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Noble, Harry_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Video.mp4

Harry Noble was born December 31st, 1923 in Astoria, Queens. He resided and grew up in Elmhurst, New York. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in the early part of 1942. Harry was sworn into the Marine Corps after a delay in his enlistment, because he had to have some teeth fixed before they would accept him. He was sworn in on August 12th 1942. Harry remembers Pearl Harbor because he was playing football at the time and they stopped the game and announced that Pearl Harbor was attacked. When he got home, his father was sitting in front of the radio and said, well son, he said, it looks like we are going to go to war. Harry and some of his friends on the football team decided to join the Marines together. Harry chose the Marines because of the excellent training. However the first thing he experienced in boot camp was the other guys yelling at him and people calling him names. It got easier, as Harry says, “And then they build you up from scratch and after it was all done, boot camp, you knew why. They made men out of you. They made Marines out of you and then you were proud enough and then you would do most anything for the Marine Corps and what you were told.” Harry found out years later that Lee Marvin, the actor, was in his platoon, but ended up in a different division. Out of boot camp, they were forming the 3rd Division. Specifically they were forming the 21st Marine regiment and Harry was assigned to that. After boot camp they went to their assignments. His was K Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Marines. They were up at Camp Elliot and then went out to Pendleton before shipped out overseas in early ’43. Harry recalls being on the steamship SS Lurline, all the way to New Zealand. While there, they had advanced infantry training. Harry had qualified expert on BAR and so they assigned him BAR man. He also went to Scout School. When they invaded Bougainville, they made him a scout. Being a scout meant map making and going on patrol to try to gather intelligence information to bring back to headquarters. They disseminate it and they compile it into information that they could divulge to the rest of the regiment, down to the companies. They use this information to figure out positions where the Japanese were, strength and condition of the units, terrain. He had gone on a particular patrol on Bougainville and Harry was doubling from BAR to scouting, they went on a platoon patrol. They went across the Torokina River, which was their line of departure, into Japanese territory. Harry recalls a war dog leaping at him, getting very close to his throat. On the patrol, they ran across a trail, which was later known as the East-West trail and it turned out to be, later on, the Japanese main supply line in that area in Bougainville. Harry and his friend volunteered to patrol in that area and for two days they went patrolling the East-West trail. They came upon Hellzapoppin Ridge, where the Japs were in number. Harry was taken out of K Company when Bougainville was finished and brought up to regimental intelligence where he stayed there for the next campaign, map making, reading aerial photos and preparing their invasion for Guam. He worked on the invasion map for his section for the 21st regiment. They had 53 days at sea in a troop transport before getting to Guam. Harry was in the first wave going in, and being a scout, he was pulling out in front. First however, Harry remembers a message coming over the PA system, Lieutenant General Geiger, the Corps Commander, telling them that they have an honor bestowed upon them, the 3rd Division and all the people that are invading Guam, because it was the only United States territory that was captured by the Japanese. Going in to the beach on the first wave, Harry had his field pack with rations, ammunition and a little bit of clothing and he had his M-1 rifle. They were anxious to get ashore after being on the boat for so long. Harry remembers they ran across the rice paddy and up the cliffs on the side of the hills without much resistance. They went up the side of the cliff, going up between Asan and Adalup Point and the 21st Regiment was in the middle. They watched the second wave get pounded with heavy artillery and mortar fire. They were pinned down on the side of the cliff for five days until the bonzai charge. Harry describes what he experienced with the bonzai attacks. After getting through the bonzai attacks, they went into regular attacks and patrols and scouting missions. Harry was sent out to different sectors that had to be put on the map as to what is out there, what the terrain was like, in comparison to what they had thought it would be like. He recalls the worst thing he ever saw while patrolling, a row of 40-50 Guamanians that were kneeling down, hands tied behind their back, tied at the feet and at their feet were their heads, they had been lobbed off. Harry thought the Japs were excellent soldiers – tenacious and well trained. They were also experts at camouflage. He remembers in Bougainville, he could be ten feet away and you couldn’t see them in the jungle. One thing he remembers during the bonzai attack was that afterwards, they found Japanese foxholes with empty Sake bottles, so they must have been high and out of their minds when they pulled the bonzai charge. Near the end of the campaign, Harry ended up with Tenge Fever. He had a very high fever and was sent to the tent hospital and was there for about a week and a half before he rejoined the outfit. When he was better, Harry went on was some outer patrols in the water, in a gun boat. This involved coming around the end of the island on boats and then hone in on an area where the Japanese were and machine gun fire, rifle fire and pick out an area that Harry remembered from the terrain, exactly where they were and so they knew about where they could reach them and then we were firing up on them from the boat. This enabled them to identify the terrain, to bring back the information of what it was like, what they were going to run into. There were caves that had to be blown up as well. Guam became Harry’s outfit’s training base for a while and he stayed busy map making and looking at aerial photos for the next campaign, which was Iwo Jima. Harry recalls Iwo Jima as a very bad campaign. He got hit the first day, a superficial wound, so he ended up being there for the whole campaign. He was still scout and in close coordination with the company commander that he was assigned to and bringing intelligence back into his own intelligence officer. Harry remembers not being able to take his boots off and change his socks for the 31 days he was there. When he finally could, his feet were so bad and he had to scrape his socks off with his knife. When he came back to Guam there was a list of who could go back to the States for R&R. Harry’s name was on the list. He got to go home after 27 months. The war ended when he was in the States. Most of Harry’s family fought in every war that the United States was in, even to the present time. His father was in World War I. His son became a Marine. His son in law was a Marine. His cousins got into the Marine Corps. They are a very patriotic family.

U.S. National Park Service, War in the Pacific National Historical Park

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War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Code: WAPA

Guam , Guam
War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Guam , Guam
Latitude: 13.3905000686646, Longitude: 144.654006958008

ICMS (Interior Collection Managment System) : WAPA-00246
NPS Museum Number Catalog : WAPA 4170

War in the Pacific Oral Histories

2025/03/07

T. Stell Newman Visitor Center, Collections room, Safe and Shelf SLF D-01

Public Can View

Rose Manibusan, Jennifer Craig

Organization: American Memorial Park
Role: Chief Interpretation
Address: Micro Beach Road, Garapan, Mp 96950
Email: wapa_interpretation@nps.gov

Saturday, April 5, 2025 12:02:40 AM

Saturday, April 5, 2025 12:02:40 AM

Noble, Harry_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Video.mp4

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