At 18 and in wake of Pearl Harbor, Marshall Dalrymple was eager to join fight
(Editor’s note: Staff writer Shae Dalrymple is the granddaughter of Marshall Dalrymple, the World War II veteran profiled in this story.)
By SHAE DALRYMPLE Staff writer WINTERSVILLE — Marshall Dalrymple, 90, spent more than two years fighting in the Pacific campaign during World War II. Like most young men in America at the time, he was eager to fight in the wake of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Dalrymple was 18 when he joined the Army in February 1943. “Everybody started joining on account of the Japanese,” he recalled. “After basic training you’re supposed to go home for 10 days. I never went home one day. I was never home one day the whole time that I was in the war.” Dalrymple said he knew that he wanted to operate radar from the start. The Army had only been using the new technology, radio-based detection systems, since 1941, but radar played a huge role in the war and proved to be an asset to the Allied forces throughout the Pacific campaign. After learning radar at basic training at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Dalrymple boarded a ship for the Northern Mariana island of Saipan, but a series of storms forced them to turn back. A couple of weeks later, they tried again and completed the 13-day journey across more than 3,000 miles of rough Pacific ocean. Only the Navy or Marines were permitted on deck in the open air — Army men were confined to the bottom section in hot, cramped quarters where there was little or no air circulation. “We weren’t worried about fighting the enemy. We were just so happy to get out of them damn ships,” Dalrymple remembered. Fighting the enemy quickly became a concern when they arrived, though. “The bullets were going over us by the hundreds Shae Dalrymple of thousands all the time. We had to get down in the MANY MEDALS EARNED — Marshall Dalrymple displays some of the medals he earned fighting the Japanese in the mud,” he said. “On the very first day, some guys Pacific campaign during World War II, including a Meritorious Unit Award Medal and a Battle Bronze Star. He operSee DALRYMPLE Page 2 ➪ ated radar in the Army on the Northern Mariana Island of Saipan.