Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Pat Mitchell, USMC

I wasn't able to get this story posted last week, but better late than never, right? This story will continue in a future post...



Pat Mitchell


In 1865, the United States was reeling from the effects of the Civil War. One man in particular, an Irishman, married to a Cherokee bride, and who hailed from Douglasville, Georgia, was returning home having done his part to protect the South from the northern aggressors. By the time he returned home, Mitchell, which is the only name known, discovered that his son, Charlie Marshall Mitchell had flown the coop, in an effort to maintain peace in the house, due to an unknown grudge with his father.

Charlie, who was mixed-blood Cherokee, was caught by the powers that be and placed on a reservation in Oklahoma, where he was told to stay. He escaped the reservation and stayed on the run the rest of his life. In 1944, the U.S. Government contacted him and asked for his identity number. As far as he was concerned, they could go fly a kite. He never bothered to reply to the Government, and remained a fugitive for the remainder of his days.

Charlie met his bride near Aspermont, Texas, and they were married in 1908. A few years later, Elmo P. Mitchell, Pat, was born somewhere between McCaulley, Texas and Sylvester on January 18, 1926.

While Pat can claim to have lived in McCaulley, Texas, he actually grew up in the Lamesa and O’Donnell area. As a side note, Dan Blocker, (better known as Hoss Cartwright of the Ponderosa Ranch), was another native from O’Donnell, Texas.

Pat’s life was anything but ordinary, unless you are from a small farming town in West Texas. Back in the early 1930’s, there was little to do except to play dominoes and make music. Having grown up in a home that loved and lived for music, Pat was exposed to guitars and fiddles long before he was born. The first instrument he started played was the mandolin, but decided that it didn’t suit him. So, when the house was empty, he would take the guitar and climb up on the bed and play it until the folks came home. When he was seven years old, he played a song for his brother, who was so impressed, that within a few days Pat played his first gig at a dance in McCaulley. Thus launched a lifetime of smiles and music.

His fingers were so adept at playing music that he and his buddies formed a group called the Blue Bonnet Cowboys, and they played professionally for a brief year. As one might guess by the band’s name, they played Texas Swing, the kind you might hear coming from Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. In fact, Pat once played with some of the Bob Wills crew, and with Hugh Farr, who was with The Sons of the Pioneers. Despite his becoming a professional musician, he found the lifestyle distasteful, and bowed out of the professional gigs entirely. But he never left music.

Of course, one couldn’t depend entirely on music to make a living in the 1930’s, so he worked various jobs to help make ends meet. He worked for the National Youth Association in Lamesa, Texas, where he tried his hand at furniture making. Then he worked at an egg plant, where they made powdered eggs. Finally, he found a job working at a bakery, and it was a good match for him.

Fast forward to December 7, 1941, the day, according to President Roosevelt, that lived in infamy, when the US was catapulted into World War II via Pearl Harbor. Pat was hanging out with a group of friends in Patricia, Texas listening to the radio when the news of Japan attacking Hawaii was announced. Like most of the young men in America, he determined that he was going to join the war effort. When he turned 17, he went to Lubbock, Texas, where he stood in line for enlistment into the armed services. He happened to be in the right place at the right time to become a Marine. So, on October 13, 1943, Pat found himself in El Paso, Texas at the historic Paso del Norte Hotel for his physical and swearing in ceremony. The Marines assigned him to the South Pacific Theater; therefore he went to San Diego and Twenty-nine Palms, where he was introduced to the delicate task of Marine boot camp. Pat smiled fondly and commented, “That’s where I found out what I was. That corporal who met me as I got off the bus immediately identified me as a &$^%. Up to that point, I was unaware of this!”

Contrary to what one might believe, his time in the various Marine schools was not entirely pleasant. One day, he got cross-wise with a sergeant and got KP duty for 30 days. Once he got off that duty, something else happened and he did an additional 30 days. By this time, he had figured out that KP wasn’t as bad as some made it out to be, and volunteered for 30 more days. Before long, they made him the Scullery Chief!

When the Marines looked at Pat’s background, they saw that he had worked as a furniture builder and concluded that he should be in construction, despite his attempts to become a cook. After his training in Miramar, California, he shipped out for Hawaii, and eventually to the Marshall Islands, where he was a maintenance man, trying to keep the base in good order. That wouldn’t last long, because the push to Okinawa and the Japanese mainland was well underway.

