The Musings of a Simple Country Man

Morris head newBy Hobie Morris

“Once a Marine, Always a Marine”

SEMPER FI

The courageous “Old Breed” Marine was victorious in his final earthly battle just before Memorial Day 2014.  Vic Streit was tremendously proud of every minute of his 77 year Marine Corps association.  An association that began in 1937 when he was still a college student at New York City’s Columbia University.  In February, 1941, Vic became a charter member of the famous 1st Marine Division that was organized at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  In 1949 Streit left the Marine Corps as a Lt. Colonel and began a long and very distinguished academic and missionary career.

Vic Streit’s World War II experiences in the Pacific involved some of the most vicious and bloody battles against a Japanese foe that was extremely determined and die-hard.  They asked for and received no quarters.  It was a war of survival at its most brutal level and the 1st Marine Division would play a major role in this monumental struggle.  Streit’s World War II years proved only a small but significant chapter in his long and very meritorious life.

Vic was born in New York City the year World War I ended and Woodrow Wilson was President.  Streit’s life spanned 17 American presidents, from Wilson to Barack Obama.

This simple country man and his beautiful wife Lois first met Vic and his charming and handsome wife Mary many years ago here in Brookfield.  Mary’s family, the Whitfords, were Brookfielders for many generations.  A very distinguished family in many different venues.

Mary and Vic met for the first time when both were students at Columbia University (Vic receiving a BA in French).  In 1942 they married and one week later the 1st Marine Division left for the Pacific.  Their daunting task was to stop the Japanese in their up to then unbeaten conquest of southeast Asia, a good deal of China and their imminent threat to Australia.  The Marines would meet the Japanese head on for the first but not the last time at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

Vic and Mary would spend many enjoyable summers at the historic Whitford family home in Brookfield before returning to their winter home in Florida.  This wonderful couple were married for 72 years and had five children and many grandchildren.  Lovely Lois and I spent many delightful times in the presence of this very remarkable couple.  Our meaningful friendship was reciprocated and cemented by years of correspondence, indeed lasting until shortly before Vic’s final hospitalization.

To me Vic epitomized what every Marine should look like.   Even at 96 years he was still ramrod straight, slender and very distinguished looking, with a thin mustache and a full head of dark hair.  He was physically very active all his life, playing very competitive golf and tennis and other sports well into his senior years.  He continued to amaze local people when he drove into Brookfield from a rather fast trip from Florida.  Not bad for a man in his 90’s.  It was always a joy for Lois and myself to renew our friendship when they arrived in late Spring.

In some of these letters Vic would reminisce about growing up in New York City, as well as occasional WW II experiences.  In his youth, and in over seven decades of marriage the Streits would visit over 120 countries throughout the world.  A  number my lovely wife and I found staggering.  Vic’s mind and memory were amazingly keen, thanks in part to a lifelong intellectual curiosity and continual stimulation of his body and mind.

Vic grew up in New York City during the post WW I and Roaring 20’s years.  Only very briefly in one letter did he write much about his family.  I believe from a conversation that I recall Vic’s father may have been an official (bursar) with a shipping/passenger line company and that he went on many oceanic voyages with his father during these early formidable years.

In the summer of 1919 at Lake George, infant Vic recalled later having some rough sailing.  “My Dad was playing with me on the beach, tossing me up and catching me.  He did it without a miss—except for one toss.   I don’t remember any pain, or the broken leg.  I remember lying on the ground next to a motor vehicle whose wheels had big yellow spokes…”

Another time in the spring of 1923, after a heavy rain  “I decided to go out and ride my new bike.  The street was rutted and muddy—yes, in New York City.  Riding unsteadily in one of these ruts I tipped over and broke my thumb.  ‘I told you not to go out,’ gently chided my mother.  Kids, of course, always knew better’.”

As a city boy in his childhood and youth, Vic looked at people and places in his neighborhood “with comforting satisfaction and sometimes with wistful wonderment.”  For example, he was fascinated by the routine procedure charged to the trolley car as the conductor swung the “long power rod on the roof of the trolley 180 degrees at the turn-around at the county line” near Victor’s home.

Another time at the same trolley turn-around the trolley wasn’t there, but what was there was a gypsy encampment, complete with a spectacularly decorated wagon and an equally colorful family with bandanas, earrings, the works.  As I stood there in open mouthed awe the male gypsy beckoned to me saying ‘come over here, little boy and I will cut off your ears.’  I was utterly terrified.  I spun on my heels and, taking about two minutes to do it, ran at top speed the two blocks to my home.

