John Lardner, a sports columnist–turned–combat correspondent, encountered no Marines en route to Iwo Jima who didn’t believe the forthcoming battle would be “bloody and disagreeable.” The island was closer to Japan than any yet stormed. As many officers pointed out, Iwo was small—five miles long by two and a half miles wide at most. “You can’t run the ends up there,” one major repeated over and over. “Every play is between the tackles.”1
Iwo Jima indeed proved a long, casualty-strewn campaign whose daily advances were measured in scant yard gains and grueling defensive stands. Remarkably, in light of the major’s imagery, Marine units fought included more than a few squad, platoon, and company leaders who had played hard-nosed, two-way football at the high school, collegiate, and even professional levels.
Just weeks before Iwo, a team of these players/leaders displayed their athletic prowess. On the island of Maui as they prepared to invade “Island X,” the 4th Marine Division fielded a “Ghost Team” (because of security, division affiliation could not be revealed) that routed opponents during an undefeated six-game season. Until the very last seconds of their final game, the Maui Marines, as the squad was officially known, never called a time-out because of injury. They would display that same endurance individually on Island X, but at high cost.2
The mind-set of American-style football suffused the strategy of the Central Pacific campaigns: to deceive the opponent about the point of attack, isolate opponent weaknesses, pound lines of resistance to gain ground and momentum, and carry that momentum to victory. In U.S. Marine Corps tactical terms: break in, break through, and break out.
Both the Navy and Marines believed college-educated football players made ideal battle leaders. One early adherent was Commander Thomas J. Hamilton, a former U.S. Naval Academy head football coach who during part of World War II was in charge of the Navy’s preflight and physical-training program. Football! Navy! War! was the title of a physical-training and mental-conditioning manual crafted by Hamilton, who believed combat aviators would need to shed “socially developed sanctions against aggression”—at least for the conflict’s duration.3 Hamilton was not alone. Marine Corps Commandant General Alexander Vandegrift linked rapid reactions on the gridiron to the instincts required in jungle combat.4
One obvious talent source, the National Football League, was quickly tapped out. The Selective Service Act of 1940 required that men between the ages of 21 and 35 register with local draft boards. To sidestep the draft, quite a few pro players volunteered for the reserves. After 7 December 1941, the NFL stuck with its regular schedule, but pro rosters inevitably became depleted; some teams hired servicemen to play during their off-duty hours under assumed names. Ultimately 638 active NFL players served in the armed forces. A handful of NFL-experienced Marines saw action in the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas.
College football enjoyed much more popularity than the pro sport, and campuses proved to be vastly richer recruiting venues. Naval aviation was earliest off the mark in 1942 with its V-5 college preflight program. But the Marines were not far behind. Casualties from savage fighting in the Solomons and Gilberts had shredded the ranks of platoon and company officers; there would be virtually unquenchable small-unit leadership needs as campaigns in the Central Pacific progressed.
Before the 1943 football season, the Navy’s V-12 College Training Program (which integrated pre-existing NROTC, V-1, and V-7 programs) turned many university campuses into officer-candidate prep schools. Not surprisingly, the Corps recruited many candidates who happened to play football. Players got encouragement from coaches, and according to campus quad consensus, “most of the ‘jocks’ were enlisting in the Marines.”5 There was yet another recruiting advantage. Although the U.S. Army had a roughly comparable college-training program (the Army Specialized Training Program), its trainees were barred from intercollegiate sports. The 40 Marine V-12 detachments ultimately enlisted more than 11,000 prospective Marine Corps junior officers.6
The impact was substantial. Of the Associated Press’ top-20 collegiate football teams in 1943, eight were Corps-infused V-12 squads such as Notre Dame and Purdue. Thirteen of 25 All-Americans were Marine-affiliated students.7 But even as these elite, quasi-college/quasi-military home-front teams flashed glory, formidable Pacific-war counterparts were also forming.
In August 1944, when the 4th Marine Division reached Maui, it returned as an illustrious unit with credit, whole or partial, for island victories at Roi-Namur, Saipan, and Tinian. However, it desperately needed rest, refurbishment, replacements, and retraining.
