Don Whipple Shares His Experience as a Marine at Iwo Jima

Announcer
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson.

These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Monson.

Kim Monson
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. It’s such an honor to bring these stories to you.

This show precipitated from a trip that I took in 2016. that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France in celebration of the 72nd landing of the Allies to get a toehold on the European continent and start to push Hitler and the Nazis out of Western Europe and ultimately to defeat. Return back stateside realizing that each of these stories are important. They’re each unique.

and decided that we wanted to start to tell them, to archive them, to have them, and it has really been a joy of my heart to get to do this. In studio with me is a friend of mine, and that is Paula Sarles. I met her at Cooper’s Troopers, which is a group of Marines that meet up in North Denver, and Paula Sarles is a Vietnam-era Marine veteran, and Paula, it’s great to have you here. Thanks, it’s wonderful to be here.

and Women Marines. There’s not a whole lot of them, is there? No, there isn’t. And there were even fewer in Vietnam.

And

Don Whipple
why did you decide to get into the Marines? Well, I had a recruiter that I worked with at Kmart when I was a teenager and he convinced me it was a good thing to do that I would get an education. And you did. Yeah, I got an education in more ways than one.

For sure. And you’re also a Gold Star Wife. Yes. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, Gold Star Wives are war widows and Women who are widowed because their husband died as a result of a wound or something that happened to them during the war. My husband died from Agent Orange in 2009, so I became a Gold Star Wife and joined the the organization and helped host the 2013 convention here.

Kim Monson
Well, you are very active because you have a real heart for the American idea, America, but there is a marine memorial that is out here in Golden that you’ve been doing a lot of work with

Don Whipple
or work

Kim Monson
on. Paula, tell us about that.

Don Whipple
Well, this memorial was built in 1977. It’s the only United States Marine Corps Memorial, west of the Mississippi, dedicated by a commandant. And Lou Wilson was the commandant at that time. And this memorial is really near and dear to a lot of Marines across the country.

And we wanted to remodel it to make it spectacular, because when it was first built, it was really the only thing you saw on the hill there going in and out of Denver. in Golden and so we got an architect that volunteered his time, his company allowed him to work with us and they’ve been really supportive, Matrix Design and then We’ve been working on getting the money to redo it, and it’s going to be spectacular when we’re done.

Kim Monson
And you’re raising money, and you started something right around Christmas time. Tell our listeners about that.

Don Whipple
This is a Build a Brick project, and it was originally in US English

Kim Monson
Well, I think that that’s really exciting. You have, what, 30,000 or 60,000 to sell. But you start with one brick and you just build on it. Well, congratulations on that.

How can people get more information if they would like to? And it’s not just Marines. You have a walkway that will be all

Don Whipple
branches of service. Right, because the Marines don’t do it alone. We wanted to honor everybody that serves, and so we have the Walk of Service. How can people get more information or buy a brick?

USMCmemorialfoundation.org

Kim Monson
Well, our show today, Paula Sarles, we’ve got something, again, very special. And Cooper’s Troopers has six Iwo Jima marine veterans that attend. And I’ve had the great honor to interview all of them, but we thought, let’s go back and redo that. And so we’re going to be talking with Don Whipple, just a young marine.

He was at Iwo Jima. And I think people will really enjoy this story. Oh, yeah, he has a wonderful story. And on the line with us is Don Whipple.

He is a Marine veteran. He was at Iwo Jima and fought in World War II. Don Whipple, welcome to the show. Thank you.

And tell us a little bit about you, Don. Where did you grow up?

Speaker 4
I grew up on a large ranch and farm in western Kansas. I was in a large family with And we all had a job and it was a delightful place to grow up. We had more fun growing up than you could ever imagine.

Kim Monson
Well, I’m a western

Speaker 4
Kansas

Kim Monson
girl, so I know exactly what you’re talking about, Dawn. Where are you from? I’m from Goodland.

Speaker 4
Oh, Goodland, good. Well, I came from Beeler. That’s going down on 96th Highway just west of Dighton, east of Dighton.

