Jack Glover

U.S. Army
Pacific Theater

“And we went into Guam and he just turned out to be the bravest man alive, absolutely fearless.”

Jack Glover served in the Infantry during the Pacific Theater of War, where he was awarded numerous medals, including four Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, two Presidential Citations, and a Silver Star. He shares stories of combat in Okinawa as well as the tale of “Doss,” the medic who refused to carry a weapon, and in the end, saved his life.

I tried to enlist on January 3rd, 1942 but they wouldn’t take me because I was a police officer in Detroit. They weren’t taking police officers because they figured they needed police officers at home. After a few months I tried to go into one of my draft boards and they wouldn’t take me. Even if they needed police officers, they said, “Oh no,” and I was walking the beat. I went into another draft board and they found a way for me to get in.

My wife didn’t want me to go either. She wasn’t in favor of me going into the service at all. So I found another way to get in and I took that chance. I enlisted on July 8, 1942 and went to Fort Custer. There I took physicals and tests to get in to a volunteer officers training class. At anytime in this VOC program you could say I want out and go right back in the civilian life; or if you want to stay in, you keep on going through until you got your commission. So I did that. I went through basic training and went through an Army camp school and did officers training at Fort Benning and was commissioned in January of ‘43.

Jack Glovers infantry battalion in 1943.

I wanted was to be a paratrooper and jump out of airplanes. At the end of basic training, if you had passed everything satisfactorily, you went through a review board. During that review board hearing, they tried to find out what you wanted to get into. I said I wanted to be a paratrooper first. I want to be an infantry man second. I didn’t care what I did third. They said, “Well you’re a police officer, so why not go into a military police officer type thing in the service?” I said, “You know, if I’m going to do that I might as well stay where I am.” So they said, “We don’t have an opening in a paratroop school, but we have an opening in the infantry school.” They needed the infantry officers more there then they needed a paratrooper, so they kind of guided you into doing that. So I went infantry training school in Benning, Georgia.

When I was in basic training I was sent to California and I was trained with a 37mm anti-tank platoon for anti-tank warfare. I was assigned to the 77th Division and shoved right into active training.

You’re trained to do certain things. In the infantry you’re a foot soldier and you fight from your foxhole. I mean you take ground and nothing’s new about that. You never get used to it. You just go into it and you do what your training taught you and what you learned from day by day fighting. I didn’t feel ready for combat, but I felt that I had all the training that I could get. In the end, I don’t think anyone’s ready for combat that hasn’t been–especially in the infantry.

A photo taken of Jack Glover as a young man during military training.

During the campaigns in the Pacific [Guam, the Philippines, Leyte, Hiroshima, the islands south of Okinawa, and Okinawa] I had eight beach landings, where you go in under fire. I had never had a scratch all during the beach landings. People got killed alongside of you and you didn’t get a scratch–that’s just absolutely a miracle.

I got four Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts, two Presidential Citations, and a Silver Star. Can’t buy a cup of coffee with it. You just do what you have to do. So remember, it’s either kill or be killed.

My first Bronze Star I got we were on Guam and our battalion went into an ambush where the Japs were set up waiting for us. They caught our first platoon. They just cut it off and there was almost everyone of our platoon, almost 37 people. During that fight I had to go across, under fire to deliver a message and join some other Lieutenant that was fighting in a certain area. You don’t think about anything like medals, you don’t think about medals, you think about just staying alive.

This was the beginning of the war. Okinawa was the last part of the war, where we had to take an assortment that another division had been on for about 3 or 4 weeks or more. They had lost a lot of men so we took over for them on assortment. It was the heaviest fighting of all of WWII. Guam was bad, and then we get into Leyte and that’s worse. Then we’d go to the islands. We took 8 islands in the bay of Okinawa to get all of the artillery off of the islands so that the Marines could land. We were about 6 days ahead of time for the Task Force 58, which is a Navy unit. So we took those 8 islands in 3 and half days and took all the artillery off of the island so the Marines could land without being fired upon.

First I was wounded on Leyte. I had bullets that scraped my eye—I had a big black eye. Sort of had a patch on my eye, but it didn’t keep me out of the house or out of fighting. But you get wounded and just one inch to half inch is the difference from being killed and not being killed. And that happens in all the campaigns, that you should have been killed a thousand times. You were just the lucky ones.

Okinawa was all together different. We always thought the other ones were pretty bad, but you get out to Okinawa, boy, the other ones were a piece of cake. Maybe it gave you an idea of how bad it was. I started out with a company of 162 men and 4 officers and 166 men, and we assaulted the assortment. And four and a half days later we were squeezed out of line. If you loose some men, you got to go back for replacement. I got back behind the assortment and for a while it was safe. And then the Japs threw some shells over. They had an anti-aircraft shell accommodation for aircrafts just logging them over. So they logged a few shells over and I was hit by one. That’s how I was wounded. So when you think your safe, no. You know, I should have been killed a thousand times before then and I didn’t have a scratch except for the one here. So when you safe, you’re not safe: You’re not safe during anytime during the war.

All your people in your outfit are your buddies in the infantry. You have a buddy system all the time. You always have someone along side of you to be your protector. You have a bond with your buddies that is absolutely more than any other bond then you have in your life time. More that love for your wife, a different absolute bond with your buddies because you are fighting with them; fight with them, die with them, depend on them. So after the war, you keep in touch with your buddies. Its something that you can’t ever describe really, but it’s a kind of love, I guess. But a bond that is absolutely more than any other bond that you have, even the love of someone close to you in civilian life.

