BOB RASMUSSEN
Age: 85
Born: Dec. 22, 1924
Hometown: Marysville, Wash.
Residence: Indio
Military branch: U.S. Marine Corps; 1st Marine Division; 2nd Marine Battalion; 7th Marine Regiment; Transport ship, USS Rochambeau (AP-63)
Years served: June 6, 1943 - Jan. 22, 1946; was on inactive reserve, then recalled to active duty — Oct. 11, 1950 - Nov. 16, 1950.
Rank: Private first class; final rank was corporal.
Family: Wife Jean; three children, Gerry Rasmussen of Lacey, Wash., Dennis Rasmussen of Bellingham, Wash., and Linda Litch of Arlington, Wash.; six grandchildren; four great-grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Fred Kammenzind of Indio.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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U.S. Marine Corps veteran Bob Rasmussen saw heavy action on Peleliu and Okinawa while fighting with the 1st Marine Division, 2nd Battalion, during World War II.
During the initial invasion of Peleliu, the 2nd Battalion was kept in reserve, with the intent the men would be sent ashore three days later.
But the 1st Marine Division took heavy casualties in the early hours of the landing.
“By noon the first day, they called us in,” Rasmussen said.
The men loaded into Higgins boats for the short ride to the shore of Peleliu, but the flat-bottomed vessels couldn't get through the coral reef.
The men were dropped off about 400 yards from the beach, “Waist deep in water with people shooting at you,” he said.
“We lost 17 of our 18 tanks getting ashore,” he said.
By the end of the day, 1,148 men had been wounded and 72 had been killed in combat action.
Rasmussen worked near the front lines, laying telephone lines across the jungle terrain, while dodging bullets and mortar fire.
The enemy tried their best to hinder the division's ability to communicate between units.
“Sometimes they would cut the lines,” Rasmussen said. “We kept running the lines.”
The telephone wiremen would call in support from the Navy ships stationed offshore.
The men would call out the coordinates and the ships would blast shells into enemy emplacements on the island.
The dead bodies of U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers were strewn about the battlefield — their decomposition hastened by the uncompromising heat suffocating the island. At 115 degrees, it didn't take long before a body would become nearly unidentifiable. There was only way to distinguish an American from a Japanese.
“You looked at their leggings to tell the difference,” Rasmussen said.
There was a shortage of water on Peleliu, but the problem was exacerbated when the water they did receive, delivered to the men in 5-gallon cans, was inadvertently contaminated.
“Sometimes they didn't clean them out good,” he said. “There was gasoline residue.”
One time, he got sick after drinking some of this fuel-flavored water.
Rasmussen was a member of E Company, which arrived on Peleliu 220-men strong.
“Thirty of us walked out 28 days later,” he said.
The 1st Marine Division lost many of its men during the nearly month-long battle — 1,120 men were killed, 5,142 wounded, and 73 missing.
What was left of the division was sent to the Russell Islands for R&R, but the living conditions weren't much better than on Peleliu.
“Rats were thicker than fleas,” he said.
If the men set their shoes outside the tent at night, “There would be crabs in your shoes in the morning,” he said.
If it rained, the footgear might be gone the next day.
“Your shoes would be two tents down the hill,” he said, laughing.
On April 1, 1945, the 1st Marine Division joined the 6th Marine Division and five Army division in the invasion of Okinawa.
“It was a pretty easy landing,” he said. “It rained constantly,” he added.
Rasmussen carried a .45 handgun, a rifle and bale of telephone wire and slogged his way across the island.
“It was muddy, muddy,” he said.The men would do their laundry at night.
“We'd hang out our wet, muddy clothes and the rain would wash them,” he said. “Then, they get you up at 4 a.m., you put the wet uniforms on and go slopping through the mud.”
Rasmussen watched saw many Marines die on the battlefield.
“A friend of mine was shot through the jugular. He was this close,” Rasmussen said, indicating a distance of about 3 feet. “He was yelling, ‘Get down, get down, there's a sniper!'” when he got shot.
Rasmussen said the men scrounged through the dead Japanese soldiers' personal belongings, picking up notebooks, Chinese money and other items found in their pockets or on their person.
He began keeping his own diary on the back of the unused pages of these notebooks.
A June 15, 1945 entry: “Pushed out about 100 yards. The going is really tough. Had hand grenade barrage last night. We came out on top. They got 10 of us, we got 27 of them out in front of our mortars and machine gun fire. Went on all night.”
At night, the men huddled two to a foxhole, taking turns sleeping. While one man slept, the other was awake, watching for the enemy.
“They'd jump in your foxhole and stab you while you're asleep,” he said. “Or drop a grenade in.”
The Marines did the same, he said. After sneaking across the lines and killing an enemy at night, the Marine would cut off one of the Japanese soldiers' ears and bring it back as proof of his deed.
Precious metals were also harvested. “They had a lot of gold teeth,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen said he never pulled out teeth, “But I had a pair of pliers that I loaned out a couple of times,” he said.
The men lived on meager rations, but once in a while, they were able to capture wandering livestock.
There were sweet potatoes on the island, which made their carnivorous meal even more savoury.
“We caught a chicken and boiled it up in the helmet,” he said. “You put water in the steel helmet,” put the helmet over a fire, “and throw in a couple of potatoes.”
On rare breaks from battlefield action, the men enjoyed taking a dip in the ocean.
“I've never seen a prettier sight than the sun coming up over the China Sea,” the Washington native said. “It reminded me of Puget Sound.”
