Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumba's. Our guest in this edition is Lewis Burgalt, a US Marine Corps veteran of World War II. He fought at Bogainville, Guam and Iwo Jima. Lewis Brigault was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in May of nineteen twenty five. He grew up in the heart of the Great Depression, with three generations under the same roof, and he quickly learned what it meant to sacrifice.
I have an older brother and older sister, my mother and father. My grandmother lived with us, who was in the middle. I grew up in the depression. We're The most common phrase was use it up, word out, make it do, and do without.
Burglt was sixteen years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December nineteen forty one. He remembers hearing the news like it was yesterday.
December seventh, nineteen forty one is very clear in my memory. A friend of nine had borrowed his older brother's card, which by the way, was an almost brand new nineteen forty one Chrysler Windsor and new cars were very rare to young boys in those days, in fact, and hardly anybody had new cars. And the main thing was his brother let him take it on a Sunday afternoon, and he picked me up and we went for a drive
out into small towns and around the country. It had a radio on it, which was quite unique even then. It had little push buttons on it and you push this button hard and the little arrow went over here in the new station. And we were riding the countryside playing with the radio, and a voice came on and said, all National Guard report to the armory. All National Guard report to the armory. All nash Guard reports of the armory. What the hell's going on? You know where we can ride?
And it kept radio okay, getting this break in about the National Guard reporting the army. And in block twilight we came back into the city and in those days, newspapers put out extras and kids are on the street extra extra. Japs bomb Pearl Harbor. My remark was, what the hell is of Pearl Harbor? I had never heard of Pearl Harbor. I knew there was a place called Hawaii where pineapples came from. And that was my first knowledge of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Burgalt again was only sixteen years old at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, too young to join the service immediately, but Burgalt didn't want to wait and hatched a plan to skirt the ade obstacle, but his father brought it to a screeching halt. Once Burglt was seventeen, his parents agreed to let him join the Marines.
Well the draft had been implemented. I didn't even have to register for the draft till I turned eighteen, and I hadn't even turned seventeen, but the age for legal enlistment and the Marine Corps the Navy was seventeen years
of age. But at that time a lot of the young men it was still things were still pretty tight around there, and a lot of the young guys were swept up in the euphoria of all the news coming from Europe, the commandos and the stalking and the masking, and the building and raids and this that and the other thing. And guys was my peers. Some of my were going in droves signing up in the Canadian Air
Force and going on off to Canada. And I thought this was a thing to do, so I falsified my age on some papers and did a little alteration with him and took him home from my parents to sign. My dad took one looks at me at that he said, you come over here. We're going to have a little talk. So I had to wait till I was seven, and then my mother made the I said, when I'm seventeen, I got talking to the Marine Corps recruiting sergeant, and
he says, when you're seventeen, going down. And so as I turned seventeen, went down and got the papers and put them in front my Paris and my mother said, well, you're never so happy at when you got a gun in your hands. You might as well go.
Just after his seventeenth birthday, Burgalt headed to Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina. The culture shock was immediate in terms of the climate and dealing with the drill sergeants.
I went to boot camp at Paras Island. I was sworn in on June first, nineteen forty two. That maybe seventeen years and three weeks of age. Paras Island in June and July, for those that have been here, got to realize it's kind of warm down there. Then we had a little sand. We used to quote something like this, here's the Paras Island, the land that God forgot, where the sand is ten inches deep and the sun is
scorching hot. It was though in those days the drill instructors could literally hit you, I mean kicking in the ass, smash your rifle in your face, do all kinds of humiliating punishment. There was no limit to what they could do as long as they didn't put you in hospital.
Training was difficult and grueling, but it got the new Marines ready for war. Burgalt explains the many different methods of training and what the Marines were trying hardest to achieve through that ordeal.
Well, we had a very thorough training. First of all, we had to learn to march. We had to learn on left foot from my right foot, and we got pretty up. My platoon got pretty good at it. By the way. I was in the platoon four h six second Recruit Battalion at Paras Island, and my drill instructor's name was Corporal Ilmoy. He was a senior drill instructor. He was a tough little nut. We had two PFC assistants.
We learned the Marching Manual of Arms. We learned to march, We learned to do this, that and the other thing, and mainly we learned to follow orders. Then we went to the rifle range, and at that time the rifle was the United States Caliber rifle and nineteen oh three a bolt operating clip fed shoulder weapon, and we fired,
went out the rifle range. We fired. We had to get up early in the morning and do our firing because if you waited till later on in the morning, the heat waves shimmering off the marshes wouldn't let you see your target. We had to perform on the bay in that course. We had to We had dummy baytis. We had to run the course in a certain amount of time. We were taught the profit way to throw
a hand grenade. We had familiarization firing with the forty five pistol, and then we then we had two weeks mess duty, which all the guys had to do pay back for all those meals. You sat down and ate and the chowhan didn't have to do any work. And it was in a casual company that was sent up to campus ureing the former's twenty first Greens.
