In hot days of deep summer, when homegrown tomatoes hang heavy on the vine, look for a sign on Refuge Road. Roscoe Richards, Jr. sells red beauties from the corner of his yard. Richards grows tomatoes in a garden behind his house where tall vines cling on wooden poles. Fruit of these vines is red and plump and plush with the promise of captured summer.
As long days wane, homegrown tomatoes get gone before you know it. Richards' stock is about depleted. But if in the height of the season you happen to have made that money-for-'maters exchange under Richards' shade trees, then you made the acquaintance of more than a gentleman farmer. Richards is a decorated war hero, a recipient of the Bronze Star, won in the Pacific theater of World War II.
Richards volunteered for the regular Army in September of 1940 when he was eighteen years old. War raged in Europe, but the United States was still more than a year away from Pearl Harbor.
A year into the American war in the Pacific, Richards sailed on a troop ship December of 1942 with the Army's 25th Infantry Division from Hawaii to the island of New Caledonia, northeast of Australia. At New Caledonia, the division transferred to smaller ships that headed north and landed Richards and his comrades on the beaches of Guadalcanal.
Guadalcanal was the closest Japanese penetration toward Australia. Since shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the fight for Guadalcanal had flared most of a year in a hellish jungle ordeal.
In early going, the U. S. Navy fought a major sea battle just offshore in what became known as "Iron Bottom Sound" for the vessels that sank there. During the desperate battle, a Japanese navy captain ran his ship on the beach in an attempt to re-supply the Japanese garrison, stranded on the island.
American Marines landed and fought their way inland to secure an airfield. Steep mountains and narrow ravines formed a terrain where men and supplies moved mostly by foot. Thick jungle covered everything, aiding the enemy with opportunities for ambush. In the hot, wet tropical funk, disease thrived. For every American combat casualty on Guadalcanal, malaria took five from the battle zone.
The Marines had fought themselves to a standstill when the Army's 25th Division arrived to relieve them in December of 1942. As a corporal in K Company-35th Infantry-25th Division-U. S. Army, Richards landed on Guadalcanal 17 December 1942. Arrival of the 25th Division soon allowed the war-weary First Marine Division to retire from the island.
"The Marines had them [Japanese troops] drove back past the airport," Richards said. "We relieved them on a knoll next to the airport. The Marines took a beating there, buddy, I'm telling ya. Our thing was to get 'em [the Japanese] out of the mountains." U. S. forces held the airstrip, but the Japanese held highlands that dominated the landing field.
Battling their way upward, Richards' group soon found jungle fighting penned a new chapter in the guidelines of warfare. As a corporal, Richards was an assistant squad leader, leading a squad of ten riflemen.
"I had more yankees in my squad than I had the other," Richards said. Most names were hard to spell and difficult to pronounce, he said. But rapport transcended region.
"In the jungle, you try to lead your people through there the best you can," Richards said. "You'd run into ambushes. It's unreal. Things happen so quick you don't realize what is happening really."
Snipers fired from trees, using smokeless powder to be undetectable. In the tortured terrain, the enemy used the advantage of high ground to pen down American invaders in low places.
After Richards' squad leader, a sergeant, was killed, Richards headed his squad of riflemen. Richards’ Bronze Star came for leading his squad in an attack on a machine gun nest. "It was on a hill," Richards said. "They were always on a hill or in a tunnel. We just had hand grenades. I guess we throwed half a dozen hand grenades in it and kept on pushing in there. There was two of 'em got away. They got out the back –– ran out the escape channel."
That channel was a trench from the back of the gun emplacement "where they could get out and get over the hill." Richards explained.
Richards minimizes his own heroics in the attack. "I didn't take all the credit, but they gave me the biggest part of it," he said. "There was nine of us involved in the thing."
Months of jungle fighting depleted the ranks. Black malaria killed a squad member. Richards saw both his squad leader and his platoon leader, a 2nd lieutenant, killed the same day. The day he was interviewed for this story, Richards could not recall his lieutenant's name –– only that the man was from Minnesota.
"He was about 30, 35 years old –– in the Army five or ten years," Richards said. "They said he was half Indian, but I don't know. He was a good lieutenant."