Kim Monson
and I agree with you, it is a great place to grow up and I do love it there. Tell us about how you got into the Marines and what year was that? 1943, as I

Speaker 4
mentioned I was in a large family. I speak in a lot of high schools and I always give a little background and I tell them that I come from a large family, and somebody always says, how large? And I’d say, well, there was four girls, and each girl had nine brothers. And they’d say, 36?

And I’d say, no, your math isn’t too good. They all had the same brothers. But it was two families together that had them. My mother’s husband was killed in World War I, and they had one son.

My father’s wife died with the flu in World War I and they had five children and they went to this country grade school and they needed a teacher out there and my mom was looking for a job to put food on the table and you have a place to live and the county superintendent suggested she apply for a job out in this little country school. My dad was on the school board and they got acquainted and Things began to move along and they sooner or later were married and then they together had seven children. And I was in the seven children.

Kim Monson
You know, Don, you and I have talked many times. I never knew those stories. I did not realize that. That is that’s remarkable.

So continue on.

Speaker 4
That was a fun thing growing up with that big a family, and we we were right in the middle of the Depression and We just didn’t have any money and farmers were going broke and moving to California or somewhere else to get a job or something. And so they, they, uh, we didn’t have any money much. And my, my brother and I, we would break wild horses for the other old ranchers to be able to work with their cattle, horses, riding horses, and we would break them to ride for these other old ranchers who didn’t want to get bucked off of these young horses. And that was our spending money.

My dad said, you guys are the ones getting bucked off. You get to keep this money. That’s the money we went to go out on a date with, or a movie, or something like that. We were kind of the last of the old American cowboys.

We had cattle drives and a whole shebang. Yes, I was in high

Kim Monson
school at that time and I was down to my grandmother’s place, my father’s mother.

Speaker 4
I had one uncle that he worked for the railroad and he never got laid off or anything and he he was a little bit more uh better off than most of those farmers and so he just bought a brand new car and that car had a radio in it and we were out looking at that car and somebody turned the radio on and that’s when they announced that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was before that but From that time on, my life began to be directed in that direction. So

Kim Monson
that’s where I was at with my grandmother’s friends. How old were you when you joined the Marines?

Speaker 4
Well, I was really only 16 because my birthday is in August, the last day of August. So I was able to start the school an extra bit early because of that I could still get into the September starting of school and so I graduated when I was 16 and the day after I graduated I caught a train to Denver to the Marine Corps recruiting station and enlisted in the Marine Corps and then I came back home and they I had to get my parents to sign the sheets and all the stuff to give me, to have my permission to join. And I worked during harvest that year and in September I got, I mean at the last of August, I got a letter from the Marine Corps with some train tickets to report to the to the boot camp in San Diego and I left there and actually wound up

at about the 23rd of September to really wind up in the middle of San Diego and became a Marine and life was pretty different.

Kim Monson
It was tough. I knew it was going to be tough. I had studied up on every flyer I could get on the Marine Corps and everything. I knew and I had always heard.

Speaker 4
It was tough going. When we got there, we landed in San Diego and there was a bunch of Marines getting ready to ship out and there’s that in front of the depot, train depot in Los Angeles. There’s a great big lawn used to be there, I don’t know if it still is, in front of the depot and these Marines had it laying around out there with their rifles stacked up and kind of like and Little Pyramids together and they were all over the place and these guys were just kind of sprawled out and laying around and they saw me waiting there.

I got there in the afternoon. The train didn’t leave there until late evening or late afternoon and so I had quite a bit of time there and got to talking to them. They’d say, where are you going? I said, I’m going to San Diego.

They’d say, to the Marine Corps Depot and I said yes, Recruit Depot and I said yes and you’ll be sorry.

Kim Monson
Oh

Speaker 4
my gosh. That’s what they would say. They’d see us in civilian clothes there on the base and we were marching around here and there getting our uniforms and to the quartermasters and all that stuff and

Kim Monson
Don Whipple, we’re going to go to break. This is Kim Monson with America’s Veteran Stories. In studio with me is Marine Veteran Paula Sarles on the line is World War II Marine Veteran Don Whipple. Before we go to break though, I want to give a shout out to one of my great partners and that is Hooters Restaurants located right here in the front range.

