Our guest this week on Veterans Chronicles is Don Mates, a veteran of World War Two. He served in the third Division of the US Marine Corps. Is a veteran of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Don, thank you very much for your time with us today. Glad to be here. Let's start, obviously at the very beginning. Where were you born and raised? I was born in Clemand, Ohio, February ten, nineteen twenty six. Calvin Coolidge its president. And did your family have a history of military service?
I any, No, no, but I had two brothers that served, one in the Navy, one in the Air Force. And of course I served in the US Marine Corps during World War Two. They were younger than me, and they served after in the Korean in Vietnam. And are you did you enlisted? I enlisted? Why did you choose the Marine Corps? In nineteen forty three, a recruiter came to John Hay High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and he said, you're seventeen years old. You're gonna turn
eighteen, They're gonna draft you. Why don't you enlist in the Marines. We'll let you graduate from high school. You can pick what job you wanted in the Marine Corps and I said that I'd consider it, and UH my parents had a sign and they signed and UH. He told me that when he asked me before I signed, w UH what I would like to do in the Marines, And I asked him, I'd like to first get the
UH dress blue uniform. And he told me that they only issued the dress blue uniform to seagoing Marines bands, marine Corps band, the UH Drum and Bugle Corps, and to embassy guards. And I told him that I got seasick and that I didn't play an instrument. Could I be an embassy guard? And he says, well, he said, you're six foot two, you're in shape. He said, uh, I'll put that down as your first choice. And he said to me, where would you like to serve?
And I said, uh, well, UH, I knew that Portugal was UH neutral, and I knew they had two colonies and the one was Goa in India and one was Macau in China. And Macau interested me because of the gambling and the nightlife. They went with it, and he says, well, then I'll put down Macau as your first choice, and Portugal is er second choice. Well, I wanna tell you to this day,
I'm looking for that recruiter. That's how I joined the Marines. I joined it for the uniform, which I never did get till the end of the war. Did you ever get to Macau there? Forgot? I haven't been there yet. So that's how I ended up in the Marines. Well, where did you do your training? I did my UH boot camp uh training in Paris Island from Paris Island, UH because it helped that I was an a eagle scout and they signed me to a very high sounding job and it
was a combat intelligence school. Basically combat intelligence school is uh nothing but a scout and observer and UH that lasted eight weeks and they taught you how to operate a five sixty radio, They taught you demolitions, they touch a UH map reading, and they taught you a little Japanese which was useless. The uh night time patrolling which actually when it was in combat, we did do that rubber boat reconnaissance, which we never did. The frogmen and the Navy
did that, and UH that's where I was trained. We also UH would taught uh uh how to operate a fifty caliber and twenty five caliber machine gun, bar Browning automatic rifle, and of course the M one rifle, which uh every marine UH had, even the cooks and bakers. Was there any particular part of that that you found the most interesting or hoped you would be doing when you were deployed. I was really brainwashed during World War Two by the movies, UH, by the newspapers, radio magazines, posters, and
UH. I really uh believed that the Japanese were super evil and they we were super good. I was just I don't wanna say snowed, but I was just a psychologically affected uh, never dreaming uh what I was getting into. It was the propaganda that uh that got to me. And I was just looking forward to uh uh being a marine and going into combat, never dreaming that anything could happen. So after training, how much of a time span was there between that and being di Oh? After training it was?