On April 1, 1945, the battle for Okinawa began when the Tenth Army landed on Higashi beach on L-Day. Yomitan Airstrip was secured while Japanese planes were still trying to land. Pat’s combat engineers were the first echelon to set up camp in an attempt to preserve and maintain the airstrip for American use. In the days that followed, some of the most desperate fighting occurred as Japan was frantic to regain its hold on the island. From April the 6th through the 18th, 400 Kamikaze planes made an all-out effort against Okinawa Island, Ryukyu Islands, and the various local shipping and beach heads. In that time, two destroyers, two ammunition ships, a mine sweeper, and an LST are sunk due to Japanese attacks, while other vessels are damaged.

The HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force) reported that in missions numbered 70 to 75: 118 B-29s bombed airfields at Tachiarai, Kokubu, Izumi, Nittagahara, and 2 at Kanoya, Japan; 5 others attacked targets of opportunity. Up through May 11, XXI Bomber Command devoted 75 per cent of its combat effort to support of the Okinawa campaign. During this period, the American B-29s flew more than 2,100 sorties against 17 airfields on Kyushu and Shikoku Islands which were dispatching air attacks (including Kamikaze raids) against USN and USMC forces. On a short side note, Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper columnist Ernie Pyle was killed on Ie Shima by a sniper during this campaign.


Sugar Loaf Hill

And where was Pat when all of this was happening? He was still on the airfield trying to repair the damage done by Japanese bombers and artillery. One day, three Betty Bomber, a Japanese aircraft, crashed into their airfield in a kamikaze run. They spent several hours trying to round up the crews of the planes, who attempted to carry out more of their sabotage mission. The Japanese also had a series of tunnels they had built into Sugar Loaf Hill, which overlooked the runway, where they could bring artillery on line to bombard the airstrip. (Part of a complex of three hills, Sugar Loaf formed the western anchor of General Mitsuru Ushijima's Shuri Line, which stretched from coast to coast across the island. Sugar Loaf was critical to the defense of that line, preventing U.S. forces from turning the Japanese flank).

Most of the Japanese efforts to bombard the airfield were nothing more than a nuisance, but it was a constant one. Daily, the Japanese attempted to destroy the airfield in an effort to turn the tide of the battle. In May, the Marines and the 10th Army took Sugar Loaf Hill, which guarded the entrance to the Japanese 32nd Army and the road to Naha. However, the Marines paid a dear price for it, losing thousands of men to death, wounds, and combat fatigue. It wasn’t until May 18 that Sugar Loaf was finally seized. Two days later, the Japanese mounted a battalion-sized counterattack in an effort to regain their lost position, but the Marines held the line. All of this activity was occurring in Pat’s immediate area. When the wounded started rolling in from the front, he and his crew spent their free time visiting the various evacuation hospitals in the area and playing music for the wounded. During the day they maintained the airfield. During the night they would play, and then return to the airfield to their quarters. Several times they traded their guitars and fiddles for M-1 riffles and Colt .45s, for the war was still raging.

When I asked Pat what the most memorable moment in Okinawa was, and he smiled wryly and said, “We were in Buckner’s Bay on a Kaiser Coffin (a transport boat built by Kaiser) when we heard that the Japanese had signed an unconditional surrender. Within the hour, they turned around and we started home.” Literally, they returned state-side on the day the armistice was signed. He and several thousand Marines had long since earned enough points to return home, and they had been in a holding pattern waiting for their orders. So, when the Japanese surrendered, they sailed back across the Pacific to California. Before long, Corporal Mitchell found himself as a civilian.

He returned to Lamesa, Texas and went back to work at the bakery for several years. During this time, he became acquainted with a young lady named Nettie Mae Taylor, who worked as a soda jerk at the local drug store. Feeling compelled to buy the occasional soda, they became better friends due to his frequent visits. On January 19th, 1947, he took her as his bride and they began a happy life together. He got a job offer working in the newly developing oil fields, which took him to Carlsbad, New Mexico. While between jobs, he accepted employment in the potash mines in Carlsbad, where he worked until he retired in 1989.

Of course, this is only a snapshot of Pat’s life. There are still a few more important things you need to know about him. Pat grew up attending a Baptist Church, and he came to know the Lord when he was seven years old in the McCaulley First Baptist Church. While he freely admits there were days he didn’t take religion very seriously, he had a life-long commitment to the Lord, and lived his life accordingly. I suspect this was part of the reason he found being a professional musician to be counter-productive. In 1995, he was inducted into the New Mexico Hall of Fame for fiddling. If you visit Pat’s Place, his work shop/music barn behind his house, you will see that his walls are adorned with more than 50 first and second place awards from the various competitions he undertook.