They have five locations. They have all kinds of specials. So be sure and check that out. Wednesday is Wings Day, and if you buy 20 wings, you get 10 for free.

And that’s not good on delivery, but it’s good on everything else. Go to HootersColorado.com for more information. That’s HootersColorado.com. We’ll be right back with Paula Sarles and Don Whipple.

Speaker 6
Remax Realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home.

Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.

Speaker 5
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of the Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimMonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.

Kim Monson
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That’s americasveteranstories.com. In studio with me is Paula Sarles.

She is a Vietnam era marine veteran and doing some great work regarding the Marine Memorial out here in Golden. And how can people help you out on that

Don Whipple
Paula? They can go to usmcmemorialfoundation.org and donate or buy a brick.

Kim Monson
and what you’re doing is remodeling this Marine Memorial out here which is the, is it the only?

Don Whipple
It’s the only United States Marine Corps Memorial dedicated by a commandant west of the Mississippi. That’s a mouthful.

Kim Monson
It is, it certainly is. And on the line with us is a good friend of yours, and

Don Whipple
that is

Kim Monson
Don Whipple. He is a World War II veteran, and he fought at Iwo Jima, and we were just talking about boot camp when we went to break. Don Whipple, boot camp, anything else you want to tell us about that? Oh, that was an experience, all right.

I kind

Speaker 4
of went in there as a green farm boy from Kansas, rancher from Kansas. I’d never seen a stop like before. I’d never seen the ocean, none of that stuff. It was a continual month starting of things I’d never been involved before with in my life.

Kim Monson
When did you complete boot camp then, Don?

Speaker 4
After boot camp, it was 12 weeks, I think, or so in boot camp. So it must have been about, well, it was in November because we were assigned to communications and I was in radio telephone school. And we were assigned misduty because every Every class that got out of boot camp for school, we had to have Mr. Williams serve the other guys in the communications classes. So it must have been right around November I got out.

I can’t remember the exact time.

Kim Monson
And that would have been November of 1943 then, right? That’s right.

Speaker 4
Because I was there during Christmas. I remember Christmas Eve, serving in boot camp, and that old Miss Sergeant, he was a drunken skunk. He just had no mercy on anybody. And so he would have us working Afternoon to twelve o’clock and sitting there on the floor in the water underneath those big old brass cooking kettles and polishing them up.

And then that’s where I was on Christmas Eve. I had a friend and he stuck his head in there and he was standing there laughing like a maniac. He was a Mexican boy that I went to school with and played basketball with. We were good friends.

And he was They were hanging over time that he had been assigned to Oxford’s training school and getting ready to go to Quantico, Virginia. And so he was just kind of floating around there and he was coming in that night, stuck his head in and calmly sitting there on that thing, polishing up that big old brass or copper cookie pot. I don’t know what they call them, but there’s about four inches of water in that little circle that we were parked in. to get in there to get a polishing that I had to get clear in there in the water to polish it up.

And he was sitting there laughing at me.

Kim Monson
Don Whipple, I think young people today might say, well, why did you have to do that? But there is in these tasks like this, there is discipline and striving for excellence and stick-to-it-ness and even something like that. It was a training you to become a Marine and preparing you for what was coming ahead.

Speaker 4
I worked with teenagers all my adult life up until later years here at an organization called Youth For Christ. So I had a real heart for teenagers and I always had good opportunity to share and get along with them. So I started working here with kids coming back from the Middle East. a couple years ago when all of them had a volunteer Marine Corps and Army and all that was all volunteer and a lot of those kids were just 16 and they enlisted and when their time was up they had during those earlier days in that war in Afghanistan

and Iraq and that area they had a They had an order that they couldn’t fire at the enemy until the enemy fired at them. And these poor guys would stand there and have their rifles out there and that telescope on their rifle and they could see these guys with their rifles right at them, they thought. And they could take him down, but about that time they’d see their buddy next to them all over dead. This just broke these guys up.