Vic also remembered a crippled man who lived alone in a large house down the block from where the Streit family lived.  Being unable to walk the man had a plan involving a well trained Doberman as an “errand dog.”  As Vic recalled “each morning the dog would pass our house with a bag tied around his neck.  Minutes later he would return with a newspaper in the bag.  I guess the dog didn’t know how to make change because I learned he had the right change each day…I’ll never forget that dog.”

Streit certainly never forgot the time his father tangled with a power hedge trimmer—the first one on their block.  “The cord on it looked about 100 yards long.  He must have come in muttering a dozen times having just cut the cord again.”

In the eventful year of 1927 Vic had two very memorable experiences.

In the spring he watched Charles Lindbergh take off from Long Island’s Roosevelt Field in his single engine plane The Spirit of St. Louis.   Heading over the Atlantic towards LeBourget Airfield outside of Paris, France.  “Lucky Lindy,” as he was called, safely made it—and history.

While not especially a baseball fan, the Streits had in their Brookfield summer home a photo of Mary’s grandfather standing with the great Hall of Fame New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson.

Also in 1927, while attending a camp near the Hudson River, Vic got to shake hands with the legendary New York Yankee’s “Bambino”—the illustrious sultan of Swat—Babe Ruth.  There was a regular size baseball field at the camp so they asked the burly one to whack out a few; “…he obliged, slamming some tape measure numbers almost out of sight.” (This was the year Ruth would hit 60 home runs.)

Vic had delightful memories of those growing up years.  As he wrote “for me it was a different world back in the 20’s.  It was the heyday of prosperity.  The war was over.  Happy days are here again, had true meaning.”

Compared to the 1920’s the decade that followed was far more sobering and dangerous as the world faced calamitous economic conditions and the outbreak of many bloody conflicts.   In the United States the Great Depression left the country economically prostrate.  Adding to the woes was a tremendously destructive hurricane that struck the East coast in September, 1938.  Vic wanted to see more of it so, driving his sister’s rumble seat roadster, he sped off to see a friend on the other side of Long Island.  “At one point a powerful gust picked me up and dumped me in a corn field…When I reached Manhasset there were more small crafts on the lawns of the houses than there were in the harbor.”

Vic would nostalgically remember several of his childhood playmates.  “One…an ordinary, fun loving kid, in later life played an important role in putting a man on the moon.  Two other friends died on Omaha Beach.”

In the mid-1930s Vic graduated from St. Paul’s School in Garden City, Long Island and then attended Columbia University, majoring in French.  While still in college he joined the Marine Corps in 1937.  One time this simple country man asked Vic why he joined when he did since the U. S. was not being threatened at that time from abroad.  First, some background.

As the 1930s continued on very ominous black clouds were descending on peoples and nations all around the globe, including the Japanese invasion of China, the Italian incursion into Africa and the Spanish civil war that would eventually involve virtually all the nations that later fought one another during World War II.

In Germany a slightly built, very undistinguished looking World War I Corporal, with a funny mustache under his nose, was mesmerizing and mobilizing a great nation in both body and mind to fulfill a racial purity and expansion doctrine.   During this rise of the Third Reich in Germany most Americans stood on the sidelines and apathetically watched events unfolding in Europe and Asia.  As Vic would later explain why he joined the Marine Corps with the U. S. momentarily unthreatened.  “No, but our later to be enemy was busy doing unfriendly things; example:  without provocation they ‘Japan’ dispatched a sizeable force to China…that was nothing compared to what they did to the inhabitants of Nanking.”

As Streit would note “we knew about that and so did our government but that was a million miles away and none of our concern.”

“For me,” would recall Vic Streit, “the event that was responsible for my enlistment was the civil war in Spain.  The armies of the king vs. the forces of Francisco Franco.”  Franco’s Fascist troops had a powerful ally in Adolph Hitler, who decided to join the conflict with his stukas, tanks and other modern weapons.  Vic read in Hitler’s intervention that “this was only the beginning of his master plan to conquer all of Europe.  That was enough for me.  I decided to enlist in the world’s finest fighting force, the U. S. Marines.”