With basic training behind him, Burgalt so soon picked up an additional job once his superiors discovered his additional talents.
I sent to the company and the first sergeant gave me some little work to do when he found out I could remember a message or some remember something I was told to do with him writing it down and drawing me a picture. So he kind of took me under his wing, and I became sort of like the company and runner, and I was a smart little kid with a smart little mouse, and I got in trouble a few times, and he threatened more than once to kick my ass and put me in a put me down.
The weapons platoon let me carry him more. The bass played around, and he also knew that the gunnery sidant didn't like me.
After some more training, it was time to begin the journey to the Pacific, which started with a cross country track to San Diego.
Well, well, we went from Campusur, which by the way, was not Campusur, and then it was the Marine Corps based in River, North Carolina. We went to Camp Elliot in the fall in November or into October November, and we did some souping and pooping in the woods around Camp Elliott, which is now part of Miramar Air Station. And then we went on a ship in Harbor, San Diego self transport. In fact, I can even remember the
name of it was the USS Franklin Bell. And we did out and did some maneuvers on where that beach the sea the seals used now at Carnado, and we did a landing at San Clementi and they took us off of San Clementi and brought us song the ocean side another practice landing and put us into Camp Pendleton. Were the first ones to occupy the brand new barracks
at pim Pendleton. They just turned just got the electricity turned on, and we enjoyed a couple about a month and a half in those nach new barracks.
From San Diego, it was off to New Zealand and eventual engagement in the Pacific Theater. Mister Burgalf remembers leaving San Diego and the moment shortly after embarking when he grasped the full reality of what was happening.
I remember when we left San Diego Harbor, we pulled away from the pier, when the tugs cut loose, we went out the end. They put pulled the anti submarine net back and the destroyer went out ahead of us, and it was just a twilight and we got well clear of the submarine net and the entrance and the destroyer, remember the bleakal light, and destroyer went like this or
something that our ship and he made a turn. He started back in and they put the hammer down on the lower line and we started out all alone and lowly, and it was very lonely feel and see that destroyer leave us. We went straight Auckland, New Zealand.
From New Zealand, Burgalt and his fellow marines were soon on their way to Guaddal Canal. The long fierce battle there was over, and the island was now being used by US forces to bring supplies to the region, and Burgalt was in the middle of that massive operation.
What we were doing most every other day when you went to someone working party on load and supplies or equipment or something, because there, you know, there were no port facilities on Guader Canal. Everything was lowered over the cargo net into a landing craft and put up on the beach and manhandled into a truck and then put on a supply dump. So and we did a lot of snoop and poop, and we did malaria control out at the edge of the jungle using machete, cutting down
anything with harbor mosquitoes. We chomped through the the rivers up in the hills, in the foothills of the mountains here in Guadalcanal, and that was pretty much it.
That's Lewis Burgalt. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific Theater in World War Two. When we come back, mister Burgalt's first taste of hostilities while still on Guadalcanal and then the battle for Bogainville and eventually Guam and ewo Jima. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Louis Burgalt, a US Marine Corps veteran of World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater
and saw combat at Bogainville, Guam, and Ewojima. Before the break. Burgalt was remembering his arrival in the Pacific and being assigned to load and unload ships at Guadalcanal. As mentioned, by that time the island was in American control, but the Japanese still wanted it back, and it was on Guadalcanal that Burgalt got his first taste of hostilities in World War Two.
Well, I had a taste of war before I was actually in combat. All Quarter Canal was secured, washing seed. Charlie was over about every night. A few bombs. We were unloading ships and we were on a work detail. We should have been down in the in the hold of a ship. This other fellow and I said to the cocks and the SELCVP, don't you need somebody down here to help, you know with Nancy said yeah, So he sold to the sergeant charges, I need these two
guys to stay with me. So the rest of the guys went up up the cargo nets into the hold of the ship where they carried the stuff and put it in the cargo nets. And we took one load and we went to show up, put it up on the beach and held it out and I think it was half sixty millimeter and more ammunition in the clusters and some stuffered crazy back pulled up under the fantail the ship for our orders to the way to pull up next, and the boy shelled down conditioned red stand
clear and I remember the prop turned on. We were right next to turbulence of the water with a ship turned and the Coxon spun that boat around and took off and just then whammed the ship right next to ours, about one hundred and fifty yards away, took a torpedo and blew up, and a hall hell broke loose thirty caliber fifty caliber forty milimere twenty traces, boom, boom. Their
wet torpedo planes were flying low. And then we were in that boat and he was heading out away from there, and I thought we were going to hit by some unfriendly friendly fire. By the time conditioned Green was declared the shooting stopped, we were halfway over to Tilagi, and that was along quite a while getting back, and we
go back to the beach. All the other guys had been in work party had been put ashore and put on a truck and taken back to the camp, and me the other fellow, we had to walk and and finally got a truck going our ways, and by that it was three o'clock in the morning. We pulled into the camp. At first Sun said, how where you are? I was just getting ready to put you down as Mia, so I learned then that the game was for keeps.
