KB
03-15-2006, 11:20 PM
Interview With a Senator and a Marine
by Maj Fred H. Allison, USMC(Ret)
The ranks of former Marines serving in Congress are thinning. In this interview the author profiles one of our most distinguished Marine Corps ambassadors who served brilliantly in the United States Senate.
Howell T. Heflin, served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1978 to 1997. He was also a Marine. He served as an infantry officer in World War II and earned the Silver Star during the Bougainville campaign and was seriously wounded at Guam. As oral historian of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division, I had the opportunity to interview Senator Heflin in August 2002 in his hometown, Tuscumbia, AL, where Heflin continues to practice law. The following are excerpts from that interview supplemented by interviews included in Senator Heflin’s biography, A Judge in the Senate (NewSouth Books, Montgomery, AL, 2001), by John and Clara Ruth Hayman.
Q: Senator Heflin, you went to Marine Corps officers’ training in Quantico shortly after the war began, what do you recall of that experience?
A: I remember the first day, I went to ask a question in the room where the DI [drill instructor] was, and I said, “I’d like to ask you a question.” He said, “You knock before you come in!” You know I knocked then. Then the next thing you know I’d done something, and so I was assigned the whole weekend to clean the floor of the head with a toothbrush. I had to get down on my knees and scrub it, and the drill instructor would come around there and he’d look at it and he’d say, “That’s terrible,” and he’d mess it up and then I’d have to clean it up. I was muttering under my breath all throughout. I said, “What the devil am I into now?” This was my introduction to a “boot camp.”
Q: Where did you go after officers’ training?
A: I was assigned to the 3d Marine Division at Camp Pendleton. I joined “A” Company, 9th Regiment, and I was made a platoon commander.
Q: Who were your superior officers there?
A: When I joined the 9th Marines we had a battalion commander named, [LtCol] Jamie Sabater. Col Shepherd [Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.] was the regimental commander. He later became Commandant. Of course, he was a World War I veteran and that was unusual to see at the time. He had great command presence. He looked like a Marine, and he acted like a Marine. You know when you say “like a Marine.” I think we all have the same vision.
Q: Where did you see your first combat?
A: Our division went first to Guadalcanal . When we got to Guadalcanal it had been secured, most of the fighting was over. But we patrolled back in the hills and our outfit had a skirmish. I think it was four or five snipers that were firing at us, and we hit the deck and fired back. But they disappeared. It was just a little firefight, not to amount to much. Another time we were walking down a trail and lo and behold we came up on a leg, a human leg that was in the path. We didn’t know what had happened, whether a Japanese had cut the leg off a Marine or something. You could tell it had been a Marine uniform. But we later found out what had happened. The Marine had a dynamite cap in his pants pocket, and it actually blew his leg off. When they removed him, they just severed his leg and took him to the hospital.
Q: I understand your regiment, the 9th Marines, was in the first wave at Bougainville. What was that experience like?
A: Yes, as a platoon leader, I and the other platoon leaders were among the first to set foot on the island. We didn’t have much resistance. They were shooting a little at us by sniper fire, and occasionally a mortar or artillery shell would land somewhere close by on the beach. We didn’t have any casualties. And we moved on in. As it developed there wasn’t really a lot of organized opposition, but there were a lot of snipers.
I remember a humorous thing that happened. We had a redheaded Marine in my platoon. We must have gone in several miles from the beachhead. One night he got diarrhea. There weren’t any toilets on the frontlines, so he used his helmet. A Japanese sniper caught sight of that white, pink skin in the tropical moonlight and shot him. The bullet went in one cheek, out that cheek, into the other cheek, and out the other cheek, and he had four holes in him. After he got bandaged up, the next morning he came to me, and he was humorous and funny as anyone could be. I can’t think of his name, but we called him Red. He was from Iowa. Anyway, he said, “Lieutenant,” and he showed me his bandages and said, “I want to apply for four Purple Hearts.” I said, “Well, I want to ask you a question. How’s your diarrhea?” He said, “That’s the fastest cure I ever had.”
Q: Your unit was involved in a fairly significant battle on Bougainville, called the battle of Grenade Hill. What do you remember of that fight?