To see one of your own guys fall is the most heartbreaking thing in the world. So when these kids came home, they were just, they were just spit. They were committing suicide right and left. So I started working with these kids to help them know the Lord.

And I became a follower of Jesus in the Marine Corps. And I began meeting up with these kids and I had the time of my life with those kids. They were just like junior high school students and it was just amazing. I would say, how you doing, Marine?

And they’d say, not very good. And I said, I talked to them a little while and finally I’d say, how you doing with your journey with Jesus? They all had the same story, almost. Yes, my heart went out to those kids, and they were so broken.

They would say, well, I’ve sinned so much, God can never forgive me. And I said, oh, He’s a big God. I had to sit down a little bit, and I told them how I became a follower of Jesus in the Marine Corps. And I would take some verses in the Bible and talk to them.

I would ask them, like, I would take a verse, say like Romans 3.23, it says, All have sinned. And I said, does that include you at all? They’d say yes. I’d say, okay, see, you’re not a lone ranger.

God’s a pretty good big guy. You go, all have sinned. That’s everybody, they would say. And I’d say, that includes you?

They’d say yes. And I’d just take different words out like that as a verse. I’d read it all. I’d say that includes you and finally by the end of our conversation I would flip over to I’d use the running short on time and I’d flip over to the last book in the Bible and there is a verse there in Revelation that said it’s a Jesus talking

to the old apostle John from heaven and the old apostle John’s in prison because of his refusal to deny his face and say Caesar is Lord rather than Jesus is Lord and they put him on this island out there and this is Jesus talking to him and in that verse there it says Behold I stand at the door and knock and if any man hears my voice and opens that door I will come in to them and will become one and I said Does that include you? Does that include anyone? Are you included in that?” And he said, yes.

And so I said, okay. God’s big enough to handle all of our sin. And he paid for it all. And when Jesus was hanging on the cross, he cried out, it’s finished.

And he was able to, because the wages of sin is death, and he gave his own son to die on our place because he didn’t have any. himself. He was the only one that had ever just said, listen. When God did that, he cleared it for once and for all, I said.

Paid for it in full. And so, finally I said to this boy, any reason why you wouldn’t want to just open that door and ask Jesus, can it be your heart to take your sin? And they’d say, I want to right now. It was just a time in my life that was fantastic.

These kids would follow me around and they were living out there in the suburbs of Denver many of them and they’d usually get an apartment that was too big for them and they’d come home and the bottom had fallen out of their day and they were so having such a tough time kind of getting their life together after that experience there in the Middle East. commit suicide. No, that was a killer for me.

I would try to get involved in churches. The ladies in these churches, the widow ladies, they would know about this. They were just young guys. And they’d take and put their arm around them and hug them and give them just what they needed and that was so great.

I was scared to stand there because I’d embarrass them. I said to this one kid one day, I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s going on when I look at your face when those dear ladies were hugging you and all that and I didn’t know whether you were saying help me or you were saying tell them not to quit.

Kim Monson
Rescue me or hug me more, huh Don Whipple? That’s right. And this has been, as you mentioned, part of your life’s work, Don Whipple. You’ve been a pastor, correct?

Were you also a pastor?

Speaker 4
Yes, I was. I was a pastor. And he was a missionary to Costa Rica too. And I went out as a missionary to Southeast Asia and was out there and working in Indonesia and Thailand and then that horn all around there, Cambodia and Malaya and all those areas.

And I was working with Youth for Christ International as a missionary with them. And I had some thrilling times there. I got kidnapped by the communists and They were going to take me out in the jungle and hold me for ransom and God just miraculously delivered me and got me out of that mess.

Kim Monson
You know what, Don Whipple, let’s go to break. I think that we want to hear that story, and then we certainly want to get to your World War II experience as well. But we’re going to go to break. This is Kim Monson with America’s Veteran Stories.

In studio with me is Marine Veteran Paulo Sarles. On the line is World War II Marine Veteran Don Whipple. We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we want to hear the story about your service when you were a missionary youth for Christ and that you were kidnapped and held for ransom.

So stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 2
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Announcer
God bless America Land that I love

Kim Monson
be sure and check out my website that’s americasveteranstories.com and in studio with me is Paula Sarles she is a Vietnam era marine veteran and she has a lot of life’s work but one of the things that you’re working on right now Paula is this marine memorial the remodeling of the marine memorial out here in Golden tell us just quickly a little bit about that Well,

Don Whipple
I’m really honored to be leading the charge to remodel this memorial. It has a lot of meaning to people across the country that have been there. And there are even ashes spread on the ground there. So it’s kind of hallowed ground to a lot of us.

and we want to make this as spectacular as it should be and Bo Bowers started the memorial in 1976 and well actually 75 when they started raising money and stuff and so it’s It’s iconic and we want to make it even more spectacular for people that drive by that they’ll see it and know that it’s Marines and those that serve with us. And so people can buy a brick, they can go to, I have it for USMC Memorial Foundation.org

Kim Monson
Okay, yeah I was in

Speaker 4
Indonesia and Jakarta one day and I met an old man, an old Chinese guy and the Chinese young people were so closely associated with the family that they never got in any trouble. But during the Japanese occupation, these kids were treated so badly that they really become resentful and they begin to form in gangs or something like that. M13 gang is what they kind of wound up doing and they were fierce and This old man was looking for somebody that had worked with teenagers. And he’d been asking all the missionaries if they’d worked with any teenagers.

And he asked me one day if I had. And so I’d been working with Youth for Christ for several years. And he’d forgotten my name. He didn’t write it down.

And so he was asking the Southern Baptist missionary they had anybody in their mission that worked for teenagers and he was telling them why and so forth and that old man said no but I know a guy out here somewhere I don’t know how to get a hold of him but I I know he worked with an organization Youth for Christ and that old man said yeah that’s the man he said I I I he wrote Youth for Christ International a letter this Southern Baptist did he had he had got the holy address of Youth for Christ in Chicago and he wrote him a letter and asked if they had somebody out here and how they could get a hold of him. So they just sent the letter on the man.

This old man had just scribbled on the back of an envelope to write this letter and he got his name and he had his name and address and so phone number and so I give him a call from Singapore there into Jakarta and talked to him on the phone. He said, when are you coming to Singapore? I mean, to Jakarta next time.

I said, I plan to be there in about two weeks. He said, would you give me a call and we can get together maybe when you get your hotel and get settled. So when I got down there, I got in this hotel and Jakarta was just, it was Most discouraging spot I’d ever been in in my life. It was just kind of the sledge part of the world.

And this new hotel was new and they… They had a nice place there and I got in my room and… After I got in my room I went down to the foyer of the hotel. The dictator of…

of… Oh man, mind plays tricks on you. Indonesia? The dictator of the country.

He had had a bunch of soldiers in a ballroom there talking to him and I was standing there by the door and he was talking and he dismissed the meeting and they came out and Soekarno was his name and President Soekarno was a real dictator there and tied in with Russia and him and his wife and Some of these A’s, they started out, in fact, he brushed right against me as I was standing there. So anyway, I went over and called this number I had, and this old man said, you call a taxi and give him this address. And he, I did that.

Gave him the address, and the taxi driver said, why do you want to go there? That’s a terrible place in town. The communists are just taking over down

Announcer
there.

Speaker 4
So I, uh, he said, I don’t, I don’t even go down there myself anymore. And I, I said, well, I’d sure like to go. And he said, I don’t think you’ll ever make it out if you do. And so I finally talked him into notion of taking me down there and I got down there and I went down that lone street in the dark and God was just there with me.

I, I said, Lord, I know that you said he, uh, that you can’t remember the verse let me now but it says the angel of the Lord encamps around about those who fear him and delivers him and I believe you will deliver me and so I walked down that aisle and down that street there was clanging and clinging as the wind was blowing the dogs were chasing cats and they they had tents backed up against this very poverty stricken place They had pen and glass and boards stacked up against their houses. And the cats would run under those and the dogs would chase them. It was just a continuous bunch of crashes going on.

