Ernest Alberti Matthews, Jr.
Second Lieutenant Ernest A. “Matty” Matthews, Jr. served with HQ Company, HQ Battalion, 2nd Marine Division.
He was killed in action at the battle of Tarawa on 20 November 1943.
Branch
Marine Corps Reserve
Service Number O-27139
Current Status
Accounted For
as of 4 January 2017
Recovery Organization
History Flight 2015 Expedition
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History
Ernest Alberti Matthews, Junior, was born in Topeka, Kansas, on 23 November 1908. His father, Ernest Senior, once rode with the 1st US Cavalry but had since hung up his spurs for the life of a railroad clerk.[1] This new profession was, at times, just as mobile as his military past. The Matthews clan moved from Topeka to Oklahoma City, then Harrison County (Arkansas) and to Dallas, Texas, all before young Ernest reached the age of ten. It was in Dallas that the family (including mother Lovie and young Charles, born in 1916) would finally set down some permanent roots. Ernest attended the J. S. Hogg school before entering South Oak Cliff High School in 1923; while there, he was active in the Cadet Corps as well as on the editorial staff of the school’s yearbook and newspaper. Both of these extra curricular activities would factor heavily in his future.
Ernest went on to attend the University of Texas, Austin; he studied pre-law but left the school after his junior year.[2] He returned to Dallas to work as a clerk in a dry goods store. It was probably around this time that he met a pretty schoolteacher named Mary Virginia Vorhes. Virginia was also a native Kansan and graduate of the University of Nebraska and Southern Methodist University. The two were married in June of 1933, following a simple ceremony at the Vorhes home, and established themselves in Dallas.[3]
Ernest held a few clerical jobs and even worked briefly as a Sunoco geologist before deciding to pursue a passion for photography. In the 1940 census, he gave his occupation as “commercial photographer” – although a Selective Service registration card from the same year reveals that he worked for the William J. Burns International Detective Agency.
With his bespectacled face and slightly built frame, Ernest Matthews did not fit the typical picture of a hard-boiled detective or a Texas lawman. However, he did strike up an acquaintance with Ken Hand, a Dallas Morning News reporter who worked the police blotter and courtroom beat. Hand appreciated that Matthews was quick with a quip – no matter how cornball – and a series of those “left-handed” jokes made appearances in Hand’s column “Last Night On The Police Beat.”
E. A. Matthews, a private detective, contributes this word picture and hopes the Readers' Digest will award him with a prize for picturesque speech: "He was wrapped up in thought, so they arrested him for indecent exposure."[4]
E. A. Matthews Jr., a William J. Burns detective noted for his bum puns, submits this weakie: "I just can't figure it out. Your Hess is as good as mine."[5]
E. A. Matthews, Jr. submits the following slogan for the benefit of the German Luftwaffe every time it is beaten off by British pursuit planes and antiaircraft guns: "Better to have luft and waffed than never to have lufted at all."
("Mr. Matthews submits that for what it is worth, which is nothing or less," quipped the paper, "and he will be paid accordingly."[6])
Jokes aside, Matthews did take his work seriously. He was involved in a series of collars, including an Oklahoma teacher with a penchant for forgery and a trio of car thieves in Terre Haute. In May of 1941, racial tensions over housing in Dallas exploded, literally, in a series of bombings aimed at apartments built for the city’s black population. A photographer from the News captured Detective Matthews, grimly observing a blasted crater in San Jacinto Village.
Ernest and Virginia were also readying themselves for parenthood: Virginia was pregnant, and the couple eagerly awaited their first child in 1941. On 7 July, however, Virginia was rushed to Dallas Methodist Hospital with unexpected labor pains. Their little daughter, born prematurely, lived for only two hours. “Baby Girl Matthews” never even had a name before her burial in Restland Memorial Park. [7] The Matthewses would never have another child.
