HADRON "IZELL" BANKSTON
Patriot, Chapter 1919
Navy, WWII, Pacific
Hadron
Izell Bankston
was born in Malta, Texas (Bowie County near New Boston) in 1925. He has
been called Izell all of his life. As a small child his family moved to
Kaufman County and while he was growing up they lived variously at Kemp,
Blue Bank, Mabank and Kaufman. He was attending Kaufman High School when
America entered the war and he wanted to volunteer immediately. However, he
was only seventeen and his mother refused her permission. So, Izell bided
his time until he turned eighteen and enlisted in the Navy on his birthday.
Doing so meant dropping out of high school before finishing his senior year.
Izell entered service as a “selective volunteer” and after eight weeks of
“boot camp” in San Diego, California, he was assigned to the Hospital Corps
and sent to the Naval Hospital there where he initially worked in the
dermatology ward. He later served special duty with the boot camp for a
short time and then his name came up for training to be a Corpsman with the
Marines. He was a Hospital Apprentice Second Class when he attended the
Medical Field Service School at Camp Elliott in San Diego and graduated on
September 1, 1943 as a Medical Field Service Qualified Assistant. He still
has today a bound notebook with his detailed handwritten class notes from
his training course work.
During his time at Camp Elliott in San Diego, Izell remembers that the
Indians in communications training, later famous as the “code talkers,” were
in the barracks immediately behind the “huts” that he and the medical
personnel were living in. He also remembers the 12-mile road marches every
Monday and the rigorous training for overseas assignment before being
deployed to the Pacific. He shipped out with other unassigned Navy Hospital
Corpsmen on an old pre-war luxury liner, the “Mount Vernon,” which had been
converted into a troop transport.
They arrived in-theatre at New Caledonia and after three weeks they were
further sent on a new Landing Ship Transport (LST) to Brisbane, Australia
where they were stationed briefly on the Brisbane Race Track. The American
troops had only U.S. money that was not convertible into Australian
currency. Some of the local citizens, out of the goodness of their heart,
spent their own money to provide them with some of their needs. Izell next
shipped to Milne Bay, New Guinea on the troopship “President Polk,” where he
joined with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.
When he arrived, the 5th Marines were training in making practice landings
and working their way up the coast, preparing for operations to force the
Japanese out of the area. Izell was allergic to quinine and he soon came
down with malaria. He was most ill between December 1943 and April 1944.
However, he could tolerate Atebrine and responded to that treatment.
On December 26, 1944, Operation Cartwheel began, the battle to take the
Japanese airfield and the area along the coast at Cape Gloucester, New
Britain. The 5th Marines, initially in reserve, were held on board ship
through the first day and then were landed on “Blue Beach” (Hell’s Point)
and took up positions in a chaotic area devastated by earthquake and a
typhoon. Izell had a friend killed by a falling tree, downed by
aftereffects of the earthquake. The area he was in was also bombed by a lone
Japanese plane, even as the men were trying to construct hasty shelters.
Nine days into the operation, on January 3, 1944, Hospital Corpsman Bankston
was attending the wounded during his battalion’s fighting west of the
airfield at “Suicide Creek,” when he was himself wounded by shrapnel. He
was evacuated with fragmentation wounds to his face, left shoulder and his
left leg, severe enough to keep him in an Army Hospital on New Guinea for a
month before being released and returned to duty.
He says his most memorable action of the war was Operation Stalemate, the
taking of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, September 15, 1944 through November
27, 1944. What was anticipated to be a four-day operation lasted over two
months, and considering the number of men involved, had the highest casualty
rate of any battle of the war in the Pacific. The 5th Marines came ashore
in the center of the division landing and attacked directly to their front
across the island to secure the Japanese airfield. Incidents that made the
greatest impressions on Izell included these. One night, his medical team
came to the realization that their position was in Japanese held territory,
out forward of their own lines. They successfully slipped back safely in
the dark. But, it had been frighteningly slow with frequent stops to take
cover as flares illuminated the area, forcing them to wait motionless until
the flares had burned out before moving again. Losses were heavy among the
medical personnel, with consequences that Corpsman Bankston could never have
anticipated. When the colonel in command of Izell’s unit was wounded in the
arm he turned to the doctor there and said, “You are in charge, I’m
leaving,” and then made his way to the rear. Of course, the medical doctor
had not had training to be put in such a position. Another time there was
not a single doctor remaining present for duty with the3rd Battalion, 5th
Marines. Peleliu was hard, but the Corpsmen did the best that they could.
After the war was over,
Hadron Izell Bankston
was discharged from the Navy on November 22, 1945 and returned home to
Kaufman, Texas. He immediately went back to High School, finished his
classes and got his diploma in 1946. During the time he was finishing up
classes, he chanced to meet a long time friend,
Mary Virginia
Berendzen,
an 18 year-old who was teaching the primary grades in nearby Warsaw. The
school system wasn’t all that big and they knew all the same people. Izell
and “Jenny” married May 17, 1946. Izell then enrolled at North Texas
Agricultural College (now the University of Texas at Arlington). Because he
was combat wounded, he and Jenny received $125 per month, substantially more
than what was provided to the normal G.I. Bill recipient. After one year in
college, he entered into a 5-year apprenticeship as a pressman with the
Dallas Morning News. After three years in Dallas, they moved to Big Spring
and Izell finished his last two years of apprenticeship on the newspaper
there. They then moved to San Antonio where he worked for six years as a
fully qualified pressman on the San Antonio Light. He then returned to the
Dallas Morning News, and he stayed with them for 34 years. He and Jenny had
a son and two daughters who had grown and married and had families of their
own before Izell retired at age 68. During this period Izell worked his way
up from an apprentice pressman to the Department Head (Superintendent) of
the Pressroom. In 2005, Izell and Jenny moved from Dallas to this local
area to be with their youngest daughter and her family (she has five of
their eleven grandchildren). Shortly after arriving he joined his fellow
combat wounded veterans of the Military Order of the Purple Heart here, and
this month Texas Capital Chapter 1919 proudly salutes Patriot
Hadron Izell
Bankston.
Patriot
HADRON
I. BANKSTON died
December 2, 2011 at age 86.
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