Lost grave markers surface from a distant World War II battlefield

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retropolis

Lost grave markers surface from a distant World War II battlefield

Marine Corps museum gets wooden crosses from Pacific battle on Tarawa, where hundreds still lie buried.



Owen L. Conner, curator for the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., unwraps pieces of a wooden cross bearing the name of Sgt. Bernard A. Marble, 28, of Massachusetts, one of more than 1,000 Marines who died in the 1943 battle for Tarawa. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

By Michael E. Ruane
Today at 7:00 a.m. EDT

QUANTICO, Va. — Curator Owen L. Conner carefully unties the ribbon around the weathered slats and removes the storage paper. Sand from the island where the Marines fought still clings to some of the wood. One by one, he assembles the three crosses.

As he does, the faded names appear in black over peeling white paint: Robert W. Hillard; Clarence S. Hodgson; Bernard A. Marble. Fragments of other names can be seen on other pieces, and “Nov …1943.”

The crosses come from lost cemeteries on the World War II battlefield of Tarawa, an atoll in the Pacific where more than 1,000 Marines were killed fighting the Japanese, and where hundreds may still lie buried in unmarked graves.

Last month, the National Museum of the Marine Corps officially acquired the crosses, along with other grave artifacts, from History Flight Inc., the Fredericksburg, Va., nonprofit archaeological firm that has been excavating on Tarawa for more than a decade.

[For the lost U.S. Marines from Tarawa, a homecoming 70 years late.]

The Tarawa crosses are rare and are believed to be the only such artifacts in a museum collection.

The relics from a bygone war come as the Marines mourn the 11 members killed in the most recent conflict, alongside one soldier and one sailor, in the Aug. 26 suicide bombing attack at the Kabul airport.

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A helmet used during the battle for Tarawa in 1943 is paired with an unused version at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)



A Marine’s canteen that still had water in it more than 75 years after it was used on Tarawa in 1943 is one of the artifacts recently given to the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

The crosses had been wrapped up like a bundle of old fence parts and stored in a repository on the atoll when they were spotted three years ago by History Flight’s chief operating officer, Justin D. LeHew.

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Color film footage shot by a Marine cameraman captured the grim nature of the combat and its aftermath. In one clip, the bodies of Marines are seen strewn across the beach and floating in the water.

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A photograph of Marine Pfc. Robert W. Hillard, 19, of Arkansas, is seen on a computer screen at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. A wooden cross bearing his name and service number was recently donated to the museum. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

He was 17, technically a minor, when he enlisted in 1941. He needed his mother’s consent to sign up.

He was 19 when he was shot in the head and killed on Nov. 20, 1943, according to government records gathered by private researcher Geoffrey Roecker.

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Officers and men of the 2nd U.S. Marine Division who fell in the battle for Tarawa are buried on this cemetery, seen here on March 20 , 1944. (AP)

By Michael Ruane
Michael E. Ruane is a general assignment reporter who also covers Washington institutions and historical topics. He has been a general assignment reporter at the Philadelphia Bulletin, an urban affairs and state feature writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a Pentagon correspondent at Knight Ridder newspapers. Twitter https://twitter.com/michaelruane

[CanonRay]

1. My wife is the 8th cousin once removed

of Bernard Marble