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Welcome to Veterans, Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Frank Wright. He is a US Marine Corps veteran of many battles in the Pacific Theater of World War Two, most significantly Guam and Ewojima. Frank Wright is also one of a very few surviving Marine raiders from World War Two. In a future episode, we will hear all about his service at Ewojima. Today, we'll learn about his service on Guam, and in this podcast, Frank will describe what it was like to be on the
receiving end of a Japanese Bonzai charge. Then he gives us incredible detail into hand to hand combat against the Japanese and the mental and physical skill required to survive. He also explains how he survived hand to hand, fighting to bite, suffering a bayonet stabbing from a Japanese soldier. All of that is straight ahead, but up first, Frank Right tells us about landing on Guam in August nineteen forty four.
When we went in there was a lot of coral. We cut our boots up and it was a very tedious type of landing. We landed on kind of a coral sand on it and our ships and the rocket ships were firing just ahead of us, and they were giving us our forward protection. All the way through into it was all flat land. We had a lot of mortars that came in on us from the shoreline and a lot of larger weapons that were coming from the
islands onto us. As we came in and we got into some small pill boxes that was close to the shoreline, we went further further in the mud and water also got less spread than it had been before it and that took two three hours. I think it was a light landy I think compared to the area where we were released from thirtyes. I was in the twenty first Marines Regiment. We did not carry the boys and a enter tank guns on that island hopping, so we were
only fired I think two shots. We shot one shot three shots and the other unit that was on that same tank road, they shot a couple. So it didn't pan out as uh as they had thought, but we did use it on the pill boxes. It was effective a little bit, but we found the flamethrowers were a
lot more effacient than the poisonner tae gunways. So we got through that that area that that the ships had been shooting above our head over into the land coming from it, because they began to have a rise to it, and the flat land became a little hill, and we went into into there and we stopped at the top of the ridge on it. They told us after firing there that you're cleaning up those Japs. They were posted on the island right by the landing strip where we
landed where we came in. They told us to bed down and we'd stay there for the evening before we take off on it. And I think they must have been waiting for something else. It seemed like we were going to be bed down quite soon, as opposed to
any other landing that we went to. So but we stayed there that evening and just before dark we had a Monasai attack from the Japanese that had been anchored up in the area where we were supposed to take They came all at one time, and I talked to a guy over on Pea company, I think it was a Pea company. He said that they had four or five Japanese tanks that came in on their section on our section. We must have been on the far end of our section because because we didn't have any tanks
in our company on it. It came in, it was just all around troops didn't have they didn't have any protection of tanks or didn't follow in on with the tank, so they just came in by themselves and it we killed them all.
There explain what a bonzeye charge is.
The bonzie charges when they all come down a hill or behind the protection of a tank to give them protection from our shops and our people. They head right for you had killed all they could before retreating back up to the hill, but we always stopped them dead. They had started bedding down at that time, right here on top of the little ridge. Some of the guys had faced their foxhole for the evening and some of them were still talking and visiting aster what they had faced.
And that was really our our units on the twenty first was the first real hand to hand stuff that we ran across on it, and at least I think it was my first one that really had a time. After the Japs came down and this guy from the pea Cups that I talked to, he said he had
never been into one either. Was I attacked, And that's when a whole bunch came in and they had some tanks that let them down, and the Japs were behind the tanks and they did real close and then they'd run out from behind the tanks and do their damage to our troops. Must have been a hundred maybe maybe one hundred seventy five or something like that. They came running down at one time, and we just went at a two toenail opponents I attacked is well, you have
training with it, you could. I was trained. I could fight with banets.
Tell me what that's like hand to hand combat.
