Henry Andregg, Jr.

Henry “Junior” Andregg was born in Whitwell, Tennessee on 17 March 1920. He was part of a large family – the eighth of nine children born to Henry and Fannie (Holloway) Andregg – and spent most of his childhood in Marion County.

In February 1935, the elder Henry Andregg – a well-known proprietor of meat markets in Whitwell and Jasper – flipped the family car while driving on the Dixie Highway near Victoria. He succumbed to his injuries two days later. Fannie died in 1937, and with both parents gone, the younger Andreggs moved in with their older married siblings. “Junior” settled in Chattanooga and lived alternately with his sisters Susie (Wagner) and Peggy (Jenkins). His brother-in-law, Steven Jenkins, became his legal guardian.

In peacetime, “Junior” worked with the Roadway Transfer Company, a shipping company based in Chattanooga.

Andregg enlisted in the Marine Corps from Nashville, Tennessee on 6 June 1942. He was sent across the country to San Diego for boot camp, and immediately after completing his initial training was assigned to Company C, Second Amphibian Tractor Battalion. That fall, Private Andregg deployed to the South Pacific.

Elements of “Charlie” Company participated in the Guadalcanal campaign while attached to the 6th Marines – among them was Andregg, who earned a promotion to Private First Class before the end of the year. He developed into an adept tractor crewman, and received his corporal’s stripe in the spring of 1943. For most of that year, Andregg trained in New Zealand – likely as a crew chief on an LVT-1 “Alligator.” A Chattanooga newspaper proudly reported that Andregg was “commander of a tank in the Marine Corps.”

In October 1943, the “Alligator Marines” departed New Zealand for their next objective – Operation GALVANIC, or the invasion of Tarawa atoll.

On 20 November 1943, Corporal Andregg and his crew boarded their LVT-1 from the USS Virgo and set off for their designated rally point. Virgo transported fifteen tractors to Tarawa; five went to the USS Heywood (carrying 3/8th Marines to Beach Red 3) while ten headed for the USS Zeilin (carrying 2/2nd Marines to Beach Red 2). Andregg was most likely assigned to the Zeilin, but unfortunately it is not known which vehicle he rode to shore.

The lightly armored, slow-moving “Alligators” were easy targets for the Japanese gunners, and casualties in men and vehicles alike were very heavy. One of the dead was Corporal Henry Andregg; he suffered fatal bullet wounds during the landing operation.

While Andregg was reported as killed in action (as opposed to “missing”), which suggests there were some eyewitnesses to confirm his death, these details are no longer known. Nor was his burial location; casualty reports indicated simply that he was “buried on Betio.”

Corporal Andregg’s remains were not identified among those initially recovered from Betio by the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company. In 1949, he was declared permanently non-recoverable.

However, in 2016 the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed the remains of several Tarawa unknowns from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and reexamined the bones using modern technology. One set, designated “Betio X-3,” was considered as a potential match for Andregg.

X-3 had been buried in Betio’s “Central Division Cemetery” (later called Cemetery 26) inland from Beach Red 2. The 604th unearthed the remains in 1946, but were unable to locate any identifying materials. Anthropologists in Hawaii were likewise stymied, and X-3 spent seventy years beneath an “Unknown” marker in Plot E, Grave 621 of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Laboratory examination – including dental, anthropological, and radiographic study – confirmed that X-3 was, in fact, Henry Andregg. His official identification was announced on 9 May 2017.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Chattanooga National Cemetery