D. Clarke Evans Photographer

Pfc. Don Holmes
Guam, 1944

I’m proud of the Marine Corps. It was the greatest bunch of guys I ever met in my life.

I joined the Corps when I was 17, right out of high school. I went to MCRD in San Diego. My DI—you talk about a man. He’d been in since 1939. He had wide shoulders, small waist, and a jaw that stuck out. The first day, he says to me, ‘Did you shave this morning?’ ‘No sir,’ I said. He said, ‘In this man’s Marine Corps, you shave every day.’

Sundays you were supposed to wash your socks and skivvies, but I thought it was a good day to rest. About 3:00 that afternoon he tells us to fall out with our laundry. I didn’t have any. He had me scrubbing his floor. They issued us our military gear and he stressed that this was government property and if you lose it, you will pay for it. Later that evening, he came by and said, ‘Give me your canteen.’ I thought, Oh Lordy, I’ve lost a canteen. About 11:30 that night he comes into the tent and throws it on top of me. It was full of beer. I never told anybody about that.

I made private first class out of boot camp and they sent me straight to Seattle on a train. I was stationed at a Naval base, and around October was sent to Guam with the 12th Marines in an artillery unit. We had all this training and then we were going to Iwo Jima. I didn’t know what Iwo was. We were not going to be assault troops, we were going to be floating reserve. That sounded pretty good.

Our ammo team got ashore on D+6 with the 21st Marines. We supported the 2nd Battalion. The next day we began firing, supporting the 5th Division firing unit. I don’t think we lost anybody on Iwo. I saw a lot of the guys, the infantry guys, the grunts; they took the beating.

We began training to invade Japan and realized how important Iwo was as it would be a landing base for the B-29s to attack their mainland. Three weeks from boarding ship for the invasion, they announced that the atomic bomb was dropped and the war was ending. We were one happy group of Marines. We were not looking forward to invading Japan.  From there I went to Tientsin, China in late November, 1945, overseeing the Chinese Nationals guarding ammunition dumps from the Communist Chinese.

Best day in the Corps? After we got back from Iwo Jima on Guam and I was able to visit some of my buddies in the 9th Marines. Worst day? I was just out of boot camp and got a letter from my mother that my brother Jack had been killed.

After the Corps, I went to college for two years and became a salesman of industrial valves. I bought a house and my payments were $49.11 a month. My dad said, ‘Son, you can’t afford this house.’ I told him, ‘Don’t know why not, I’m making $1.35 an hour with overtime,’ which was good then.

My brother was a Marine. He was at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea—wounded twice. My son became a Marine and was in Vietnam. He was a good Marine but had some issues when he got back. I married Dorothy Gibson in 1947; she passed away in 1967. I reconnected with my high school sweetheart, Anne McIver, and we married. She passed away in 2013.

I never got rich, but I sure enjoyed my life. {04-10-2015 • New Braunfels, TX}