Uh? I immediately went overseas. But even going overseas, I left uh Norfolk on uh the UH ship called the Florence Nightingale and our ru uh. We were going through the Panama Canal, but our first stop was in Cuba where we got liberty. And Cuba was quite a place for liberty and in the nineteen fours, and then we stopped in Panama, which was got liberty in Panama. And then I went to a replacement depot in Hawaii and I thought, my god, Uh, this is just a marvelous uh exactly what
I expected. It wasn't a uh, you know, celebrity cruise, but it was uh. The Navy treated you royally. You could sleep on deck and you could eat anytime you wanted, or have coffee anytime you wanted. All you had to do was stand in line. So it was uh, it was just uh up until that point, it was marvelous. And it got even better when they sent me to Guam, w which was being liberated
by the third Marine Division. They sent me by UH with four other or three other uh replacements, and we went by aircraft carrier and uh, the sh that's like, uh, that's like a cruise. I mean even at an a ice cream bar. There e everything but a night club on the ship. And uh, I that was a eight day short term cruise. And then the proverbial hit the fan when I uh landed at Guam, and then I knew that, uh, it wasn't like the movies. Where are
we on the calendar? At this point, we're into uh uh uh they invaded in July. They celebrate July twenty fourth as uh uh the day that they were that we invaded and the Japanese lost control and UH there July twenty fourth is our July fourth and uh uh I hit about the July twenty eighth, and I was immediately sent to the reconnaissance company that I had trained for, and we were sent not into the lines I. We were sent to the northern end of the eyeland and the big fighting was in the southern end
of the island. We were sent to a Titian point and uh that's where we did our uh fighting and as where we went into our combat. After we set up uh booby traps and ambushes and uh as they were being driven north, we were up there waiting for UH as they came up from the south, the Japanese and UH. It was uh it wasn't a pretty picture. What type of action were you witnessing. It was mostly patrolling and at
that point they hadn't been that far north. Uh the j uh the Japanese, but you still had to be aware of booby traps and you had to be aware of mines and uh. As the Japanese fled north, there was no taking prisoners on either side. It was uh killed or be killed. We got into some uh firefights, We got into a lot of uh grenade throwing. Uh. We didn't have any heavy artillery, but we had a
twenty five millimeter and fifty millimeter uh machine guns. Uh. The only the only good point about Retidian Point was the rations were uh uh k rations and
sea rations were nothing to ride home about. But uh what we did was we would throw grenades into the ocean and we'd stun the fish, and then we'd take the nose replacement amstrip go out and get the fish and uh we'd eat either fresh fish raw, and and we ate anything that came up except if it had spikes on it that was poisonous, or we'd have a uh
we'd have a fish ry. And uh that was the only uh pleasurable part about fighting up a Retadian point was we could uh we could break loose a little bit just about a minute left before we take our our first break. How difficult was it to adjust to combat. You'd obviously gone through a lot of training, but when you hit the real thing. I Uh, well, you you realize it's not like the movies. It's the old story where
there were a hundred of us there. And if they asked for a hundred volunteers and they told that only two of you were coming back and there were ninety eight casualties, well you looked around to see who the other lucky fellow was. You never dreamed or you never dreamt that anything would happen to you. So when something happened you to one of your buddies, uh, it comes as a shock, and it's uh, you become anxious, you become uh stressed. There's a a smell. There's a couple smells that you don't
get over. And that's a smell of fresh blood coming out of somebody. If somebody's artery is cut and the blood gushes out, there's nothing you can do about it. That an odor of sweet blood stays with you. And the other odor that you is that of a decaying body. We never buried the Japanese, and their bodies just decayed. Even to this day, if I drive by a cemetery and if they're using recycled water, I think I can smell the dead bodies. Those are two smells you never get over with.
Don. Let's pause right there. When we come back, we'll hear more of your story about your service in World War Two in the Pacific and specifically Ewojima. We're talking with Don mates, veteran of the third Infantry Division of the US Marine Corps, veteran of Ewogima. This is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service. This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile. T Mobile offers exclusive disco for a veteran and military families and are proud supporters
of the National Defense Network. Visit t mobile dot com slash military to learn more about how they support our military community. From Fort Lauderdale, new homes for veterans are coming to Broward County. Two new apartment buildings will be dedicated to housing those who have served our country, in part thanks to a big
donation. Last Monday, US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz was joined by United Way of Broward County leaders, staff and veterans to announce more than one million dollars in funding that she was instrumental and securing in the House appropriations process to support the purchase of critical veteran housing. She said, it's cruel to leave a vulnerable person like a veteran, thrown to the wolves out in the community.