The respite wasn’t to last long. Victories in the Marianas had enabled the construction of air bases from which VLR (very long range) B-29 bombers could strike Japan’s home islands directly. As early as 14 July 1944, Army Air Forces General Henry “Hap” Arnold, realizing the flight path from the Marianas to Japan ran directly over Iwo Jima, had recommended taking the volcanic speck.8 That fall Arnold’s vote was pivotal in the Joint Chiefs’ decision to occupy “one or more positions in the Nanpo Shoto.” Iwo, the only island in the 750-mile-long chain with both passable landing beaches and suitable terrain for airfields, was plugged into an already tight invasion schedule.9
Each of the three Marine divisions ticketed for Operation Detachment (the 3d, 4th, and newly forming 5th) had or would create its own distinctive esprit and personal history. The 4th, for example, had been the first Marine division to go directly into combat from the United States. A second distinction, little appreciated at first but ultimately embraced, was its attachment to the island and people of Maui.
Division veterans got their first, distant glimpse of Maui from transport decks as ships lay off Lahaina Roads for provisioning on the way to the Marshalls in January 1944. From a distance, great fields of sugarcane, palm trees, mountains, and beaches suggested storybook beauty.10 But their first experience of actually living and training at Camp Maui engendered entirely different impressions. The sprawling facility was situated 1,500 feet above sea level adjacent to towering Mount Haleakala, an extinct volcano. The division came to Camp Maui in the rainy season. Some Marines suspected the camp had originally been intended for the Army, only to be rejected. Others thought it a deliberate high-command conspiracy to simulate combat conditions.11
During this first stay, Camp Maui’s basic infrastructure took shape. Tents for living quarters were raised, and buildings for offices and mess halls were constructed. Roads were carved out of the muck. Post exchanges, libraries, and chapels opened, as did regimental (open-air) movie theaters. Ball fields, boxing rings, and other sport facilities were staked out. Eventually electric lights were installed in all tents, and public-address systems wired announcements and popular music into company areas.12 Just as important—and more enduring—were the developing affections between the community of Maui and their Marine Corps guests. By the time the 4th’s Marines shipped out for the next beachhead, many island natives already considered them “Maui’s own.”
Perhaps the biggest change in Camp Maui’s ambience during the division’s second stay (from August through December 1944) was the increased variety and sophistication of off-hours diversions. In addition to movies, scenic trips, fishing, and swimming outings, the 4th also organized its own stage show. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Leroy B. “Pat” Hanley administered Camp Maui’s recreational and sports activities. His emphasis on organized regimental sports—baseball, volleyball, basketball, softball, boxing, and wrestling—reflected the Corps’ natural interest in physical conditioning and teamwork.
But Hanley was at heart a football coach. In fact, he and his brother Richard E. “Dick” Hanley, another Marine lieutenant colonel, made a formidable gridiron duo. Both had starred in football at Washington State University, and both had enlisted in the Marines during World War I and afterward turned to college coaching. When Dick was head coach at Northwestern, Pat backed him as line coach before setting off on his own to be head coach at Boston University.
After Pearl Harbor, the Hanleys rejoined the Corps. Pat served with the 1st Division; then, with the 4th, he was wounded on Saipan. Dick, meanwhile, remained stateside, recruiting, organizing, and coaching the El Toro (California) Marines football squad, which joined the 1944 “collegiate” elites. Pat Hanley’s decision to organize a 4th Division football team—what became the Maui Marines Ghost Team—eventually got the backing of new divisional commander Major General Clifton B. Cates, who’d lettered in football and baseball at Tennessee. As Cates later recalled:
Although we had been playing regimental, inter-regimental football, when he asked me to let him enter this team over in Honolulu, I said to him, “Pat, we can’t hold a candle to the Air Corps and the Navy and the Army.” . . . But he talked me into it. So he went over to the meeting and they practically laughed at him. They said, “You can’t stand up against these other teams.” So they finally agreed to let us play in the league but the games were not to count in the championship.13
League scheduling and standing headaches aside, Hanley knew where to find his core talent. They were in the division’s crop of collegiate-trained platoon and company commanders. The problem was these young leaders had all they could handle in restocking their units and training them for the next assault. A few were still nursing battle wounds; they needed to heal and regroup, not play two-way–style football. Hanley, however, was not above pleading, cajoling, invoking Corps duty and pride, even pulling divisional strings.
