Alvin Chester Cockrell, Jr.
First Lieutenant Alvin C. Cockrell, Jr. served with Baker Company, First Battalion, 7th Marines.
He was killed in action at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 24 September 1942.
Branch
Marine Corps Reserve
Service Number O-6684
Current Status
ACCOUNTED FOR
2022-2023
Pursuit Category
Defense POW/Accounting Agency
[Official press release TBA]
History
Alvin Chester Cockrell, Junior was born in the small town of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, on 28 September 1918. He was the oldest child born to Doctor Alvin Cockrell, a Copiah County dentist, and the former Annie Patrick. A younger sister, Jim Alice, arrived in 1922; the Cockrells expected a third child in 1929, but the infant girl died at birth. The family lived in an affluent part of town, counting physicians, lawyers, and white-collar workers among their close neighbors. A domestic servant, Edna Wright, was employed to keep the house at 82 Extension Street neat and clean.
The two Cockrell children were well known to their peers, particularly in their teenage years. They attended Hazlehurst High School, and in 1935 both served on the student council as student body president (Chester, a senior) and freshman class president (Jim Alice). Chester was somewhat headstrong and impulsive – he earned a newspaper mention for drinking a bottle of ant poison at the tender age of four – but also proved to be a popular and reasonably successful student. After graduating from Hazlehurst High in 1936, he enrolled at the University of Mississippi and channeled some of his aggression into collegiate boxing. A “long armed and aggressive” pugilist, Cockrell’s bouts were profiled in the Jackson newspapers.[1]
Chester Cockrell through the years at the University of Mississippi. His sister, Jim Alice Cockrell, also attended "Ole Miss."
Cockrell also showed an interest in military life, both in the university’s ROTC program and with the Marine Corps. He enlisted in the Reserve on 1 May 1937 and spent two summers at Quantico attending Platoon Leaders’ Class. By 1940, with graduation fast approaching, Cockrell decided on the Marines as a career. His application for a commission was accepted, and on 18 August 1940, Second Lieutenant Cockrell was placed on active duty.
Even with his previous military experience, Cockrell found the transition to Marine officer challenging. He graduated in the lower third of his Reserve Officer Course and earned positive, if somewhat unenthusiastic, marks on fitness reviews for his first assignment – platoon leadership in K/3/5th Marines down in Cuba. In early 1941 he transferred to the 7th Marines, where Lt. Col. Amor Sims was only slightly more impressed. Perhaps feeling underappreciated in an infantry battalion, Lieutenant Cockrell made some moves to transfer to a glider pilot training program.[2] However, late in the year, Cockrell met a senior officer who understood his style. The famously pugnacious Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller took command of First Battalion, 7th Marines shortly before Pearl Harbor, and quickly pegged Cockrell – then serving with Company C – as a kindred spirit. In a fitness report spanning October to December 1941, Puller noted that Cockrell had a “violent temper” which could “adversely affect his efficiency.” However, on the same page Puller wrote “I believe he will make an excellent combat officer.”[3] He would be proved right on both counts.
Cockrell’s temper bested him on one memorable occasion. In the very early morning of 22 February 1942, military police were summoned to the White Owl Tavern in Kinston, North Carolina, to settle an altercation between a group of enlisted Marines and an aggressively intoxicated individual in civilian clothing. The MPs escorted the man outside, where he promptly took a swing at a uniformed Marine officer – Second Lieutenant Monson McCarty of the 7th Marines. The quick-fisted “civilian” turned out to be Cockrell, and he faced a laundry list of charges: being out of uniform, fraternizing with enlisted men, lying about his identity, and fighting. “Conduct on your part constituted a violation of regulations, falsehood, and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,” declared Colonel James W. Webb. “Such conduct cannot and will not be tolerated.” However, being young and headstrong played in Cockrell’s favor, and he received only a 10-day suspension from duty – thanks to his short time in the service, or possibly the intercession of Chesty Puller.[4]
On 6 April 1942, a week after returning to his duties as a company officer, Cockrell joined his regiment and other units of the 3rd Marine Brigade in boarding the USS Fuller at Norfolk, Virginia. Their destination was kept secret, but it was easy to guess that it lay somewhere in the Pacific. Some Marines hoped to avenge Wake Island, others to help the beleaguered defenders of Corregidor. Instead, they landed on the friendly shores of Upolu, Samoa. During the voyage, Cockrell received a promotion to First Lieutenant (the stain of his suspension was not, evidently, indelible) and a new assignment as executive officer of B/1/7th Marines.
