TUSCALOOSA - When the major replacing Marion Chalker arrived in Tah
Ninh province, Chalker tried to make the transition as easy as
possible.
Chalker offered advice where he thought it would help. Then, before
heading back to the United States, he said goodbye to the Vietnamese
driver who had been his companion since he arrived in 1963.
Days later, back in the U.S., Chalker learned that the man who had
replaced him and the driver he’d grown so fond of had struck a
landmine with their jeep and both were dead. Chalker left the combat
zone in his third war just in time.
But until Alzheimer’s disease dimmed his mind recently, he never
forgot his replacement’s name. And after the Vietnam War Memorial’s
dedication, he took a special trip to Washington, D.C., to search
for that name on that name on the memorial’s bleak, black wall.
“We found his name and I broke out crying," Chalker said. “It could
have been me, but it was him."
Over 25 years, through three wars, in three different branches of
the service, Chalker survived some of this country’s worst fighting:
Iwo Jima, the 38th Parallel and Vietnam. As Memorial Day approaches,
Alzheimer’s has robbed him of the names of the men who fell around
him, but not their faces.
“It’s this medicine I’ve been taking," he said with frustration in
his voice.
Now an 82-year-old retired lieutenant colonel who recently moved to
Tuscaloosa, Chalker remembers the day in 1943 when he left his
hometown of Avera, Ga., to head to Atlanta. His father urged him to
join the Navy, and he complied.
“My daddy said, 'Don’t get in the Marine Corps,’ " he said.
But Chalker didn’t have much choice. He was inducted into the Navy
and the Navy decided to make him into a Marine.
“I went home wearing a Marine Corps uniform and my daddy said, 'What
have you done?’ " Chalker remembers. “I said, 'Daddy, I didn’t have
anything to do with it.’ "
As if to realize his father’s worst nightmare, the Marines placed
Chalker in the 5th Marine Division and packed him off to the
Pacific. He went to Hawaii and then to Saipan for training. He had
no way of knowing that he was en route to a little-known island
called Iwo Jima that would come to define the Pacific’s bitter
fighting.
Chalker almost didn’t make it into combat. During training, he was
climbing down the side of the ship on cargo rigging to climb into a
landing craft in heavy seas.
“The ship went up and I went down," Chalker said. “I fell about 25
feet. I could have killed me. It hurt, but I wasn’t injured."
His unit was under way before the men knew where they were going.
Most wouldn’t have known where it was even if they’d been told.
After arriving at Iwo Jima, the Navy bombarded the Island and the
men boarded landing craft. But Chalker said the initial landing was
scrubbed because the bombardment hadn’t done enough to suppress the
Japanese fire.
Chalker didn’t go ashore until the third day. For three more days
they crouched on the beach while enemy shells landed around them,
some as close as 50 feet.
“From then on, it was just staying alive," Chalker said. “I don’t
know how many men we lost in my outfit, but we took heavy
casualties."
Chalker’s unit never moved more than about 1,000 yards inland. The
soil was just loose, black volcanic ash and they felt exposed all
the time.
“You couldn’t hardly walk," he said. “You just bogged up in the
stuff. You tried to dig a hole and that stuff would just come back
in on you."
For more than a month, he lived with fear and frustration. The
Japanese were dug into underground defenses. During that time, he
never saw the enemy, only death and destruction enemy soldiers
wrought. Concealed enemy infantry scared him even more than the
shelling.
From his position, Chalker said he could see the first flag raised
over Mount Suribachi. It was a stirring sight, but he never realized
how famous it would become.
Chalker also remembers the relief he felt when he finally left Iwo
Jima’s bleak landscape.
“I was in two other wars and they were bad," he said. “But nothing
like Iwo Jima."
Chalker’s unit immediately began training for the U.S. invasion of
the Japanese homeland. They were aboard ships heading toward the
mainland when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Chalker wound up in Nagasaki a few weeks after the bomb
dropped and stayed in the occupation force for two months.
When he finally got back to Georgia, Chalker used the GI Bill to
enroll at North Georgia College, a military school. He had a
year of college under his belt when he enlisted, so he finished in
three years. He took ROTC and was commissioned a second lieutenant
in the U.S. Army Reserves when he graduated.
Chalker’s father got him the postmaster’s job in Avera when he got
out of school. Soon he met his wife, Betty. They got engaged and set
Oct. 8, 1950, as their wedding date. That was the year the Korean
War broke out, and a week before the wedding the Army notified
Chalker that his unit would be called up in a month. The newlyweds
would have three weeks together before he shipped out.
“We got that for a wedding present," Betty Chalker said.
As inconvenient as it was at the time, Chalker decided he would make
the Army his career. He vowed he would stay in until he retired.
“I loved it," Chalker said. “I gave it everything I had. I didn’t
like the fighting, but that was part of it."
Chalker would soon get plenty of that part. In August 1951, Chalker
found himself a platoon leader in a rifle company positioned north
of Seoul, South Korea. The fighting was brutal.
“I was in it for three months and I was lucky to be alive," he said.
At one point, he learned he would be sent to Japan for rest and
recreation if he could bring in a prisoner. He and a radioman named
Jarvis went into the hills looking for an enemy soldier.
They found one, but when he popped his head up over a rock, Jarvis
shot and killed him, much to Chalker’s disgust.
The fighting was so bad, Chalker dreamed of the “million dollar
wound." He hoped that he would step on a land mine just so he could
get away from the fighting.
“I knew I’d lose a foot but I’d get to come home," he said.
After three months in the line he had a rush of good fortune. In one
day, he was transferred out of a rifle company and attached to
division headquarters, he flew in a helicopter for the first time
and he got promoted to first lieutenant. He spent the rest of the
war attached to division headquarters.
Chalker served through the 1950s on active duty and rose in rank. He
was a major in 1963 when the army sent him to Vietnam as an adviser.
And his wife saw him off to war once more.
“It’s very frustrating, but that’s Army life," Betty Chalker said.
He had no authority over the Vietnamese officers he advised. He just
consulted with them on tactics and other matters. The Viet Cong
insurgents learned who he was, and before he left Vietnam, they
issued a bounty on his head.
Upon his return to the United States, Chalker, by then a lieutenant
colonel, attended general staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. It
put officers on track to become “full bird colonels."
But to gain that coveted rank, Chalker had to do another tour in
Vietnam.
His wife was adamantly opposed.
“I said no, I’ll just retire," Chalker said.
Chalker embarked on a second career as an ROTC teacher in Atlanta.
He recently moved to Tuscaloosa to be near his daughter, Pam Harmon,
who lives in Eutaw.
Although retired, Chalker never lost his love for the military. And
he feels that God looked after him through all the years of his
service, particularly the time he spent on Iwo Jima.
“I was thankful that I didn’t get killed and didn’t get hurt," he
said. “I didn’t get a scratch. And I saw so many people who did get
killed around me."
