Two Marines Reunite, Recall Time on Iwo Jima
Herald & Review, Decatur, Ill. | Oct 14, 2014 | by Huey Freeman
DECATUR -- More than 70 years after they met in a California camp while the Fifth Marine Division was being assembled during World War II to wrest a tiny home island called Iwo Jima from the Japanese, Harold Miller and Claro Bergevin remain close friends.
Miller, a Decatur native who left home to join the Marines at 18, and Bergevin, who left college and his family cattle ranch at 20, both signed up to fight despite disapproval from their fathers.
"My dad wouldn't let me go, so I went anyway," Miller said, while sitting next to his buddy, who traveled all the way from Washington state for a reunion in Decatur of members of B Company, 5th Tank Battalion. "I had one more year to go in high school. I finished that later when I came back."
Bergevin had a similar story.
His father wanted him to stay around to work on the ranch, for which he had a draft deferment, but he asked the head of the draft board, a friend of his father's, to sign him up.
"Your dad's going to shoot me," the official said.
"I don't care," Bergevin said, insisting he had a right to enlist.
Out of about 1,200 recruits that were mustered into the armed forces with him, just 12 chose to join the Marines.
"I thought: Did I make the right choice?" Bergevin said.
Miller and Bergevin underwent grueling training together in Southern California and Hawaii. They were both assigned to 3rd Platoon, Company B, 5th Tank Battalion.
Miller recalled that during boot camp, one drill consisted of crawling on his belly through water, under various strands of barbed wire for about 100 yards.
"They're firing shots 30 inches over your head," Miller recalled. "It gives you something to think about."
The two young men had good times together during the lead-up to the invasion of the unknown destination. They spent leave in Los Angeles together with a small group of friends, trying to meet ladies and gain entrance to bars, although all were underage.
"This guy was a hell of a good looking guy," Bergevin said. "We'd go out on liberty, and he'd get all the good-looking girls."
While in Hawaii, Miller had an interesting date with a good-looking woman who worked at a restaurant on Parker's Ranch, the training ground for 20,000 Marines.
"Everyone was after her," Miller said.
He asked her to go to a movie with him, and she agreed. When he showed up at her door, she asked if it would be OK if her father, mother, sister and brother came along. Miller, who was always out to please the ladies, agreed.
"The spent all my money," he recalled. "Then I had to hop on the back of the bus to get back to camp. It had a big bumper."
The reunions started in 1965, 20 years after the battle, which was Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945. Eleven Marines showed up at the first one, held in Nebraska. It was originally only for the 3rd platoon, which had 30 original members, but as the numbers dwindled over the years, it was expanded to include the entire B Company, which had about 120 Marines.
It was originally held every two years, but was recently switched to an annual event. Many Iwo Marines have died. Even the youngest are almost 90 now. Only Miller and Bergevin have attended in recent years, but a couple of widows and several other family members have also been attending.
For many years following the battle, Miller and Bergevin did not talk about their war experiences.
Iwo Jima, known for the iconic photograph of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, was one of the most deadly battles of the war.
"That flag didn't mean anything to us then," Bergevin said. "There was still a battle going on, a lot of shooting, a lot of commotion."
About 6,800 U.S. service members, including 5,400 Marines, lost their lives on the volcanic island during the five week campaign.
By contrast, during the past 13 years about 6,700 members of the U.S. armed forces have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Miller and Bergevin have both referred to Iwo as "hell on earth."
Bergevin would talk to his family about his love for the Marine Corps, but not about Iwo. He returned to the ranch after the war and operated a successful cattle operation.
Miller went on to have a successful police career, with 13 years as a detective. He retired as a patrol lieutenant.
"During my 32 years with the Decatur Police Department, I didn't tell anyone I was even in the service," Miller said.
In recent years, they both decided they wanted people, especially the young, to learn about the sacrifices that were made during that horrific campaign.
While they were both were in the same unit, their experiences were vastly different while they were on the eight-square-mile island, which had 22,000 Japanese soldiers hidden in a vast network of underground tunnels and caves.
Bergevin spent the campaign in a Sherman tank by day, while sleeping beneath it most nights. Miller, a member of a three-man reconnaissance team, spent most days and nights with the infantry, seeking targets for the tanks to blast.
Not that being in a tank on Iwo Jima was a safe place. A few days after landing, Bergevin's tank, with five Marines inside, took a direct hit from a shell, apparently fired from an offshore U.S. Navy vessel.
"We were deaf for four or five hours," Bergevin said. The weld on the side of the tank was cracked open, and the long gun barrel was bent by hot metal. There was a maintenance crew on the island that repaired the tank and replaced the barrel the following day.
The platoon had three tanks. The platoon commander was 2nd Lt. Hal Barker, a tough, highly respected Marine who was later an actor in movies and television. Bergevin became the driver of Barker's tank after the first driver was injured.
Bergevin and Miller both recalled that during one battle, when Miller was in the same tank, Barker received a citation for Miller's bravery.
"The lieutenant made me get out and talk to the infantry," Miller said. "Later, he got a Silver Star for me getting out of the tank."
"All the officers got all the medals," Bergevin said, adding that all the lower ranks, including corporals such as himself and Miller, received two Bronze Stars for fighting on Iwo.
Near the end of the campaign, when the platoon was at the north end of the island and Bergevin was driving the tank, a Japanese soldier jumped out of a nearby spider hole and slammed a magnetic mine to its side. The tank was in the wrong place, in front of the front lines.
"It blew the motor," Bergevin said. A brave Marine infantryman approached the tank, picked up the phone attached to it under protective armor and warned the tankers to stay inside or they would be massacred.
Word was sent to another tank, which butted up against the disabled one. The five men left through the escape hatch at the bottom of their tank, crawled between the treads to the good tank and crawled inside through its hatch.
The Marine who left the good tank to help guide the Marines out of the disabled tank also attended many reunions until his death.
Inda Adams, widow of Sandy Adams, has been the secretary of the Company B Survivors group for the past 20 years. She said that the reunions have forged the family members of the survivors who attend the reunions into one family.
"These guys are a band of brothers," she said.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/10/14/two-marines-reunite-recall-time-on-iwo-jima.html?comp=7000023468045&rank=3