Four especially prized recruits were unit commanders First Lieutenant Howard W. “Smiley” Johnson, First Lieutenant Silas J. Titus, Captain Fraser P. Donlan, and First Lieutenant John D. Hallabrin. Johnson, 28, part of the 3d Battalion, 23d Regiment (3/23), was a 6-foot, 200-pound Georgia Bulldog guard and linebacker who’d played two seasons as a Green Bay Packer reserve.14 A small-town boy raised in an orphanage, Johnson was deeply religious and didn’t smoke, drink, or carouse. He was unfailingly upbeat with a high-wattage grin but also, according to one Packer teammate, “tougher than nails.”15
Sharing co-captain honors with Johnson was Brooklyn-born, 26-year-old Silas J. Titus (2/25). An All–New England, All-East, second-team All-America center for a Holy Cross Crusader football powerhouse that compiled a 23-3-2 record, Titus captained a 1940 college all-star team that upset the NFL’s New York Giants at Yankee Stadium. Following graduation, he played three seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers football team. For his part, 6-foot, 210-pound, Scotland-born Fraser P. Donlan (2/24) had been an “All-City” tackle at New York’s Manhattan College.16 Donlan had also signed with the Dodgers, only to join the Marines before the start of the 1942 season.17 And 24-year-old John Hallabrin (3/25), before joining the Marines after the 1941 season, had been an Ohio State rusher and kicker under rookie coach Paul Brown.
Beyond football plaudits, the four officers stood apart as decorated combat veterans, all with Purple Hearts. Donlan had first seen combat on Roi-Namur; all four had fought on Saipan and three on Tinian. Two were Silver Star recipients: Johnson for hand-to-hand fighting in the course of defending an exposed flank on Saipan; Titus for evacuating fellow casualties under intense enemy fire on Tinian.18 When the explosion of a Japanese storehouse on Roi-Namur cut down 18 of his Marines, a wounded Fraser Donlan refused evacuation, rallied platoon survivors, and ultimately earned the Bronze Star.
Joining Johnson, Titus, Donlan, and Hallabrin was an impressive array of standout collegians (some already combat tested, some not) who would prove to be the Maui Marines’ game-day workhorses—fresh legs, arms, and bodies. One was 23-year-old Second Lieutenant Robert I. Perina (1/14). Perina (Czechoslovakian pronunciation “Pay-she-na”) was a 6-foot-1, 200-pound All-Ivy Princeton Tiger back and a superb passer. Following graduation, he had played a season as shortstop and pitcher for Louisville, a Boston Red Sox minor-league affiliate, before enlisting in the Marines in July 1943.19
Perina was also, according to rival Harvard’s student newspaper, The Crimson, “a hard and dangerous runner,” but he was hardly the only Maui Marine ground-gaining threat.20 Washington native Private Robert E. Simpson (3/25), for example, had been a fleet Southern Cal end; Private First Class Howard E. “Red” Maley had been a Southern Methodist back; 5-foot, 9-inch, 190-pound Sergeant William M. “Big Bill” Kellagher had starred as a Fordham fullback; Sergeant Quentin H. Brunette had quarterbacked Marquette for a season; and 22-year-old Second Lieutenant Charles R. “Scooter” Anderson Jr. (1/24) had been both a football and track star at Nebraska State College.
Surrendering his usual guard position to Smiley Johnson, Anderson switched to halfback. Joining Johnson, Titus, and Donlan as interior line anchors was Canadian-born William Krantz Smyth, a V-12 alumnus who had played line for three college powerhouses: Notre Dame, Cincinnati, and Penn State.