The 7th Marines learned of Corregidor’s fall when they arrived in Upolu, and for a time it seemed that Samoa might be next on the Japanese hit list. The Americans worked furiously to turn the islands into a fortress – but the expected attack never came. Victory at Midway blunted Japanese expansion plans, and by June the novelty of the exotic surroundings began to wear off. Puller’s battalion was encamped on landscaped polo grounds, and enjoyed “pineapple and coconuts… also fresh water to bathe in. We played baseball and were allowed two cans of beer a day.”[5] Chesty had no use for such soft living, and instituted a punishing training routine – which seemed all in vain as the men got no closer to combat. “This lousy outfit has failed completely in giving the men anything to look forward to,” complained an officer, “they just don’t give a particular damn about anything.”[6] Lieutenant Cockrell had ample opportunity to learn the role of an executive officer, serving under skippers Captain Claude B. Cross and Major John P. Stafford.
At long last, the 7th Marines boarded the USS President Adams for transit to the Solomon Islands. They arrived on 18 September 1942, just in time to witness American transports shooting down a Marine dive bomber – hardly an auspicious omen. That night, Japanese cruisers and destroyers shelled Henderson Field and caused numerous casualties in the nearby 7th Marines bivouac. Undeterred, Chesty Puller led his battalion on their first combat patrol the following morning. At a bridge over the Lunga River, they encountered their first Japanese soldiers. The Marines were well trained, but inexperienced in combat; men scattered off the trail at the first shot and had to be browbeaten back into line by a furious Puller. They camped in the field that night and completed their objective the following day.
With Stafford hors de combat, command of B/1/7th Marines passed to Chester Cockrell.
Four days later – 24 September 1942 – Puller’s battalion set out again, this time on a high-stakes patrol intended to advance the American strategic situation. Puller was to take his men through the remote backcountry, following a hand-cut Japanese trail that would hopefully circumvent the powerful defenses along the Matanikau River. If all went according to plan, Puller’s battalion would fall upon the Japanese rear guard, roll up the flanks, and clear the way for a general attack across the river. The assault was scheduled for 26 September, so Puller’s men had to move quickly.
The day’s march was punishingly difficult, across rough terrain that varied from mud-slicked ravines to desert-like expanses of dust and grass. By 1700 hours, the exhausted Marines were more than ready to call it quits. Puller found a suitable hill and, encouraged by reports of running water ahead, sent Able and Baker Companies to investigate. Able Company forded the stream to secure the area, while Baker took up positions along the stream. Able Company surprised a pair of Japanese cooks laboring over a fire and dispatched them with a flurry of gunfire – which provoked an immediate response from a much larger Japanese force bivouacked nearby. Able Company lost five Marines in the first few seconds of firing, and Baker Company tumbled down into the streambed where Puller and Cockrell quickly strategized a counterattack.
Puller decided on a classic envelopment. Baker Company’s 2 Platoon (2Lt. Walter B. Olliff) would advance around the left flank, while 3 Platoon (2Lt. James W. McIllwain) went up the center. Cockrell and 1 Platoon (2Lt. Talmadge R. Meadows) would take the right flank where the firing was heaviest. When all was ready, Puller hollered “Bring ’em up, Cockrell!”
The charge was a disaster. 2Lt. Olliff witnessed fire so intense that “the bushes and leaves waved and bent over as if there was a gale,” and saw three of his men wounded or killed before a bullet smashed his left hip.[9] McIllwain’s platoon also struggled to make headway:
There was no sign of Cockrell, Meadows, or 1 Platoon. Sergeant Goble heard Puller howling reams of invective towards the right flank, to no avail. Finally, a breathless runner splashed up and reported that Lieutenant Cockrell had fallen while leading the attack. His death threw the company into confusion, and they were in no shape to press onward. Darkness was gathering, and Puller decided to withdraw his forces to a more defensible position. He placed Captain Zach Cox in command of Cockrell’s company, and orchestrated a complicated “advance to the rear,” leaving his dead on the field temporarily. “Puller swore to go back in the daylight to find [Cockrell] and the rest of the dead,” recalled Goble.[11]
The thirty-minute fight over the stream bed cost the lives of ten Marines from 1/7 – four of them from Baker Company – and wounded 28 more. Puller regretted his losses, but seemed to take the death of Cockrell almost personally. Author Burke Davis relates Chesty’s sorrow: “God, I hated that I had to curse at Cockrell out there tonight. He was a good, brave Marine – the fighting kind. It was something that had to be done.”[12]
In the morning, a burial party set to work digging five graves on the bivouac site “Hill X.”[13] Meanwhile, Baker Company went out to find the Japanese. “The next morning, we circled around the battle area about a mile out, to come in from the north,” said Joe Goble. “We wanted to surprise the Japs by hitting them from that direction. But, when we got to the battle area, all the Japs were gone.” Instead, the Marines found piles of brass, abandoned defenses, and their own dead. Goble was with the party that found Chester Cockrell.
