TEN

PROUD TO CLAIM THE TITLE

JUNE 1942-NOVEMBER 1943

Those close to Sandy Bonnyman were torn about his decision to join the Marine Corps in the winter of 1942.

“I knew he would unquestionably make a good soldier,” his father said, “but I did not like to see him enter the marines at thirty [sic] years old as a private, leaving a copper mine that was paying him $30,000 to $40,000 a year . . . and leaving a comparatively young wife and three girls, the youngest of whom was only one year old when he enlisted.”1

My grandmother Jo “admired him for wanting to fight for his country,” but considered the Marine Corps “practically a Suicide Squad. . . . I would not have minded a safer branch of the service.”²

Sandy hoped the war would not go on for long. But he shared President Roosevelt’s conviction that unconditional surrender by the Japanese was the only sensible conclusion, and he knew that would take time. He was busy with the mine during the spring of 1942 and my mother didn’t recall seeing him at all after April. But he went to great lengths to ensure that his family and business would be taken care of in his absence.

On June 29, my grandfather signed a partnership agreement that gave his best friend Jimmie Russell sole management of the Guadalupe Mining Co. He would continue to own fifty percent of net assets, receive half of all profits, and would be liable for just ten dollars in debts or obligations.3

Upon hearing of the proposed partnership, Alex Bonnyman hired a local attorney to nose around about Russell’s reputation (much as he had done with my grandmother before her marriage to Sandy). Ultimately, Alex “thoroughly approved” the partnership, citing Russell’s “very fine brand of honesty and splendid character,” business knowledge and “pep and energy.”⁴

Sandy initially set Jo up with a monthly allowance of $400—nearly $6,000 today—though he would later have to raise the amount more than once: “I had hoped that she would do on her $500 [$6,800], but which [sic] is not happening.”⁵

Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. boarded a train in Albuquerque, bound for Phoenix, on June 28, 1942. The next day, he completed his paperwork—including forms certifying he had never been convicted of a crime and a sworn affidavit that “there is nobody dependent upon me for support beyond my ability to contribute beyond the pay of a private in the U.S. Marine Corps”—and was inducted in the US Marine Corps Reserve. On that day his income dropped from $3,000 a month to just $183.34.

On July 7, Pvt. Bonnyman was ordered to board a Southern Pacific Railway train to San Diego and, likely because of his age, put in charge of three other new recruits. Arriving twelve hours later, he herded the men aboard buses that would take them to the depot at Marine Corps Base, San Diego, where all recruits from west of the Mississippi were being sent for training (on Sept. 25, President Roosevelt would dedicate the new facility and it would be named Camp Pendleton after World War I Gen. Joseph H. Pendleton). Two weeks after arriving, Sandy was appointed acting corporal, the first of many promotions he would receive over the next fourteen months.

At thirty-two, he was very much the “old man” to the young recruits enduring boot camp with him. Sandy’s age no doubt also paved the way for his highly unusual friendship with forty-nine-year-old Col. Gilder D. Jackson Jr., the highly decorated commander of the Sixth Marine Regiment. The corporal and the colonel became so close that Sandy visited him and his wife Vesta in their home many times, and when Jo came to San Diego to see her husband for the last time, the couple spent an evening with the Jacksons at the Hotel del Coronado. Jackson declared that he’d never had a marine in his command “that I was any more devoted to on such short acquaintance.”6

It took less than two weeks of boot camp to disabuse my grandfather of any romantic notions he might have had about being a grunt (“An enlisted man’s life would grow a little monotonous,” he wrote⁷). He had helped train his first platoon after an instructor became ill, and was kept behind when it was shipped overseas to be a drill instructor. He didn’t love the assignment, especially having to attend “school” from 1500 to 1630 every afternoon, but it was an importance showcase for initiative and leadership.

“I took the assignment as a stepping stone to Officer’s Training School or OCS or whatever the correct term is,” he wrote his mother. “It is supposedly not possible for me to go there until I am a Corporal . . . although I have the same responsibilities and duties of a regular Cpl.”⁸

Ironically, maturity and success put Sandy at a disadvantage when it came to being commissioned as a marine officer. The upper age limit to join officer’s candidate’s school as a recruit was twenty-seven and regulations specifically excluded married men and those without college degrees (unless they had earned credit for, or taken an examination in, ten of fourteen tough classes, including differential calculus, physics, and “rhetorical principles”).⁹ Meanwhile, field commissions were generally reserved for recent college graduates or non-commissioned officers who had served for more than a year.

