Iwo Jima Day stirs painful memories

[Walt's Daughter]

Iwo Jima Day stirs painful memories

By Sally Applegate/ Correspondent

Thursday, February 17, 2005

 

When he allows himself to remember intense moments from his service during WWII, 78-year-old Georgetown resident Arthur Rauseo's eyes mist over. Only 17years old and already a veteran of the invasions of Tarawa and Saipan, Rauseo found himself at Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Lowndes, an 11,180-ton battleship.

 

The enormous troop and supply carrier backed up Marines being sent in landing craft to the beach, where many of them died in bloody fighting. Landing craft would then return to the beach to pick up the dead and wounded. The Lowndes, like the other large ships at Iwo Jima, would tend to the wounded and attempt to transport the most serious cases to a hospital ship. The dead were wrapped in heavy canvas and given military funerals before being put over the side into a watery grave. Sometimes the wounded died while being transported to a hospital ship.

 

"The only time I cried was when we had to put men over the side," said Rauseo. "When they go off into the water it really gets to you."

 

Under heavy fire from the beach, and with Japanese suicide kamikaze pilots constantly circling overhead, small landing vessels made their way back and forth to the landing site 24 hours a day.

 

"How do you think we felt taking these guys to the beach and bringing them back?" asked Rauseo.

 

When Rauseo wasn't in the electrical room he was upstairs bringing in bodies from the ships returning from the beach.

 

"Everyone in my division looked up to me, even though I was the youngest one, because I had already been in two battles," Rauseo said.

 

Rauseo's records show the casualty toll at Iwo Jima after the four-day invasion was 4,189 killed, 441 missing, and 15,308 wounded.

 

Iwo Jima Day is Feb. 19 in Massachusetts, the only state to recognize the day. It will be honored at a State House ceremony in Boston on Saturday morning. Rauseo and his wife Marjorie have attended reunions for the crew of the U.S.S. Lowndes, off and on, for 13 years, and he still proudly wears his service cap.

 

Rauseo was only 16 when he left high school, determined to join his four brothers in fighting WWII. Angelo Rauseo, the oldest, served in the Merchant Marine, Joseph was a Marine, Michael was in the Air Force, and George was in the Army.

 

Rauseo says boys as young as 14 would show up offering to fight, "but they were sent home."

 

Expecting to receive six months of training, Rauseo was sent to war after four weeks.

 

From bad to worse

 

Bad as Iwo Jima was, Rauseo considers his first battle, at Tarawa, much worse. Rauseo was 16 at the time of his first battle.

 

He was on board the U.S.S. Deede, a small, agile destroyer escort. In an unpublished column, the late journalist Ernie Pyle once described these little ships as "baby destroyers."

 

"They are rough and tumble little ships," wrote Pyle. "They roll and they plunge, they buck and they twist, they shudder and fall through space."

 

Rauseo says everyone on the U.S.S. Deede was new to warfare.

 

"We were greenhorns. The whole ship's crew was greenhorns," said Rauseo. "The U.S. was in trouble. We were sound asleep on this one. It's a wonder we won the war."

 

As the invasion of Tarawa turned into a disaster, the Deede deliberately jammed itself onto a reef to add support.

 

"Our guys were in trouble," said Rauseo. "We put the Deede right up onto the reef. We were pulling guys out of the water."

 

Sailors from these little destroyer escorts were fiercely proud of their ships, and often fought over whose ship was the best. There were also organized fights, "just for fun," and Rauseo regularly boxed in these. He still has his boxing gloves.

 

Following his service at Tarawa and Saipan on the Deede, and at Iwo Jima on the Lowndes, Rauseo was involved in the invasion of Okinawa on the Lowndes. Okinawa is considered the battle during which the most damage was done by kamikaze strikes. As many as 300 suicide kamikaze pilots dove their planes onto the allied fleet, and the destroyer Laffe was attacked by 20 kamikazes. Gunners on the Laffe took down nine planes, but six more hit the ship all at once. By the end of WWI, 300 U.S. ships had been sunk or damaged by kamikaze attacks.

 

Another terrifying memory for Rauseo is the day the Lowndes weathered a large typhoon steering into the wind, dipping so sharply from side to side it seemed it might capsize. He shared this petrifying adventure with fellow sailor Leo O'Brien, who served as a motor machinist mate on the Lowndes.

 

Rauseo was at the bottom of the pecking order for people to be sent home, being young and unmarried. During the war his mother Marian was fighting for her life in a hospital, and although the officers knew about this, Rauseo was never told, because there was no way he was going to be allowed home to see her. Fortunately, in a story that was widely reported, some of his brothers were sent back and saw her before she died. By the time Rauseo finally learned of his mother's illness, thanks to a Boston Herald sent to him by O'Brien, she had been dead and buried for months.

 

Rauseo came out of WWII with the WWII Victory Medal, the American Theater Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific Four-Star Medal, and having logged 61,391.5 miles on the U.S.S. Lowndes.

 

In Rauseo's civilian life following the war he worked for a local Malden electrical contractor, later returning to work at Converse Rubber in Malden, as a floor manager. He and his brother-in-law held dances in Malden at a hired hall. Rauseo describes himself as not the most upstanding citizen in those days, but says meeting his wife was a blessing.

 

"Thank God I met Margie," said Rauseo. "She straightened me out." They were married when Rauseo was 23 and Margie was 18.

 

During his many years in Georgetown, Rauseo may just be the longest-serving town official, having served as a firefighter at Central Fire Company with every one of the town's fire chiefs during a 50-year stint, once serving as acting chief. He served for 20 years on the Water Board, and has been an Electric Light Board Commissioner for 15 years. He figures he has 55 years total time in service to the town.

 

"I think I beat (Selectman) Paul Thompson by five years, " said Rauseo.

 

Rauseo is looking fit after having survived a heart attack 10 months ago, and he's hardly finished with town service.

 

"I'm going to run for the Light Board again this year," he promised.