I finally got to the door of the address and an old Chinese man was sitting at the door. He said, what do you want? Kind of in broken English. I said, I want to see Mr. So-and-so.

I can’t remember his name right now. He kind of grilled me for a while, wanting to know why I wanted to save and this and that. So he finally reached down to a little cardboard box by the side of his chair and said, pulled out a little slip of paper and said, he’s not here. He’s at this address.

So with the six different houses, he got the same answer every time. And every time the taxi driver says, this is the worst area in Vietnam and I don’t want to take you at all. I tell you, you’ll never get out of here. So I finally got to the sixth one.

I got to the door and a little Chinese lady came to the door. She said to me, could I help you in a sweet voice? And I said, I want to see Mr. So-and-so. And she said, he’ll be right with you.

This old Chinese man came in and apologized to me for getting me in that dangerous part of town and getting shagged down all around. He was such a neat old man. I fell in love with him. So anyway, that’s…

He said, I’ll be by tomorrow morning and I’d like to have you. And I have a new Mercedes-Benz. And he said, I’ve… What I’ve done is I’ve put all my money and resources and every asset I had into cash.

And I took the cash and bought Mercedes-Benz cars with it. I put these Mercedes-Benz cars in friends that I can trust in Jakarta. And if I need money, I just Call these men and tell them to take that car down to the Mercedes Benz and sell it. And they’ll give you the money for it.

So he was just using the Mercedes Benz for a bank. And he said, I’ll be by to pick you up. I’ll have a driver tomorrow morning be by at 8 o’clock by your hotel to pick you up. And I want you to drive around the entire perimeter of the island of Java here.

And I’ve got a place for you to stay. And they’ll feed you and put you up. It used to be an underground church. It’s a widow lady that owns it, but everybody in those towns, these bigger cities, knows what its place is at.

And they all have a group of people that I’ve contacted that have ever worked with young people to be there, and they want you to maybe make plans with them, how you can maybe have some way of getting a way, a thing formed where you can get some of these young Chinese gangsters together and Went into the Lord and helped get him straightened out. So we were driving. I had heard every night on the news that the communists were out in Malaya.

I was up in Malaya at nights a lot, working with teenagers. I would come down to 11 o’clock sometimes in that jungle when it was dark. Every turn I’d wonder if I was going to see a communist Chinese guy step out there in his orange jumpsuit and have a sub-machine gun mail motion me over. I had a little Volkswagen and I’d always drive with the lights on dim because little animals were running out of the jungle to the beach to get the crabs and stuff like that.

And I think they were really wild pigs, unless they were, I don’t know. I probably hit one of them. I was afraid I’d knock the whole front end out of my car and I’d be stuck out there with those guys and I’d be in there for sure. But anyway, I never saw anybody in Malaya, but I went to Java and one morning after we got up and had breakfast and took out, We rounded a curve and there this Chinese man walked out of the jungle with his submachine gun and his orange jumpsuit.

Guard motioned us over and he walked up to the car and pointed right at me. I was in the back seat and I had an interpreter in the front seat and the passenger seat and the driver. They were Indonesians but he never paid attention to them. He just had his eye on me because I was an American and he figured he’d get more money than Americans.

He said, out of the car, in broken English. The interpreter said, why do you want him out of the car? And he said, well, there’s an epidemic over here with cholera and smallpox. So he’s got to get a vaccination.

The interpreter said, well, he’s got his international health card with him and he’s had all those shots up to date. And so he doesn’t need that. The old Chinese guy just said, out of the car. And I get out of the car.

So finally, the interpreter said to me, you better get out of the car because he’s getting kind of angry. And he got, I got out of the car and he rammed that machine gun in my back and started waving and finally talking in Chinese and waving his hands. Interpreter says, he wants you to walk across the street here in that jungle trail. And I said, yeah, that’s what I thought he was saying, but I was trying to stem his I started walking and he had that thing in my back.

