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n December 2, 1942, Philip Leland Givan enlisted as a United States Marine in Cincinnati,
Ohio. Over the next three years, he would travel halfway around the world and fight
an enemy he had never seen or heard of before on tracts of land no larger than the acres
of farmland in the part of Indiana where he had spent the first nineteen years of his life.
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He would receive a gunshot wound to the arm, he would watch guys he had trained with
and who had become his friends die, and he would forever lose part of his youth on the
sandy beaches of the South Pacific islands. |
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The journey that would take Phil to these tropical islands began three months
after he volunteered to serve his country in the Second World War, for which he made a
cross-country trip from his small hometown of Moores Hill in Southeastern Indiana to Camp
Joseph H. Pendleton in Oceanside, California. |
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He left behind his mother and father, Beatrice and Clyde Givan, a younger
brother, Larry, and a sister Lois. Phil became part of ‘E’ Company, Second Battalion,
the Twenty-Fourth Marines, and after a wartime shuffling of units, his regiment joined forces with
four other divisions and two special units to form the 4th Marine Division. Those
units were piecemealed together in order to structure the foundation of the 4th’s fighting
strength (Proehl). The building started at Camp Lejune in New River, North Carolina,
where nearly all of the lower echelons were formed, including the 23rd Marines, originally
an infantry division with the 3rd Division, but detached in early February 1943; the 14th
Marines, comprised of a central nucleus of an artillery battalion; the 20th Marines, formed
by an engineer element of the 19th Marines; and finally the 25th Marines, originally part
of the 24th, but separated in order to form a second regiment. After the units
journeyed by train and ship through the Panama Canal in July and August of 1943, they
joined the 24th, then on August 16, 1943, the Fourth Division was officially activated
(Chapin).
Wallace Ralston, a man who would eventually fight side by side with Phil in
the same platoon and four-man fire group, joined the Division a month after it was
activated. While the Fourth was amassing its troops, he was stationed at Hawthorne,
Nevada at an ammunitions depot, where he performed guard duty. There he primarily
guarded the mustard gas igloos, driving around them at night and watching from a tower
during the day. Many men who would later join the 4th began their tours of duty at
Hawthorne (Ralston), including Daniel Garcia, who eventually joined 'E' Company after Iwo
Jima and met Phil (Garcia). |
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Once assembled, the troops began an intense and exhausting five months of training in
preparation for combat. The 132,000 acres of the former Santa Margarita Ranch with
its hills, canyons and semi-arid deserts were ideal terrain for command post exercises,
field problems, hikes and maneuvers (Proehl). The hikes were typically twenty-five
grueling miles through the hills of the camp and each soldier carried around fifty to sixty
pounds of gear on his back, increasing the difficulty of the exercise. On the day one
of those trips through the countryside of California was scheduled, Phil had just returned
from a visit back home and was not feeling well. He had a hard time keeping up with
everyone, and to help alleviate some of his burden, Mr. Ralston exchanged his |
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rifle for Phil’s Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and carried it the remainder
of the hike (Ralston).
Nearby, Aliso Beach and San Clemente Island served as proving grounds for
amphibious landing groups, where part of the training involved coming ashore in large rubber
lifeboats. The ride was typically a rough one and many men experienced strong pangs of
sea sickness (Ralston). In November, the Fourteenth Marines were sent to Camp Dunlap in Nilan,
California for extensive firing practice. As a whole, the Division participated in
training maneuvers on San Clemente Island where everyone boarded ships and landed on its
beaches to take the island under life fire support. At the end of the military exercises,
the men boarded the ships to return to Camp Pendleton where they prepared to do it all again
the next day. Although the objective was top secret, it was obvious that they were
preparing to move out (Proehl).
On January 11, 1944, when Phil and the other men of the Division boarded the
USS Elmore at San Diego, California, this objective was realized: they had entered the war
and were heading off for combat in the South Pacific. Phil, who had played on Moores
Hill’s varsity basketball team only a year earlier and had not reached his twentieth
birthday, was on his way to fight in a string of battles that were among the most violent
throughout the duration of the war. For a total 63 days they were in combat situations,
with each day its own battle, and every acre of Roi-Namur, Saipan and Iwo Jima its
battlefield, which would account for the highest casualty rate of any Marine division.
The first stops in that chain of battles were the twin islands of Roi and Namur in
the Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands (Proehl). |
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On the Homefront |
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hile stationed at Camp Pendleton, Phil kept in regular contact with his
family back home in Moores Hill, including his grandmother, Ida Voshell. Photos of
her can be seen in the Photo Gallery at the following link...Click
Here. Below is a page of one of the letters Phil wrote to her, this one is dated
December 23, 1942. The war or |
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his training were never mentioned; the letter was simply to say hello and I am
doing fine. |
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