Bill Crane was 17 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He tried to join the Marine Corps the next day, but his father told him to wait. His older brother had joined the Army Air Corps that day, and his father wanted to be sure his second son was not just getting carried along; he should make his own decision. On 5 December 1942, his 18th birthday, Crane did just that.1
He finished boot camp at the recruit depot outside San Diego, California, then went to communication school for six weeks before shipping out with the newly constituted Fourth Marine Division on New Year's Eve, 1943, headed for some of the toughest combat in the Pacific War.
On 13 January 1944, he and his unit left Hawaii for Roi-Namur, Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. There, during his first skirmish on 1 February, a "rather large piece of shrapnel" struck the helmet and right shoulder of the green radio linesman and knocked him unconscious.2 He woke up as corpsmen were putting him on a stretcher. All he remembers is that "it looked as if it was dark."3 Later he heard he had been hit by flying debris from a Japanese block house full of torpedo heads that had been blown up by a Marine demolition squad.
Sent back to Maui, Crane made a quick recovery. Within a couple of weeks he was joined by the rest of his unit, then transferred to the Regimental Weapons Company, 24th Marines, the regiment commanded by Colonel (later Major General) Franklin A. Hart. Training was intense for their next operation: the invasion of Saipan in the Marianas. This time Crane and his buddies knew their objective well ahead of time. Tuning in to Tokyo Rose on a jeep radio, the Marines on Maui learned they were going to land on Saipan, and on exactly which beaches.
During training, Captain Loreen A. O. Nelson, career Marine, "old China hand," and the Regimental Weapons Company's executive officer, asked Private First Class Crane if he would take the job of scout and liaison for the newly appointed company commander, Major Roger G. B. Broome. Crane agreed, though he knew the assignment could be dangerous. Later, he acknowledged that while Broome cut little slack for his men, neither did he spare himself. He once told Crane that he would never send him on any assignment he would not accept himself, and Crane had reason to remember that.
On 15 June 1944, after what he described as "quite a number of days on water," Crane landed on Saipan with the rest of the company in LCMs (landing craft medium), each carrying one half-track as well as personnel.4 The 37-mm gun platoons were attached to their respective battalions, while the half-tracks and headquarters sections remained under company control.5 The Japanese had the Marines "zeroed in with their guns from back in the mountains," but fortunately, the barge Crane was in was not hit, although he saw many others that were.6 The shelling from the pre-registered Japanese mortars was intense, even though the 24th Marines were part of a feint landing which one Marine Corps account notes had "not really fooled" the enemy who "did not rush reinforcements to that area."7 Moving about 300 yards inland, Crane's platoon had to cross a large drainage ditch made even more of an obstacle by the ground piled up on the far side. Japanese antiaircraft guns had targeted the only available bridge. By the time Crane arrived, the ditch was littered with dead and dying Marines, most hit by shrapnel.
Following the major's instructions, Crane found a low spot on the far side of the ditch where a half-track, concealed from the heights above, could offer covering fire. By getting up to full speed the half-track made it across to Crane's location and eventually knocked out enough targets so the rest of the men could move forward.
A few days later, quite a bit farther inland by then, Broome asked communications to run a line to the next knoll, about 300 yards ahead. Night was approaching, and the communications man was a close friend of Crane's, so Crane asked the major for permission to go with him. He got the okay because, as the major said, "they tell me there is nothing in front of us." The two friends laid the line to the top of a hill and a demolished shack, where they found whole boxes of canned goods scattered about. Secure in the knowledge that they were in no danger, they quickly stuffed their dungaree jackets before calling in to report the line complete. "Get the hell out of there and proceed with extreme care," came the response. They had been given wrong information, and they were in fact 100 yards behind enemy lines. "We made it back without encounter," recalls Crane, "but we was two scared rabbits!"8
One of the most difficult aspects of the Saipan campaign for many Marines was the presence of civilians, native islanders as well as Japanese.9 The day after the line-laying incident, Crane was heading into a clearing, about 400 yards across, behind tanks and half-tracks. When one of the tanks fired a shell at a couple of small buildings at the edge of the trees, children and women came running out. Before he stopped to think, Crane sprinted forward, afraid they might get hit. They cowered, until Crane ran up and saw they were not Japanese but islanders of Spanish descent. The young Texan surprised them by reassuring them in their native tongue.
