Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:07 | On Iwo Jima, Bill Head had a foxhole mate who kept falling asleep on his watch. A drunk Japanese officer charging into the camp with sword raised offered a perfect opportunity to teach him a lesson.
At seventeen, Bill Head was very angry about the Pearl Harbor attack, so he enlisted in the Marines. He only fired an old single shot weapon at Parris Island but there was a Browning Automatic rifle in his future.
Marine Bill Head's unit was held in reserve for Saipan, but once it was secure, and that's a very relative term according to him, they were sent to Guam where they did see action and plenty of it. Many banzai attacks were repelled, but one time they broke through.
After Guam was secure, Bill Head participated in three sweeps of the island and they found Japanese holdouts during every one. However, they missed at least one because thirty years later he surrendered. Bill's unit then began preparing for Iwo Jima, an island which was supposed to take three days to capture, according to the brass.
Landing on Iwo Jima the third day of the battle, Marine Bill Head moved inland and through the center of the island. A big problem was that the enemy would come up behind you after you gained ground, using tunnels. A big asset for the Marines when trying to deal with this was the flamethrower.
The reason Iwo Jima was important was the airfield, and as soon as it was secure, a big bomber landed after nearly running out of fuel. Once the Marines had taken nearly the entire island, Bill Head saw a gruesome sight as a group of enemy soldiers killed themselves to avoid becoming prisoners.
The green replacements coming into Iwo Jima didn't really know what to do, says Bill Head, who told one guy to keep his head down, to no avail. Soon he was back on Guam, training for the dreaded invasion of Japan, which in his mind, meant certain death. Then came some wonderful news.
Returning to the states after the ordeals in the Pacific, Marine Bill Head was put on a strange troop train which wandered nearly the whole country before arriving at Camp Lejeune. He stayed in the reserve and was called up for the Korean War, during which he exercised a special skill.
