James Beardsley
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Marines
Mr. Beardsley served in World War II in the Pacific Theater.
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was assigned to B Company, 4th Pioneer Battalion. He participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Mr. Beardsley is a longtime Duluthian.
Source: Duluth News Tribune, Friday July 4, 2008 (see below)
Circumstance and a world war brought them together and, although every year there seem to be fewer and fewer of them, members of B Company, 4th Pioneer Battalion, still gather to catch up and reminisce.
The World War II veterans have met in Tennessee, New Mexico, Texas, Ohio, and Nevada, just to name a few places. This year, Duluthian James Beardsley, 83, is the host.
“There were 22 of us to begin with, and now we are down to three,” said Beardsley. “They’re not all dead, but one way or another they couldn’t make it.”
His guests this year are Walter Cope, 82, of Berlin, N.J., and Jim Simpson, 83, of Rockville, Md. They have a bond that only could have been forged under fire.
“A lot of your co-workers in business will cut your throat to move up the ladder,” Cope said. “You don’t have that in the service. There’s just a bond that’s there and always will be.”
The men said it was like getting married: They slept next to each other, they went everywhere with each other and they looked out for each other.
Veterans: Men who fought on Iwo Jima gather in Duluth, Minnesota.
Today won’t be the first time these men have spent a holiday together; they spent several together during the war. But unlike today, the men didn’t get to celebrate those holidays. They just concentrated on staying alive.
Of all the times and places these men have experienced, the most memorable were the 36 days they spent together on Iwo Jima. They can laugh about certain parts now, but their time on the island was anything but humorous.
After eating what they thought might be their last meal—powdered eggs, a small piece of steak and some fruit—the group went over the sides of their Higgins boat and went to shore. All three men were part of the third wave of the attack.
“For Jim and I, it was our first landing. It didn’t seem like anything until we hit the beach and started seeing dead bodies and the whole thing changes. It’s not a fairy tale, it’s real,” Cope said. “It was scary as hell.”
Iwo Jima was one of the hardest fought battles in the Pacific Theater. There were more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers on the island, which covers only 8 square miles.
“It’s a volcanic island. The sand was all black. You could always feel the heat and smell the sulfur. There was no natural drinking water anywhere on the island,” Simpson said.
More than 5,000 Marines were killed and 17,000 injured in the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Although the conflict was horrible and left scars in the minds of the men who served, the men still can joke about some of the lighter times they had in the service.
Beardsley even looks back and laughs at something that happened to him just after landing on the beach.
“When we first got on Iwo, we had to sit on a Higgins boat for about six hours before we landed. When I hit the shore, I had to go to the toilet really bad. So I ran into a shell hole, and while I’m sitting there relieving myself someone comes over the top of the hole that wasn’t a Marine,” Beardsley said. “So I said, ‘Where in the heck are you from?’ He says, ‘Duluth, Minnesota.’ It’s a small world.”
Another incident the group laughs about involved fresh eggs, a hot commodity to the average Marine, who mainly lived on C-rations.
“We went aboard ship and I saw a carton of fresh eggs, so I put four in my pocket, saluted and walked away like a penguin down the ramp to tell Jim about the eggs. And he pocketed four eggs,” Simpson said. “We put them in a sandbag on top of our foxhole. That night they shelled us with mortars and ripped everything to shreds.”
Somehow the eggs were unscathed the next morning. The men then found two empty helmets on the beach, presumably helmets of fallen comrades, and cooked scrambled eggs and bacon right there on the beach.
“We fried the bacon in one helmet and scrambled the eggs in the other one,” Simpson said. “Jim and I were the only ones to have bacon and fresh eggs on Iwo.”
