Marine Sergeant Al Schmid - September ‘96 World War II Feature

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Personality

Marine Sergeant Al Schmid lost an eye while heroically manning a machine gun in bloody fighting on Guadalcanal.

By William B. Allmon

In 1945, Warner Brothers released a movie titled Pride of the Marines, based on a book by Roger Butterfield, starring John Garfield, Eleanor Parker and Dane Clark. Both the book and the film were based on the life and experiences of a unique American hero, Marine Sergeant Albert “Al” Schmid. Al Schmid fought at Guadalcanal, and when he came home, he fought another battle, for sanity, health and happiness.

Born in 1920, the son of Mr. and Mrs Adolph E. Schmid, Al grew up a cheerful, freckle-faced kid in Burholme, Pa., a Philadelphia neighborhood. After his mother died, Schmid was on his own. He worked on farms and other odd jobs. In 1940, he became an apprentice burner at the Dodge Steel Company in northeast Philadelphia, near the Delaware River.

Since he could not afford his own place, Schmid lived with fellow Dodge Steel worker Jim Merchant and his wife, Ella Mae, in a row house on Tulip Street near the Tacoma-Palmyra bridge. While living with the Merchants, Schmid met Ruth Hartley, a friend of the family, who worked at a Sears department store in Philadelphia. In time, Schmid fell in love with Ruth, whom he called “Babs.”‘

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Schmid was sprawled out on the floor of Jim Merchant’s house, looking at the paper and trying to get up the energy to get dressed for a date he had with Ruth that night.

Then, all of a sudden, the radio stopped playing dance music; a voice relayed the startling news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Thinking it was a joke, Schmid tuned in another station. Pretty soon they said the same thing. “All this time,” Schmid remembered, “I was lying there like a dumb cluck, not thinking of it; finally I called to Jim, and said, ‘Hey, Jim, the radio keeps saying there is a war with Japan–where the hell is Pearl Harbor?’” Then he got dressed and took Ruth ice skating. Ruth did not learn about Pearl Harbor (Schmid didn’t tell her) until she came home later that evening.

For a day or so, Schmid could not see how the war affected him. Then things changed. He talked to Ruth about enlisting in the Marines, but she didn’t take him seriously; he was always talking big. On December 9, 1941, he told her, “I’m in. I went down to the Custom House and signed up.”

Schmid left Philadelphia on January 5, 1942. After recruit training at Parris Island, S.C., and further training at New River, N.C., he returned to Philadelphia on a short leave before heading for “destination unknown.” He collected a bonus from Dodge Steel for his work during 1941 and used the money to buy an engagement ring for Ruth.

Soon afterward, Schmid boarded the troop transport George F. Elliot as part of the 11th Machine Gun Squad, Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division. On August 7, 1942, the 10,000 men of the 1st Marine Division, under Maj. Gen. Alexander Archer Vandegrift, the largest Marine force ever engaged in landing operations up to that time, assaulted Guadalcanal, beginning the first American offensive against the Japanese.

The Marines had expected a counterattack the moment they landed, but encountered no real opposition during their first two weeks. Then the Japanese sent a crack army regiment commanded by Colonel Kiyono Ichiki from Rabaul to retake Guadalcanal. Ichiki landed his elite troops on Guadalcanal on August 18, then marched west toward Marine positions along the Ilu River (mismarked on the American maps as the Tenaru). Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Pollock’s 2nd Marine Battalion was waiting.

H Company’s machine-gun squad was there also. Schmid and two other Marines, Corporal Leroy Diamond and Pfc John Rivers, manned a .30-caliber water-cooled machine gun inside a sandbag-and-log emplacement camouflaged with palm fronds and jungle greenery. The position was on the west bank of the Ilu, which was 50 yards wide at that point.

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