Fast forward.  Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor.  In rapid order the U. S. found itself at war with Japan and Germany.  America was grossly unprepared but in an almost miraculous undertaking quickly mobilized all facets of this nation to fight the Axis Powers.  Vic, as an “old breed charter member of the famous 1st Marine Division, would eventually fight in the Pacific against the Japanese military juggernaut that was undefeated and unchallenged until the middle of 1942.

In early August 1942 the well trained but inexperienced 1st Marine Division met veteran Japanese troops in the hot, steamy jungles of Guadalcanal.   A strategically located island off the northern coast of New Guinea.  Japanese control of Guadalcanal with its air bases and naval facilities could challenge the supply and troop pipeline from America to Australia.  Before Guadalcanal was secured, 4,343 of Vic’s Marine buddies had died.  Many more would die, others wounded in the bloody battles that followed in the next three years.  Defeating the Japanese on Guadalcanal had stopped the Jap march on Australia and in retrospect was the beginning of the end of their military expansion in Southeast Asia, but the American butcher bill would be high.

After Guadalcanal came Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa.  On Peleliu beginning in September, 1944, Vic would write “I still don’t understand how I survived…I lost all my company commanders and had only one wound that was so slight I couldn’t be bothered going to the sick bay.  Besides, I was too busy.”  (The Marines had anticipated a few days battle to capture this small Pacific island.  Changing defensive tactics by the Japanese concentrated their defenses, not on the beaches but in bunkers and caves, trenches and pill boxes, each of which had to be taken one at a bloody time.  It was an extremely high casualty battle that raged on for over two months with one of the highest casualty rates during the entire Pacific campaign.)

Continuing his Peleliu experiences Vic recalled: “Coming inland and off the beach under heavy enemy mortar fire, I led my battalion to safer ground inland.  At one point, for reasons I can’t explain, I chanced to look down at my feet. Six inches from my left foot was a 4” length of wire.  I knew at once it was meant to be under the sand, not above it. I halted the battalion and sent for my demolition man.  He knew what had to be done; he cut the wire, then traced it to an 8’ buried torpedo.  My nearest platoon sergeant shouted, ‘Navy Cross.’ ‘What are you talking about, Sergeant?’  I had merely spotted an almost hidden Japanese booby trap. ‘Yes, Sir, but…’ ‘Come on, sergeant, we have work to do.  Let’s go ahead and do it.’”

In November 1944 Fleet Admiral U. S. Navy and Commander in Chief of the U. S. Pacific Fleet Chester W. Nimitz highly commended Major Victor Streit in the following commendation for his leadership and bravery on Peleliu.

The citation reads in part:  “For meritorious achievement, as Executive Officer of a Marine Battalion in action against Japanese forces…from 13 September ’44 to 6 October ’44.  During 22 days of continuous fighting in extremely difficult terrain against heavy opposition he performed his duties in a most efficient manner.   His cool direction…under constant enemy fire made possible the teamwork…responsible for the success of operations in which the battalion was engaged…”

Vic Streit had many other very narrow escapes where “inches and seconds can spell the difference between life and death.”

Vic Streit would see three Columbia University Marine buddies killed.

Captain Jacob (Jack) Joseph died on Oct. 22, 1942 on Guadalcanal.  Joseph was Intelligence Officer for the 3rd Battalion 7th Marine Regiment.  Streit was Operations Officer and by the nature of their duties both men worked closely together.

It was early evening and chow time.  Vic and Jack were squatting on the ground while eating, discussing deployment plans for the next day.  About six feet away stood a Marine, enjoying his meal off the hood of a jeep.  Suddenly a Jap artillery barrage struck the area, killing seven Marines outright and wounding fifteen others, including the Marine at the jeep.  He was gone.  Only his shoes remained, laces still tied.  One of the wounded was Captain Joseph, with a seemingly non-life threatening gash on his face.  He was evacuated to the sick bay for emergency treatment.  He died that night.  Not from loss of blood from his facial wound but from severe damage to his vital organs caused by a shell fragment that had entered his spine.  Streit was the only one of the 22 Marines who escaped unscathed.  In Joseph’s death Vic lost a fast friend.

Two other Columbians, Steven Stavers and Company Commander Jim Shanley, would die in the blood bath that was Peleliu in September 1944.  Vic noted that Shanley was a “fearless commander and incomparable leader of men.”  During one vicious firefight, Shanley entered a draw to help a beleaguered Lieutenant.  The latter was killed and died in Vic Streit’s arms.   Shanley would later posthumously be awarded The Navy Cross.  (Ironically, a captured Japanese officer had also been a fellow Columbia University student and classmate.)