So I got up there a ways about so many yards and saw another guy standing beside a tree and a shelf that he’d built right on the tree. And on the shelf was another submachine gun and two syringes to give you shots. These were great big grease gun sized syringes. We used to use them the vaccinated are horses and they’re big bulls and they’d hold about a pint, I don’t know and they had glass sleeves on them and inside there was you could see the color of the stuff and so he grabbed he kept playing with my

arm with the machine gun until a button came loose and my sleeve on my shirt he pulled it up and He laid his machine gun down and put this one with a black liquid in it. It looked like used oil. Just black as tar. It was…

I’d used to see it on the farm. Oil in a glass bottle or something. And the way it flicks on the glass is like nothing else that I’ve ever seen. And anyway, that’s what this did.

And I was sure it was used oil, but I have no idea to this day what it was. But he laid his machine gun down and grabbed that one with the… black stuff in it and I don’t know how many other people have been shot with that needle but he rammed that in my arm and shoulder up there and pushed down the plunger and put the whole shebang in my in my arm and pulled it out and threw it out in the jungle and as he reached for the other syringe to give me another shot for the other Smallpox is what it’s supposed to be.

His face went into just muscles, just went into cramps. And he began to yell frantically and waving, go, go, go. He wanted me out of there just to be in. And I’d been reading in the Bible about Elijah.

And he was down in Jerusalem. And the Moabites were down there at the gates of Jerusalem. And they were going to burn the gates of Jerusalem, go ahead and kill all the Jews. Elijah was down there and he called on the Jehovah that he would send his armies from heaven and this man, those Moabites just turned and ran because these heavenly troops were just so fierce looking that they just ran and saved Jerusalem that way and that’s what this guy

I was just reading about that, and I said to the Lord, Lord, these guys have gotten me, and my hope is in you, and I just ask you to help me out. About that time, this guy just kept hollering and motioning for me to go. He was frantic, and so I just turned around and started walking on that jungle trail again. Walked back up and the car was still sitting there.

They didn’t know what was happening to me, but they thought they’d wait a little while and they took me back to the car and I went on back to Singapore. But I know I was in Vietnam a couple weeks later and there was a missionary there in Vietnam. I was staying in the Christian Missionary Alliance mission home and they said, we know how you got out of there. He said, we’ve seen these villages in the highlands up there in Vietnam, surrounded by the Viet Cong and All of a sudden they’d just make a break and run back in the jungle.

The next day they would ask some of the people that lived in the jungle who that other army was that was around them. And they said, there was no other army there. And they said, yes, there was. There was a Spokane army we’d never seen.

And these missionaries had been working for years there in Jakarta and in Indonesia. They said, God sent his forces just like he did in the days of Elijah. His heavenly hosts. And it just strikes these guys to death.

And that’s what God did for you. He sent his heavenly hosts. And I was thinking that was the case. And I felt a sense of something was there.

I felt I even kind of laughed to myself.

Kim Monson
Don

Speaker 4
Whipple,

Kim Monson
that is a story that I think that we really needed to hear. We’re going to go to break. This is Kim Monson. We’re talking with World War II veteran Don Whipple.

Paulo Sarles is in studio. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 7
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Speaker 8
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Kim Monson
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website, that is americasveteranstories.com. In the studio with me is Paula Sorrell. She is a Vietnam era veteran and she is raising money for the United States Marine Corps Memorial out here in Golden, Colorado.

And how can people donate to help you?

Don Whipple
They can go to usmcmemorialfoundation.org and there’s the donate button or buy a brick.

Kim Monson
And as you are hearing the story of Don Whipple, World War II veteran, certainly be great to go over and contribute and help them out. Don Whipple, we only have a few minutes left in this show. And then we have just scheduled a part two for your interview, which will be great. But let’s talk about Iwo Jima.

You were just a young kid. How old were you when you were landing on the shores of Iwo Jima? I was 17. 17 years old and a Marine.

What wave were you in Don Whipple? I went in the second wave. And what was it like when you went ashore?