Well, a guy running at you with a rifle and a long band ad which is like a large knife stuck on the end of a rifle and poking at you. You're trying to get out of his way. You tried to counter any type of maneuver that the enemy does, and if you lose, you usually lose your life. And likewise, when the Japanese loses the combat between the two of them,
they usually lose their life. So you're fighting for your life and you don't usually go by the book all the time, because when they start running at you, and not just one, you know four or five will be on one marine. You know you've got to fight, and you've got to kill otherwise they're going to kill you. It's a hard thing to do if you don't have much ammanition. When I was training a lot and then say you do this, that and the other thing on it, they're, hell,
why don't you just shooting? Don't sit there and fight? But that's not the way it is. They come down and most of the time they don't have enough ammunition because they're shooting. They're shooting off their rifles and they don't have too many pieces of ammunition left. Of course, we don't either because we are fighting for our lives too, and then those guys are so you have to fight with your bandet. Now I can see, you know, And at that time I could see why you didn't just
shoot the bastard in the first place. On it, I followed I was before, and I knew what it was. And I thought bannets before and I knew what it was. I also ran out of ammunition too, And it's the worst kind of fighting because you're fighting for your life right there and you're not fifty yards away or whatever. You know, that's real fighting, and you just don't go by the book all the time. I tried that a couple of times, and I had to get rid of him and the way that I thought and the way
that he was fighting. If he was fighting a certain way with then I would be able to counter. I had been told on how to do a lot of countering stuff, but it's it's hell.
Tell me how you were wounded in hand to hand combat.
After that first seizure we had with the jets, as we first landed on the twenty first, we started hiking further up the island. We worked until we got up around Agat, city of Agat, which was bombed tremendously. The Japanese had retrieved back or not toward the city of Agat.
We were in that particular area, we were told to buncle down again and stay there because we were going to wait there for another unit that was coming to headquarters unit I think it was that was coming from our right as we kept going up to the island, so we started bending down in that particular area on it, and the headquarters was to our right, and they were they were coming in with more ammunition and more tanks and the unit to reinforce our troops. As we went
further north on it. So we were told to stop and dig your hole. So we stopped. We started digging our hoes on it.
Well.
UH in the area that we were the had the sand coral sand and uh and pieces of corals had been broken off and stuff. And so therefore we had to use our knives as well to help dig the hole. We couldn't use that, just a little of our little shovels that we had. So we pulled in that uh area and we started digging our holes and and then I'd take my gun hole knife and break the ground
up with my gungco knife. And then now a gungole knife is shorter than a bayonet, and it was just like a big bowlo knife on it had about a fourteen inch blade to it and good size handle, so you could do a lot of digging on it. So that's what we were doing, at least I was doing. And I put that knife in the ground and turn
it and it would break up the soil. And then I'd pulled off with the a little shovel that we had if we carried, and then I'd put that amount of dirt and pack it around the foxhole that I was digging on it and it kind of made a little berm on that that you could really get down into your foxhole and hang your rifle on top of that and do some long shooting if you had to. But anyway, that was what I was doing with the dirt.
Then we could hear the Japanese up on them on the hill we were coming through again, I think it was, And then we were on Assan Road that came down from the top of the hill on it, and it was coming down the hill toward toward the landing that they were doing. Our troops were coming in. Edwards group was coming in with had a lot of heavy stuff on it, a lot of acclaim throwers and heavy machine guns and light machine guns. So they were getting a
lot of reinforcements on it from that area. And we were right above them, and we could hear the Japanese up on the top part of the hill. We hear tags were going up and down the hill the star in the mortar, and then then they stopped it, and so he didn't know if they were coming down or what.
They were drinking saki and getting drunk on it and had a lot of nerve left in in my guess, and they sat down a bunch of Japanese tanks down the hill, and they came in first, and they started shooting at us, and we were carducking as much as we could from that, and the tank kept coming well.
But that time the tanks were arriving from down below us on our right, and they were coming ashore, just coming ashore, and then just came ashore, and they went right straight on up the hill to meet that force
of tanks that was coming down the hill. And that turned out when they met that turned out to be the biggest tank paddle in the old South Pacific, right there in front of us on it, and boy, they leave forward on it, and a lot of action between the two enemies there, the Japanese enemy and our enemy towards them. So anyway, the Japanese turned tail and went back up on the hill where they were doing all that drinking and stuff, and our troops went right after him.
