Writing WWII memories
Lodi Marine Corps veteran describes years of service
At the age of 16, Darrell “Bob” Eugene Potter left home and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He served in Guadalcanal, a province in the Solomon Islands, and it is there that Potter’s story starts, as he begins writing his memoir.
The decision to put his years of service down on paper follows after the loss of his wife, Dorothy, who died in March. The couple had been married for 74 years, and in an attempt to mend his broken heart, Potter was encouraged to write a memoir focusing on his marriage to Dorothy.
A heartbroken Potter struggled to put pen to paper and chose to focus on his years of service instead.
“It is easier for me to talk about war than it is to talk about the 74 years, five months and two days I had with Dorothy,” Potter said.
In the summer of 1942, before Potter met his wife that August, he and his friend Gordon Sprague decided to hitchhike to Memphis from their home in Clinton, Ill. Both just 16, the boys were determined to leave their difficult homes lives behind.
“My mother was a bootlegger and she ran a house of prostitution,” Potter said, adding that he did not have a maternal bond with his mother. She had left his father when Potter was 5 years old.
“I preferred to live with my father but he was ill and could not take care of me. In sixth grade I was moved to Bloomington (Ind.) and made to live with my mother,” he said.
According to Potter, his mother was not very concerned with his well being, and he was often made to feel like a burden while living with her. He says he was often caught in the crosshairs of her illicit business dealings.
“One night, after first moving to my mother’s home, the police raided her home and the whole house was arrested. I spent the night in an iron jail cell, it was very cold and scary,” Potter recalls. “I remember promising myself I would do whatever it took to make sure I never ended up back in jail again, and so far so good.”
While his home life was tumultuous, Potter says Sprague’s was much worse, which is why the pair were both determined to start anew.
After days of hitchhiking, the boys landed in St. Louis where they came across a recruitment billboard for the Marines. The boys spoke to a recruiter and were told they would need a parent to sign a waiver to enlist or wait until their 17th birthday.
“Before we even left the recruitment office we had gotten our physicals and they had our information. I am sure they would have taken us without us getting our parents’ consent, but we went back home anyways to get our parents to sign the forms,” Potter said.
Both Potter and Sprague attended boot camp at Camp Holcomb in San Diego before being deployed.
“I wanted to go into the infantry, and Gordon wanted to get into aviation, so he made me take the aviation test with him,” Potter said. “It ended up switched, though, because I ended up in aviation and he ended up in the infantry.”
After their stint in boot camp, both Potter and Sprague received their orders and were separated until after the war. Potter was stationed in Guadalcanal, located in the southwestern Pacific, northeast of Australia, and Sprague was stationed in Okinawa.
“I never saw him again until after the war. He had been shot in Okinawa and was never the same again,” Potter said.
In his memoir, Potter gives details about his experience sailing from Camp Kearney in San Diego to Guadalcanal.
“The boiler room was near the mess hall, so you would go get something to eat and you would be dripping in sweat. The ship did not have sleeping quarters so you slept where you felt comfortable,” Potter said. “One night I found an empty lifeboat and decided to sleep there. That was the only time I ever felt seasick on the boat.”
Before landing on the shore of Guadalcanal, Potter said he noticed his Remington rifle was missing a firing pin.
“It was the first time I felt scared. I didn’t go to church as a kid so I didn’t know who God was or what he was, but when we got off that boat I was praying,” Potter said.
Potter was a member of the VMA-124, a squadron in the Marine Forces Reserve, and was stationed at Henderson Field, which was used as an airfield and landing strip. Potters’ squadron was part of the Cactus Air Force, which was an assemblage of Allied forces assigned to the island of Guadalcanal.
By the time Potter arrived in Guadalcanal, most of the island was secure, but some Japanese soldiers had fled and hid in the coconut trees around the airstrip.
“They (Japanese officers) would shoot at us in the daylight so we couldn’t see the flashes and find out where they were hiding,” he said.
Living conditions on Guadalcanal were challenging. Pilots and mechanics lived in mudfloored tents in a flooded coconut plantation called “Mosquito Grove,” and most contracted tropical diseases such as malaria, dysentery and dengue fever.
“We dug fox burrows under the palm trees and covered our dug-outs with shrapnel,” he said.
Potter said he got used to the sound of bombs dropping overhead in Guadalcanal, recalling that Japanese aircraft referred to as Washing Machine Charlie regularly dropped bombs while the men slept
“They dropped bombs almost every night, but never hit our camp,” Potter said.
There was one attack on a camp that killed several men and left many wounded. Potter remembers walking through the camp and seeing body parts scattered throughout the area.
“When I close my eyes I can still see it,” Potter said. “I guess there were many times I should have been scared, but I was too dumb to be afraid.”
Potter said writing the memoir jolted memories he had hidden away.
He recalls leaving Guadalcanal and sailing home aboard the USS La Salle.
“The whole way home they played, ‘That Old Black Magic’. I grew to hate that song the more it played,” Potter said.
He recalls the relief he felt as the ship came into port, and the fog around the Golden Gate Bridge began to lift.
“We knew we were home. People were waiting at the dock cheering for us as we came in,” he said.
Potter returned to Clinton and married Dorothy, and the two moved to Lodi. Potter was later stationed in Santa Ana during the Korean War.
“Getting it all down is important to me because maybe people can learn something from my story, either for historical significance or for life lessons,” Potter said.
Potters’ daughter Jeanette Potter, and friend Barbara Miller are helping him write and assemble his memoir.