In a post-war review of the island hopping American military strategy, the bloody capture of Peleliu was deemed unnecessary.  The island could have been bypassed and the courageous Japanese garrison left to eventually wilt on the vines of a lost war.

A Jan. 10, 1944 photo showing an extremely weary looking Major Vic Streit sitting on a log planning military operations on Cape Gloucester, New Britain, speaks volumes of the tremendous cost of fighting in the Pacific.   The 7th Marines were securing an American toe hold on the western end of this very important 300-mile long Japanese held island.   The capture of this strategically important Hill 660 overlooking Borgen Bay was one of the most difficult and vicious battles the Marines would ever fight.

Another fascinating photo also taken in January 1944 on Cape Gloucester appeared recently in a book on the naval action during the long and bloody Guadalcanal campaign.   This photo shows six very tired and battle weary Marines.  It is the Regimental Staff of possibly the greatest Marine of all—Lt. Col. Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller.  Standing next to Puller is an unidentified, very tall, thin, dark haired Marine, with his helmet in his right hand.  A 45 cal. pistol hangs in its holster on his right hip.   Despite the visible fatigue, his eyes have a twinkle to them.  Other than Puller, none of the other men are identified.  When this simple man unexpectedly came upon this photo, a question crossed his mind.  I sent a copy of the picture to my friend Victor Streit.

The handsome, tall Marine was indeed my friend.  What a thrill it was to make such an unanticipated discovery in a very unexpected way.  In a 2011 letter Vic would name all the men in this 1944 photo.   About Puller, Vic wrote “a blood and guts” Marine going back to the 1920s who was “tough as nails but gentle as a pussy cat.”  Later back home at Camp Lejeune Mary and I socialized quite a bit with them after the war.”  In still another letter Vic commented that “knew Chesty ‘better than anyone in the U. S. M. C. going back to his Major days before the war’.”

In all our friendship years Vic always regaled us with a delightful sense of humor and contagious smile and sparkling eyes.  His mirthfulness was always kindly and self deprecating.  One example I especially remember was when he told me he didn’t know how many [Japanese] he frightened to death but he almost did in his wife Mary when he returned from the Pacific weighing 137 pounds.

In the year 2000 Vic wrote about another Marine legend for The Old Breed magazine.  Joe Buckley was a close friend and combat buddy.  Vic wrote about Buckley “he was to all who knew him a living legend.  He is the only Marine I have ever known whose men not only followed him to hell and back but reveled in it.”  Apparently Buckley had been a Marine from the day he was born, according to Streit.  In 1917 he became a Marine before finishing high school.  Buckley was apparently a great reader and could quote the thoughts of the great philosophers from Plato to Santayana.

Buckley could never refuse a challenge.  One time a younger Marine challenged Joe to match his physical strength.  The young Marine was the acknowledged world push-up champion.  Accepting the challenge Joe proceeded to not only beat his opponent but set a new world record, reportedly over a thousand push-ups.

(Over the remaining 60 plus years of his life Streit kept in close contact with his World War II Marine buddies.  He was often asked to assist authors, film makers, and relatives of Marines he once knew.  Vic became a Marine legend in his own right, but I’m sure he would shake off this distinction with some kind of a humorous retort.  His innate modesty was the capstone of his remarkable character.  Indeed, he was legendary among those of us fortunate and blessed to be friends of such a unique person.)

While the fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific was characterized by relatively brief but extremely intense, violent and bloody battles, the Americans were eventually sent back to a rear area to rest, re-equip and refill their ranks with replacements.  After this rest another Japanese island remained to be conquered.  Between these battles the Marines were often entertained by USO shows that came into the Pacific from the States.  These shows were especially important because they helped to raise the soldiers’ morale.

Near the end of 1943 the 1st Marine Division was resting in New Guinea with Guadalcanal behind them and the Cape Gloucester, New Britain battle soon ahead.  The Marines were royally entertained by a show featuring Bob Hope, Frances Langford, Jerry Colonna and a cute dancer named Patty Thomas.  As Vic noted of Thomas, “she was pretty good at what she did, but it was her pretty features that caught the eyes of the Marines.”