Nonetheless, Jo and his parents were thrilled by his change of heart, convinced that serving as an officer would be safer than as an enlisted marine. But time was a factor, and Alex immediately began pulling strings. He wrote to his friend Francis Biddle, Attorney General in the Roosevelt administration, to ask for advice. And through a mutual acquaintance, he arranged a meeting with retired marine Maj. Gen. Hugh B. Matthews, who had received the Navy Cross while fighting with the Second Marine Division in France in 1918. The general concurred Sandy was “just the type of man they wanted as an officer.” (Alex wrote his son, “Maybe this was brought about by your father’s, shall I say eloquence?—or salesmanship?”10) Matthews wrote Maj. Gen. Clayton B. Vogel, commanding general of the Marine Amphibious Corps in the Pacific, on October 7, urging him to take a close look at Sandy Bonnyman. To the disappointment of all, Vogel never replied.

But Sandy might not have needed such help in the first place. Jackson had seen his potential and placed him in the Officers’ Candidate Class, which “put him in a status for commission later, provided he made the grade.”

“After seeing him in my home and having him in my Regiment, I was never in doubt as to the eventual outcome,” the colonel later wrote.¹¹

Sandy wasn’t the only one in his family to show leadership potential. Before he even became a marine his brother Gordon, nine years his junior, had graduated from the ROTC program at Princeton and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Promoted to first lieutenant on February 1, 1942, he was sent to India on October 31, where he began instructing Chinese troops in the use of field artillery. In April 1943, Gordon was promoted to captain and sent to Burma as a liaison to the Chinese army.

On October 19, 1942, Sandy boarded the USS Matsonia as part of Headquarters Company, 6th Marines, arriving in Wellington, New Zealand, on November 4. Wellington was about as close to home as a marine could get overseas, reminding many of San Francisco with its wharves, hills, and temperate climate. When the marines weren’t training, they enjoyed milk shakes and ice cream sodas at the city’s many “milk bars,” ate hearty meals of fresh lamb, beef, and eggs, and drank Waitemata beer and eye-opening Australian “jump whiskey,” a “villainous, green Mexican distillation.”12

On November 25, Sandy was promoted to corporal and appointed to F Company, 2nd Battalion, 18th Marine Regiment, “to take full advantage of his talent and ability . . . (as an) Engineer.”¹³ His experience in the mining business had prepared him well for such a role, and he was excited to be “back in my old trade.”¹⁴

The New York Times editorial page wrote admiringly of combat engineers: “They are masters of many trades, men-of-all-work as well as men-at-arms. . . . They lay and unlay mines, dig trenches, run railroads and railroad shops, make bridges, roads, fortifications, airports, bomb-proofs, gun emplacements, barracks, anything buildable. They map and camouflage. They are photographers and cinematographers. They incinerate, refrigerate, disinfect. They are first-class plumbers. They attend to the water supply. They are expert handlers of explosives and all tools, including a rifle and a bayonet. One of their favorite sports is tossing a flame-thrower at a pillbox. . . . They are real Yanks of the Yankiest kind.”¹⁵

Sandy’s 18th Engineers, aka Pioneers, were among some 3,800 marines billeted alongside the Third Wellington Regiment of the New Zealand Army in the Judgeford Valley, a bucolic farming community north of Wellington. He boarded the USS President Jackson December 24 and spent Christmas at anchor in Wellington Harbor before sailing for the Solomon Islands to mop up after the First Marine Division, which had been fighting—and winning—the grinding jungle campaign on Guadalcanal since August. He made landfall on January 4, 1943.

Engineers were jacks-of-all-trades on the island, serving as everything from infantry to demolitions experts to bridge builders. Sandy Bonnyman’s most notable task in his six weeks on “the canal” was supervising construction of a pontoon bridge over the Toha River. His team labored from daylight until dark and bivouacked on the river, where Japanese artillery or machine gun fire kept them awake half the night. In the morning they breakfasted on scalding coffee and hardtack before getting back to work.16

“It was due to Sandy’s energy, ingenuity, and his personality that he was able to have his men erect this bridge in record time,” Col. Jackson recalled.

Bonny, as his friends now call him, made little fuss over his first taste of combat, when he and a reconnaissance team surprised eight Japanese fighters, killing three.¹⁷

Stories of a dramatic jungle ambush and bridge building make good copy. But on Guadalcanal, as it would be on Tarawa, it was Sandy Bonnyman’s leadership and work ethic that won the respect of his fellow marines. As Jackson wrote, “He was always cheerful, ready to work twenty-four hours a day without rest, and was always to be found in the front line trying to do some job that would make the Infantry advance a little bit easier.”¹⁸ Jackson’s gambit and Sandy’s hard work paid off, and on February 7, 1943, he received a commission as a second lieutenant. His commanding officer, Capt. Joseph Clerou, recommended that he be given command of a company once the Second Marine Division had finished up on Guadalcanal. Seven months after entering the Marine Corps as a private, against the odds, my grandfather was an officer in the US Marine Corps.