Richards remembered the man died at a place called Payne Hill. Driven off in the action, K Company returned to retrieve the lieutenant's body. They found the enemy had cannibalized it. "They'd cut the muscle off his legs and butt and had 'em in a frying pan," Richards said.
Later, a replacement platoon leader (another 2nd lieutenant) was wounded and removed from duty. The Army provided another replacement. "They sent in a 90-day wonder," Richards said.
The new 2nd lieutenant, fresh out of officer's school, aimed to fight a regulation war. By then a veteran jungle fighter, Corporal Richards told the young lieutenant, "You don't go by the book out here in these jungles." The green officer took it for insubordination and busted Richards back down to private.
From December to July 1943, the Army's 25th Division neutralized Japanese resistance on Guadalcanal. The speed of the six-month accomplishment earned them the nickname "Tropic Lightning."
With Guadalcanal secured, the division pressed on to the island of Vella Lavella where Richards fought from August to October 1943. As his unit returned by boat from Vella Lavella, a Japanese bomber struck them at sea. An anti-personnel bomb exploded in a blossom of tiny fragments.
"It's just like breaking razor blades all to pieces," Richards said. A shrapnel fragment wounded Richards in the left side of his neck. Another struck him near the base of his right index finger. A medic treated him for the light wounds, but Richards woke the next day with streaks of blood poisoning creeping up his arm. He spent two months in a hospital on New Caledonia. Released for duty, Richards asked to rejoin his unit.
"I found out they'd been over in New Zealand for two months having a good time," Richards said. When he caught up with them, his company commander restored Richards' rank to private first class with the promise of sergeant to follow. His previous "insubordination" was forgiven.
But in just two weeks, Richards was back on New Caledonia, training with the 35th Infantry for the invasion of the Philippines. His injured hand was still a problem.
"They disqualified me from combat duty," Richards said. He handled ammunition for a time until "a big ole sergeant" walked in one day where Richards was billeted. "He said, 'Boys, pack your stuff up. We're sending you back to the States'."
Stateside, Richards and others spent time in medical quarantine.
"I did have malaria," Richards said. "I had plenty of that. I was discharged the 30th day of December 1944. Four years and ten days I spent in the Army. I was discharged in South Carolina with a disability."
Richards received 50 percent disability for malaria, his hand injury, yellow jaundice and an enlarged spleen. That lasted only four years, he said. After some wrangling with the Veterans Administration, Richards eventually worked his compensation back up to 25 percent permanent disability.
After his discharge, Richards worked three decades at Lockheed. His malaria recurred periodically as did the post-traumatic effects of war. How long did it take Richards to get beyond his combat experiences?
"Lord, I don't know," he said. "It takes a while. About two years after I got out of the Army, I got married, and that helped me get straightened out."
Richards married Lamode Wilson. The couple reared three daughters and a son. At 83, Richards has eight grand kids, eleven great grand children and a great-great grandson, born just weeks ago in Gainesville.
"I ain't even seen him yet," Richards smiled.
A grandson built the wooden case that displays Richards' Army medals.
"All my records was burnt up at St. Louis," Richards said. He said it took 50 years to get credit from the Army for earned achievements and awards. Richards finally mailed officials a copy of his discharge papers to set the record right. Now the glass-fronted case holds Richards' medals and unit badges. Conspicuous is a Purple Heart. Beside it is a Bronze Star with a V for valor.
"I always said it should have been given to somebody else," Richards said of the star. "I was recommended for it for saving a couple of boys' lives. A couple of them got wounded, but they made it. We lost a lot of people on Guadalcanal in different places. I tell ya, you see a lot of people hurt and killed. It gives you different feelings about the thing."
Richards said he still sometimes dreams he is digging a foxhole. "Every time you moved up and stopped somewhere you had to dig a foxhole," Richards explained. "That's all you had out in that place. I'm lucky to be alive. I'm thankful the Good Lord has took care of me."
On September 20, 1940, Roscoe Richards, Jr. was one of sixteen Pickens County men who volunteered together for service in the United States military. Three of that group survive today. Most have already answered to a final roll call.
Richards survives. In his dining room, flanked by photos of extended family, Richards held his case of medals for a portrait to be struck and summed up his wartime experience.
"You just do the best you can," Richards said, "and try to save lives. I never took credit for nothing," he added. "My people did it. We did it together." |
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