Today's sixty Seconds of Service is brought to you by Previgen. Prevagen is the number one pharmacist recommended memory support brand. You can find Prevagen and the Vitamin Aisle in stores everywhere. Our guest on Veterans Chronicles this week is Don Mates. He's a veteran of the US Marine Corps in World War Two, veteran of Guam, as we heard in the last segment, as well well as
EO Jima, which we'll get to shortly. Don, you were just talking about your service on Guam and some of the memories and even the sense that will stay with you for the rest of your life at this point. How much bonding had you done with your group and had at this point had you met Jimmy Trimble, who will talk about a lot more as time goes on. Jimmy Trimble and I met in the States. The bonding that goes on
in the Marine Corps stays with you till the day you die. I volunteer at a BA hospital in Florida in West Palm Beach, and if I see a marine standing in line waiting, I'll pull him out of line and get him to his appointment immediately, and the commander of the military order the purple heart. I make a special effort, not that I don't help as many people as I can, but I'm make a special effort with the Marines. And it's true, there's no such thing as an ex marine on the marine,
always a marine. And Jimmy and I became close, very close, because one way were tent mates after going was secure, and two he was a He was a major League baseball pitcher. He had signed with the Washington Senators and in nineteen forty three Clark Griffith gave him a five thousand dollar signing bonus and send him to Duke and paid for his college. He didn't send him to a farm team. He wanted'em to he would play for the Duke baseball team. Well, Jimmy kept the five thousand dollars, went to
Duke for about a week, and then enlisted the Marines. Jimmy and I went through Combat Intelligence school together, We went overseas together. We were the
best of buddies. We were tent mates. And because he was an outstanding pitcher, and UH our commanding General Erskine Graves was a baseball nut, and we had six marine divisions in uh the Pacific, and among the six divisions there was a round robin World Series and General Graves wanted to win that world series and uh lo and behold really uh uh when Jimmy pitched the uh winning game and we won the UH Marine Corps World Series, he became a uh
a favorite of the General and the General said to him, I want you to be my bodyguard, and he says, pick whoever you want, and of course Jimmy picked me. So I just tagged along and uh got some of the Jimmy's glory rubbed off on me, and we became uh bodyguards for General Hurskin, which just meant uh when he was in his tent sleeping, we were outside when he was in the seat. When he was awake, we were awake when he he he was asleep, we took turn sleeping.
Uh. So uh that's how I ended up with Tremble and uh uh being my fast buddy and also my combat buddy. You team up in a foxhole, yeah, and Tremble was uh in the foxhole with me, where were you and what did you do between Guam and February of nineteen forty five when you went to Ewogima. Well, the first thing we did was uh uh we trained uh. But because of the job that I had and I didn't have to do when he practiced landings, the most I had to do was
an occasional patrol to look for gray Japanese. The UH third Reconnaissance Company consisted of four platoons one platoon. The fourth platoon was spun off even though it was part of the reconnaissance company and was assigned to General Graves. General Graves want didn't want information coming up through the chain of command when he wanted to know something, whether it was on the island Aguam or about a patrol. He wanted a first hand report from the participants, so our platoon was assigned
to him. Specifically, we were at his beck and call what the Swiss Guard is to the Pope. We were d General uh Graves, so UH we didn't participate in all the UH rugged training that the other UH troops did. We were in shape, but we uh we had a pretty easy cause of our position. By the time the Battle of Ewojima started, obviously the Allies were doing very very well in the Pacific. Did you have a pretty good sense of that where you were, that that the tide of the war
in the Pacific was clearly in your favor. Yeah, well, well, of course we were taking Ireland after Ireland, and uh we were uh basically uh inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese. And to be truthful, I personally didn't have the big picture. I had no idea that MacArthur was going to swing to the east and come up through the Philippines, and that was where he was headed, and then we were to go to the west and do island hopping. Napoleon once said that the s s the soldier in hi his
army. His view of the big picture was the pack on the back of the soldier in front of him. And that's sort of the covered my view of World War Two. I I I I didn't really have a big picture. All I knew was what my job was and w what I knew was going on where I was at. I had no idea of the stepping stones and that Okinawa would be next, and that they were planning to invade Japan, and that n Pelleloo and Tarboro were taken because of the airfields, and
