Harry Clark Morrissey

Harry C. Morrissey was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, on 8 August 1915. He was the son of Charles and Clarinda “Clara” Morrissey, and grew up with an older brother (Charles Raymond) and a younger sister (Pearl). The Morrisseys moved from New Hampshire to Rhode Island, and then to Camden, New Jersey where both parents worked factory jobs to support the family.

Both Morrissey boys left school after the ninth grade and followed their parents into the factories. Harry made cans in Camden until 1940. Perhaps seeking a change of fortune, he went to live with his uncle, Joseph Joyal, and family in Everett, Massachusetts. He took a job at the Eagle Mattress Company as a truck driver, but when this also failed to suit him, he decided to join the Marine Corps.

Morrissey enlisted in Boston on 4 September 1940; he was 25 years old at the time. After completing his training at Parris Island, he sailed for Cuba and joined Company B, First Battalion, 7th Marines at Guantanamo Bay. He would serve with this company for the rest of his life.

Private Morrissey served solidly and without particular distinction through the year of 1941, participating in fleet landing exercises and shipboard training when not in barracks. He was stationed at New River, North Carolina when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and was soon on his way to California with the rest of his regiment. In the spring of 1942, they deployed to Samoa as a garrison force and to man beach defenses.

In September 1942, the 7th Marines arrived on Guadalcanal for their first taste of combat. PFC Morrissey was soon a veteran of battles along the Matanikau River. The month of September ended on a low note with a disastrous defeat at Point Cruz.

On 9 October 1942, PFC Morrissey’s battalion was operating east of the Matanikau River in support of 2/7th Marines. They wound up heavily engaged along a ridge while moving north towards the ocean. In the ensuing firefight, PFC Harry Morrissey was killed by machine gun fire.

The battalion called in heavy concentrations of mortar fire and drove off their adversaries. Before continuing on to the beach for evacuation, they buried three Marines in the field: Morrissey, PFC Francis E. Drake, Jr. (C/1/7) and Pvt. Albert L. Bernes (D/1/7).

Although the graves were numbered and marked, and map coordinates recorded, the site could not be located by post-war searches and all three Marines were declared non-recoverable.

We waited all morning for orders, not knowing what was going on elsewhere. At about 11.00 a.m. we were ordered to move along the ridge towards the ocean several miles away. This ridge flanked the Japanese concentration that was on our right. Colonel Puller had taken part of the
Marines to the left ridge while other Marines were engaging the enemy on the river to our right.

We were ordered to cross a narrow valley waist high in jungle grass. Part of us had gotten across when two machine guns opened up, killing two of our men. We took the ridge but continued to receive heavy mortar fire. Some of my men were hit, but not badly enough to keep them from fighting.

I directed rifle grenades where I thought the machine guns were, and we later learned that we had knocked out two guns.

Sergeant Joe Goble, B/1/7

While working on an outside kitchen for a building on Skyline Ridge, Honiara resident Mr. Yorick Tokuru uncovered “possible osseous remains” – in the form of a partial human skeleton. The remains changed hands several times, from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force to a local archaeologist, then to historian John Innes, who contacted JPAC to take possession of the remains.

Almost seventy years to the day after Puller’s 1/7^th Marines fought across the ridges west of the Matanikau, Radio Australia broke the news that suspected American remains had been found in Honiara. Michael Tokuru Junior was working on the very same kitchen when he unearthed more bones, and an American identification tag inscribed “F. E. Drake, Jr. 299871 USMC.” Ewan Stevenson got word to JPAC, and an excavation of the site revealed a third set of remains.

In the four years that followed, JPAC was disbanded and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) took its place. On 28 August 2017, the remains of Francis Drake and Harry C. Morrissey were identified; formal announcements accounting for the two Marines soon followed. On 28 May 2018, Francis Drake was buried in Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Agawam, Massachusetts. Harry Morrissey was buried in Arlington in the fall of 2020.

The third individual, who may be Albert L. Bernes, is still officially unidentified.

CENOTAPHS
Manila American Cemetery and Memorial
Beverly National Cemetery

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery

Harry’s older brother, Charles, served with the 110th Infantry in Europe and was captured in combat. He died in a German POW camp on 6 March 1945, and is buried in Lorraine American Cemetery.