Mervin Delbert Galland
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Marines
Mervin Delbert Galland
PFC Mervin Delbert Galland of Minneapolis, Minnesota has been accounted for as of 11 May 2020.
Mr. Gallard was born on 20 March 1921 in Eveleth, Minnesota to Roy and Ida (Mitchell) Galland.
Mr. Galland decided to join the Marine Corps shortly after Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in Minneapolis on January 17th 1942. He was assigned to San Diego for boot camp and was initially assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines for training with a heavy mortar or machine gun.
He was given the nickname “Monk” which one of the last living Tarawa Veterans, Wendell Perkins, still referred to him as. [WWII veteran on History Flight identifying remains of two friends lost at war (yahoo.com)]
Mr. Galland saw combat in the Guadalcanal campaign in January and Feburary of 1943, and spent the months that followed in camp at New Zealand alternately training for Operation GALVANIC and going on liberty in Wellington. Mr. Galland was now a member of Company B, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force.
Operation GALVANIC was undertaken to take the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands and its vital airfield. The USMC landing met stiff Japanese resistance in several days of intense fighting. Approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded, while the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Mr. Galland died on the third day of battle, Nov. 22, 1943 due to a gunshot wound. He is honored at the Punchbowl Cemetery with his name on the Tablets of the Missing at Honolulu Memorial Cemetery.
Growing up Mervin was the couple's first child, but not the eldest in the family; Ida, a widow, had a nine-year-old son named Guy from her previous marriage. Although both Roy and Ida were local to Polk County, Minnesota, they raised their family in Eveleth for many years; Roy worked for the town’s power company, while Ida abandoned her self-built millinery in Mentor for the role of a housewife until her untimely death in 1936.
The Gallands returned back to Polk County not long before Ida passed away. Mervin had two younger sisters, an older half-brother and a younger half-sister. By 1940, Mervin Galland was nineteen years old and like many young men of his time, he found work with the Civilian Conservation Corps, and was employed by the Rabideau Camp in the Chippewa National Forest. Mervin only had a year of high school to his credit, but that didn’t matter – if he needed a forestry expert’s advice, he had only to ask his father.
In October 1943, Mervin boarded a transport and sailed for combat once again – a very different kind of campaign than his experiences on Guadalcanal. His 2nd Marine Division was invading the tiny island of Betio in the Tarawa atoll, and anticipated being able to stroll ashore after a punishing naval bombardment. Galland’s regiment were called upon to land in rubber boats on the evening of 21 November 1943. The last day of Mervin Galland’s life was spent fighting a determined enemy in blistering hot equatorial weather, trading lives for an advance of a few hundred yards. That night, they dug in and prepared to resist any counterattacks that might come their way. No less than three hit their lines, climaxing in an all-out attack by several hundred Japanese troops in the early morning of the last day of the battle. At some point during one of these attacks, PFC Galland was shot in the chest and killed. His official date of death was recorded as 22 November 1943. “Monk” was buried in a long trench alongside some thirty other Marines later that day. The temporary markers put up by that did not last long; construction of a Navy base ultimately destroyed the scrap wood crosses, and the location of the graves were lost.
PFC Galland's remains would be undiscovered until 2019, when a Home - History Flight, Inc. expedition uncovered “Row D” and brought the remains back to the United States for laboratory analysis. Mervin Galland was identified on 11 May 2020 and has now been officially accounted for. His name on the Tablets of the Missing at Honolulu now have a rosette stone placed next to it representing that he is no longer 'Missing.'
Welcome home, PFC Galland. Semper Fi.
PFC Roy Galland (Mervin's father)
In the Great War, PFC Roy Galland served with a forestry company in the Army’s 20th Engineers. The combination of quasi-military life in “The C’s” and his father’s service might have influenced Mervin’s decision to join the Marine Corps shortly after Pearl Harbor.
Sources:
http://missingmarines.com//2020/05/19/account...
https://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/News-Releas...
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/69565658/...
Mervin D Galland in American Battle Monuments Commission - Fold3