The US approach to the Pacific theater became known as island hopping. It involved attacking strategic Japanese positions on countless little islands throughout the Pacific, building many of them into air bases, or using them to shorten supply lines. An island by island, the Americans and our allies inched closer to mainland Japan, but the early hops were very far
from the ultimate target. After serving on Guadalcanal, it was time for Brigal and his fellow Marines to formally enter the fighting and relay critical messages just a little bit farther north in the Solomon Islands at a place called Bogainville.
My first taste of battle was just off just offshore of Bougainville. We were on an APD, which is an auxiliary personnel destroyers the world will one destroyer where they're taking two stacks out and they would carry about a
company of marines. The convoy was started being harassed US about midnight, and we passed handled ammunition twenty minute reels of ammunition from storage to the gun tubs and forty milliman ammunition, and the destroyer beside us, about five hundred yards of our stern took a torpedo, and by then then it was daylight, and we put on the boats
and went ashore. The first wave had already been ashore and they already cleaned out the very light resistance where we went in at Cape Turaquina, and we hung around there and ineffectively fired us some planes that were with our rifles. That planes were trying to dive bomb the LST's on the beach. By the way, something I hear nobody to talk about anymore. What kept those planes from getting too close to the LSTs with barage balloons. There was huge balloons of the cable they put up with
those cables. They had cables dropped from them kept the planes from diving in too close. And when they pull out of their dive, they came right around past where we were hidding in the bushes at the edge of the beach, and we were firing at japped planes with our ones. I fired one m one so it got the damn hot that the barre band charge made the wood on the upper hand hold made black. But that was kind of fun. But then it was after then we moved on up. Then we were not engaged directly
with the enemy. We did patrols. We set up a primitive defense. We relieved the people in front of us. We set up as a mean objective was to seebees build an airfield down so they could run planes up to Boham truck.
That's Lewis Burgalt, a US Marine Corps veteran of World War II, describing his service in combat and in carrying messages on the island of Bogainville in the Solomon Islands. In a moment, we'll hear about his actions at the critical Battle of iwo Jima, and here his memories of the flag racing on Mount Suribachi and the end of the war. But before that we'll hear how Brigalt and the Marines confronted two difficult adversaries on Bogainville. That's next.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is Louis Burgalt, a US Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific theater in World War Two. He saw action at Bougainville, Guam and Ewojima. In just a few moments, we'll hear Burgalt's very vivid memories from Ewojima. But first mister Burgald picks up his story on Bogainville, where he not only fought against a fierce Japanese enemy, but the island itself.
Big problems On Bougainville. I got malaria. I a dysenterry. I got jungle rod. I was covered with jungle rod from my knees up to my shoulders. That was a miserable, scratchy, itchy thing. I was in the division hospital there at the beach for three days, one hundred and three hundred and four degree fever. It was mud, it was wet, it was dreary. We did a lot of time just manning a Periminiza. I was not engaged in any combat with the enemy. I did shoot a straggler what do
you call it? Was left behind as a sniper. I guess they Japs had a habit of leaving wounded and sick behind to take out a couple of us before they went. And one time I made a decision to go this way around a little when you call it an island, in the trail of what do you want to call it instead of going this way? And he was facing that way, and I got him. He didn't see me. He heard me, but he didn't see me. I saw him. And that was my only really combat there.
The rest of the time I was running from the company, had boys back to battalion head bars and back up again and doing this and doing that, hauling this, haul in that, or something or other.
After Boginville, Bergalt and his fellow Marines were soon on their way to take part in the invasion and liberation of Guam, which took place in July and August of nineteen forty four. After mopping up on Guam, as Brigalt puts it, it was time for rest and planning the next big invasion, Ewojima. Burgalt and the other Marines left Guam for Ewojima in January nineteen forty five. It's not a short journey, but Burgalt says the time was put to good use well.