Apparently the high command had anticipated this and instructed the MP’s to be watchful, especially when the ladies returned to their tents.  But as Miss Thomas went to hers a Marine reached out and “gently patted her posterior.”  The MP’s quickly stepped in and proceeded to read him the riot act, with all kinds of threats, including a court martial if he dared to attempt “such a glaring intimacy again.”  But, as Vic recalled, from the Marine’s face “I gathered that he was in seventh heaven…his indiscretion was well worth the threatened punishment.”  Apparently, Miss Thomas showed no objection at all.

To many, including Vic, the star of this USO show was Frances Langford.  As he recalled, “the warmth and sentimentality she had, that was her aura made us feel that she was truly one of us.”  Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna were of course their comical best.

In late December 1943 before the 1st Marine Division embarked Christmas Eve for Cape Gloucester, another entertainment troop arrived for a brief, two-day visit.  The special guests  included the famous movie actor Gary Cooper, comedian Una Merkel and a young, pretty  but little known actress named Phyllis Brook, plus several other entertainers.

The first night the troop experienced a conditioned Red air alert, signifying the suspected presence of enemy aircraft in the vicinity.  Everybody, including the guests, dashed for the nearest foxhole.  Twenty minutes later the All Clear sounded.  Everybody resumed their normal activity.  Everybody except Miss Brook and a single Marine who somehow managed to share a foxhole.  They joined the rest about 20 minutes later.  Vic and his Marine buddies figured their foxhole must have been especially deep for the two of them to take so long getting out of it.

For reasons Vic Streit never figured out, Gary Cooper was assigned to him and shared Vic’s tent.  At that point Cooper had just finished filming what would be a smash movie hit “Pride of the Yankees,” which was dedicated to the life and times of the great New York Yankee’s baseball hero and slugger Lou Gehrig.

As Vic later remembered about Cooper: “…I found that his personality matched very closely the baseball star whose role he played—soft spoken, modest and self-effacing.”  (A description of Cooper and Lou Gehrig that this simple country man felt also precisely described Vic Streit’s personality too).

For many of the Marines attending these USO shows it would sadly be their final connection with home town America.  As Vic would write, “…their [USO] visit was a pleasant interlude and contrast to the grimness of combat we were soon to face.”

It would take 44 months and cost almost 100,000 American lives before the war in the Pacific was over and Vic Streit and the bloodied and now veteran 1st Marine Division came home.

This simple country man recently discovered a fascinating coda to Vic’s fighting experiences some 70 years later.  The story goes like this.

On Sept. 17, 1944, on the third day of the 1st Marine Division’s assault on Japanese occupied Peleliu, Corp. Thomas (Cotton) Jones, a 22 year old machine gunner, was killed in action by a [Japanese] sniper.  In his last request written in his diary, he asked the finder to return it to Laura Mae Davis, his high school sweetheart and girl he loved, who had given the diary to him.  The Marines had expected a few days’ battle, but the blood bath lasted over two months.

Laura Mae Davis Burlingame is now 90 years old.  She had heard that Corp. Jones was mentioned in an exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.  After 69 years Laura Mae was finally able to hold the diary she had given to Corp. Jones and read the various entries.    It brought her to tears.  Apparently Corp. Jones’ nephew did want to send the diary to Laura Mae, but feared it might cause her problems in her 1945 marriage.  His concerns were apparently groundless.  Corp. Jones and her husband were very good friends.  For many, past wars never end until final taps are sounded.

Two thirds of Vic’s remarkable life lay ahead.  An advanced academic degree followed:  while teaching French he received a prestigious Fulbright grant to study in France.  This experience led him from the teaching classroom into school administration and a long career in public education, ending only in 1985.

In 1976 Vic and Mary accepted an assignment as Methodist missionaries in Granada in the West Indies.  They were specifically charged with establishing an institution to be called Wesley College.  As Vic would comment “it was a challenging, frustrating and gratifying experience.”

Vic and Mary were immensely proud of their five very distinguished and successful children.  A close knit family with wonderful memories of the fun times visiting their parents during their annual summer stay at the historic Whitford homestead in Brookfield.

Vic Streit was a remarkable man and honorary member of America’s often acknowledged greatest generation who, through his long life, proudly exemplified and upheld the greatest traditions of this nation that he honored and fought to preserve, as well as the USMC.  In his persona Vic epitomized the highest ideals of Christian manhood, and his presence in the lives of this simple country man and his beautiful wife and legions of others left a permanent and indelible mark.

Thank you, Vic, as you join forever your Marine buddies—Semper Fi!

Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.

 

 

 

By martha

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.