Dale Robert Geddes
Private Dale R. Geddes served with How Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines.
He was killed in action at the battle of Tarawa on 20 November 1943.
Branch
Marine Corps Reserve
Service Number 485974
Current Status
Accounted For
as of 23 December 2015
Recovery Organization
History Flight 2015 Expedition
Read DPAA Press Release
History
Dale Geddes was born on 21 February 1922, the fifth and youngest child of William and Minerva “Minnie” Geddes. He spent his youth in Grand Island, Nebraska, and worked as a paperboy for the Grand Island Independent during his school years. The newspaper business appealed to young Dale; after graduating from Grand Island Senior High in 1940, he applied for full-time employment with the Independent’s business office.
After two successful years at the Independent, Geddes moved to Wyoming for a job in the circulation department of the Cheyenne Eagle. It was now 1942: the twenty-year-old Geddes was registered with Selective Service, but hoped to avoid being called by the draft. In November, he resigned from the Eagle and drove down to Denver to stay with his sister Florence and her family. Little Shirley Hutton remembered “Uncle Dale’s” visit, the beautiful marionettes he made for her, and the way he left his eyeglasses on the family piano one day. Dale didn’t want the Marine Corps recruiters to know about his poor eyesight.
Dale enlisted from Denver on 20 November 1943, and was soon on his way to San Diego for boot camp. After earning his Eagle, Globe, and Anchor (and a very short-lived career as a trainee tanker at Camp Elliott), Private Geddes was assigned to the 11th Replacement Battalion and sailed from San Diego. He arrived in New Zealand in April 1943, and joined How Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Paekakariki.
Geddes spent the next several months training with his new buddies in the fields and hills near Wellington. How Company was a heavy weapons outfit, fielding water-cooled Browning machine guns and 81mm mortars plus a host of supporting jobs – messengers, drivers, ordnance men, and more. While Geddes’ primary role within the company is not currently known, he would have been subjected to the same challenges as any other man in the company – with the added desire to prove himself to the more experienced Marines, who were veterans of Guadalcanal.
In October 1943, the 8th Marines boarded transports at Wellington for a final round of training exercises. When the ships headed out to sea instead of returning to town, the Marines aboard began to realize that the rumors were true: they were bound for combat.
The amphibious assault on Betio, Tarawa atoll – Operation GALVANIC – commenced on 20 November 1943. The Second Battalion 8th Marines was given the job of assaulting the easternmost of three landing beaches – “Red 3” – and, once ashore, moving inland to quickly secure the airfield that covered much of the tiny island’s surface. A heavy and morale-boosting naval bombardment convinced many Marines that the task would be a simple one, and spirits were high at 0900 when their amphibious tractors started paddling for the beach.
The Japanese were quick to recover. Shells began bursting over the LVTs. “As the tractors neared the shore the air filled with the smoke and fragments of shells fired from 3-inch guns,” notes A Brief History of the 8th Marines. “Fortunately, casualties had been light on the way to the beach, but once the men dismounted and struggled to get beyond the beach, battle losses increased dramatically.” Most of the beach defenses were still intact, and these were supported by row after row of pillboxes, rifle pits, and machine gun nests.
The Second Battalion, and then the Third Battalion, tried in vain to break through the Japanese defenses, suffering heavy casualties in every attempt. By evening, they were barely clinging to a sliver of beachhead, and the shocked survivors dug in among the bodies of the dead.
As he approached Betio, Dale Geddes must have thought back to the day he enlisted – exactly one year ago. When he hit the beach, however, he had other things on his mind. According to Captain Arthur J. Rauchle, a Japanese sniper dropped a How Company Marine with a serious wound. Geddes hurried to help his buddy, and was unpacking his first aid kit when another shot rang out. Dale Geddes fell to the ground – instantly killed, thought Rauchle, by the very same sniper.
It took two days for the dead men on Beach Red 3 to be buried. A long trench was bulldozed near the pier, and more than forty Marines were carried over and laid down under their ponchos. Private Geddes was among those buried in “Division Cemetery 3.”
Dale Geddes’ burial ground was “beautified” by Navy garrison troops in 1944 and renamed Cemetery 27. A single large cross was put up and the names of the fallen painted on a plaque nearby. When the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company arrived to exhume the battle casualties in 1946, however, they found not a trace of any remains beneath the monument – nor anywhere nearby. After days of searching in vain, they gave up and declared the 40 men permanently nonrecoverable.
In 2015, the non-profit group History Flight conducted an archaeological dig at a shipyard on Betio. This expedition, the result of years of research and data supplied by GPR and a cadaver dog, found the original burial trench beneath a parking lot – quite some distance from the memorial location. The remains of 46 men were recovered by History Flight – and among them were those of Dale Geddes.
DNA analysis, plus additional material and circumstantial evidence, finally identified Dale Geddes in December 2015. The announcement went public in 2016, and the young Nebraskan was officially accounted for. He was returned to his family for burial in a family plot in Grand Island Cemetery.
Decorations
Purple Heart
For wounds resulting in his death, 20 November 1943.
Next Of Kin Address
Address of parents, William & Minnie Geddes.
Location Of Loss
Geddes’ battalion landed on and fought in the vicinity of Beach Red 3.