On 8 July, near the end of the struggle for the island, Broome told Crane the two of them were going to scout ahead of the main forces. Crane realized something was up, but he later recalled that when Broome "was close behind, I had a strange feeling of security."10
They had gone only a couple hundred yards when Captain Nelson joined them. At first Broome ordered the captain back, but finally, according to Crane, he was convinced that the company was in good hands, so the three of them continued on together. Crawling along the plateau, concealed in long grass, they reached the edge of a ravine. Looking across the ravine about 40 yards and down about 30, they saw two caves "both of them containing an undeterminable number of Japanese."11 The major and the captain were debating whether to go in immediately or to call for help, when Crane saw one of the Japanese take aim with his rifle. Calling out that it was "too late now," Crane shot the enemy rifleman, and a brief firefight ensued. Ultimately, eight or nine Japanese emerged from the caves with their hands in the air.12 The major said "Let's go get 'em," and posted Nelson near the top of the ravine. They disarmed and searched each of the Japanese and sent them back up the trail to Nelson who dispatched them to the rear. But just as the last prisoner went over the top "All hell broke loose. Seems like they were shooting from every direction."13
Nelson took the first hit. Broome and Crane carried him back up the trail to a ledge where Gunnery Sergeant William O. Koontz and the men were just arriving. The major told Koontz to carry the badly wounded captain out, which he did. Just at that moment Broome fell wounded over the ledge, tumbling 30 feet to the bottom of the ravine. Crane followed, "Scooting, tumbling, and shooting all the way down." Putting the last clip in his carbine he heaved the major, "a big man weighing close to 200 pounds,"14 over his shoulder. Firing blindly behind him, his carbine grasped like a pistol, Crane carried the major back up the trail. But just as they got to the top, "the light went out," and they both fell to the bottom of the ravine again.15
Crane does not know how long he was out, but when he came to, blood was pouring down his face, he could not see, and the Japanese were still keeping up a furious fire all around them. He could hear the major moaning and told him they would have to play dead for a while until help arrived. Finally, hearing return fire from the ledge above, Crane started crawling up, some of his sight returning on the way. At the top, Koontz hauled him up, and Crane told him that the major was badly hit and could not move. Koontz put sulfa drugs on Crane's head wound and gave him a shot of morphine.
That is the last the young Texan ever knew about Major Broome, Captain Nelson, Sergeant Koontz, and the rest of the regimental weapons company. He vaguely remembers waking up in a stretcher on a jeep, but he did not wake again until he found himself in a hospital ship on his way to New Caledonia.
Sergeant Koontz, meanwhile, braving heavy enemy fire, made his way to Broome. Realizing how exposed they were and how hard it would be to move him, Broome urged the sergeant to leave. "Hell, no," replied Koontz. "You can't stay here."16 It would have been suicidal to take the footpath, so Koontz drew his knife, grasped the major by a strap of his pack suspenders, and crawled slowly up the side of the ravine, hacking his way through the vines and undergrowth. Enemy bullets hit the ground all around them, one even passing between his arm and his side, and another tearing through his pant leg, but without touching him. Another Marine arrived to help and together they dragged the major the last few yards to safety.17
In New Caledonia, Crane recovered quickly. Three or four weeks later he was pronounced fit enough to rejoin his outfit and was packing to go when an ambulance screeched up to the barracks. Two corpsmen jumped out, told Crane to undress, put him on a stretcher and, without explanation, took him back to the hospital. When a nurse warned him not even to sneeze, Crane got scared. Finally, after he threatened to walk out unless he was told something, a doctor informed Crane that the last set of X-rays revealed "what looks like a Japanese bullet in your head, and you're going Stateside."18