uh N, none of that came through to me. I found out about the Elogiman Gorm after I got out and I read all about it. I found out what I was involved in. But when you're a private pushing to become a PFC making thirty dollars a month, y you just concerned where your next meal is coming from, what it's gonna be, and who was the unfortunate fellow that's going to get shot instead of you. Don. We'll pause right there when we come back our final segment and we'll learn all about your
role in the Battle of Ewojima right after this on Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles. We're honored to be joined today in studio by Don Mates, a veteran of World War Two veteran of the US Marine Corps, Sir. Just before the break, we were leading right up to the beginning of the Battle of iwo Jima, which began on February nineteenth. You went ashore on the twenty fourth. What was the state of the battle
at that point and describe coming ashore. First, we were sent ashore to set up sleeping quarters and a CP for General Lursman. And when we landed on the beach, it was just absolute chaos. I thought I had seen quite a bit in Guang but this was came as a shock. They hadn't yet start to bury any of the bodies. They were bloated. There were maggots, there were parts of bodies. There were people UH learnings that were had no head, missing legs. There was broken equipment. There was a
wounded lined up on the beach like a railway ties. It was I. I. It was just utter chaos, and it seemed like the one with the loudest voice was the one that was in command. We set up our skin UH and again it's his bodyguard trembled and I. The Japanese had UH spigot mortars, and UH. A spiggot mortar is bigger than a fifty five gallon oil drum. It's just lit with explosives. It's a rocket propelled and it tumbles after the rocket burns out. It reminded me of the UH road
Runner and cartoons. You may see it occasionally now on TV. The kids may where the road runner looks up and a piano is gonna fall on him and crushes him. There a truck runs him over and he's flattened out. Well, that's how you felt when you saw this tumbling fifty five gallon oil drum coming towards you. It it it blew a tremendous hole in the ground, and there wasn't much shrapnel, but the concussion was horrible, and you'd if you were close enough, you'd you'd bleed from the ears, You bleed
from the nose. Your brain really got rattled. Uh and one landed near her skin and he Up until that point, uh uh, the Recoon company had not been well. The You could get shot anywhere anywhere. It was two by four. They put thirty thousand of us ashore and there were twenty one thousand of them, so you just throw a grenade anywhere and you hit something. In fact, when we got ashore, the uh uh I threw a Foster's grenade into a spider hole or or t spider trap, and uh
uh tremble yelled to me. He says, look behind you, and the smoke from the Foster's grenade came out behind me. And the they had seventeen miles of tunnels throughout and they could scurry everywhere. UH. They figured the battle would last three days, and of course it lasted from February nineteenth til March twenty seventh. Anyway, Erskine wanted to find out where they Spagott mortars were coming from. They were coming night and day, and he said that
you could see him better at night. So he asked for our Lieutenant Stack and her company commander Oscar selgo within at john Sack. He asked for UH eight volunteers. I'll never forget him. There was Orange Garrett. He was the old man of the outfit. He was twenty four, had two children. It's tremble. There was me. There was a corporal Reid, he was in charge of the patrol. There was McCluskey, never did find his body. UH. There Wasntzel he he died of wounds. There was Jim
White, and there was Lee Blanchard. Lee Blanchard stayed in the Marines and became a colonel the UH. And we set out on February twenty eighth to look for these UH Spiggott mortars and see where they were coming from. UH. And then we had a radio with us. McCluskey was the radio man and we strung the wire and we went to a ridge. Between there were two hills three six two and three eight two. There was a ridge line and we went to the top to the ridge line and it overlooked an open
mind sulfur pit. When a shell would come and land in the sulfur pit, it would ignite the sulfur. It was a big open pit and off to the right was the village of Moriyama where the civilians had lived and I don't know how they did it, but they raised pineapples Amajima and the volcanic ashes unbelievable. We sat up around uh six o'clock in the evening and we set up two two men on the top of the ridge with the radio.
Then we dropped down fifty feets. On top was the reed and McCluskey neck came Netzel Uh and uh Orange Garrett, then came a Tremble and me and down at the bottom was Jim White and Lee blanchn Well. At midnight we were to shift every six hours and there was always to be one man uh awake and one man to sleep. Well. Nobody ever did go to sleep, because just before we were to switch the Japanese started to infiltrate and come up the ridge. Now years ago they made a movie, Sherlock Holmes movie.
