Howard Pascal Brisbane

Howard Brisbane and his twin brother, Albert Junior, were born minutes apart on 26 December 1921. Throughout their young lives in Fairfield, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana, the Brisbane boys were an inseparable, good-humored duo: the pride of their parents, Alfred Senior and Winifred (Torgerson) Brisbane, and older sister Margaret. The family stayed close even after Margaret married and moved to Chicago. “Some of my earliest memories have Howard in them,” recalled his niece, Judy Landry. “I knew he and his brother would always play tricks on girls. One would make a date and the other would show up instead.”

The Brisbanes both graduated from high school – probably De La Salle High, just a few blocks from their home on Arabella Street – and scooped ice cream at a local parlor. Howard also tore tickets at the Loew’s State Theater on Canal Street. He dreamed all the while of becoming an artist; at home, he covered the walls with sketches and designs. It was a dream never to be realized. In February 1942, the Brisbanes registered for Selective Service – and then Howard struck out on his own by enlisting in the Navy.

Brisbane enlisted at a New Orleans recruiting office on 19 July 1942. After passing a battery of interviews and aptitude tests – not to mention basic training – he was selected for hospital corps school and additional instruction to serve with the Fleet Marine Force.

At Camp Elliott, Hospital Apprentice Brisbane learned everything from basic first aid and field sanitation to emergency triage and marksmanship. The battle of Guadalcanal was raging in the South Pacific, and Brisbane might have anticipated a swift transfer to the seat of the war – but instead found himself assigned to the Second Airdrome Battalion in Linda Vista, California, where he would spend the first six months of 1943.

In July, Brisbane was transferred to a replacement battalion and deployed overseas, eventually joining the Second Battalion, 8th Marines in New Zealand. While en route he befriended another corpsman, HA1c Stanley Bowen from Beverly Hills, California. The two young “Docs” trained side by side and went on liberty in Wellington together. Brisbane showed promise while training at Camp Paekakariki, and in October 1943 was advanced to Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class.

Later that month, 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.

“Everyone was anxious to get into action,” recalled Stan Bowen. “Except the guys who had been on the ’Canal. They never said much, but they weren’t excited like the rest of the kids were, and we were just kids then, 17-19. I was 20, a little bit older than the average Marine. The veterans were calm, and the rest were excited to get going.” Bowen felt no fear on the eve of the invasion – “we were really stupid,” he admitted – but Brisbane was a different story. Historian John Wukovits relates their conversation, which took place on 19 November 1943.

“Stan, I’m scared. I’m not going to make it, I know it.”
“Bullshit, Howard. We’re all gonna make it, I know it.”

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.

“Doc” Brisbane was assigned to one of the platoons in the first wave ashore. Bowen, with Fox Company, arrived a few minutes later and immediately went to work.

The first guy I took care of was a shocker. A friend had told me the first guy will probably be your worst, and he was right. I had worse later, but this was a shocker. Johnny Snyder and I decided we would pair up and work as a team if we found each other on the beach. The first guy was from my platoon. He was laying [sic] on his stomach but his toes were pointing skyward. We thought he had a broken leg, and we tried to pull him over, and I lifted up and my hand came through his pants. His leg was blown off. I had blood and tendons and bone and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I asked Joe if it hurt, and he said no it was numb. We applied a tourniquet to the stump, then tried to administer morphine. I stuck one in his leg but couldn’t squeeze out the morphine. I didn’t know how to use the syringe. I was unprepared for this.

Bowen beat the odds and survived the battle; he would later receive a Silver Star Medal for gallantry. As the fighting drew to a close, he remembered Howard Brisbane’s premonition and went in search of his friend. After asking around and learning nothing Bowen retraced his steps to Red Beach 3 and walked along the shore, looking at the bodies lying on the sand.

I found him on the beach. He never got even 30 yards. He had been machine gunned. He was all bloated up. He had little pointed ears, and he had a high school graduation ring so I recognized him. All those bodies lying there, bloated in the hot sun. Plus the bodies that floated in the water. The place was really a mess. The smell was horrible.

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. Howard Brisbane was one of the men buried here in “Division Cemetery 3.”

Brisbane’s 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 were painted on a plaque nearby. Brisbane also had an individual marker in memorial Cemetery 33 (Plot 1, Row 2, Grave 15).

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 Cemetery 27 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. In all, the remains of 46 men were recovered by History Flight and turned over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for forensic analysis.

One of the men found by History Flight was identified as Howard Pascal Brisbane.

For a detailed story of Brisbane’s recovery and return, please read Fallen And Forgotten by Mike Valerio.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery