Baptist Chaplain Glyn Jones served in combat in the Pacific with the Marines in World War II. His medals and decorations included the Silver Star, Bronze Star (Combat “V”), and Presidential Unit Citation. In 1950, at the start of the Korean War, he was with the understrength Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, which was ordered to Camp Pendleton to fill out the understrength First Marine Division.
“These were good Marines but there were too few,” he recalls in these edited excerpts from his Naval Institute oral history. “General MacArthur had asked for a division. The government said there would be a division, and so he got a division.”
Fabled Marine warrior Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller had regimental command.
When I went to see him and introduce myself, he knew my name. “Well, what’s your idea of being a chaplain in this outfit?” he asked. I said, “Serving the troops wherever they are.” He said, “You do that, and you tell me what you want me to do to help you. I’ll never get in your way.”
Jones had learned before he left Lejeune that he was going to be ordered to the Chief of Chaplains’ office to relieve Harry Harris.
Well, our move to Pendleton caught Harris by surprise. He wasn’t expecting me to go. After a few days, he heard I had gone, and he sent a dispatch detaching me.
The first I heard about this was the call to go see the colonel. “I’ve got this set of orders for you,” he said. “Do you want to go? ”I said, “Of course not, sir.” Puller talked like a Marine and his thinking was simple. “I’ll send a dispatch saying I need this guy,” and he did. This got to Harry Harris’s desk, and it infuriated him. He went with a dispatch for the signature of the Chief of Naval Personnel saying, “Detach immediately.”
Chesty called me in and said, “I’ll prepare a dispatch for General Smith to send personally to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. We’re not going to go for that damned Navy nonsense.” General Smith gentled the message, checked it with Commandant Gates, who approved, and out it went. “Tell the Chief of Naval Personnel to forget it. Cancel this order. I want Jones to stay,” signed O. P. Smith.
Well, old Harris really blew his stack this time. Now the Commandant had come in and the Marines were telling Harris how to run the Navy! So, he sent a real hot message: “Unless Jones is aboard ship en route, send him back immediately.”
The message came in, early evening; I was in my tent. A jeep pulled up with the old man and his bodyguard, a man named Jones. Jones looked like a Flintstone. He would fight anybody, anytime. He was a dead shot, and he walked around Chesty Puller the way the Secret Service walks around the president. He was looking at everybody. He was suspicious of everybody.
The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and said, “This blankety blank thing just came. Unless you’re aboard ship, you’ve got to go back.” I said, “Aye, aye, sir.”
“Well,” he said, “how long will it take you to get aboard ship?”
“Right now, sir!”
“You’ve got your 782 gear packed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jones, drive him down to San Diego and get him on a ship.”
Jones did. He drove me down to San Diego, and I got aboard ship. Then the old man sent a dispatch saying, “Chaplain Jones already aboard ship.” I waited there for three days for other people to get loaded up. Harris didn’t know what had happened. In the Navy it never would have happened.
So we went to Kobe and were briefed about landing at Inchon, 15 September. We learned about the sea wall, Wolmido, about naval gunfire and how the fleet would land the Fifth Marines, then go back out and wait for high tide.