To fill out his squad with enough players to field two practice teams, Hanley also held tryouts, open to any Camp Maui officer or enlisted man. Many successful walk-ons were decorated veterans: two Silver Star recipients, two Bronze Star recipients, and six Purple Hearts recipients. Two of the Purple Hearts belonged to Sergeant Gerald Casey and Corporal John Cotter, both in Company C, 1/23. Casey and Cotter were also boyhood friends, playing football together at the high-school and college-prep level in Augusta, Georgia, and then at The Citadel military academy.21 They even held consecutive service serial numbers—Casey: 816135, and Cotter: 816136.22
The Maui Marines’ first Pacific Ocean opponent was Aiea (Naval) Barracks; the outcome, a scoreless tie, showed “breaking-in” promise for a team with no previous track record.23 “Breaking through” and “breaking out” in subsequent games, the Ghost Team honed a balanced offense and defense. First, there was the 12-6 defeat of the highly regarded Kaneohe Klippers. Then, in weekly succession, followed increasingly lopsided wins over Transient Center Marines (19-0), Ford Island (34-0), and Barber’s Point (48-0).24
On Saturday 2 December, the Maui Marines played their final game against the Navy Seabee Stingers at Maui’s Kahului Fairgrounds. The previous week, the Stingers had held the “highly touted 7th AAF eleven to 17 points,” reported the Maui News. But the Seabees proved no match for the rampaging Marines. “The power-laden machine marched to its first score in six plays . . . with the game but six minutes old. . . . Si Titus, Bob Perina, John Hallabrin engineered the touchdown marching 64 yards with the former Princeton star going over from the 12-yard line.”25 By halftime the “local Gyrenes” led 31-0.
The second half began with uncharacteristic miscues. “For the first time this season,” according to the Maui News account, “the Marines displayed some sloppy football committing four off-side penalties.” But after recovering a Stinger fumble, they “quickly organized with Scooter Anderson romping to pay territory. . . . Perina split the uprights for the extra digit.”26 Another third-quarter lapse, when Bob Simpson missed a Perina pass to the end zone, was redeemed several plays later when Simpson blocked a Stinger punt at the 10-yard line. Another Maui Marine recovered the ball in the end zone, and Bob Perina kicked the extra point.
The final score was 51-0. Nearly every man on the roster saw playing time. In the Maui News reporter’s estimation, at least, the “Hanleymen have proven their right to the Pacific Ocean area title beyond a shadow of a doubt by taking on all comers and coming out victorious.” But, though talk circulated of a Maui Marine showdown with the 7th Army Air Forces team, it was not to be. The remaining weeks on Maui saw undivided focus on combined-arms training and practice landings.27 The 4th Marine Division embarked for Island X—Iwo Jima—in late January 1945.
Most of the spectators at Kahului Fairgrounds on 2 December likely had known that the Maui Marine Ghost Team actually represented the 4th Marine Division. Soon, perhaps in dozens of stateside newspapers, knowledge of the connection spread even further. The 15 December edition of the Newark, New Jersey, Star-Ledger, for example, described local boy Bob Perina “as a triple threat back on the star studded Fourth Marine Division eleven . . . against a strong Navy team, Perina’s brilliant running and passing kept the sailors at bay all afternoon.”28
There was no byline on The Star-Ledger article, but the details were almost certainly supplied by another Jersey boy: Marine combat correspondent Sergeant John Barberio. A 28-year-old former managing editor of the Red Bank, New Jersey, Daily Standard, Barberio had enlisted in the Marines in 1943, gone through Parris Island, and then been assigned to public relations headquarters at the Navy Department in Washington before being detached to Maui in August 1944.29 Described by fellow combat correspondent, and later Los Angeles Times columnist, Jack Smith as a “big, hearty fellow . . . high spirited . . . everybody’s friend,” Barberio enthusiastically attached himself to the Maui Marines as a volunteer publicist and game-day announcer.30
By Corps discretion, it would not be until 3 March 1945, roughly two weeks after the 19 February landings, that the identity of the Maui Football Marines was officially established, As the sports page article in the Marine Corps Chevron, the service’s San Diego newspaper, told it: “A hero-studded football team which had to remain anonymous while it was carving out the only unbeaten record in the Pacific Ocean areas can now be named now that Iwo has been hit.”31
The Iwo landing plan called for the 4th and 5th Divisions to land abreast on a 3,500-yard stretch of eastward-facing beach, with the 3d Division in reserve. The 5th would assault Green and Red beaches (to cut off and capture Mount Suribachi), the 4th Yellow (23d Regiment) and Blue (25th Regiment) beaches. (The 24th Regiment was held in division reserve.)32
The amphibian-tractor–borne assault battalions made it ashore in 45 minutes—at first under surprisingly little fire. Medium landing ships and Higgins boats trailed assault waves to begin landing tanks, bulldozers, jeeps, 37-mm guns, radio and medical equipment, Seabees, and shore-party personnel.
