St. Louis boy Joined Marines, Fought on New Britain, but Plans to Resume Art Career After the War
By Sgt. George E. M’Millan A Marine Corps Combat Correspondent
SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC (Delayed).
(Image text: MARINE PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JOHN SMITH, NOW IN A SOUTH PACIFIC REST CAMP AFTER BITTER FIGHTING AT CAPE GLOUCESTER, SKETCHES FOR A PAINTING HE HOPES TO COMPLETE BEFORE THE NEXT BLITZ)
THIS is an interim report on the John Smith, Marine, of St. Louis, Mo.
It is written for Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the nationally-known Philadelphia art collector. John Smith is eager for Dr. Barnes to know what has happened to him, what he has been doing since he handed his sketch book to his instructor at the Barnes Art School and fled in embarrassment. He had decided to join the Marine Corps and feared his patriotism would be taken for ungratefulness.
When John Smith had turned up at Dr. Barnes’ imposing estate in Philadelphia’s suburban Merion, in of June, 1942, with 25 cents in his pocket and two surrealist paintings under his arm, Dr. Barnes had been sympathetic and appreciative.
John remembers how Dr. Barnes sat in a large chair, holding the paintings so the sun would fall on them. “Come back in October.” Dr. Barnes had finally said, “and we’ll give you a job.”
John had come back, worked nights on the Philadelphia Bulletin, lived in the Philadelphia Y. M. C. A. and attended Dr. Barnes’ school by day.
It didn’t pan out. At night in the city room of the Bulletin, the war was close, imperative, the experience of his generation.
During the day, the low echoes of the huge museum, the peacefulness of the Barnes estate, the quaint French woman who was his teacher—these began to seem unreal.
Somehow, maybe it was because he was only 17 at the time, John could not face Dr. Barnes himself. The teacher, fortunately, had been so startled she couldn’t say anything. No one had ever quit the school before.
John went home to St. Louis in November, 1942, and joined the Marine Corps. His father, Iredell Smith of Smith Brothers, St. Louis leather jobbers, had not been insistent but he had told John that he thought there might be a better chance to do some art work in the Army. Painting would have to wait, John told him.
Almost before he had time to reflect, to remember how good it was to watch the bright oils take hold on the rough canvas, John was at an advance base in New Guinea, training, sweating it out before the Marine assault on Cape Gloucester, New Britain.
He was now Private First Class John McRee Smith, 19, Marine rifle grenadier.
Before he had time to feel real fear, he was on the perimeter of the Cape Gloucester beachhead, in a foxhole, waiting for a Jap counterattack.
“They hit the company on the left of us, then the company on the right, but for some reason they never hit us,” John said. After five days of this, John’s outfit started a push along Borgen Bay. The whole area, described as ‘damp’ on maps, turned out to be waist-deep swamps. They came to the bank of a swollen stream, and started across.
Along about here, John killed his first Jap, a sniper who had just grazed the hip of his buddy.
“He was tied onto a limb and when I had hit him five times, he dangled,” John said. “One of our B. A. R. men shot him down.”
They pushed on. It was Hill 660, the bitterest fight of the Gloucester campaign. John’s company was leading.
It was about then, John remembers, that he started praying, began to be afraid. ‘I lost my rosary, but I had a Holy Family Medal,’ he said. ‘I prayed to keep awake when I was on watch… I prayed most of the time, I guess, except when I was thinking.’
“I would get the loneliest feeling, the loneliest feeling I ever had in my life. There’d be a million guys around and you’d still feel lonely. Sometimes when we were pinned down, waiting to be told to charge, I’d lay there, with my face as deep into the ground as I could get it. I’d fix my eyes on something.”
“Once it was an ant. I wanted more than anything to be an ant. Once it was just a blade of grass. It started me thinking about all kinds of things. I was in a daze . . . I forgot where I was. And all of a sudden I’d be back in St. Louis in Forest Park, lying on the grass as I used to . . . thinking. Then a machine gun would open up and it would end and I’d come out of it.
“I wasn’t any hero, but there were a lot of fellows in my outfit who were. You should write about them. They’d go right into a Jap machine gun emplacement alone. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d never have got up that hill.”
They reached the top. It was five days before relief came. Rain was incessant. The Japs counter-attacked. “They’d come up and on, and we’d mow them down.”
When they’d finally given up, we’d look down, and the little streams at our feet would be streaked with the red of their blood.
When they came down, with the Hill secured, many of the men had feet so badly infected with fungus – “jungle rot” – they could hardly walk. Others had dysentery. John was sick but recovered.
“I didn’t write Mom about it, so don’t say what it was,” he asked. “I’ve never really told her what things were like. I just wrote that I was in a good outfit, and that we’d seen some action. At home, the Gloucester thing didn’t sound big. She kept writing, asking if I’d been in the Admiralties or New Guinea.”
John lives at 1310 Highland Terrace, Richmond Heights. He attended Maplewood High School, in suburban St. Louis. After graduation, he attended Washington University School of Fine Arts for a year before a professor showed him articles in the Saturday Evening Post about Dr. Barnes.
John was working part-time as office boy for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “One night I took two paintings with me to work. When quitting time came, I went across the bridge and started hitch-hiking for Philadelphia.”
“I had 50 cents, but truck drivers who picked me up invited me to eat with them. When I got to Philadelphia, I asked a man on the Main Street where the Barnes museum was. He’d never heard of it. I went into a hospital and an intern there told me.
“I went out right away, even though it was about 8 o’clock. I got there about 9 o’clock. The gates were unlocked, so I walked into the caretaker’s house. He was a friendly Irishman. I sat down and talked with him. Two maids came in, and the Irishman asked them to let me see Dr. Barnes the next morning. They agreed and that’s the way I got to meet him.”
John’s outfit is in a rest camp now. He has just been given some painting materials. “I’d like to do one good painting before I go into the next blitz,” he said.
“I’d like to have something to Send to Dr. Barnes. I guess he’ll be pretty sore at me for leaving the way I did. I want to go back there after the war.”
Smith’s older brother, Lt. James Iredell Smith, 24 years old, navigator of a bomber has been reported missing in action following a raid over Europe on Aug. 16. Lt. Smith was graduated from Christian Brothers College and attended St. Louis University before he entered the Army Air Forces in 1943.