The five Marines found on the field – Wehr, Karnaghon, Pimentel, Edwinson, and Cockrell – were buried all in a row on “Hill Y.” Soon after, the battalion departed. Puller dispatched Able and Baker Companies back to the perimeter with the wounded; he continued on with his mission, leading Charlie Company and reinforcements from 2/5th Marines. The battle along the Matanikau that followed – and weeks of additional combat – would eventually reduce this baptism of fire to a footnote in the regimental history. Chester Cockrell, however, became the first man in 1/7th Marines to receive the Navy Cross during World War II. The decoration, along with his silver identification bracelet, personal effects, and Purple Heart, were presented to his family back in Hazlehurst.
In June 1944, Jim Alice (as Mrs. James A. Perkins) sponsored the USS Alvin C. Cockrell (DE-366) in her brother’s memory.
Alvin Chester Cockrell, Junior is memorialized at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, and Hazlehurst Cemetery, Copiah County, Mississippi.
According to the 2023 DPAA Year In Review, Lieutenant Cockrell’s remains were accounted for in Fiscal Year 2023. This article will be updated.
[1] The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS) 2 February 1939.
[2] Alvin Chester Cockrell, Jr., Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD. (Hereafter Cockrell OMPF). Cockrell formally requested this transfer and passed the physical, but his application was evidently denied.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Leland DeRocher, quoted in “Andy Malanowski, USMC” by Jamie Malanowski; 9 March 2010.
[6] Jon T. Hoffman, Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC (New York: Random House, 2002), 146-147.
[7] Joe Goble, untitled memoir, The Lower Deck Newsletter of the Warships & Marine Corps Museum (Franklin, Australia), September 2002.
[8] Notes on Jungle Warfare from the U. S. Marines and U. S. Infantry on Guadalcanal Island, edited by Russell P. Reeder, Jr. (Washington: United States War Department, 1942), 25-26.
[9] Hoffman, Chesty, 159.
[10] Goble, 2002 memoir.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Burke Davis, Marine! The Life Of Chesty Puller, ebook, (New York: Open Road Media, 2016), 102. Davis quotes an anonymous officer for this anecdote, and its accuracy cannot be fully verified
[13] The five men buried here – Edwards, Canady, King, Walters, and Rowe – were killed in the vicinity or died of wounds suffered at the ambush site.
[14] Goble. In his 2002 account, Goble insists multiple times that he helped to bury 13 Marines after this firefight, however the battalion suffered only 10 fatal casualties.
[15] Cockrell OMPF
Decorations
Purple Heart
For wounds resulting in his death, 24 September 1942.
Next Of Kin Address
Address of father, Dr. Alvin C. Cockrell Sr.
Location Of Loss
Approximate location of Hill Y – now the outskirts of Honiara, Guadalcanal.
Related Profiles
Buried in the field, Hills X and Y, as result of Maizuru Ambush.
Leaving Mac Behind: The Lost Marines of Guadalcanal
Willie Rowe, or someone who sounded a lot like Willie, was crying in the darkness.
PFC Gerald White could not blame Willie. He felt a bit like crying himself. His battalion of the 7t Marines left the Lunga perimeter full of fight, ready to prove they were no Johnny-come-lately laggards but the warriors who would turn the tide on Guadalcanal. Now they were a “weary and dejected band” dug in on a nameless hill overlooking an unfamiliar stream, an anonymous location with no known landmarks save those they named themselves. The field where Fuller found the cooking fire; the ridge their guns were on; the tree where Goble hid; the trail where Randolph died.
Unremarkable places, except that men bled for them.
Read more about the Maizuru Ambush in "Leaving Mac Behind."
Click the cover for details.