 to 3 January 3 1946, primarily with the 1047th Engineer Gas Generating Detachment.
6. Goss was married to Hazel Underwood.
7. Alpheus served on the harbor tug USS Tuscarora for the duration of the war.
8. Dottie Moe, “The Bugle Call, The Tampa Bay Times (5 February 1944).
9. According to his service record, Ellis shot 231 on the New River rifle range – below the score needed to qualify as a marksman. However, in subsequent training he rated as “familiar” with the M1 carbine and “Expert” with the bayonet.
10. It is possible that Underwood was serving as an assistant BAR gunner on Namur. Underwood had the MOS 746 (automatic rifleman) on the battalion’s muster roll for February 1944. Although his records don’t show any specific training with the notoriously complicated Browning Automatic Rifle, subsequent events on Iwo Jima indicate that he was familiar with the weapon.
11. Anonymous, “More News From Saipan,” The Tampa Bay Times (7 August 1944).
12. Anonymous, “Marines Doing Quick Job Routing Japs In Pacific, But Pause For Souvenirs,” The Tampa Bay Times (17 September 1944). While the photograph was taken on 8 July and Saipan was officially “secure” on 9 July, Underwood’s battalion had to do a final combat patrol on the island and did not cease combat operations until 14 July – so his estimation of six days is correct.
13. Letter from Major F. Belton, USMC, to George and Cora Underwood, 27 March 1945. Copy in Underwood OMPF.
14. The exact date of this wound is unknown. The February 1945 muster roll for First Battalion, 24th Marines states that Underwood was wounded and evacuated on 22 February, and was sick aboard the USS Hocking (APA-121) for the rest of the month, returning to duty on 1 March. A casualty report from the USS Lenawee (APA-195) in Underwood’s Official Military Personnel File states that he was received aboard on 25 February, and returned to shore on 26 February. (Lenawee departed Iwo Jima on 27 February.) While either date is plausible – Baker Company was involved in heavy combat on both 22 and 25 February – Underwood’s OMPF uses the later date for his Purple Heart.
15. This statement formed the basis for Underwood’s eventual Bronze Star Medal citation.
16. Underwood’s USMC casualty card gives his cause of death as “Wound, Fragment, Shell, Back.”