However, as troops from the 23d advanced over the first of two elevated beach terraces, bound for Motoyama Airfield No. 1, the Japanese opened up from concealed positions, determined to pin the Marines to a narrow beachhead. As lead units struggled to break out, those stalled behind took withering artillery fire. Seabees, engineers, pioneers, and evacuation stations were often hit even harder than frontline troops.
As afternoon approached, the 23d managed to move inland toward the airfield. Meanwhile, from the narrow confines of the Blue Beaches, the 25th attempted to pivot north to assault the high ground. Leading that charge was the regiment’s Lieutenant Colonel Justice “Jumpin’ Joe” Chambers, a veteran of the Solomons, Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas (and eventually a Medal of Honor recipient). Among his runners that day were two Ghost Team footballers: 1/25’s Private Bob Simpson and Corporal Charles W. Schebor Jr. During his first hour ashore, Chambers spotted wounded Maui Marine John Hallabrin whom Chambers realized had previously been hit on Saipan. “[T]hey had a rule of two wounds and then Stateside,” recalled Chambers in a postwar oral history. Hallabrin “was wounded in his left shoulder and the blood was spurting out of it. . . . When he saw me looking at him, a great big grin came on his face as he said, ‘Hey, Colonel, look! Stateside!’”33
Later, as Japanese fire became particularly intense, Chambers took shelter in a large bomb crater. “When we got into that big crater, I sent [Bob] Simpson and Friedline [another runner] back. I never did see Simpson again. Friedline got back to me after goodness knows how long and said, ‘Colonel, the battalion C.P. [command post] is just gone.’”34
Both regiments took such appalling casualties that, as dusk approached, reserve battalions were ordered to land. One of these reinforcing units was 3/23, commanded by Major Shelton Scales. Scales remembered Yellow Beach as “wall-to-wall, coast to coast dead men.”35 He and his officers, including Smiley Johnson, cajoled, inspired, screamed, and literally kicked their men forward to escape artillery and mortar fire. By 1800 Scales’ 3d Battalion had reached the edge of the airfield and was ordered to dig in to await a massive night counterattack. The expected assault never came, but the carnage hardly abated. After supervising forward defenses, Smiley Johnson returned to the battalion C.P. only to be felled by artillery fire. Directing medics to attend first to others, Johnson died before he could be treated.36
Meanwhile, it was not until 0100 that Chambers’ Marines, with the help of 1/24 reinforcements, at last secured the northern high ground, the key to holding the narrow beachhead. In the back-and-forth struggle, 3/25 was whittled down from about 900 men to just 150.
Not until D+1 could survivors begin to gauge the full extent of losses. Debris was so thick that there were only a few places where landing craft could still get in. Crippled tanks and tracked vehicles were smashed or bogged down in coarse volcanic sand. A thousand 4th Division Marines had already been evacuated to hospital ships, among them Maui Marine footballers John Hallabrin, Charles Schebor, and Corporal Mark W. Busser (1/25). A yet undetermined number lay dead, many partially buried under the sand by the incoming tide.
Any sorting of casualties—from division level down to squad level—would produce sobering results, and for the missing and presumed dead such as Bob Simpson, there was often no story as to what exactly happened. It was left to squad, platoon, and company buddies to hold onto memories and imagine final accountings.
For 1/23’s Gerald Casey, for example, the D-day death of childhood friend and C Company buddy John Cotter weighed especially heavy. Recalled another Company C Marine: “I saw Casey on the 20th, and had never seen a paler, sadder face.”37 Cotter’s mourning was all-too brief. He was killed on 22 February as the regiment finally secured the airfield.
It was also not until D+1 that combat correspondent Jack Smith learned of John Barberio’s beachhead death. The Marines who sought out Smith offered to lead him to the dead correspondent’s typewriter; since he had lost his own typewriter coming ashore, Smith went along. Finding Barberio’s typewriter case locked, one Marine broke the lock with his combat knife. The lid popped open, but there was no typewriter inside. Instead, the case was filled with canned goods.38
In the days and weeks to come, the “between the tackles” combat to conquer Iwo edged northward. The 5th Division moved along “Sulfur Island’s” western shore, the 4th along its eastern shore, while the 3d pounded its center. For each division, the casualties reflected the fiercely defended objectives to be taken. On the east side, four formidable objectives lay ahead for the 4th Division: Hill 382, the island’s highest point save Suribachi; the “Meat Grinder,” a stretch of ground leading to a little hill named Turkey Knob; and a natural bowl soon known as the “Amphitheater.”39
By 1 March, after seven days of pounding these eponymous objectives, the 4th had sustained more than 4,000 additional casualties, but the Japanese still held. Four additions to the Ghost Team casualty roster were First Lieutenants Samuel Mandish and Silas Titus, Sergeant Quentin Brunette, and Private First Class Victor J. Uranowski.
Titus took a sniper bullet on 28 February. Miraculously, the projectile passed through his throat without touching anything vital. But then “the little so-and-so shot me again when I was down.” Entering Titus’ elbow, this second round tunneled up through his arm before exiting his shoulder. “I was lucky,” he reflected after evacuation, “just a fugitive from the law of averages.”40
The final battle for Hill 382 and the Meat Grinder kicked off two days later. Hill 382 was taken once and for all on 3 March. The next day, as assaults against Turkey Knob and the Amphitheater continued, 1/24’s Scooter Anderson volunteered to flank an enemy ridge emplacement. Surprising the Japanese, Anderson and his men overran the emplacement, but not before he was killed.41 By day’s end the two legendary objectives still refused to fall, but they had been stunned into silence and bypassed.
Monday 5 March, two full weeks after D-day, the Marines “rested.” That is, by Corps order, no attacks would be launched until Tuesday morning. Taking advantage of the respite, 1/24’s Captain Fraser Donlan was briefing his men in a makeshift C.P. when a mortar round hit, immediately killing everyone except Donlan and a radio operator. The captain’s left leg was “hanging by a strip of skin and flesh” below the knee. Calling for aid, Donlan tried unsuccessfully to stop the bleeding with his hands. “Cut the whole damn thing off,” he told the corpsman who finally reached him.
Though it would be hard to describe the remaining struggle as a “breakout,” by 10 March all but two coastal slivers of Iwo were in Marine hands. Raw replacements were entering the lines and garrison troops were coming ashore. On 9 March, the naval phase of the Iwo operation ended and the Army assumed air control. High-level planners had their sights firmly set on Okinawa.
Still, remaining frontline units were stretched thin. Corporal William Gaul, for example, was serving as an acting platoon leader in an engineering unit operating as infantry when he was killed on March 13. Gaul was the last of 15 Ghost Team casualties—more than 40 percent of the undefeated team. By the 16th, when the island was declared secure, the 4th Division had sustained over 9,000 casualties, including nearly 1,500 killed.
When the 4th Marine Division finally returned for its last encampment on Maui, it was indisputably Maui’s own; the natives had followed news accounts of unit exploits with passionate grief and exultation. Among the many forthcoming decorations, accolades, and epitaphs was a story (inaccurate only as to count) in the 26 May 1945 edition of the Chevron: “Thirteen Fourth Division Gridders Were Iwo Casualties—Thirteen men on the squad of the unbeaten 4th Mar. Div. football team fell as the team protected its perfect record in the Pacific by vanquishing its toughest opponents—the Japanese on Iwo Jima.”42
1. John Lardner, “A Reporter at Large: D-Day, Iwo Jima,” The New Yorker, 17 March 1945, 48.
2. “Maui Marine 11 Sweeps into Pacific Leadership,” Maui News, 6 December 1944.
