Today, the DPAA announced that PFC John Paul “Jack” Langan of Columbus, Nebraska has been accounted for as of 7 July 2020. Read their press release here.
Jack was born on 30 January 1925 at Platte Center, Nebraska. He grew up in a large railroading family headed by Eddie and Mary “Minnie” Langan, and attended local schools in Platte Center including St. Joseph’s High School. His young life was marked by a pair of terrible tragedies. In 1936, Minnie passed away at the age of forty-one. Four years later, Jack’s oldest sister Martha – married as Mrs. Martha Rogan – was terribly burned while heating milk for her infant son. Kerosene in a coal stove exploded, setting fire to her nightgown, and she died after a few days of intense suffering.
At around this time, Eddie Langan left Nebraska and moved to Idaho. The remaining Langan children stayed close to Platte Center. Some moved in with the Rogan family, while Jack went to live with his older brother, Arnold “Buster” Langan, in Columbus. Buster and his wife Stella became Jack’s legal guardians.
In late 1942, Jack left Columbus for Des Moines, Iowa, where he enlisted in the Marine Corps on 25 November. He received his initial training in California at San Diego and Camp Pendleton, and shipped overseas in early 1943 as a member of the 11th Replacement Draft. Private Langan arrived in New Zealand in the late spring of 1943 and was assigned to duty with Company C, First Battalion, 6th Marines – a veteran unit that was recuperating from the Guadalcanal campaign earlier in the year.
Jack Langan spent the next several months training in New Zealand, and advanced in rank to private first class. In October, he boarded a transport and sailed for his first and only combat operation – Operation GALVANIC, or the invasion of Betio in the Tarawa atoll. He landed in a rubber boat under cover of darkness on 21 November 1943, found a safe foxhole to spend the night, and prepared for a morning attack.
Langan’s battalion (1/6) came ashore at Green Beach on the very western end of Tarawa. The plan for 22 November called for an attack to the east, catching the Japanese defenses on the flank and relieving the pressure on other units of the 2nd Marine Division which had landed on the Red beaches over the previous two days. The Marines started off at 0800, with Langan and Company C leading the assault. They made good progress over the course of the morning, losing only a few men while killing an estimated 250 Japanese whose defensive positions were compromised by the flanking attack.
At about noon, Company C was ordered to halt and rest while Company B passed through their lines to continue the assault. The equatorial heat was taking a toll on the men, and they were running into isolated Marines from other units – some of whom had been cut off from their own companies for days. Water details were organized and canteens distributed.
“About noon they called for a volunteer to carry water to a group of boys who were trapped,” recalled an unnamed C/1/6 Marine in a letter to Dolores Langan. “John volunteered to try to get water to them and a machine gun opened up and he was shot through the temple. He died immediately and did not suffer at all.”
The following day, John Langan was buried in an unspecified cemetery on Betio. A memorial marker was later erected in Cemetery 11, but his remains were not identified among those found at the site by the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company after the war.
Langan’s burial site was a mystery until 7 July 2020, when the DPAA announced his recovery. His remains were found by non-profit organization History Flight in 2019, in a burial feature known as “Row D” of Cemetery 33. Langan’s name did not appear on the original burial rosters of the row, indicating that he was buried there as an unknown in 1943.
Welcome home, PFC Langan. Semper Fi.
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