Eventually, Ernest managed to parlay his investigative energies (and, presumably, his familiarity with Ken Hand) into a reporting job with The Dallas Morning News. While the veteran newsmen ran stories about the war, Matthews was relegated to somewhat drier topics involving land valuation and county budget deficits. He attempted to inject a bit of his characteristic levity (“Want To Build A Road? See Your County Dad!”), but it was hardly hard-hitting reporting. In May of 1942, he was moved to Ken Hand’s “courthouse run” and printed an article about a gambling prohibition (which, he noted with some amusement, had lasted only twenty-four hours.)[8]
In June of 1942, Matthews turned in his resignation at the News. He was going to enlist, he said, with the express aim of becoming a Marine combat correspondent. His colleague almost certainly played a part in this decision, for Ken Hand also resigned with the intent of going to war. “The stories these correspondents will file on the fighting activities will be sent back to corps headquarters for release to the nation’s press,” explained the News.[9] Hand, naturally, was more grandiose:
"Combat correspondents are former newspaper writers and photographers who have been trained as fighters. With a rifle in one hand and a typewriter in the other, they go forth to war, these fighting, writing men of the Marine Corps to give the public at home an accurate picture of the Devil Dogs in all parts of the world. From them will come the tales of deeds of future Wake Islands, Midways, Corregidors and Bataans, recording the heroism and grim determination of the Marines as they make history.
"When the units to which the correspondents are attached become involved in conflict with the enemy the writers will continue their duties as the eyes and ears of the Marine Corps. However, these men can shoot as straight as they can write. The combat correspondents are assigned in pairs, a writer and a photographer. They are sent to Marine posts and barracks throughout the world, wherever Marines are stationed."[10]
For all his intentions, Sergeant Kenneth N. Hand would never file a combat story – because he saw no combat at all. He arrived in New Zealand with the 12th Marines, but within a short while was headed back to California for hospitalization and eventual medical discharge.
Ernest Matthews, on the other hand, would follow a very different path.[11]
In January of 1943, Sergeant Bem Price huddled in a muddy hole, scribbling notes. The battle for Guadalcanal was nearing its end, but the perspective from Price’s foxhole was anything but rosy. “About 200 feet from this foxhole, United States Marine are tangling with the Japs in a bitter fight over a strategic ridge,” he wrote in a story that reached the world via the Associated Press:
To reach their objective, the Leathernecks must cross a bare crest and plunge into the Jap-infested jungle. They are making progress inch by inch and yard by yard. The enemy's fire is murderous. At dawn the Marines rose from their muddy foxholes and plunged forward. They advanced about 50 yards before they were pinned down by rifle and machine gun fire. Now they are firing with everything they've got into the edge of the jungle. I can see Sgt. Karl Koehring of San Francisco, and Cpl. Ernest A. Matthews of Dallas, manning an observation post and taking azimuth readings for artillery fire. Their post is not the safest place in the world for the Japs keep it under constant machine gun and mortar fire…. A sniper and a light machine gun have spotted this foxhole, and I've got to get out of here.[12]
Corporal Matthews, minus his glasses and sporting a trademark bushy mustache, was quite at home under fire. He had gone through boot camp and emerged, not as a correspondent, but as a photographer for the 2nd Marine Division’s intelligence section (D-2). The moviemakers at 20th Century Fox taught him to shoot motion pictures, and the Marines taught him to shoot a rifle – expertly, as it happened; Matthews’ range score at San Diego was only a few points short of the standing record.[13] He carried a camera and a compass into combat, alternately taking photographs and spotting targets for artillery.
“As a combat photographer and member of a front-line observation post team, ‘Matty’ as he was known was a familiar sight on Guadalcanal,” noted correspondent Fred Feldkamp. “He often would be found stripped to the waist and standing upright despite sniper fire, while taking compass readings on enemy positions. He was a veteran of some of the fiercest fights toward the end of the Guadalcanal campaign.”[14] At one point, Matthews wrote, he was serving as both a photographer and acting intelligence officer for his unit.[15]
Matthews would not remain a corporal for long. Deemed “a highly qualified motion picture cameraman and still photographer” who made “patrols in contact with the enemy in a most efficient manner,” Matthews attracted the notice of the D-2 officers, who determined to make him one of their own. He was recommended for a commission in April 1943 and, after passing a physical exam, was made a Second Lieutenant effective on the second of May. The promotion did not go into immediate effect; Matthews would remain a corporal until 1 August 1943, when he was formally discharged to accept his new appointment. He sent the happy news of better rank and better pay to Mary, who was working for North American Aviation back in Dallas.[16]
Lieutenant Matthews immediately impressed his superior officers by holding down the triple jobs of Combat Intelligence Officer, Acting Public Relations Officer, and officer in charge of training observation post personnel. LtCol. Thomas J. Colley rated Matthews as “very good to excellent” in his new role, and noted, “This officer is capable and efficient in combat intelligence training and has a suitable background to fit him well for public relations work.”[17] The “suitable background” would come to define Matthews’ role; he was soon relieved of intelligence duties in order to focus on publicity. The 2nd Marine Division had recently formed a cadre of photographers and motion picture cameramen who were trained to ply their craft under fire. Matthews was attached to this group, which included seasoned correspondent Robert Sherrod along with men like Norman Hatch and Jim G. Lucas who would shortly make their names. The slightly built Texan quickly fell back into the role of newsman. “He was one of the most popular men in the outfit,” Lucas said.[18]
Matty read hundreds of my letters, but he took out only one word. When he found technical violations, he usually figured out some way in which the same things could be said in non-offending form, and called the writer to help him change it.
And Matty was the best storyteller I have ever known. He never came to the office without an exciting tale of what had happened the night before. And he acted out his yarns to perfection. If he had seen a fight, it was not uncommon for him to bounce one off his own chin and sprawl flat on the floor to illustrate his point.
The detachment faced some unique challenges while training in New Zealand. “Marine Corps public relations was still a new, and fairly foreign, notion for many of the old-guard officers who viewed reporters and photographers with suspicion or derision, sometimes both,” notes Charles Jones.[19] Cameramen practiced with aerial photography, and when issued with .45 caliber pistols, happily popped away until the barrels wore out.[20] They also practiced loading their bulky gear. A fully loaded motion picture cameraman might carry a 35mm Eyemo with a rotating turret, a 16mm Bell & Howell for shooting color film, or a 35mm Wahl that could record sound. Each man also toted 1500 feet of film – five bulky canisters – in a specially made leather belt. With personal equipment added, Norm Hatch estimated that the total load was over 200 pounds.[21] It certainly did not make for a speedy exit from a landing craft under fire, as they discovered during amphibious landing practice
Naturally, the photographers and correspondents formed a close bond while training together, and it grew even closer in November of 1943 as they boarded transport ships for a top-secret operation. Matthews was aboard the USS Biddle with his buddy Jim Lucas and Norm Hatch. Hatch was an accomplished still photographer and passed part of the long journey taking pictures of shipboard life. More than once, his lens landed on Matty Matthews, whose trademark mustache had grown into a full goatee.
Matty was back in his element. I have never known a man who got as much kick out of action as he did. In preparation for what was ahead, he was growing a beard. I insisted on shaving, and told him I intended to go over the side with a clean face. Whiskers would be a punishing liability in the event of a serious face wound. I had seen too much of that punishment.
On the morning of 20 November 1943, Jim Lucas looked over the transport’s rail at their objective. “Tarawa was completely enveloped in smoke and flame,” he observed. The PR men had joked and bragged about getting ashore fast to get the scoop on a battle that was supposed to be over before it began. Matthews and Lucas even made a big show of swapping addresses and chuckled at the thought of swapping them back in a few hours.[22] Even when a Japanese shell splashed in the water nearby, they laughed at each other and at themselves for taking cover.
Then another shell hit five yards away, “killing a sailor and spraying our deck with saltwater,” Lucas said. “We upped anchor and steamed out of range.”[23] The laughing stopped.
A few minutes later, Matthews and Lucas were climbing into their assigned boat – a tank lighter loaded with a truck and trailer and a bunch of other Marines. The radio crackled to life: “We have landed against heavy opposition. Casualties severe.” Almost immediately, shells began landing close by. “A boat on our starboard side received a direct hit,” reported Lucas. “Five men were killed. We pulled alongside and dragged in the survivors. That was 1030 AM.” In the early afternoon, “we started in again, moving toward the pier which appeared undamaged. We were stopped by machine-gun fire…. The truck’s windshield was knocked out. At 3 PM, we tried again. Shells tore the water on all sides. Two more boats went down, and more Marines died. We backed out again, unable to pick up the survivors. Many of them swam to us…. Many of the wounded drowned.”[24]
The correspondents waited in their boat under enemy fire and the blazing sun for another nine hours. At midnight, a control boat finally arrived and ordered them ashore. Night had fallen, but the moon was bright and full. “At home, I would have called it beautiful,” remarked Lucas. “We swore at it viciously. We were perfect targets.”[25]
In his book “Combat Correspondent,” Jim Lucas described the next few minutes as if reliving a nightmare.
I was to take the watch at midnight, and I had not yet been awakened by the man who had the 8 to 12, so I knew it was sometime before midnight when Matty shook me.
“We’re going in,” he said.
Four boats were following the command vessel, which was edging towards the pier. For a moment I feared we might land among the Japs. The danger was not as real as it appeared then, for Colonel Shoup has since assured me that our men held a beachhead of considerable length on that first night.
We drew fire – I swore then that it came from the bulk of a small Japanese merchantman that had been blasted by our bombing of September 4 and was beached just beside the pier. Fortunately the fire, wherever it came from, passed over our heads.
Shortly before midnight – fifteen hours after we had left our transport – our landing craft drew up alongside the partially wrecked pier.
We were not fooling ourselves. After our first abortive attempt to get in, Matty and I knew our chances were none too good, no better than fifty-fifty. Matty took out his fountain pen and wrote:
Mrs. E. A. Matthews, Jr.
501 Sixth Street
Dallas, Texas
“Let her know how it happened,” he said.
I nodded and gave him Ashleigh’s address in Wellington. I had written letters to my own family and left them behind to be mailed if “anything” as I had said “happens to me.”
Matty was the first man out of our boat. He helped me onto the pier. As I stepped on the pier I saw a Marine directly under foot. I thought he was a wounded man, and cautioned Matjasic to be careful.
“He’s dead,” Matty said.
He was a kid of not more than eighteen. The white stripe on his dungaree trousers meant that he was a member of the shore party and had come to Betio to help in the unloading. He had died, in all probability, without firing a shot.
We had moved down the dock less than ten feet when the Japanese opened up with a hateful 40mm barrage. The first shell hit in the water and exploded not ten feet away, and we fell flat – not a difficult thing to do under fire.
The pier was crowded, for several hundred men lay crouched there waiting for the next shell to hit. My gas mask, strapped to my side, prevented my getting low as I thought the circumstances demanded, and I detached it….
Matty was on the outside, with Matjasic next to him. I was next to Matjasic. The three of us did not cover four feet of the pier.
The second shell hit directly beneath the pier. I was stunned and drenched by salt water. I heard Ray scream. Matty moaned.
Ray and I jumped to our feet and ran to the opposite side, expecting the next to be a direct hit.
Matty did not move. I called to him, loudly, but he did not answer. I ran back and begged him to get up. Marines shouted at me to get down, and I was sorely tempted. I do not know when I have been as badly frightened. I tried to drag Matty, but he collapsed in a heap. The third shell, at this moment, hit farther out in the water and I yelled for Matjasic.
Stunned by the blast, he had been lifted three feet in the air and thrown back on the wooden pier. He had disappeared.
Ray suddenly materialized out of nowhere.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Matty,” I replied.
Ray began to cry, and disappeared again.
I begged a Marine to help me. I got Matty to the other side, and lay down beside him. The shelling lifted, and I began a frantic search for help. Finding a hospital corpsman, I asked him to come with me.
“Man,” he said helplessly, “I’ve got 500 men hurt since 9 o’clock this morning. All I can tell you is put him on a stretcher, try to get him onto a boat, if you can find a boat going back, and send him out to one of the ships.”
Meanwhile I had found Ray again.
“How’s Matty?” he asked.
“I’m afraid he’s dead.”
We waylaid a second corpsman – a tow-headed kid who ought to have been back home teasing the girls in the junior play – and brought him back to our lieutenant.
He felt Matty’s pulse and stood up. “He’s gone,” he said.
Ray is a Catholic and I am a Protestant. Ray had attended confession aboard ship, and I had prayed with men of my own faith.
Together, we fell on our knees. Together, we prayed over our friend.
I stood up. A watching Marine asked quietly: “Your buddy?”
I could only nod.
“They got my kid brother this morning,” he said.
I have never felt so much alone as at that moment. It was difficult to leave Matty, but we had no choice. I have since learned that ten or fifteen Marines who knew us both were in the area, but I did not see a one that night.
In his pack Matty had several stories I had written aboard ship. He was also wearing one of my shirts. This gave rise to a report that I had been killed, and I was to hear it many times after the fighting was over….
Ray and I covered Matty’s body and began our slow trek. Many of Matty’s friends, coming ashore later, saw him there. [26]
Ernest Matthews never shot a bullet or a frame of film on Betio.[27] As the battle went on, Lucas returned to his friend’s body several times, retrieving his censor stamp and looking for a typewriter. The 40mm blast had destroyed both his and Matty’s machines, and his stories would have to wait for publication.[28]
Throughout the battle, the 2nd Marine Division’s motion picture cameramen shot some of the most impressive, graphic, and ultimately compelling footage of the war. Their efforts became documentary entitled “With The Marines at Tarawa.”
Two Marine correspondents – Matthews and Staff Sergeant Wesley L. Kroenung, Jr. – gave their lives to make the film, which won an Academy Award in 1945.[29]
Eventually, a burial party working along the pier picked up the body of Ernest Matthews and carried it to the East Division Cemetery near the airfield.[30] Someone noted the grave as #11 in the first row. “I stood with Marine Chaplain Norman Darling, formerly pastor of the Jacksonville (New York) Methodist church when we buried Matty back of the hangar,” noted Lucas. “Chaplain Darling held more than 200 services in one hour.”
Other administrative wheels were turning. Two telegrams of regret arrived in Dallas, one delivered to Lovie and one to Virginia. Notices of his death were sent to the papers and ran in the Dallas Morning News. Ernest’s pay records were closed, and his final character award (“excellent”) entered into his permanent file. The men of Matthews’ section even submitted a citation for the Silver Star Medal.
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity during action against enemy forces on Tarawa, Gilbert Islands, November 20 1943, while serving as Assistant Division Public Relations Officer, Second Marine Division. Lieutenant Matthews, although not required to do so, landed with one of the assault waves on D-day, and was fatally wounded while attempting to get ashore along the pier on Betio Island, while under extremely heavy enemy gunfire. Lieutenant Matthews was carrying a motion picture camera and proposed to film actual battle scenes despite the fact that such action on his part was over and beyond the call of duty. His conduct was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
However, the Board of Awards vetoed the idea. “There were many Marines killed during the assault on Tarawa who were attempting to get ashore and who do not warrant an award,” read their report, and while “it was most unfortunate” that Matthews lost his life, they denied the recommendation.[31]
Virginia channeled her shock and sadness into action. She volunteered for the Red Cross and wound up posted on Kwajalein – another island chain wrested from Japanese control by American amphibious assault. She managed to make one special stop on her way: Virginia visited Betio and went straight to the cemetery. News reports noted that Mrs. Matthews was “the first American woman serving in the Pacific to see the battlefield grave of her husband.” She found the cemetery beautiful – and she believed with all her heart that it was “where he would want to be.”[32]
Virginia’s wish would be granted, although probably not in the way she envisioned. The well-tended cemetery she saw was a sham; Ernest was not beneath the marker that bore his name. When base construction encroached on the original Marine cemeteries, Navy construction troops took down the original markers and put up memorials in their place. They were orderly, lovely, and completely inaccurate. When the government decided that no burials would remain on Betio, the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company was dispatched to exhume and account for more than one thousand Marines, sailors, and airmen. Less than half were found, and a worryingly small percentage of those were identifiable. Matthews’ reported burial site – now called “Cemetery 33” – presented the most significant problem. The 604th counted more than 400 markers in the cemetery; only 129 bodies were recovered. Some were overlooked by the diggers, while others had never been buried there at all. Ernest Matthews was not among those recovered, and he was declared non-recoverable in 1949.
In June of 2015, an expedition led by non-profit organization History Flight conducted excavations in the area of Cemetery 27 – quite some distance from Cemetery 33, near where the pier once met Beach Red 3. They found two burial trenches, undisturbed since 1943, and the remains of 44 American fighters. The bones were carefully cataloged and turned over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for examination. Much to their surprise, the remains of “Individual 17” proved to be those of Ernest Matthews. He had never been buried in Cemetery 33 at all.
Using “dental, anthropological, and chest radiograph comparison analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence,” the DPAA identified Lieutenant Ernest Alberti Matthews, Junior on 2 December 2016. He is considered officially accounted for as of 4 January 2017.