It was called A Hound of Baskervilles and n n I. I think they remade it with Robert Downey on a on some series and BBC. But but the story was on the moors in Scotland. This this fog would come up at night and there was a huge hound that was in this fog and he would come bounding out and kill people. And Sherlock Holmes was called him to solve the problem. Anyway, That's how I felt on hill three six two and on the ridge in three eight to two. I was waiting for
this hound to come bounding out of the sulfur fumes. But what came out of the sulfur fumes were the Japanese who were coming at us. Now, mind you, there are eight of us and we behind us, behind us, and we're in front of a mortar platoon, so we were right there in the front lines. And the Japanese he's had something that uh few of us have seen, uh Un eu Jima. Not all outfits had it.
They had on the back of their neck. They had a little pin phosphorus pin and with just a little moonlight or starlight, their officer could see his men and how they moved. We couldn't see the pin cause it was on the back of their neck. But what happened was, at one point, a little bit after midnight, we turned around and if you turned around and looked and you saw the pins, then we knew we were in big trouble. A battle lasted about hand to hand combat, about three hours, and
thank god we had grenades the way we did. But what happened was, as I said, uh Reid, he was married, you know, had been stationed in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. He was bayonetted. McClusky did ever found his body nets he died of wounds received Garrett. For some reason, the Japanese bayoneted him and they took his rifle and left their rifle. Just something symbolic. Tremble and I, uh did the best we could to hold him off, and as I said, the grenades came in handy.
There was no talking. There was just screaming and hollering and pointing out and at one point a little left two o'clock, Jimmy Tremble hollered grenades. Now, the Japanese grenades didn't have a pin flyhander like we did there. They're grenades which were much smaller in ours and much weaker. Some at the end of the war in Okanaw in parts of Whima were made out of uh.
Of course, there was the the O the iron, then there was the UH the ones they made out of UH glass, and then they had him even made out of clay like pottery, because they were running out of uh uh minerals. And anyway, he and they and what they would do is to ignite him. They would hit him together. And when you heard that click, you know grenades were coming. I didn't hear the click, but Trembles did, and he hollered grenades before that they got close enough to
bag at him in the shoulder. And coming at me was another Japanese UH soldier. He was crawling and he had in his hand what I thought was a stick of dynamite or plastique. It was oblong and dark, and he was crawling towards me. Well, anyway, the trembles wound wasn't that bad, and he kept firing, and I sh shot and blew away the Japanese who got within a couple of feet of me, and uh I just reached over and grabbed what he had in his hand, and it was a wooden
box and I stuck in my pocket. Well, anyway, grenades came flying in right near the fox. Only one came in the foxhole and uh peppered Jimmy's back and broke both of my legs and uh uh I came very close to uh. When I looked down, the my crotch was just a bloody mess, and uh uh I pulled myself out of the hole and tremble. He was still alive, and I reached in to help pull him out. At the same time, the Japanese had a looked like a baseball base.
It was made out of canvas and was about the same size as a baseball base, maybe fifteen inches square, And in each corner was a magnet and it was loaded with explosive and they would put that on a tank and try to blow the tank. Well, the soldier had this strap to his body and he climbed in the hole. Of course I saw what he had on I rolled away. He pulled the cord the mine went. They called it Mine ninety and m uh grenade ninety the Japanese did, and the Japanese just
evaporated and uh Tremble was the whole. He was blown in half. The lower part of his body just separated completely. I was very fortunate that t two behind me, White and Blanchard. They came out of their hole. W Blanchard picked me up, carried me back. White put on the uh tourniquets. He took my my belt, took his belt, and he did something that he wasn't supposed to do. He took his bandages and and did both my legs with my bandage and his bandages, and put on sulfa drugs.