On the way up, they finally it was all those preparations. I remember. It was a tent set up with actually arm sent fish placed around it, and only certain offices were allowed in there that went on those big rooms about we never even heard the name e Regim. So we run a ship on the way up there, and then they had mock ups and they got us in groups on the deck and show us aerial photos and
there's nothing, just bear laying well the problem. They say, this is probably a pill box, and this is probably a pill box with a low level of pictures and nothing did and get the name.
When D day finally arrived at Ebo Jima Bergalt was not slated to land in the early waves. He says, after some very encouraging reports earlier in the day, his efforts to get ashore on day one were ultimately unsuccessful.
And on D day when we went, we were up on the deck waiting over the side when on shoreboard barbaric was going on. We were watching that. It was terrific, terrific display. And the first wave. The captain came on the ship and said, the first wave has hit the beach. There was no opposition, and oh yeah, it's gonna be a piece of cake. And we went over the side and got into the landing craft and we headed for the beach, and then we started circling and then we
headed for the beach. Then we started circling and we did that all damn day alone, and there was we found a lady. There was no room on the beach for ust. The beach was just a disaster. We went back to the ship. We had to jump from the landing craft to a little platform, a little landing, and climb up this little bows and ladder back to the ship again. And the sea was kind of rough. The big ship was going like this and the little one was going like this, and we had to jump from
here to there and up, and we were loaded. You had a helmet, gas masks, you packed two canteens of water, a couple of units of fire, your legging. If you'd never slipped and missed, you had gone to the bottom like a lead balloon to gone right straight down. And that scared the living hell out of me. And we didn't go a short till the next day.
The next day, the Marines faced a few challenges in making the landing on the beach at Iwo Jima, but Burgalt clearly remembers what he saw on that beach and where he had it.
After that, well, it was sort of uneventful. Who we got to the beach, the carnage and the wreckage and the debris on the beach was the reason they put us ashore. Right then they needed manpower to get the crap off the beach and move it and every assembly lines. There's a big picture of guys taking supplies in our lst and some of the magazines. But we did that. We moved, We moved supplies off the beach for the
for the tide got him. There were a few rounds came over ahead, but there was no shelling on us. And we slept that night up there in the shelves right there, just over the over the second riseland that night, but we were there, and then the next morning we were told to we were we were moving up to relieve a company. So we went all along the island around side along the way airfield and across the airfield
in that rough ground on the other side. We got shot at a little bit going across the airfield, which is they were still up in Sabachi and they were still on the high ground the other end.
Lewis Burg would not be an action long on Ewo Jima, but two things stand out. Dealing with a fellow marine in agony on a stretcher and getting knocked out himself due to enemy shelling.
There was a guy on the stretchers, one of the units that we were leaving. I guess had been doped up with morphine because he started moaning. He was coming out and he started moaning at the first start. He said, you, you, you, and you grabbed that Get that guy the hell out of here. So the four of us grabbed a stretcher and went back across the airfield, which wasn't a very we went. It's probably the fastest stretcher movement there ever was.
It wasn't pleasant. This stuff was cracking around our heads and singing and banging. We went down the embankment and we met a stretcher party coming up from the beach and turning it over to hurt the eye over them. And then we started back and a hell of a big mortar barage came down and walking closer to us. It was the big stuff. It wasn't little stuff. And the last thing I remember was jumping on a big crater.
My next recollection, I was on the beach and they were pinning a tag on me, and some guy lit a cigarette in his face and stuck it in my mouth. I don't know, I have no recollection going over that into that hole where their stuff was busting all around us, and they put me on a transport to be converted into a hospital ship for I guess because all the guys who were might walking wounded with arms or something like that, people like me and no visible wounds and stuff.
And that was the end of my sojournal I Regima.
The most indelible image from the Battle for Iwo Jima is the flag raising a top Mount Serabachi. This was actually rather early in the battle and the fighting would rage on for weeks to come. Joseph Rosenthal's photograph would become one of the most iconic images in American history, even though he had already been evacuated from the island after being knocked out in that enemy shelling. Lewis Bergalt
remembers the flag raising quite well. In fact, it's one of the last things he remembers happening before being sent back to Guam.
I was on the ship, but the captain came on the PA and announced, and some of the ships blew their whistles and stuff. That the guy mentioned us today that they were cheering under the down There was woo whistles. We did have we did have to make smoke at night. Came into the compartments. One night, twenty millimeter guns on the deck a twenty millimeter gun anchored to the steel deck of an empty steel ship were reverberate through the damn ship you think was there. You would get really murdered.
But I don't remember much after that about the trip back to Guama. I remember getting in the hospital at Guam. That's all I remember about it.