Virginia Matthews never remarried. She died in San Antonio in 1969, and is buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. On 5 November 2019, Ernest Matthews was buried at her side.
[1] While Ernest Senior is considered a veteran of the Spanish-American War, he entered service after the 1st Cavalry fought at Las Guismas, San Juan Hill, and Santiago. He may have seen action with Troop B in the Philippines.
[2] Ernest Alberti Matthews, Jr., Official Military Personnel File.
[3] “Virginia Vorhes Becomes Bride of E. A. Matthews, Jr.” The Dallas Morning News (30 June 1933).
[4] Ken Hand, “Last Night on the Police Beat,” The Dallas Morning News (14 November 1940).
[5] Ken Hand, “Last Night on the Police Beat,” The Dallas Morning News (20 May 1941).
[6] Ken Hand, “Last Night on the Police Beat: Today’s Left-Handed Crack,” The Dallas Morning News (6 May 1941).
[7] Texas Death Certificates 1903-1982, database online.
[8] Ernest Matthews, “Gambling Lid Is Put On For a Day, Then Lifted,” The Dallas Morning News (12 May 1942).
[9] “News Reporter Joins Marines As Writer Of Battle Stories,” The Dallas Morning News (6 June 1942).
[10] “Marine Fights With Rifle, Typewriter,” The Dallas Morning News (9 August 1942)
[11] Interestingly, the Dallas Morning News reported that Hand and Matthews were enlisting on the understanding that they would be assigned to duty as “public relations sergeants.” This was evidently brought up at some point, as documents in Matthews’ file indicate that the PR office “has no knowledge of the enlistment of Private Ernest A. Matthews, Jr. (410571) for duty as a public relations sergeant.” Matthews would go through boot camp and be assigned to line duty like thousands of other men.
[12] Sgt. Bem Price, “Vernon Marine, J. C. Bolton, In Bitter Guadalcanal Fight Related BY Correspondent,” The Vernon Daily Record (13 February 1943.
[13] The Dallas Morning News (20 October 1943). According to his service record book, Matthews scored a 337 out of a possible 340.
[14] TSgt. Fred Feldkamp, “Texas Marine Photographer at Tarawa Is Praised,” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (30 March 1944).
[15] The Dallas Morning News (9 May 1943).
[16] The Dallas Morning News (20 October 1943).
[17] Matthews, Official Military Personnel File.
[18] United Press, “Japs Realized Being Outmatched After Tarawa, Marine Asserts,” The Austin American (28 January 1944).
[19] Charles Jones, War Shots: Norm Hatch and the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Cameramen of World War II, (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2011), 80.
[20] Ibid., 82.
[21] Ibid., 91.
[22] United Press, The Austin American.
[23] Bill Banning, editor, Heritage Years: Second Marine Division Commemorative Anthology, 1940-1949, (Paducah: Turner Publishing, 1988), 67.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Jim G. Lucas, Combat Correspondent (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944) 185-188.
[27] United Press, The Austin American. Lucas claimed that a 40mm shell caused Matthews’ death; Matthews’ casualty card indicates a gunshot wound in the abdomen.
[28] James Powers, “Tarawa Vet Foresees Even Bigger Losses,” The Austin Statesman (27 January 1944.)
[29] “Whitey” Kroenung, another Marine Corps cameraman, was also killed on the Betio pier – possibly around the same time as Matthews. Kroening was accounted for on 16 April 2019.
[30] This was an interesting choice, as there was a much closer cemetery (“Central Division,” or Navy Number 26).
[31] Matthews OMPF. A proposed downgrade of the award to a Navy and Marine Corps Medal was also rejected.
[32] Joseph L. Myler, “All White Girls On Kwajalein Said ‘Maddeningly Beautiful,” The Lubbock Morning Avalanche (7 June 1946).
[33] “Casualties: Last Landing,” TIME Magazine, Vol. 47 No. 13 (1 April 1946), 97.
Decorations
Purple Heart
For wounds resulting in his death, 20 November 1943.
Next Of Kin Address
Address of wife, Mrs. Mary Virginia Matthews.
Location Of Loss
Lieutenant Matthews was killed while advancing along the main pier at Betio.