“Obviously your confidence in Bonnyman’s ability is justified,” a secretary for Gen. Vogel wrote Maj. Gen. Matthews—five months after the Bonnymans thought the retired general’s efforts had gone nowhere.19

The family was elated, and with good reason. At Guadalcanal enlisted men of the First Marine Division had been killed at nearly twice the rate of officers, a ratio that would be matched at Tarawa.

On February 19, the marines handed Guadalcanal over to the Army and 2nd Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. sailed back to New Zealand aboard the USS President Adams. Having tasted combat, he was eager for more.

“When we do get another chance,” he wrote Jo, “I believe we will do a good job. We certainly pray and hope so because the First Division certainly gave us a mark at which to shoot.”²⁰

But it would be nine long, difficult months before the Second Marine Division engaged the enemy again.

During his second stay at Camp Judgeford my grandfather forged close friendships with numerous officers—2nd Lt. Barney Boos, 1st Lt. Paul Govedare, Capt. Clerou, Capt. John Murphy, Capt. Bert Watson, Capt. Don Farkas, 1st Lt. Tracy Griswold, and others.

“There’s so much a fellow could write about Bonny and it wouldn’t even cover half the man he was,” wrote Boos, one of the few who also had “come up through the ranks” to become an officer.²¹

Though eager for action, Sandy enjoyed New Zealand. He served as F Company’s athletic officer, tasked with keeping the men in fighting trim. He frequently went to the horse races and shopped for his daughters, even placing an order at a local harness shop for a custom English saddle for Fran that he would never see completed. While other marines took jaunts to such places as Rotorua, the “valley of geysers,” and Christchurch on the country’s South Island, Sandy took his two weeks of R&R in March in a “Scotch town”—perhaps Dunedin on the South Island—where he slept between soft sheets and enjoyed eating “anything that wasn’t G.I. cooking.”²²

With thousands of young Kiwi men deployed overseas in Africa and Europe, many of the marines found local women receptive to their charms, and many ended up marrying them. Competition between the Americans and New Zealanders occasionally erupted into violence, as with the April 3 “Battle of Manners Street,” a tavern brawl that began at the Allied Service Club when a group of drunken Southern marines refused to let dark-skinned Maori soldiers enter. More than a thousand American and New Zealand troops and hundreds of civilians, some armed with belts and knives, were embroiled in the melee for four hours before the police could restore order.23 (There is no indication that Sandy took part in the melee.)

Rumors persist among family members that he fathered a child with a Kiwi girlfriend but so far as I know, no long-lost relatives have ever appeared on any Bonnyman doorstep.

Malaria was a scourge of Guadalcanal, and many marines came down with the debilitating disease after the battle. Sandy stayed healthy for months, attributing his immunity to, “hard work, and lots of it.”²⁴ But on April 26, complaining of headaches, chills and malaise, he reported to a Navy doctor and learned that he had not escaped the pestilential mosquitoes after all.

“The So. Pacific islands,” he noted ruefully, “are a far cry from Hollywood’s portrayal of the Tropical Paradise. No Hedy Lamarrs, no dusky Belles, just mud, bugs and bad smells.”²⁵

Placed on bed rest for a week, he began treatment with quinine sulphate and Atabrine. The latter was despised by the troops, not just because it turned their skin a waxy yellow, but also because it was rumored to cause what former US Senator Bob Dole would one day call “erectile dysfunction.”

Released under treatment, Sandy was back at the doctor’s office on June 16, battling a fever of 102 degrees, and was readmitted to the hospital. He weighed just 157 pounds, having lost 41 pounds since his first marine physical. The next month was better, but after hard maneuvers he was in the hospital again on July 31, this time with a 105-degree temperature. All told, he spent more than thirty days in the hospital or on bed rest, but when he was discharged on August 7 the disease had finally run its course.