A: On Thanksgiving Day, we were at Piva Forks; we had a big, early Thanksgiving dinner. Shortly after noon, we were moving up in the jungle, and the Japanese opened fire on us. I later heard our platoon was facing a reinforced company of Japanese on a hill, and they were just lying in wait. They waited on us until we got within 20 or 30 feet of the top of the hill and opened fire. The foliage was so thick you couldn’t hardly see until you got close to the top. Luckily none of our scouts were seriously wounded and this allowed us time to disperse two squads of Marines and form a base of fire. The Marines were able to move forward on their stomachs and find better positions to fire from. They soon pinned us down. The trajectory of our rifle fire was such that it would go up and above their emplacements and not hit them, and our mortar shells would hit the top of the trees and not get down far enough to be of any help. So we would throw grenades, and the Japanese threw grenades. They would even roll them down the hill toward us. The only way we could be effective was to get on a level and stand up where we could spray them with BARs (Browning automatic rifles). Carbaugh [Harvey Carbaugh, Heflin’s platoon sergeant] and I decided he would create a diversion and I would take a BAR because I was much taller than him and rake their machinegun nests and any Japanese I saw. Carbaugh got the other Marines in the platoon to holler and throw handgrenades and attracted the Japanese’s attention. Then I got up with the BAR and sprayed the area. Carbaugh and I felt not only had we knocked out one machinegun bunker but had probably done serious damage to another such bunker with grenade and BAR fire. Carbaugh then went down the hill to see if there was any contact with the first platoon.
While he was gone, I noticed that there was some Japanese movement around on the top of the hill, and I was afraid they were going to reman the machinegun bunker that we had knocked out. So I saw Slim Davidson who was fairly close by. He was a BAR man. I got Slim to come over to where I was, and we told the corporals in charge of two squads that they should create a diversion by hollering and throwing handgrenades. I sent word to them to holler as if they were charging the hill, using words like “banzai!” The Japanese understood that word. This was to be done on a signal from me. At the appropriate time I gave the signal and Slim and I stood up and fired into what seemed to be two Japanese machinegun bunkers and some foxholes. It seemed to quiet things down considerably. Within a short time Carbaugh was back with the word that they couldn’t make contact with 1st Platoon. About this time darkness was falling and we got the word that Col Randal wanted us to withdraw back to the bottom of the hill and get ready to prepare a more intensified attack on the top of the hill the next morning. We asked to be resupplied with grenades. Our supply people during the fight had been excellent bringing up grenades to us. There is one person I wanted to highly praise and that was our corpsman, Jim Lindsey, who was all over that hillside taking care of the wounded, and he got wounded himself, but it was not serious. He later was awarded the Silver Star.
The next morning our scouts brought back the word that the Japanese had retreated from their dug-in positions at the top of the hill. So we went up the hill, and there we saw that we had destroyed several machinegun bunkers and killed a number of Japanese soldiers in fortified positions. Their bodies were there. Although the Japanese had made some effort to get their dead off of the hill, they did not succeed in getting them all. I came through miraculously well. I got some handgrenade fragments in my stomach. I could pick them out; they were only skin deep.
Q: You received a medal for this, right?
A: Yes, I got the Silver Star.
Q: How many Marines did you lose in the battle?
A: Well we lost one killed, that was PFC Don Bertsche. But I believe out of about 40 or 50, only 11 were not wounded in some manner or another.
Q: After Bougainville, the 3d Marine Division went back into combat in July 1944 during the campaign for Guam. What do you recall of that?
A: My unit was again in the first wave. Guam was a much bigger operation than Bougainville. The landing was pretty heavily opposed. The Japanese were well-fortified and were firing artillery and mortars. They knew pretty well where we were going to land, and their artillery hit the beaches and sank some of the landing craft in the harbor as they came ashore and on the beaches. We had to move forward and get to high ground as fast as we could. Going up the first hill, I got hit in my hand. The bullet went through my thumb. Well they fused it later, and I still have a stiff thumb. I kept going. A short time later I was hit in the leg. I was nearly immobile but I could still move forward. We got to the top of that hill, which was our immediate objective, secured our position, and there we were able to place mortars and fire toward the places where we saw smoke coming from, which was their artillery. We also called for air support, and it destroyed a good deal of their first line of real defense. I was evacuated to the hospital ship [USS] [I]Solace [AH 5] later that afternoon and went back to Hawaii and spent about 6 or 7 months in various hospitals.
Q: You got out of the Marine Corps after the war, you became a lawyer, and in 1978 were elected to the U.S. Senate. As a Senator did you work for Marine Corps-favorable legislation, and did other Senators do the same for their respective Services?