The first order of business once Burgalt got to Guam was to recover from whatever actually happened to him on Iwo Jima. Soon after that, Burgalt got the news that every marine wanted to hear, and the news that shocked the nation. In mid April nineteen forty five.
We're in the hospital for about four weeks, and then by then four or five we send the division. We were coming. They came back to Guaham, and then the doctor came out and talked to all of us. Said, you guys are looking to go home, he said, but we're going to send you back to duty because you're going to get home faster going back to duty, because all you old time hasn't been out here for thirty months.
Are going back. If we go through medical, it's going to be four or five months before you get there. So they sent us back to a casual company and back to our company. And when we get back to the company, first I said, oh ya are you old guys. Now, get your sea bags back to keep them back, and don't leave this area without checking in every hour. Don't go visit your friends over to tidy head boards running. You stick around because you're going to go home. And
the strangest thing was, I'll never forget it. We got the news that Franklin Roosevelt had died and was in half an hour there at the first side and said, you guys, get your sea bags out on the road. The truck's on the way. So I always connect that. I always know what day it was that I got to come home. And they put us on a took us down to Apra Harbor there on Goam put us on a jeep carrier that was going back to the States. They had no aircrew and stuff on boards, so they
had a lot of extra bunk space. Then we stopped at Ford Island on the way back. They didn't miss off the ship and we were San Diego.
One other anecdote that makes Burgault laugh to this very day was the intense warning to returning service members as they came into port here in the UAS. But it was a warning with absolutely zero enforcement.
We were warned not to buy any cigarettes on the ship where they were fifty cents a car and they were taxed on shore. Uh, don't bring any souvenirs you got any, don't take anything. We were told that it don't bring any broken down carbines and pistols, the hand grenades, don't bring because they're going and go through your customs and you'd get locked up in your car. We pulled in San Diego Harbor. We put our seat bags on the shore. We walked down the ramp going on a
busted over recruit. People nobody even looked at us.
Burgalt was assigned to guarding prisoners, American prisoners actually, and that's where he was when the word came down that the Japanese had surrendered and World War two was officially over.
It was in August. I was I was on duty at the prison. When we call fire and riot squad. We had an extra as well as the primitive guards and to sell block guards and the annexed cards. We had an extra squad stamlea cans ranging around the p X and drink coffee and stuff like that. But I was on a fire and riot squad when the news came in. The prisoners started. There were of course, they were all our guys, so there were general court martiall prisoners.
They started rioting and turning up their bed turning to their beds and throwing blankets and stuff out. So order had to be re established back in the cell block, and we went up there and we spent three or four hours getting think straight and around up there. Again, I don't blame for celebrating, but we didn't. The U normality did not sink into us till the next day we knew that the Japs had dropped the Big boom and we heard the big bomban this is the second
when the Japs had quit. When that was when the rioting actually started. And then I had nine months to do in my enlistment, and watched all the reserves that had only been in about a year all getting his discharge and going home, and I had to sit there and finish out my enlistment.
And reflecting upon his service eight decades later, Lewis Burgalt knows he is fortunate to be here, and that's slightly different. Decisions by him or the enemy could have resulted in a very different outcome.
Well, look, even any other thing, some little, some big, it changes your whole life. How do I know where I would have been? Where? It is some little thing that happened to me instant on Bogaville. If I had gone this way, that jack would have got me in the back. And by the way, I took the round the chamber of his rifle, and I had the cbe build drol hole and lit the powder out, and I'd kept it in my pocket. I've still got it at home.
I figured if that would have my name on it, and if I keep it in my pocket, never keep me.
As you might gather from how he tells his story, Lewis Brigald is in high demand as a speaker to school students and other organizations. He's always eager to do it, not only out of respect for those who want to hear about his service, but because, he says, our nation has become far more appreciative of his generation and other service members over the past past couple of decades.
Fifteen twenty years ago. If I told somebody that I was a World War Two veteran, the destructed this and said, what so what? What the hell? You know? Now people walk across the street, they see me and they come over and shake my hands. They thank you for your service. People will buy my meal in a restaurant, warning, well, re recognized. I just can't believe it. All like just all going here. Go to Pearl Harvard. Everybody's coming up
with be a nice thing. I go to the base campus and the change of command ceremony, the outgoing the base commander has me stand up in his partying remarks. He recognizes me and tells the people about I can't get over it. I'm amazed. I'm overwhelmed. I went to Pearl Harbor two months ago, all this attention, you know, I meeting it up.
That's Lewis Bergalt. He is a US Marine Corps veteran of World War Two serving in the Pacific Theater, Guam and Ewo Jima. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
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