And by this time it got to be about four thirty and uh A Corman came along and gave me a a shot of morphine. And I can understand to this day how somebody becomes a a heroin addict because that morphine. Even though I was banged up pretty good, that morphine just spreads a warm feeling over you and you just completely relax and the pain goes away. It's just marvelous. And they put a mark on your head like they do for
Catholics on on Wednesday, ash Wednesday. They so they put a mark on your head, so they know that you had a morphine shot, and you don't get too many of'em. Anyway, L Corman gave me some plasma and they they carried me w uh away down to ah They would call on TV a mash unit, a medical unit where they uh bandaged me up and uh try to set my legs, but they it was just too much and they uh shipped me. I was there twenty four hours and they shipped me
down to the shore. They put me about the hospital ships were all crowded, and they put me on a troop ship, put me in the kitchen, and that's where they operated on me and uh bound me up. That's where I got a a shot of penicillin. And it turned out that I'm allergic to penicillin. And every time I go in the hospital, I I put big signs all over allergic to penace. Cause I went into a coma for ten or eleven days and your blood pressure drops down to nothing and your
skin just peels right off. And I woke up on Saipan in an army house building a tent. From there, they flew me uh Johnson Island, where the media air art is supposed to be. And then from Johnson Island they flew me to Hawaii and by this time it was April first, and uh that was I remember that it was Easter. Sunday also was the day that they've invaded Okinawa. The hospital was so crowded in Hawaii that meet. They put me in the uh VD ORG cause it was Sunday. Everybody if
that ward w was mobile. They then went to the movies, went to eat, went for a walk. Uh and uh i uh, I was there alone and they they said that a congressman was coming through well under normal can conditions. Uh, the seventeen or eighteen year old. I wouldn't have any idea who my congressman was, but I remember in newsreels that Franklin Roosevelt, who was in a wheelchair, every time he came to address Congress,
he would stop and talk to a congressman who was a new wheelchair. And that's how I His name was Crosley, and that's how and that was my congressman, and that's how I knew when I saw the congressman that it was Congressman Crosley. And he came over and he said, Uh, how would you like to go. Ask me where I was, and I told ye. My congressman on in Cleveland east side. He said, how would you like to go home? I said sure. He says, I, i'd you like to go to day? I said, I sure would. Well,
I didn't go that day. I went the next day and I was on the first plane that flew from uh uh that had evil uh uh casualties on it and flew into Oakland Naval Hospital. From there, I went to Sun Valley Rehab rom there I went to Great Lakes. From there, I went to the Marine hospital in Cleveland. There's no such thing as the Marine U S Marine Hospital. This was a merchant Marine hospital. And I recuperated there and uh life went on after that. You had several more surgeries from
what I understand. UH my last yeah, uh my last operation ended in nineteen eighty two and uh two women operated on me. And what saved me was that's when the cat scan came out. Before that, when they would operate for shrapnel, they would pokey you and then they would glue a paper clip to where they thought the shrapnel, but they didn't know how deep it was. And you know how a cat scan works. It's one X ray
after another and they could three D it and they can. They were able to spot what was really troubling me and take out the pieces the that uh were embedded and weren't moving. And I haven't been back. I haven't had an operation since. There are little pieces of volcanic ash that come out, but it's just like a pimple. I can with my finger then I can flick it out. And uh, I did have braces. I got rid of'em one by one and uh that unfortunately, uh uh I I did
get some gangreene infection that held me up for a while. And back in nineteen forty five, in nineteen forty six, you gotta remember, therapy was pad rest. If they could get you in a whirlpool bath and they would give you a back rub with Jergon's lotion. That was it. There was no getting out of bed right after the operation. That there was no moving after the cast came off the all bedress. So it took me a little while to get organized. Last question here in our last minute or so maybe
two minutes. Since that time, you've also been very active in honoring the memory of Jimmy Trimble, both at the American Veteran Center and elsewhere talk about how you UH took on that role and then what it means to you. Well. With the American Veteran Center and with the UH UH Saint Albans where where he went to UH prep school. UH, we started a scholarship and we the l last count that we had raised was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And it's for a UH I hope we UH marine, but they'll
take any son of a serviceman. UH. Then w UH. We also instigated the U UH Young Marine Award UH every year an annual award that UH that I donate to and the American Vetteror Center and I the U S and the outstanding Women Young Marine and men Young Marine. And this is not the real marines. These are like the boy Scout Marines, right, and they're honored at the banquet and UH and the American Veteran Center holds every year.
I just continue tribute. I'm they headed the Military Order of the Purple Heart in UH westwom Beach, Florida. I have the second largest UH. I have four hundred and fourteen members and the the biggest award I ever got side of Purple Heart was two thousand and nine. I UH received from the Pentagon UH the uh UH World War Two Service and Community Service Award. Bob Feller got one. I got one. Hugh O'Brien, I got one too. I'm here today, I feel like a million dollars. Don Mates, veteran
of World War Two Battle of Guam and Iwo Jima. US Marine Corps veteran, Third Division. I'm Greg Corumbas. This has been Veterans Chronicles