J. W. Gaskey

J. W. “Dub” Gaskey, a former farm worker, was inducted into the Marine Corps from his wartime job at Brown Shipbuilding in March, 1943. He went through boot camp at MCRD San Diego, qualified as a rifle sharpshooter, and was sent overseas that summer. Gaskey was assigned to Baker Company, First Battalion, 6th Marines, and saw his first combat in the battle of Tarawa in November 1943.

On 15 June 1944, PFC Gaskey boarded a landing craft bound for Red Beach 2 on Saipan. Although his battalion was in reserve, they took heavy fire on their approach. “All of the LVTs were tightly packed with Marines,” notes A Brief History of the 6th Marines. “The men had only enough room to stand hunched over beneath the armored gunwales of the LVTs, a position necessary because of the steady drum of small arms fire on the sides. Once in a while a mortar or artillery shell would score a direct hit on an LVT. Survivors waded ashore without their equipment.”

Gaskey was initially reported as missing in action during the landings on Red 2. His parents received a letter from a fellow Marine stating that “he saw [Gaskey] killed in the first invasion of Saipan with only four marines coming out alive,” but official confirmation was slow to reach the family home in Stowell, Texas. Marine Corps officials finally received confirmation of Gaskey’s death, attributed to “gunshot wounds, head,” and amended his status to killed in action as of 15 June 1944. Many decades later, a relative posted to the World War II Memorial Registry that Gaskey was killed “while helping a buddy who could not swim,” although there is no official eyewitness account of his final moments.