A: Yes, I think it’s a natural thing for them to do that. But I think the Marine Corps is the premier Service. Those who had been Marines would always speak up and let it be known that they were former Marines. You couldn’t find out from the others what branch they belonged to. There were a lot of things that came up [that] I was involved in. I think I was helpful with Senator Stennis [John C. Stennis of Mississippi] in getting the Marine Corps fully admitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lou Wilson [Gen Louis H. Wilson] was a good friend of mine. We served together in the 9th Marines in the war. I was in the Senate when he was Commandant. I introduced Mundy [Gen Carl E. Mundy, Jr.] at his confirmation hearing. But we had a group of Marine Senators that would every now and then get together and would agree to do this or do that, just plot a little strategy. There was Dale Bumpers from Arkansas; Jim Sasser of Tennessee; John Warner [Virginia], who had been Secretary of the Navy; John Chafee of Rhode Island, who had been Secretary also; Conrad Burns [Montana]; John Glenn [Ohio]; and others. For example, I’d get with Warner, and he’s on the Republican side and I was on the Democratic side, and we’d spot opposition, and we’d kind of move in on the opposition and that sort of thing. There were always those who wanted to cut spending where they could spend it on social programs. They said they believed in a strong military, but they were always hunting ways to say that there was waste and abuse of appropriations. We all fought for the Osprey [MV–22] and the modern, up-to-date landing craft [expeditionary fighting vehicle] as well as anything the Marine Corps requested.
Q: What was the mood in Congress toward the military when you were elected in 1978?
A: Coming out of the Vietnam War you had a cutback of the military and all this antimilitary feeling. Now that’s one thing Wilson did as a Commandant. He transformed the Marine Corps back into the legendary spit and polish, gung ho, ready for combat Marines, after all that hippy attitude of the Vietnam period that had crept in the Navy and Marine Corps. In my judgment he is one of the great Commandants because of that alone.
Q: How did your Marine Corps experience benefit you as a politician?
A: It was something I could be proud of. My head publicists that worked on newspaper ads and television ads in my campaigns would mention that I was a Silver Star Marine and wounded in combat. Actually in one of my races, they interviewed one of the sergeants in my company. A fellow from Mississippi named Woodrow Easterling, and he made an ad and he got to crying almost. He was genuine.
I firmly believe my Marine Corps experience broadened my horizons and leadership skills. I was very progressive in racial issues. I was at Purdue and commanded blacks in the V–12 unit there. I think that the first black man commissioned in the Marines that went through Officer’s Training School was in my V–12 unit. I think one attribute you need in politics is a “take charge attitude”; it is especially important. I think command presence is an innate part of your personality, but the Marine Corps develops it.
>Maj Allison is the head of the Oral History Unit, History and Museums Division, HQMC.
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2005/05allison.html
by Maj Fred H. Allison, USMC(Ret)
The ranks of former Marines serving in Congress are thinning. In this interview the author profiles one of our most distinguished Marine Corps ambassadors who served brilliantly in the United States Senate.
Howell T. Heflin, served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1978 to 1997. He was also a Marine. He served as an infantry officer in World War II and earned the Silver Star during the Bougainville campaign and was seriously wounded at Guam. As oral historian of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division, I had the opportunity to interview Senator Heflin in August 2002 in his hometown, Tuscumbia, AL, where Heflin continues to practice law. The following are excerpts from that interview supplemented by interviews included in Senator Heflin’s biography, A Judge in the Senate (NewSouth Books, Montgomery, AL, 2001), by John and Clara Ruth Hayman.
Q: Senator Heflin, you went to Marine Corps officers’ training in Quantico shortly after the war began, what do you recall of that experience?
A: I remember the first day, I went to ask a question in the room where the DI [drill instructor] was, and I said, “I’d like to ask you a question.” He said, “You knock before you come in!” You know I knocked then. Then the next thing you know I’d done something, and so I was assigned the whole weekend to clean the floor of the head with a toothbrush. I had to get down on my knees and scrub it, and the drill instructor would come around there and he’d look at it and he’d say, “That’s terrible,” and he’d mess it up and then I’d have to clean it up. I was muttering under my breath all throughout. I said, “What the devil am I into now?” This was my introduction to a “boot camp.”
Q: Where did you go after officers’ training?
A: I was assigned to the 3d Marine Division at Camp Pendleton. I joined “A” Company, 9th Regiment, and I was made a platoon commander.
Q: Who were your superior officers there?
A: When I joined the 9th Marines we had a battalion commander named, [LtCol] Jamie Sabater. Col Shepherd [Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.] was the regimental commander. He later became Commandant. Of course, he was a World War I veteran and that was unusual to see at the time. He had great command presence. He looked like a Marine, and he acted like a Marine. You know when you say “like a Marine.” I think we all have the same vision.
Q: Where did you see your first combat?
