Shannon Field

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Transcript: Mineral County Miner, Home Front, Section B, Thursday, February 4, 1988.

A miner . . . a dancer . . . but not a hunter

Joey Jackson learned life and death in the Pacific

"Former Creede resident dies in Ft. Collins." Those typewritten words meant nothing to the majority of readers of the Mineral County Miner.

To those who knew Joel T. Jackson, Joey as we called him, he may have been remembered as one of Bill and Jo Jackson's kids, that he was a good student, that he loved Toots Matzen and Cherie Larson, that he worked at the Federal Fish Hatcher with Hurtha Duncan and that he later became a miner under foreman Johnny Weaver at the Commodore tunnels.

They may have remembered that he liked to dance, was a neat dresser and was well-mannered, that he was a typical happy-go-lucky Creede boy, but that he didn't like to hunt.

That's right. Joey didn't like killing in any form and hid behind the woodpile when Grandma lopped the heads off of the frying chickens with a sharp, double-bitted axe. While we were knocking birds and squirrels senseless with our beany flippers or shooting rabbits for the frying pan, Joey was hunting arrowheads or scaring the game from our path. Scolded by his dad, teased by his peers, Joey shouldered a rifle and tried, but he could never bring the sight on a living target.

Then came the day of "infamy." On Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, plunging us into World War II. On Dec. 8, Clinton Fairchild drove Joey, Bob Manning, Clarence Snow and Herb Hutchison to Denver to enlist for the duration. Joey went to Marine Corps boot camp. Clinton, Bob and Clarence to the Navy. Herb failed the physical due to a bad ankle and drove Clinton's car back to Creede.

In less than three months, Joey's battalion became a part of the Second Marine Division steaming in darkness from the coast of California to a rendezvous hear the Hawaiian Islands before starting the South Pacific campaigns that would stretch from the Solomon Islands to Okinawa.

The boy next door and the young fellow down the street who had been married only two weeks before war broke out, had been transformed into jungle sharpshooters for the work ahead.

Tulagi, a small island near Guadalcanal, was Joey's baptism by fire, and when secured, the battalion went on to relieve units on Guadalcanal in one of the fiercest battles of the war. Here he saw the crumpled remains of a platoon caught in the ipact area of a Japanese mortar barrage and he wondered about the fragile strand that separates the living from the dead, a strand that could be severed in an instant.

After Guadalcanal came Tarawa, a speck in the Pacific Ocean but a thorn in the side of General MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Forces. A costly error sent the first two assault waves from landing craft when the tide was out. They struggled through deep water; some drowning, some picked off by the waiting defenders in bunkers on the island.

Joey's unit threaded through the floating bodies in landing craft that reached the beaches. He wondered how any could have been spared in the initial assault. The Japanese had been pushed to bunkers on the far end of the island and a Del Norte boy hoisted himself from his tank turret for a breath of fresh air. He was shot between the eyes by a sniper.

This was when Joey realized that this youth and the ones being bagged for burial were the ones being spared. Spared from another beachhead, free from the fear and pain and smell of war standing in puke in a landing craft while bombers and naval cannons softened up the enemy’s defenses and blew bodies into little pieces.

On Saipan, a Mariana island, a sergeant yelled, “Incoming, incoming! Hit the dirt!” Joey muttered, “To hell with it.” He had had enough of diving for cover and running. The next thing he remembered was seeing his helmet rolling with a curling gash in one side and blood running down the side of his head from a hole where a piece of shrapnel still clung to his skull.

Saipan and Tinian exacted much blood from Creede warriors: Clarence “Kayo” Slaght, Lee Davis and Billy Filley were downed there by Japanese fire and only a strip of sea away on Guam, Pete Walker and Scooter Jackson were sharing the same fears.

Iwo Jima, a benign-sounding name for such a hellhole, was the last landing for Joey’s battalion. They were spared the next one, Okinawa, and returned to Hawaii before the journey home when “the forgotten battalion” became legend in a San Francisco newspaper.

Joey received a hero’s welcome in the town of his birth, but he never forgot the crumpled bodies on Guadalcanal or the stench of death on Iwo Jima.

We forget too soon and too easily, Joey. You didn’t like killing and you detested war, but you gave it your all and we should remember that. You deserve more than a one line in a local newspaper, for without you and 12 million other veterans, our lives would have been drastically changed. My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. Thanks, old fellow.