Crane spent the next year in three different hospitals until a doctor at Balboa in San Diego told him they could not operate to extract the bullet. It had gone through his helmet, penetrated his skull, and was lodged firmly between and just above his eyes. The doctor gave him two years to live at most. Discharged from the Marine Corps and not yet 21, Crane spent the next year drinking and fighting. Finally, he pulled himself together, got a job, married, had a family, and survived. But for the next 53 years, Crane wondered what had happened to the men he had left behind on 8 July 1944, often reliving that violent day in nightmares.19
Both Broome and Nelson died of their wounds. Though slightly wounded later, Koontz survived the war and remained in the Marine Corps. For his part in the action that day, Captain Nelson was awarded the Silver Star. In February 1945 Major Broome received the Navy Cross, posthumously. His citation, signed by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, reads in part: "For extraordinary heroism in action against the enemy on the island of Saipan, Marianas Group, while serving as commanding officer of a weapons company of a Marine infantry regiment"20 For his gallant rescue of Major Broome, Gunnery Sergeant Koontz also was awarded the Navy Cross. But by the misfortune of war—the death of the officers he attempted to save, and his own severe wounds—Private Crane's bravery has gone unacknowledged. When he finally heard, a month before this was written, what had happened to Major Broome and Captain Nelson, he was distraught, blaming himself for being too young and inexperienced to save them. When told, on the contrary, that he had been more brave than any one could imagine, Crane replied: "That wasn't bravery. Hell, I was scared to death."
I believe my father, Major Broome, would have called it bravery.
1. Most of this account is based on a memoir written by William A. Crane on 14 October 1997, in the author's possession (hereafter Crane Memoir), and the author's interview with William Crane on 23 October 1997, in San Antonio, Texas. Additional information was provided by surviving members of the Regimental Weapons Company, whom the author interviewed at their annual reunion in Kalispell, Montana, 19-21 August 1997, and by the families of Captain Loreen A. O. Nelson and Major Roger G. B. Broome. back to article
2. Crane Memoir, p. 2. back to article
3. Crane Memoir, p. 2. back to article
4. Crane Memoir, p. 3. It is 3,226 miles from Hawaii to Saipan, according to Captain John C. Chapin, Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan, Marines in World War II Commemorative Series (Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1994), p. 5. back to article
5. ''Narrative of Operations on Saipan, 16 June to 12 July 1944," Regimental Weapons Company, 24th Marines, Fourth Marine Division, FMF, Fleet Post Office, San Francisco, CA, 24 August 1944, 1. (Hereafter "Narrative of Operations on Saipan.") Typescript in author's possession. back to article
6. Crane Memoir, p. 3. back to article
7. Chapin, Breaching the Marianas, p. 1. back to article
8. Crane Memoir, p. 5. back to article
9. Chapin, Breaching the Marianas, p. 5. back to article
10. Crane Memoir, p. 5. back to article
11. R. A. Tenelly, "Major's Rescue," 27 September 1944. This is a typewritten account in the author's possession bearing the identification "#312" and written by Staff Sergeant Dick Tenelly of Washington, D.C., a Marine Corps combat correspondent, formerly of The Washington Daily News (hereafter, "Major's Rescue"). Tenelly's account, apparently, was based largely on information from Gunnery Sergeant William O. Koontz, who came on the scene after the action had begun. Tenelly mentions Pfc. Crane, and where the two stories overlap, they differ only in some small details. back to article
12. Tenelly, "Major's Rescue," says "eleven of the Japanese were induced to surrender and were removed to the rear. The others put up a fight," p. 2. back to article
13. Crane Memoir, p. 8. back to article
14. Tenelly, "Major's Rescue," p. 2. back to article
15. Crane Memoir, pp. 8-9. back to article
16. Tenelly, "Major's Rescue," p. 2. back to article
17. Tenelly, "Major's Rescue," p. 3. back to article
18. Crane Memoir, p. 11. back to article
19. Crane Memoir, p. 14. back to article
20. Copies of all three citations in possession of the author. Captain Nelson left a wife and an infant daughter Mary, and Major Broome a wife, a son Roger, and a daughter Kathleen. back to article