A: Our division went first to Guadalcanal . When we got to Guadalcanal it had been secured, most of the fighting was over. But we patrolled back in the hills and our outfit had a skirmish. I think it was four or five snipers that were firing at us, and we hit the deck and fired back. But they disappeared. It was just a little firefight, not to amount to much. Another time we were walking down a trail and lo and behold we came up on a leg, a human leg that was in the path. We didn’t know what had happened, whether a Japanese had cut the leg off a Marine or something. You could tell it had been a Marine uniform. But we later found out what had happened. The Marine had a dynamite cap in his pants pocket, and it actually blew his leg off. When they removed him, they just severed his leg and took him to the hospital.
Q: I understand your regiment, the 9th Marines, was in the first wave at Bougainville. What was that experience like?
A: Yes, as a platoon leader, I and the other platoon leaders were among the first to set foot on the island. We didn’t have much resistance. They were shooting a little at us by sniper fire, and occasionally a mortar or artillery shell would land somewhere close by on the beach. We didn’t have any casualties. And we moved on in. As it developed there wasn’t really a lot of organized opposition, but there were a lot of snipers.
I remember a humorous thing that happened. We had a redheaded Marine in my platoon. We must have gone in several miles from the beachhead. One night he got diarrhea. There weren’t any toilets on the frontlines, so he used his helmet. A Japanese sniper caught sight of that white, pink skin in the tropical moonlight and shot him. The bullet went in one cheek, out that cheek, into the other cheek, and out the other cheek, and he had four holes in him. After he got bandaged up, the next morning he came to me, and he was humorous and funny as anyone could be. I can’t think of his name, but we called him Red. He was from Iowa. Anyway, he said, “Lieutenant,” and he showed me his bandages and said, “I want to apply for four Purple Hearts.” I said, “Well, I want to ask you a question. How’s your diarrhea?” He said, “That’s the fastest cure I ever had.”
Q: Your unit was involved in a fairly significant battle on Bougainville, called the battle of Grenade Hill. What do you remember of that fight?
A: On Thanksgiving Day, we were at Piva Forks; we had a big, early Thanksgiving dinner. Shortly after noon, we were moving up in the jungle, and the Japanese opened fire on us. I later heard our platoon was facing a reinforced company of Japanese on a hill, and they were just lying in wait. They waited on us until we got within 20 or 30 feet of the top of the hill and opened fire. The foliage was so thick you couldn’t hardly see until you got close to the top. Luckily none of our scouts were seriously wounded and this allowed us time to disperse two squads of Marines and form a base of fire. The Marines were able to move forward on their stomachs and find better positions to fire from. They soon pinned us down. The trajectory of our rifle fire was such that it would go up and above their emplacements and not hit them, and our mortar shells would hit the top of the trees and not get down far enough to be of any help. So we would throw grenades, and the Japanese threw grenades. They would even roll them down the hill toward us. The only way we could be effective was to get on a level and stand up where we could spray them with BARs (Browning automatic rifles). Carbaugh [Harvey Carbaugh, Heflin’s platoon sergeant] and I decided he would create a diversion and I would take a BAR because I was much taller than him and rake their machinegun nests and any Japanese I saw. Carbaugh got the other Marines in the platoon to holler and throw handgrenades and attracted the Japanese’s attention. Then I got up with the BAR and sprayed the area. Carbaugh and I felt not only had we knocked out one machinegun bunker but had probably done serious damage to another such bunker with grenade and BAR fire. Carbaugh then went down the hill to see if there was any contact with the first platoon.
While he was gone, I noticed that there was some Japanese movement around on the top of the hill, and I was afraid they were going to reman the machinegun bunker that we had knocked out. So I saw Slim Davidson who was fairly close by. He was a BAR man. I got Slim to come over to where I was, and we told the corporals in charge of two squads that they should create a diversion by hollering and throwing handgrenades. I sent word to them to holler as if they were charging the hill, using words like “banzai!” The Japanese understood that word. This was to be done on a signal from me. At the appropriate time I gave the signal and Slim and I stood up and fired into what seemed to be two Japanese machinegun bunkers and some foxholes. It seemed to quiet things down considerably. Within a short time Carbaugh was back with the word that they couldn’t make contact with 1st Platoon. About this time darkness was falling and we got the word that Col Randal wanted us to withdraw back to the bottom of the hill and get ready to prepare a more intensified attack on the top of the hill the next morning. We asked to be resupplied with grenades. Our supply people during the fight had been excellent bringing up grenades to us. There is one person I wanted to highly praise and that was our corpsman, Jim Lindsey, who was all over that hillside taking care of the wounded, and he got wounded himself, but it was not serious. He later was awarded the Silver Star.