Pat also had a brother, T.C. Mitchell who served in the Army and was an occupation force member in Japan for some of the months immediately following the war.

Recently in 2007, Pat lost the love of his life, the ever smiling Nettie, whom we dearly miss.

If you are in the mood for some really good fiddle music, you can find Pat and his group making music like nobody’s business in his shop, Pat’s Place on Tuesday evenings. And if you happen to see a man whose gentle smile and graceful fingers making musical notes melt like butter, then you know you’ve found a man worth talking about: Corporal Pat Mitchell, USMC.

18 comments:

Alison Bryant said...

I'm constantly amazed at how many heroes we have around us, quietly living their lives while most of us have no idea the sacrifices they've made.
Yet again, Will, thanks for taking time to chronicle his story. The next time I see Pat I'll give him an extra big hug and say thanks...the least I can do.

Travis said...

I need to take him a copy of the story. It's the least I can do.

Alison Bryant said...

Suggestion...I'm sure Reba would appreciate a copy, too.

Billy Coffey said...

Wow, what a guy. Here's to Pat. May his days be long and never forgotten.

Tracy said...

I am SO happy that I interuppted my blog-cation to read this! What a wonderful tribute to one of the many thousands of heroes we all owe so much to. Thanks Will, for telling us the story of Pat Mitchell, USMC!

Gwen Stewart said...

Ah yes, and I almost heard Pat's music in your writing, Travis. Texas swing...now that, I must hear live. I've heard live bluegrass and all kinds of country music. And folk. Texas swing? Not live. I must hear it. :)

Thank you for sharing Pat's story. I echo Alison; quiet heroes live all around us.

Travis said...

Tracy-
I'm glad you stopped by also. I was hoping you'd see this article.

Gwen-
I'm extremely happy for you to stop back by. I've missed having you poke your head in the door. You should hear Pat play. His work is art, not music. One of my favorite songs of all time, Ashoken Farewell comes to life when he begins caressing those strings.

And Texas Swing is a special variety all its own, as Alison will attest. Bob Wills was a master!

KM Wilsher said...

What a great tribute! Sounds like a man I'd like to sit on the porch with and drink lemonade and listen to!
Great post, thank you for sharing.

Travis said...

KM-
That is a great profile photo!

Email me when you get a chance...
traviwinman[at]yahoo[dot]com

I want to chat with you about something!

Travis said...

that should say traviswinman

Dave said...

I waited to read this one until I could take the time to really focus on it and get engrossed in it. Very nicely written. I think it's hard to find a more honorable man than him.

And last night at the church praise band practice, he cut loose on the fiddle when we were done. I've never heard him play with so much vigor. I loved it.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Thank you so much for posting this story. Pat is my cousin and I met him for the first time at a family reunion in 2010. I spent some time talking to him but didn't learn half of the things you wrote about. I did get to hear him play the fiddle, however, and it was one of the highlights of our weekend in Abilene.

Travis said...

His was one of my favorite interviews of all! And a man I highly respect. What an honor for you to be part of his family.

charmpacksplus said...

Hey Travis, I know you wrote this article several years back but I'd like to say THANK YOU!!! You see, one of my hobbies is genealogy and this article led me directly to my great grandfather, Charlie Marshall Mitchell. Marsh, as he was known, was married briefly to my great grandmother, Nevada Courtney, but for some reason he left her with two young children, one of them being my grandmother, Bessie Mitchell. Grandma Bessie only recalled seeing him once in her lifetime. She didn't know much about him - where he came from or where he went. He was missing for over 100 years(1900-2015). When I read this article the man you described (on the run) sounded like maybe he could be the one. I took a chance and wrote a letter to Pat Mitchell to find out if he knew anything about Marsh being married before. He did not, but said he wasn't surprised. He forwarded my letter to his brother, T.C., and eventually it got to T.C.'s granddaughter who did DNA tests on several family members to help me prove or disprove that this Charlie Marshall Mitchell was one and the same as the father of my grandmother. And our DNA does match! Close match, in fact. Pat and T.C. are my grandmother's half brothers. If not for this article we still would not know what happened to Marsh. Thanks to you we now know!

Travis said...

What an amazing story! I'm so pleased you worked it out, and that I played a small part of that discovery! Thank you for sharing those results with me. I'm always grateful to know the rest of the story.
God Bless!

charmpacksplus said...

BTW - T C Mitchell passed away last Friday, October 27, 2017.

Travis said...

I'm very sorry to hear of this. We shall keep his family in our thoughts and prayers. I know he will be missed.