Francis “Bob” O’Brien

U.S. Marine Corps
Pacific Theater

“…one fell right in the foxhole with me and his bayonet cut my jacket —I stuck a knife in him, right there; I figured it was better for him to die fast.”

Bob O’Brien joined the Marine Corps December 8, 1941—the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He had to endure months of difficult training before fighting in two of the most horrific battles of the Pacific Theater of Operations—the battles for Guadalcanal and Peleliu. This is his riveting story.

The war started December 7, 1941, nine days before my 19th birthday. I went down to join the Marine Corps the day after Pearl Harbor, which was the start of the war. We were in boot camp for 90 days, where we had to endure brutal training and hard work, but it was to make men out of us. Then they let us go home for a little while before we went overseas. We left in May of 1942, sailed the high seas for a long time, and finally ended up in New Zealand. We went to one island called Good Enough Island and there were some Japanese up there in a listening post. We had joked about it; if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for us.

Bob O’Brien getting a haircut in boot camp. 1944.

Then on August 7, 1942, we landed on Guadalcanal. The Japs had control of everything at the time: the sea, the air, anything you can think of. We were kind of trapped on the island, but we had to continue fighting to keep control of the airport, because we wanted to bring in some air support. When they charged across this field at us, we were shooting them down and one fell right in the foxhole with me and his bayonet cut my jacket and gave me a scrape. I stuck a knife in him, right there; I figured it was better for him to die fast.

We left there on December of 1942 and ended up in Australia where we stayed until they took us over to the Russell Islands; we were going to prepare for some more landings. Next, we traveled to Cape Gloucester in New Britain. We fought there for a while; lost our captain, an officer, and quite a few men. Then we went back to Pavuvu in the Russell Islands, went aboard ship, and on September 14, 1944, we landed on Peleliu in the Palau group.

I was in the first wave of every landing. There was a big anti-boat gun that the Japanese had up there that was shooting down the beach and killing most of our guys. I get upset about this—I have been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder over the years. I got wounded on Peleliu after about an hour and a half of fighting, and got taken aboard the hospital ship for about four days; being treated for a blast concussion and shrapnel in my jaw. It was terrible on that hospital ship and I wanted to get out of there, so I left to get back to my outfit.

After fighting there, I realized that Peleliu was the worst battle in the Pacific. We took about 9,000 Marines out to a place that had been bombed so severely that you wouldn’t think any Japanese would be left there, but their soldiers were in these great big caves. They came out of the caves and we had a lot of close fighting, some hand to hand. I lost all my friends.

American ships landing on the beaches of Peleiliu. September 14th, 1944.

Every day we would get bombing raids. We didn’t have any planes to fight them. At night they had these harassment types of things. We called them “Washing Machine Charlie.” We would put floodlights up there because you couldn’t see the planes that would come in, but you could hear the bomb bay doors open. You never knew where it was going to hit. Then they came in and they shelled us from the big ships. You would hear those big shells going over; they were trying to disrupt us from getting that airport ready for our planes. What we did was get it in decent shape; got some Grumman fighter planes there and P-30s and they would go up and fight the Japanese’s Zeros. The Zeros were a little faster than ours, but they didn’t have good armor plate on them for protection. Our boys were shooting them out of the air. We saw some of the best dogfights, like you would see in the movies, up in the air there. Our planes shooting down the Japanese planes, it was beautiful. You could see that on a daily bases after awhile.

We finally took Peleliu. I think we ended up killing about 600 Japanese there. My company had 235 men in it when we landed, and I think there was about 70 left when we were relieved. The only good memories I have are of the days that we were leaving those places.

Soldiers in battle on Peleiliu. 1944.

After coming home from the war, I went to work for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. This is where I ended up meeting my wife. Then I decided that I wanted to do something more with my life, so I answered an ad in the Detroit Times, and that’s how I got into the newspaper business. A few years later, I was given a few different minor merit awards and a Purple for being wounded in action in Peleliu.