Speaker 4
Well, I had a hard time realizing it was a real thing. So I had made so many landings and we had trained so long for that. It was just amazing. We got up at three o’clock in the morning and we got a big a holiday meal for breakfast and it was a Thanksgiving type menu of chicken and turkey and dressing and all of that greasy stuff and we ate there at three o’clock in the morning for breakfast

and we went over the side to this to get in this boat to take off why we had to the sea was kind of rough and We had to go out there and circle around and wait for a while. Rendezvous after we got loaded until everybody else that was in that wave got formed. Only seasick once in my life, and man, I just heaved all my breakfast. But it was just hard for me to realize this was a real thing.

I just felt like we’d done so many trips like that, and it just seemed like another training trip. All of a sudden it hit me that this is a real thing. And there was an airplane up above that sputtered a couple of times. And that whole landing was so choreographed, it was just like a Broadway show.

And it was amazing. The battleships had been peppering away on that island for hundreds of hours prior to this time. Those old battleships would light up like a torch. It looked like they were all afire, but they’d have a broadside.

And that thing would just be enveloped, and they’d have all four big old guns fired at the same time in flames. And in the dark, they would just light up the whole place. Then, all of a sudden, at 9 o’clock, it was H-hour. So we floated around out there to get our wave all formed and then we started out towards the beach.

All of a sudden the battleships stopped about a minute before nine and it was just, you could hear a pin drop. And the dive bombers begin to coming in. It was just choreographed so, so neat. And they begin bombing the beach and dive bombing the beach and fighter planes were in there.

Strafing it. And that went on for just about maybe a minute. I

Speaker 1
don’t know

Speaker 4
what it was, but this plane, I heard it. I heard this plane. I looked up and I heard it sputter. A little Navy fighter plane.

It was actually a look out plane for the battleship to tell them where not to shoot and to shoot. And kind of a I’m A few seconds later, it did start up again and went for just a little while and then it began to sputter and died out for good, man. I looked up and I watched that thing and all of a sudden, the nose began to dip down. The pilot, he was doing his best to get that thing out of the way of all of our boats.

As you knew, he was going down. Being in communications, I got to hear the The aircraft carrier where he was at later broadcast and I got to hear it in the radio shack there on it. And it broadcast and he was singing. I’m not…

I can’t remember that song. He was singing a song and I’m not having a wonderful day. And oh, that’s a very funny little tune and it just flopped around my mind. And on the way over there, he had just gotten a card from his wife, a telegram from his wife, that she had just given birth to an eight-pound baby girl.

Oh my gosh. And I watched that plane, and it began to dip down and then begin to kind of whirl around in a circle and dive down into the ocean. I watched it plunge into the ocean. And I thought, oh, what a sad thing, that little girl will never get to see her father.

and he was killed. My first thought then was, because I was just so curious about all this stuff, I didn’t have any fear whatsoever, I was just so like a teenager would. I just was so caught up in all of this stuff and finally it dawned on me, this is for real, these guys are out to kill us. Yeah.

Yeah. Don Whipple, World War II veteran at the Battle of Iwo

Kim Monson
Jima. talked about and the sacrifice. My friends, we have to think about the sacrifice that the men and women, American men and women have done to stand against tyranny and to stand for freedom and liberty. So, Don Whipple, we are going to keep this as a cliffhanger.

We will be doing a part two interview with this that will be broadcast on America’s Veterans Stories very soon. We’ll let our listeners know about that. Don Whipple, thank you so much. for sharing all this with us.

Yep. Okay. And Paula Sarles, it is so great to have you in studio as well. And as we’ve just heard this story and this young pilot who crashed, did everything he could to not hurt our guys, to get out of the way, and he just had a baby girl.

It just, I don’t know what to say about that, Paula. It gives chills. Before we sign off I want to share a quote with you From Chester Nimitz Sr. He was the Fleet Admiral of the United States Navy.

He played a major role in the naval history of World War II as Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Fleet and Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Ocean Areas, commanding the Allied Air, Land, and Sea Forces during World War II. He was born in 1885 in Fredericksburg, Texas, and he died in 1966. And as he was watching what was going on on the beaches of Iwo Jima, he said this, of the Marines at Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue. And my friends, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

This is Kim Monson with America’s Veterans Story signing off. God bless you. And God bless America.

Announcer
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.

Speaker 1
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.