He was a Texan, born and raised in Houston, a graduate of Jefferson Davis High School. He was an early volunteer who enlisted in January of 1942, still angry about Pearl Harbor, anxious to get overseas. He fought the Japanese in the Solomon Islands until laid low – not by bullets or bombs but the bite of a tiny mosquito. So Willie was sent from the Second Marines for treatment back in the States.

Willie hated the hospital and wanted to leave; he took off in July ’43, but thought better of flight and returned to the ranks. He stood guard at Terminal Island and NAS Astoria, Oregon as the tide turned in the Pacific. The Marines kept advancing, and every advance cost more men. So back Willie went to the Fleet Marine Force.

In September 1944, he arrived at Camp Maui and reported to the First Battalion, 24th Marines. He knew how the heavy mortars worked, so naturally became a mortarman. Willie was still restless; he picked a fight, hurt a man, and went to the brig once again. But he knew his business and once on Iwo, fought only against the Japanese.

So Willie came to the very end of the battle, manning a little fortress made of stones, an outpost at the end of the line. He burrowed in with three other Marines, fixing the distance to a small rocky path in his mind as the light faded. Soon it was pitch black. The four buddies prayed and cursed for star shells, but the Navy did not oblige. Darkness played tricks and worries raced through their minds. Are they sneaking up on us? How many are there? How close are they? Whenever the tension got too much, they’d reach for a grenade. Their fort was well-stocked – two 24-count cases of grenades – and so they could be profligate, to some degree, pulling pins and pitching the bombs over the stone wall. It was too dark to aim but it didn’t matter; the grenades would roll down the path and explode. Maybe they found a mark, or maybe not.

And then the Japanese threw a few back. Sometimes the missiles bounced off the rock wall and rolled back down the hill; other times they sailed overhead and burst somewhere behind. Finally, one went off a little closer than the rest, and Willie began to wheeze.

“We knew he was hit,” said PFC John C. Pope, “but we couldn’t find where in the dark. We tried to ease his pain, but we could do nothing. As the night wore on he got worse, and began talking out of his head to his mother between groans and pleas for help.”

The last night of combat was darkness and fear, occasional explosions and curses, and the hoarse crying of Willie who didn’t want to die. He fell still just before dawn on 17 March; his buddies didn’t need daylight to know that he was gone. “We discovered a small hole in his chest,” Pope concluded. “Apparently a piece of shrapnel had punctured one of his lungs and done other damage. Our corpsman said he probably drowned.”[1]

Willie Cordon‘s last moments burned in the minds of the three survivors. One man couldn’t let it go. He was one of Pope’s oldest friends, a fellow Georgian, member of the “Cracker Platoon” that trained together at Parris Island, a veteran of four terrible campaigns. Long experience taught him how to tamp down his emotions, but the memories never went away. Even the eventual end of the war brought no peace, and the man eventually suffered a breakdown, tormented by Willie’s dying cries.[2]