WWII vet gets Purple Heart after 72 years

• Lost, destroyed or inaccessible veteran medal? Call Sen. Joe Donnelly, (317) 226-5555, for help.

MUNCIE — More than 100 family, friends and strangers watched Junior Howell receive the Purple Heart medal on Wednesday — exactly 72 years after he was wounded in combat.

"It's the end of World War II for me," the 91-year-old Marine told reporters after a Marine unit pinned the medal on his suit jacket. " … everything turned out fine. I had a good life."

"From one vet to another, I wanted to show my support," ex-Army paratrooper Joe Litke, a stranger to Howell, told The Star Press. "I'm waiting to meet Junior when all the well-wishers are done."

"He deserves it and should have had this a long, long time ago, but unfortunately sometimes the government takes too long," said another stranger and Army veteran Kevin Davidson, head of the local American Legion Riders chapter. "I don't personally know him … but wanted to show my respect, and honor Junior for his achievements."

On Sept. 21, 1944, Howell, a teenager, was riding on an amphibious warfare vehicle fitted with a flamethrower being used in a battle against more than 10,000 heavily armed, virtually invisible Japanese troops on Peleliu island.

He estimates the vehicle was about 300 yards past the forward-most American forces.

"They were firing down — snipers," Howell recalled during a recent interview. "I could see their faces as plain as I can see you. The drivers have both got their hatches closed. They didn't know what was going on … I crawled up between — there's a passageway next to the motor — I crawled past that, grabbed hold of them, and I said, 'Back out, back out. They're hitting us.' "

After the vehicle reversed and made a turn, it was struck by an armor-piercing shell. "It knocked the track off the drive sprocket," Howell said. "We stopped just like that."

One of the drivers who jumped out was already hurt, missing his right foot. The blood splashed Howell. "He jumped off and started running on his hands and knees faster than I could keep up. I'm thinking how the hell do we get back to the front lines. There was no cover. Artillery and mortars and rifles hitting the deck all around me. I remembered boot camp. I would run, I would fall, I would roll. I would get up again hunched over, hit the deck again, crawl, roll."

Howell caught up with the crew member whose foot was gone, but he was dead from gunshots to the neck and head. "He must have slowed down and the snipers got him. I don't remember getting hit. I remember getting put on a stretcher on a jeep. I had this blood on me. They said I was hit. I said, 'No, it's Castille's blood. He's up there at the edge of the ridge. I think he's dead.' End of f------ story for three months."

The next thing Howell can remember is standing in a company commander's office at Guadalcanal. "This is almost three months later," Howell said. "You are one of the heroes from Peleliu," the commander told him. "I said, 'Sir, begging your pardon, the heroes are still there.' "

The National Museum of the Marine Corps calls Peleliu "the bitterest battle of the war for the Marines." The island's Japanese bomber strip was viewed as a major threat to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines. The Japanese force was entrenched in hundreds of caves/tunnels/mine shafts that honey-combed the cliffs of the Umurbrogal highlands.

"The fighting did little to enhance MacArthur's return to the Philippines and cost the joint force 10,000 casualties, a price many survivors considered excessive," the museum reports. Japanese casualties reached 10,700.

Howell and the five other members of the flamethrower crew, all of whom volunteered for the assignment, were burning caves when they came under attack. Howell assumes the rest of the crew perished.

Thirteen years ago, a local veterans affairs service officer tried unsuccessfully to help Howell obtain the Purple Heart medal for wounds suffered in combat.

Marine Corps headquarters responded in a letter dated April 10, 2003: "During the period you served in the Marine Corps, the Purple Heart was authorized for award to those who were wounded or injured as a direct result of action by an enemy of the United States or an opposing armed force of a foreign country in which the Armed Forces of the United States was engaged. Regrettably, a review of your records, and the records at this Headquarters failed to reveal any evidence that you were wounded in action by the enemy."

The Marines told Howell they would reconsider the decision if he could obtain eyewitness statements from medical personnel who treated him in the field or two other personnel who were present when he was injured.

"That's what's crazy," Nate Jones, the current veterans affairs service officer for Delaware County, told The Star Press. "Someone dropped the ball on him."

Jones, who got to know Howell at weekly breakfast meetings at the Oasis Bar & Grill, discovered that Howell's medical history had been overlooked during the previous Purple Heart application.

Dated Sept. 21, 1944, the history includes the following notes: "Howell, Junior Eugene," DOB 6-18-25, "6th Amphib," "Pacific," "Diag: Wound Fragment Mortar Buttock," "Not Misconduct," "With Command," "Work," "Negligence not apparent," "Wounded in action against organized enemy."

"This guy shed blood," Jones said. 

A Marine unit presented the Purple Heart medal to Howell during a formal, public ceremony at 10 a.m. on Wednesday in front of the Delaware County Building. Howell expressed his gratitude at the event to Jones, the Marines, U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly's office and others.

Donnelly issued a statement on Wednesday: “Junior Howell served our country with distinction during World War II, and it was a great honor to help him receive this long overdue Purple Heart. We owe our deepest gratitude to Junior Howell and thank him for his sacrifice.”

Military records show that after 15 scorching-hot days at Peleliu — only a couple hundred miles from the equator — Howell spent 15 days on a ship, followed by 53 days on Pavuvu Island, 124 days on Guadalcanal Island, 20 days on a ship, 97 days on Okinawa Island, five more days on a ship and 78 days on Saipan Island.

A graduate of Center High School in Perry Township, Howell was 17 when he enlisted, 19 during the battle of Peleliu.

After the war, he worked on the road as a salesman for Marhoefer, a Muncie meat packing company, for 14 years. He spent the next 30 years all over California as a car salesman, a job that led to acquaintanceships with lots of actors, such as Roy Rogers and Michael Landon, aka Little Joe Cartwright in "Bonanza," Charles Ingalls in "Little House on the Prairie" and Jonathan Smith in  "Highway to Heaven."

Landon challenged Howell to a drinking contest one time at a car dealership. After spending the afternoon and evening in a bar, they drank more at the home of George Lindsey, aka Goober Pyle on "The Andy Griffith Show," where Landon finally passed out on the couch, according to Howell. Howell says he stayed up all night and got to work an hour early. Landon appeared at the dealership around noon and paid off the $50 bet.

Howell returned to Muncie after leaving California.

Besides running for his life, his memories of the Marines include the smell of rotten human corpses ("you don't get that in the movies"), saltwater showers on the top deck of a ship, being transferred from island to island, living out of a duffel bag, and one island where life consisted of wild ponies, palm trees that dropped coconuts, six-feet-long land crabs that would crack open the coconuts, and "rats the same size that would kill the f----- land crabs."

"I am happy to have served in the Marines, but it was a bad f----- time. The only good day I had was when I got out."

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.

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