They got up as far as they could up there, and then they were called back because a lot of our company was getting in need of fuel and stuff because they had just come in off of the off of the ships and stuff and had not been fueled up. Whatever they do to those portions of the troops, so they had orders a lot to follow, so they didn't follow them up and they went back down the hill
to the headquarters area to help them if needed. I left the Japs up in the top of the hill or where we were without their tank protection, and so they all togethered again up there, and they came roaring down the hill and they were hollering and yelling and stabbing and in four or five Japs to maybe one or two guys in their boxhos, and it was a pretty big doings there. It was the largest on the island,
I think. Anyway, as they were fighting, I got a couple of them that came down that didn't want to run on further down to the headquarters company and had it down there. They stopped over there and they started shooting, and and they ran out of ammunition as well as I did, and we were just hand to hand. This one was it was a very good fighter. They started at me kind of fast, poking and how and then
I started backing up. As I was backing up on it, I tripped on that burm that I had been building up around my foxhole, and I started going down and as I was losing my composure like that. That jet took advantage on it and poked me with in the
stomach with manat. It didn't go too deep, but it went in enough to cause me pain, and that court bled a lot anyway, as I went down, hooked me again, pushed it in to go deeper, I guess, and I just about that time, guy in the foxhole next to me on it sell the position that I was in
and he shot the jet. I fell on my back down into the box show and whatever it was that the jeb had it, he shoved the last fund and he fell right on top of me in the box hoole cause I went down and on my back, my hand went over and hit that congo knife that it was. I hadn't I just stuck into the ground on it. It was just waiting for me to keep working on my fox show. I felt that and I knew I knew what it was because I had cared it for
a long time. So I came up with it and then I slashed his throat and you start bleeding and yelling, and god, you know, that's a heck of a lot difference than killing someone that's fifty yards away and stuff right there. You hear them yelling at your at the and your face and screaming and they smell a fish and sacky. You hear them screaming and yelling of pain. Boy, that's that's hurts That hurts you. You know, you hate to do that, your human being, but you gotta you
gotta do what's needed. Sometimes you fast and sometimes you slow. You stick them and they're yelling at you, and there's something that the guy has to get used to. Anyway, I was there as Jeff was on top of me. The guys from headquarters came up further and they started chasing them up as on road American tanks had driven the Japanese tanks up further too. There were things quieted down a lot. Darkness was starting to appear on us, and I just stayed there with that Jap on me
until the next morning and everything was going. Then pretty soon the secure squads started coming around and they're picking up the guys that had turned them over that were dead, and the other guys had Corman up there trying to pull them out too. So anyway, they started getting the people that had been wounded and getting them and they kind of missed me a little bit because they thought it was just a Japan down there, but they didn't realize that it was laying on top of a marine.
So finally somebody I said, hey, here's one underneath that dead Jap. So they pulled him off, and then then he got me. I had not seen my wound or anything. I couldn't see it until that next morning. Then they found him and they found me, and they pulled him off, and they did they broke the stuff there on a fox shole, and I started bleeding again on it, and I got up, and then the guy said, hey, he's
alive underneath it. Just pulled him off, or they pulled that off him off, and then he pulled me out. By that time the wound had coagulated a little bit. They didn't do too much to me, and then said he just called a corman over, and a corman came and he wiped all the blood off around the area and located me another we called them blouses, and another blouse and from a dead marine chocked that old bloodied one off and put another one on. He bandaged me up and he puts some I think it was sulfur.
He puts something on it, and put that powdered in the sage on that, and I put the jacket jacket or a little jacket or blouse we call it on and stayed there and I waited, and they started pulling other people out. Then somebody came by and said, we got to go. They need all the help they can on those pill boxes that they're uncovering back there. I just fall in line with them, kept going also because it didn't hurt. I guess the feeling finally got into it,
but it didn't hurt too much. I started walking further north. I got to put a little bit further north on it, and ran into another bunch of pill boxes and stuff, and we started cleaning them out as much as we could. Must have broken open my wound from that bandet, and so one of the guys up here hollered, and here's the guy who's got something wrong with his stomach. So I got to get a corman over there. So they called up on one and the guy from the headquarters
heard and it came up. I've been doing a little research on it, and I found out that the corman it came up from headquarters to finish my wound. I ran across him in San Diego with the Raider Battalion reunion who we had down there, and I found out that he was as the one that take called from headquarters. They went up there, and now he's the one that told me how to treat that uh won. He said what he should have done was he should have taped it. The first guy should have put that powder into stuff
and taped it. You had show that the wound would not be an open and he would heal a heck of a lot better.
That's Frank Wright. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of World War Two in the Pacific Theater and one of the last surviving Marine Raiders. After much of Guam was secured following the major combat operations, Wright was still sent out on patrol to find remaining Japanese soldiers on the island. Despite his lingering injury. For the next few months, he healed and did a lot of training, months of training
for their next battle. They didn't know it at the time, but their next battle would come six months later and take an even bigger toll on a small but critically important island called Ewogima. We'll bring you that story soon. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Hi.
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