Robert Donald Jenks

Robert was born in Sutherland, Iowa on 15 December 1922. He was the third child of Arthur and Margaret (Frank) Jenks, a farming couple working in the fields of O’Brien County. The family grew to include five boys – Arthur, Joseph, Robert, James, and John – before they moved from Iowa to South Dakota, settling in Beadle County around the early 1930s. Two more children (Frances and Thomas Berry Jenks) were born in the years after the move. The elder Jenks boys went to school through about the eighth grade, then went to work – helping around the farm, or with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Robert managed to get a job working for a real estate firm in Huron.

Joseph Jenks was the first to answer the country’s call in World War II: exactly one week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was at a recruiting station joining the Marine Corps. James followed in March of 1942. The entire Jenks family watched the situation in the Pacific with trepidation, especially when Joseph was assigned to a rifle company in the 2nd Marines. In August, they heard of islands like Guadalcanal, Gavutu, Tanambogo – and, most important to the Jenks clan, Tulagi. Private Joseph Jenks was fighting there with C/1/2nd Marines when a bullet clipped the side of his neck. He survived his wound but suffered paralysis of his brachial plexus, which would lead to his discharge from the service.

Robert joined up on 15 December 1942, two months after Joseph returned to the United States. Like his brothers, he went to San Diego for boot camp, and in April of 1943, he went overseas with the 16th Replacement Battalion. He joined Company D, First Battalion, 6th Marines at Paekakariki, New Zealand, and trained with them through the summer of 1943, learning to work with the crew of a heavy 81mm mortar. That fall, he earned a promotion to Private First Class.

In October, PFC Jenks sailed from New Zealand for his first – and only – combat operation. After spending a month at sea aboard the USS Feland, he landed on the tiny island of Betio in a tiny rubber boat, and spent his first night in the combat zone on the recently secured Green Beach. The following day, 22 November, his battalion attacked along the southern shore of Betio, rolling up the flanks of Japanese fortifications that were slaughtering other men of the 2nd Marine Division. Evening halted their progress, and Jenks helped his buddies dig foxholes in preparation for a nighttime counterattack.

When a gap in the lines was discovered, Jenks’ platoon leader Captain Lyle “Spook” Specht ordered his gunners to leave their heavy mortars and plug the gap using only their personal weapons – mostly small carbines and 60mm mortars, firing at point-blank range. This platoon bore the brunt of a major banzai attack, which one D Company veteran estimated at “300 against maybe forty-five or fifty men.” PFC Jenks likely lost his life in this fight; on the morning of 23 November, he was found dead in the field with shrapnel wounds in his head and chest.

(The other Jenks brothers would carry on the fight: Arthur in the Army, and James and John as Marines. James saw combat in the Marianas – like Robert and Joseph, he was with the 2nd Marine Division.)

Robert Jenks was buried in a long trench alongside some thirty other Marines later that day. The temporary markers put up by 1/6 did not last long; construction of a Navy base ultimately destroyed the scrap wood crosses, and the location of the grave was lost.

The mass grave lay undiscovered until 2019, when a History Flight expedition uncovered “Row D” and brought the remains back to the United States for laboratory analysis.

Robert Jenks was identified on 4 February 2020 and has now been officially accounted for.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing


Final burial pending wishes of next of kin.