“I have gotten back some of my pep and zeal,” he wrote to Jo. “We have been working hard and my appetite is like a horse’s so that I look like ‘Porky Pig.’”26

Sandy Bonnyman was widely admired by his men, not just for earning his lieutenant’s bars the hard way. He was daring, competent, hard working, even keeled, and generous, going so far as to share his officer’s whiskey rations with his men.²⁷

“No matter what happened and we did have some rough times, on maneuvers, landing exercises, troop movements, etc. Sandy would never lose his temper or his perspective,” Tracy Griswold recalled. “He was always very even tempered, and could always see the humorous side of any situation, no matter how tense it seemed at the moment.”²⁸

Sandy genuinely enjoyed the company of the men in his command, seeing in each a unique character. His three-page homage to the men he commanded on Guadalcanal reads like a character sketch for a Hollywood war epic:

“There were the Bird brothers from La. (the swamp country) . . . neither yet 20 and they have three more brothers in uniform; ‘Tommy’ Thompson from Mississippi is the wit of the company; Two Spanish boys, Vaca and Vasquez, always quiet, never hurrying but always working and both with [skills] that must be inherited from their Conquistador ancestors; Raw-boned lanky Doug had been a miner and a cowboy from Montana [who] drove the truck and got us through mud that no one else could; ‘Hillbilly’ Austin sometimes known as ‘Governor’ because he wants to be governor of Tennessee; Entwhistle (yes that is his name) is the faithful sheep dog of the outfit, the one to catch the little uninteresting routine jobs and who does them uncomplainingly; My right arm . . . is Henry Watson from near Brownsville, Texas (who) left a fine job with the telephone company to join the Marines . . . I have yet to find anything he can’t do and do well; There were others who worked for us and all of them good men who stuck to the job day in and day out in spite of heat, wind, insects, timber rash, hard work and three Jap snipers.”29

Having spent time as an enlisted man, Sandy was a tough but fair officer, recalled Victor Ornelas. Victor volunteered for the marines as a teenager after the Army told him he was too young, arriving at Camp Pendleton in September 1942. He and Sandy both sailed aboard the Matsonia for New Zealand in October, but they didn’t meet until they pulled KP duty at the same time in Wellington. Victor spent the next week being entertained by the tall Tennessean’s wild and woolly tales life in exotic New Mexico.

Months later, Victor was driving a jeep loaded with ammunition on Guadalcanal when he accidentally ran over a wire fence, which dragged behind him just as he passed a group of officers. One yelled for him to stop.

“‘Hey, you son of a so-and-so, stop! You’re pulling up all that wire!’” Victor recalled. “I stopped and turned around to see who in the heck it was, figuring the worst he could do was bust me to a civilian. Well, who do I see coming up but your grandfather? He’d gotten his commission as a second lieutenant. I think he was really going to tear my head off, but when he saw it was me, he just gave me a smile and said, ‘Don’t do it again!’”³⁰

Sandy also befriended Father William O’Neill, a Navy chaplain who would help oversee burial of the dead on Tarawa and return after the war to search for their graves. Sandy not only received communion from “the Padre,” but also joked with him about their mutual acquaintance, New York Archbishop Francis Spellman, prelate for all Navy chaplains. The Southern rebel and the rugged priest, both fearless and eager for action, would themselves have made a pretty good duo in a war movie.

“When the Padre wasn’t up in the front he was charging all over the muddy Guadalcanal roads in a truck with no windshield top or brakes on it,” Sandy wrote. “He would drive from the front ten and twelve miles so that the boys in the rear areas could go to Mass.”31

With the same theatrical flair that had so entertained his sisters when he was a boy, Sandy also regaled his men with tales about life in the rugged west, fishing and hunting expeditions, and his drinking exploits.³²

My grandfather seldom passed up a chance to play games of chance, whether Acey-Deucy—a variant of backgammon—or poker, until long after midnight. On the decks of the USS Heywood the night before landing on Tarawa, he famously refused to accept payment for a $10 drinking debt incurred by Capt. Joseph Clerou, joking that if the captain were killed, he’d be happy to accept his brand-new combat boots as payment.³³

Somehow, he always seemed to balance such easy camaraderie and playful spirit with his role as a leader and his deep understanding of the war’s gravity.

“I found him a man of rare intelligence, understanding and compassion,” wrote Richard W. Johnston, a United Press International correspondent who received a Marine Corps commendation for bravery on Tarawa. “He seemed to me one of the relatively few Americans in the Pacific war who fully comprehended the meaning of the war and the meaning of his own country.”³⁴

In light of his accomplishments and the widespread respect of both officers and enlisted men, it was no surprise when Sandy Bonnyman was appointed to the rank of first lieutenant in the US Marine Corps Reserve on September 1, 1943. It had been fourteen months since he’d arrived at boot camp as a buck private.