One microbe, carried by one small insect can
take a soldier out of action as effectively as any well-placed bomb.That's the case with Ray Conley. Part of a heavy weapons platoon with D Company, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th
Infantry Division, Conley saw action at Guadalcanal in 1942-43, Conley met up with the malaria bug in 1943 and nearly lost his life.
The Guadalcanal campaign was nearing the end in early 1943 when
Conley, a "selectee" from Erie, contracted malaria. He became wracked with devastating fevers. He was pulled from the combat zone, sent to the nearby American base at New Caledonia and then put on a ship to the
United States.
Here is his story.
He left Erie with 200 guys to Fort Indiantown Gap, the first military base most Pennsylvanians would see during the war. Conley was selected a
month after the war. Basic training took place at Camp Wheeler in Georgia. While there, Conley developed a dislike for Georgians, who seemed to have no love for the soldiers, but who had a great desire for the
money the soldiers carried. When leaves were granted in nearby Georgian communities, the prices were way too high. For recruits making just $21 a
month (up to $30 once they hit pfc.) it was aggravating. "We were always broke. And on payday, the prices always went up. Those Georgians would always soak ya."
Following basic training, Conley was eventually assigned to the 25th Infantry Division, which was already in Hawaii.
The 25th
had borne part of the Japanese attack on Pearly Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941, when aircraft hit Schofield Barracks. Conley ended up there for
a time. Years later, while watching the movie, "From Here to Eternity" with his family, he surprised them by pronouncing the barracks the same ones he had lived in.
In the summer of 1942, the 25th
was shipped to Auckland, New Zealand, positioned to repel any Japanese invasion of the southern Pacific island nation. The need never arose. On the way, Conley volunteered to man a
40mm antiaircraft gun just so he could get on deck more often. "The ship was terrible. It stunk on the bottom.
"I think I shot a Jap plane out of the sky. I had my sights on the plane and
then aimed two sights ahead, like they told us, and shot. The plane ran right into it and went down."
In New Zealand, the division trained and equipped until it was needed at
Guadalcanal. While the First Marine Division fought the hard battles on the island from August 1942 into November, plenty needed to be done when the 25th arrived in January. The 35th
Infantry Regiment would become the left flank of the American forces, helping hold the flank and eventually clearing the Japanese from it.
On Guadalcanal Conley was in a heavy weapons platoon, on an 81mm
mortar squad. Three men were assigned to the mortar. Each took turns carrying the tube, baseplate and ammunition, even Conley who weighed in
at 140 pounds. He figured the tube to weigh about 60 pounds. He would carry that along with the rest of his field pack and rifle. He carried nearly as much as he weighed.
At one action, they had to carry the mortar to the top of some high ground. "There were 500 Japs down in the valley. They wanted an officer to come
down and negotiate their surrender. We sent a staff sergeant down and they blew off his leg. He got back to us somehow. We got pretty angry.
We lined up the 81mm mortars on top of the hill and poured the mortar shells down on them.
"We figured we killed 500 of them, including a field hospital. Well, we gave
them a chance to surrender, but we didn't want to send any more guys down there."
"We had a reporter from Stars and Stripes with us and he wrote a story
about it. He got my name in it. That's how my brother found out about it over in Europe.
The division got the nickname, "Tropical Lightning" while at Guadalcanal
because of its speed in getting through the jungle. The division's commander, J. Lawton Collins, picked up the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his career: Lightning Joe Collins.
What was Guadalcanal like? "Not too bad. The Japanese were trying to get off the island and work their way back to the northern Solomons. …
The Marines were happy to see us because we took some of the pressure off them."
At one point in the campaign, it looked like the combat might become
hand to hand. "We were told to fix bayonets. The Japs ran away. We were lucky. We had no experience with that kind of fighting. The Japs were way more experienced at it than we were."
In this action, "we used all our ammunition up. We burnt two gun barrels for the air-cooled machine gun. They got red-hot. The water-cooled were
a lot better. We ran out of water for them one time and we … eh … pissed in them, you know. And it worked! They say the American soldiers would improvise."
The Americans went in pursuit of the Japanese and took six prisoners. "I'm surprised we took them at all. Usually they chose suicide. One of
their favorite tricks was to surrender and they would have a mortar shell on their back and then blow themselves up when they go up to you. After
that, we wouldn't take no more prisoners. Well, we took one, and his own men killed him. He wanted the Americans to take him. He thought the
Americans would treat him better than the Japs would. They sent a guy in to get him. He gave up too. After he shot the first Jap, we killed him.
When the fighting on Guadalcanal was over, Conley was at Tulagi, an island across from Guadalcanal. "I was standing in line and I passed out. I
went to the hospital. I came to and a nurse said I was out for three days. 'We nearly lost you,' she told me."
"They said, 'You're going home." He was then transferred to the United
States. While walking up the gangplank onto the ship that would take him home, he again passed out. "I told the nurse, 'There goes my chance of
going home.' And she said no, you're going home as soon as we can get a place for you on another ship."
The liner Macedonian brought him back to the U.S., to his relief. "I was
numb. There were times I thought I wouldn't make it. After I fell down the gangplank there were times I didn't think I would ever make it back.
"The fever got so high, it felt good. The nurse told me she was with me all the while.
You get chills, then warm up again." Back in the U.S., he got an attack
again. In fact, Conley was struck with it 15 times in his life. The last time came on a trip to Germany with his wife, Tillie and her sister 40 years after the war.
They sent him to the Twin Cities in Minnesota after he came back with malaria. He couldn't figure out why they sent him to Minnesota when he was getting hit with fevers from the malaria.
"The major said, 'What the hell are you doing up here? You're supposed to be in a warm climate. Are they trying to kill you?' I got sick up there -- really sick. They put me on a hospital train, which was quite an
experience, and sent me to Missouri. Then we went down to Shepherd's Field, Texas."
Once in Texas, Conley was assigned to an Army Air Forces base. "They
put me in the Air Corps. They said I wasn't going to see any more action." He didn't. He spent the rest of the war there.
The good part of this was the food -- no more C-rations. The first time he
got soup was in the Air Corps.
While at the airfield, some of Conley's best buddies were officers -- a lieutenant, captain and major. They would go for beers at the nearby
towns along the Texas-Mexico border. It wasn't so unusual for officers to socialize with enlisted men, he said. "They said officers never associated
with enlisted men. That's a pile of crap. They did in the Pacific, too. The officer once said, 'If it wasn't for you guys, we'd all be dead."
"I wanted to go to Europe." His brothers, Harold and James, were already assigned to Europe. James was captured near the French-German border
and spent several months as a POW. The Army needed replacements for the many casualties being taken in Europe, but Ray was refused his request to go because of the malaria, which still troubled him.
By BILL WELCH