3. Donald W. Rominger Jr., “From Playing Field to Battleground: The United States Navy V-5 Preflight Program in World War II,” Journal of Sport History, Winter 1985.
4. Wilbur D. Jones, Football! Navy! War! How Military ‘Lend-Lease’ Players Saved the College Game and Helped Win World War II (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009), 9.
5. James D. Schneider, The Navy V-12 Program: Leadership for a Lifetime (Champaign, IL: Marlowe Books, 1987), 134.
6. Jones, Football! Navy! War!, 60.
7. Ibid., 16
8. Richard F. Newcomb, Iwo Jima: The Dramatic Account of the Battle that Turned the Tide of World War II (New York: Owl Books, 1965), 24.
9. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 494.
10. Maui: Home Base, http://fightingfourth.com/Maui.htm.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Oral history transcript, General Clifton B. Cates, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), Benis M. Frank, interviewer, 1973, History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 139.
14. Jeffrey S. Williams, “Remembering Smiley: Bulldog, Packer and Maui Marine,” www.georgiadogs.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/022210aaa.html.
15. “Greenbay Packers Player Battlefield Hero—Lt. Howard W. ‘Smiley’ Johnson Now Rests in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific,” www.hawaiireporter.com/greenbay-packers-player-battlefield-hero-lt-howard-w-smiley-johnson-now-rests-in-the-national-memorial-cemetery-of-the-pacific/123.
16. “Selective Service Shuffles Drawing,” The New York Times, 23 December 1941.
17. “Football Giants to Report Aug. 6,” The New York Times, 26 July 1942.
18. “Greenbay Packers Player Battlefield Hero.”
19. “Bob Perina Stars in Pacific Grid Loop,” Newark, NJ Star-Ledger, 15 December 1944.
20. Robert S. Landau, “Big Three Opener Finds Crimson Underdog; Bob Perina Sparks Improved Nassau Eleven,” The Harvard Crimson, 31 October 1942.
21. Rita H. DeLorme, “Two boyhood friends from Augusta face war together on Iwo Jima,” Southern Cross, 3 July 2008, 3.
22. “Company C, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines,” www.c123rd.com/our-wwii-history/chapter-1-activation-and-growing-pains.
23. “Maui Marine 11 Sweeps into Pacific Leadership,” Maui News, 6 December 1944.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. “Prizefighter’s Training Camp,” http://1stbattalion24thmarines.com/training/camp-maui/ (retrieved 10/9/14).
28. “Bob Perina Stars,” Newark, NJ Star-Ledger, 15 December 1944.
29. “Sergt. John Barberio, Marine Corps, Killed,” Red Bank Register, 8 March 1945.
30. Jack Smith, “After 50 Years It’s Time to Forgive,” Los Angeles Times, 27 February 1995.
31. 2d Lt. Jim G. Lucas. PRO, and Sgt. John M. Barberio, “Iwo 4th Division Gridders Finally Recognized,” Marine Corps Chevron, 3 March 1945.
32. “Iowa Jima: Red Blood on Black Sand,” www.fightingfourth.com.
33. Oral history transcript, Colonel Justice M. Chambers, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 1988 (Transcript of 1978 audio recording), 380.
34. Ibid.
35. Charles A. Jones, “Into the Meat Grinder,” World War II, March 2005, 48.
36. Williams, “Remembering Smiley.”
37. DeLorme, “Two boyhood friends from Augusta.”
38. Smith, “After 50 Years It’s Time to Forgive.”
39. Newcomb, Iwo Jima, 187.
40. Arthur Daly, ”Sports of the Times: From Brooklyn to Iwo—and Back,” The New York Times, 19 June 1945.
41. Military Times Hall of Valor, Charles R. Anderson Jr., Silver Star, http://projects.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=35083.
42. Sgt. Bill Hengen, “Thirteen Fourth Division Gridders were Iwo Casualties,” Marine Corps Chevron, 26 May 1945.