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At Christmas in 1944, a Marshalltown family worries about sons in uniform

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS — Left: Pvt. Richard W. Jones after bootcamp. Right: Roger Jones, Army Air Forces.

This is the third in a series of occasional articles by Marshalltown native Steve Jones about his family during the second world war.

Eighty years ago, in 1944 at the height of World War II, the Arthur and Lillian Jones family of Marshalltown faced its second Christmas without their two oldest sons. Both Richard and Roger Jones were in the military. But unlike Christmas 1943, when their sons were in training and still in the United States, they were overseas in combat zones.

The Joneses shared their angst with others in their neighborhood. It seemed to them that most of the sons and some of the daughters from their West Madison Street surroundings also were in uniform and far from home.

Richard was a 24-year-old Marshalltown High School graduate who was engaged to a local woman. He was a battle-tested marine stationed in the South Pacific. Richard recalled years later spending Christmas Eve 1944 sitting under a palm tree eating Christmas dinner, trying to keep ants out of his food.

Roger, 20, who had quit school at MHS during his senior year, was in the Army Air Force in Italy. A nose gunner on a four-engine B-24 bomber, he wondered when he would fly his first bombing mission. Bad weather in Europe in December 1944 had grounded him.

“And that wasn’t all bad,” he said.

Richard began 1944 in California in advanced artillery training. He later boarded a crowded Dutch troop ship for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where he was awed by the idyllic tropical scenery.

“This country is beautiful, and I intend to see all I can for as long as I can,” he explained in a postcard to his dad. “Thanks for sending me the T-Rs,” referring to copies of the local newspaper that Art had mailed to him.

Richard, then a corporal, added, “They sure take care of the marines, and I’m proud to be one.”

His next stop was Guadalcanal where he spent six more weeks in combat training. Richard left Guadalcanal for a tiny island unknown to almost all Americans, Peleliu. It would be his first combat.

The marine invasion of Peleliu began September 12, but heavy Japanese fire delayed Richard’s landing by 24 hours. A landing craft took his unit to the edge of the island under constant and heavy Japanese fire. His months of training took over when he waded ashore and quickly found cover on the beach.

Richard immediately noticed the heavy stench in the hot, steamy air from the growing number of casualties from both sides of the battle. During a lull later in the day, while eating a can of K-ration food, he noticed he was surrounded by dead Japanese soldiers. That evening, in an advanced position, he listened to Japanese conversations as near as 100 feet away through the dense vegetation. He realized he was in a new, unimaginable world.

Richard spent most of his time with his artillery unit behind the front lines where the infantry slugged it out with the enemy. The marines fired shell after shell at the well-protected Japanese in their web of protective caves.

“We fired for almost 24 hours straight once,” he said. He was sent to the front line to relieve infantrymen in the 1st Marines, which had taken unusually heavy casualties. It was a prolonged fight on what was called Bloody Nose Ridge. It was combat at its worst.

His 30-plus days on Peleliu included three battles and 20 days in combat. “I am fine and have the situation well in hand,” he wrote to his parents, attempting to calm their fears. Peleliu forever changed Richard. “I landed a boy — left a man,” he later wrote in his illegible handwriting.

Roger had his own challenges in summer 1944 — who would he take out on a date? He had been transferred to the Army Air Force base in Tucson, Ariz., as a gunner on a B-24 Liberator bomber. A typical day started with a training flight, perhaps over the Grand Canyon or to Los Angeles, and ended with a trip to the University of Arizona campus. Because of the war, few males were on campus and dates were easy to get.

“We would go to the women’s dormitory lobby and see who wanted to go out dancing,” he recalled.

Roger was assigned to a 10-man B-24 crew as a nose gunner. He operated twin .50-caliber machine guns to protect the propeller-powered plane from enemy aircraft.

As his training intensified, Roger matured and realized the seriousness of warfare. For once he became a good student and trained hard. His life and the lives of his crew depended on each other knowing their jobs.

Often the training missions involved rendezvousing with other bombers and flying in a tight formation. The bombers flew “wingtip to wingtip” in practice bomb runs that dropped flour bombs on the desert floor.

In November, Roger’s crew went by rail to Topeka, Kansas, for new flight gear then on to Virginia where they boarded a French troop ship for Italy. They were sent to the small town of Venosa, near the Adriatic Sea. The airfield there had been hastily constructed after the German army retreated.

Roger, a corporal, saw a tired, beat-up bomb group in Venosa that had experienced too much war and too many casualties. That evening, in a cold, driving rain, his crew erected their own six-man tent. A senior officer instructed them to find or steal wooden planks for their tent floors. Mud was everywhere.

Bad weather at the end of 1944 had grounded most planes. Roger’s flights were limited to a few short training missions. He used the down time to write home and send letters to a handful of girls in college and at MHS. Like everyone at the Venosa base, Roger missed being at home for Christmas. At least he was in a safe area.

Richard Jones returned to Guadalcanal in fall 1944 for rest and relaxation following the Peleliu battle. He was exhausted, and all he wanted to do was sleep. He was thankful, however, that he was not on the casualty list. Richard received a field promotion to sergeant. He thought he looked too young to have three stripes, so he began smoking cigars to look older.

He spent Thanksgiving and Christmas 1944 on the island with thousands of other U.S. personnel including Marshalltown brothers George and Bob Hartman, who grew up around the corner from the Joneses.

Bob was a radio operator. A few times he and Richard took a jeep with a big battery-operated radio and snuck into the jungle to relax and listen to music. “We listened to Tokyo Rose, who filled the airwaves with propaganda and lies but also played popular music we enjoyed.”

Richard’s training on Guadalcanal continued and would intensify. He knew this was in preparation for the next invasion at a time and place no one yet knew. For the time being, he enjoyed the relative peace of Guadalcanal at Christmas.

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