The next morning our scouts brought back the word that the Japanese had retreated from their dug-in positions at the top of the hill. So we went up the hill, and there we saw that we had destroyed several machinegun bunkers and killed a number of Japanese soldiers in fortified positions. Their bodies were there. Although the Japanese had made some effort to get their dead off of the hill, they did not succeed in getting them all. I came through miraculously well. I got some handgrenade fragments in my stomach. I could pick them out; they were only skin deep.
Q: You received a medal for this, right?
A: Yes, I got the Silver Star.
Q: How many Marines did you lose in the battle?
A: Well we lost one killed, that was PFC Don Bertsche. But I believe out of about 40 or 50, only 11 were not wounded in some manner or another.
Q: After Bougainville, the 3d Marine Division went back into combat in July 1944 during the campaign for Guam. What do you recall of that?
A: My unit was again in the first wave. Guam was a much bigger operation than Bougainville. The landing was pretty heavily opposed. The Japanese were well-fortified and were firing artillery and mortars. They knew pretty well where we were going to land, and their artillery hit the beaches and sank some of the landing craft in the harbor as they came ashore and on the beaches. We had to move forward and get to high ground as fast as we could. Going up the first hill, I got hit in my hand. The bullet went through my thumb. Well they fused it later, and I still have a stiff thumb. I kept going. A short time later I was hit in the leg. I was nearly immobile but I could still move forward. We got to the top of that hill, which was our immediate objective, secured our position, and there we were able to place mortars and fire toward the places where we saw smoke coming from, which was their artillery. We also called for air support, and it destroyed a good deal of their first line of real defense. I was evacuated to the hospital ship [USS] [I]Solace [AH 5] later that afternoon and went back to Hawaii and spent about 6 or 7 months in various hospitals.
Q: You got out of the Marine Corps after the war, you became a lawyer, and in 1978 were elected to the U.S. Senate. As a Senator did you work for Marine Corps-favorable legislation, and did other Senators do the same for their respective Services?
A: Yes, I think it’s a natural thing for them to do that. But I think the Marine Corps is the premier Service. Those who had been Marines would always speak up and let it be known that they were former Marines. You couldn’t find out from the others what branch they belonged to. There were a lot of things that came up [that] I was involved in. I think I was helpful with Senator Stennis [John C. Stennis of Mississippi] in getting the Marine Corps fully admitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lou Wilson [Gen Louis H. Wilson] was a good friend of mine. We served together in the 9th Marines in the war. I was in the Senate when he was Commandant. I introduced Mundy [Gen Carl E. Mundy, Jr.] at his confirmation hearing. But we had a group of Marine Senators that would every now and then get together and would agree to do this or do that, just plot a little strategy. There was Dale Bumpers from Arkansas; Jim Sasser of Tennessee; John Warner [Virginia], who had been Secretary of the Navy; John Chafee of Rhode Island, who had been Secretary also; Conrad Burns [Montana]; John Glenn [Ohio]; and others. For example, I’d get with Warner, and he’s on the Republican side and I was on the Democratic side, and we’d spot opposition, and we’d kind of move in on the opposition and that sort of thing. There were always those who wanted to cut spending where they could spend it on social programs. They said they believed in a strong military, but they were always hunting ways to say that there was waste and abuse of appropriations. We all fought for the Osprey [MV–22] and the modern, up-to-date landing craft [expeditionary fighting vehicle] as well as anything the Marine Corps requested.
Q: What was the mood in Congress toward the military when you were elected in 1978?
A: Coming out of the Vietnam War you had a cutback of the military and all this antimilitary feeling. Now that’s one thing Wilson did as a Commandant. He transformed the Marine Corps back into the legendary spit and polish, gung ho, ready for combat Marines, after all that hippy attitude of the Vietnam period that had crept in the Navy and Marine Corps. In my judgment he is one of the great Commandants because of that alone.
Q: How did your Marine Corps experience benefit you as a politician?
A: It was something I could be proud of. My head publicists that worked on newspaper ads and television ads in my campaigns would mention that I was a Silver Star Marine and wounded in combat. Actually in one of my races, they interviewed one of the sergeants in my company. A fellow from Mississippi named Woodrow Easterling, and he made an ad and he got to crying almost. He was genuine.
I firmly believe my Marine Corps experience broadened my horizons and leadership skills. I was very progressive in racial issues. I was at Purdue and commanded blacks in the V–12 unit there. I think that the first black man commissioned in the Marines that went through Officer’s Training School was in my V–12 unit. I think one attribute you need in politics is a “take charge attitude”; it is especially important. I think command presence is an innate part of your personality, but the Marine Corps develops it.
>Maj Allison is the head of the Oral History Unit, History and Museums Division, HQMC.
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2005/05allison.html