Jack standing next to his life saver, Doss.

My brother was with the 3rd Army Division in Europe. So he didn’t get a scratch. My younger brother was in Pearl Harbor during the whole war, and never got a scratch either. I was the only one that spent 17 months in the hospital. That’s when I had all the shrapnel taken out of my left lung, left chest, left knee, left shoulder, all that side, and I spent about five months on Guam in the hospital on my back. And I had other surgeries on my back where they went in through a rib resection to repair my chest wall on top. Then I was transferred to the States and sat around 5-6 months at the Kellogg General Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Then I was transferred to Kellogg General in Battlecreek, Michigan. It was near home when I was on rehabilitation stuff, and where I was about 60 miles from my home. I get to go home 15 days and I had to spend twice as much time in the hospital as I spent home during those rehabilitation times. I spent 17 months in the hospital all together.

When they dropped the atomic bombs, it was in August of 1945 and I was in the hospital. I was in another hospital when the war ended.

Well, if it would have been me, I always said, I would have dropped forty of them and it would have killed all men, women, and children and dogs. Because when you’re seeing all your buddies killed, it’s such a waist. I always thought that way about the war, absolute waist. The Japanese too. They fought, well, they were just fanatics about the fighting, and very very tough tough soldiers, so they were doing it because of their religious beliefs, probably. I felt very very bitter about it. From the standpoint of religion, I felt bitter about things and after I got back from the service my wife was very devoted to Baptists. I wouldn’t go to church when I got back from service. I didn’t want any part of a religion, so I cursed God many many many times during the war because it was a waist and my buddies were being absolutely slaughtered that way and I wouldn’t go to church.

It took from 1946 to 1958, twelve years, that I didn’t go to church or accept the Lord or anything like that as a religious thing. So it takes time, rehabilitation, it takes a short period of time and a long time.

But one story that I got involved in during the war, which is my main story and I have videos of what took place. When I was in the desert of Arizona, a person joined my company and he was a Seventh Day Adventist. They were trained as combat medics in Michigan. They were kind of labeled conscientious objectors because they wouldn’t touch a rifle, wouldn’t touch anything, a grenade or a pistol or have anything to do with anything that took life. They were enlisted in-service, so I never considered them as conscientious objectors. So he joined our outfit in the desert when we were in desert training. H was introduced to me as Desmond T. Doss. The one that introduced him to me was the Sergeant in my platoon. He said, “You know, Doss won’t carry a rifle or anything. He’s trained as a combat medic and he won’t take life.” I said, “Well don’t worry, we go into war to kill or be killed. If you’re by my side, you’re going to carry a damn gun.” And he said, “Lieutenant, don’t ever doubt my courage because I’ll be right by your side saving life while you take life.” I told him, “You’re not going to be by my damn side unless you have a gun.” He was kind of a scrawny kid and I was older then most of them. I enlisted when I was twenty-seven so that was pretty old for all the rest of the guys who were much younger.

Glover won many awards and medals during the war including but not limited to: Silver Star, 4 Bronze Stars, 2 Purple Hearts, and 2 Presidential Citations.

Doss was a scrawny kid, and he wore glasses with metal rims and his glasses were always crooked. So I tried to have him transferred out of the outfit, but the battalions wouldn’t okay it and the regiment wouldn’t okay it. I went to a division and the word I got back from the division was, “Not only is he going to stay in the army, but he’s going to stay with you.” So he stayed with my company. And we went into Guam and he just turned out to be the bravest man alive, absolutely fearless. It’s religious. His religious belief, his duty, was to save lives, not take lives. You’d do an attack and you’d leave wounded behind, because the rule during warfare is that if we were going along and say the three of you and I were attacking and one of you would get shot or get hit and the rule was I was never to stop and help you, ever, because that would leave two of us, right? If you were hit and I stopped to help you that would take two men out. So you’d leave it to the medics to take care of you. The medics would come on by. Doss would stay out in the field under fire to take care of the wounded and when we’d yell for him, “Doss, damn it. Get the hell out of there!” His duty was to save lives. That’s where he said, “Don’t ever doubt my courage. I save lives while you take lives, right?” All during the war, from Guam, Leyte, the Philippines, the islands, Hiroshima, where we were also before we were to go to Okinawa, his name became a legend. Doss, you know, just a legend. He stayed out under fire, just ignored danger; that’s what he was always saying. Afterward he said, “God just let me live to take care of one more soldier.” Then he went all through the war.

In Okinawa, when I came back behind the disbarment, I was hit and Doss saved my life. He was the only medic right near me when I got hit. So the irony behind the whole story is that the guy I tried to help get kicked out of the service ended up saving my life. He also, through all the time, he was seriously wounded after he saved my life and was shot up real bad. So he ended up winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest honor that you could receive. He was the only conscientious objector that ever received the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was decorated by President Truman in a ceremony.

After the war, I have always kept in touch with him. He’s still alive. Can’t see very good, but he’s still alive, and he lives in Arkansas. In 1956 before I came to Arizona I wrote a story about what I just told you about Doss and me and the guy that I tried to kick out saved my life.

Everything that anybody does in service, if they do it to the best of their ability, will aid them in the rest of their life. Somewhere along the line it will influence them in their life whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad, then it’s their fault. If you work hard enough when you’re a trooper you’re going to do well enough where everything is going to help you. And if it doesn’t help you, you didn’t do thing well enough in service.