Roger Kieth Nielson

Roger was born in Ephraim, Utah, on 10 November 1921. His parents, LeRoy “Moyle” and Lula “Lou” Nielson, relocated to Colorado in the mid-1920s, and Roger grew up in Denver with his younger brothers Garth and Corwin. The family kept close ties with their Utah relatives and were regular visitors through the years. Roger, in particular, was well-known in Ephraim and spent a few summers working on farms in Sanpete County. He might have sought refuge in the country; Moyle and Lou’s relationship faltered in the late 1930s, and they eventually separated. Lou became dependent on her oldest son for support.


Roger graduated from Denver’s East High School with a passion for drawing, and may have hoped to pursue a career as a draftsman. Instead, he put in one last season of farm work and visits with his grandmother, Amelia Nielson, before enlisting in the regular Marine Corps.

Nielson enlisted from Denver on 6 June 1941, and after completing boot camp at San Diego was assigned to Easy Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines. This outfit would be his home for the rest of his life.

The 8th Marines were stationed in California, and Private Nielson had a few chances to visit Ephraim in his snappy new uniform before the attack on Pearl Harbor put an end to peacetime pleasures. By 5 January 1942, his regiment was sea and bound for Tutuila, American Samoa. Nielson would spend several months on garrison duty, preparing to repel an expected Japanese attack that never came. During this time, he was promoted to Private First Class and rated as a specialist with the Browning Automatic Rifle.

In late October 1942, the 8th Marines sailed for the Solomon Islands and joined the battle for Guadalcanal on 4 November 1942. Unfortunately, any stories of Nielson’s experiences during the campaign have since been lost – though he did write to his grandmother about “considerable service and action.” He survived three months of combat unscathed, and his combat performance was described as “excellent.”

During the spring and summer of 1943, the 8th Marines rested and re-trained in New Zealand. Like many of his fellow combat veterans, Nielson spent several stretches in sick bays and field hospitals – likely the result of a tropical disease contracted on Guadalcanal. He also received a promotion to corporal, which likely put him in charge of a fire team of three other Marines.

That October – almost exactly a year since they departed  Samoa for Guadalcanal – 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 once again.

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.

The Second Battalion, and then the Third Battalion, tried in vain to break through the Japanese defenses, suffering heavy casualties in every attempt. By evening, they were barely clinging to a sliver of beachhead, and the shocked survivors dug in among the bodies of the dead.

In the chaos and confusion of battle, many men seemingly disappeared, never to be heard from again. Such was the case with Corporal Roger Nielson. He was evidently seen on the beach in a wounded condition, although nobody could quite specify the extent of his injuries. When the battle ended, he could not be located on the island, in a ship’s sick bay, or any known hospital. Military authorities ultimately concluded that he had been killed in action effective 20 November 1943. Unfortunately, the Nielsons received no fewer than three confusing, conflicting, and worrisome notifications before this decision was made.

Nor could any of the hundreds of bodies lying on the tiny island of Betio be positively identified as Roger Kieth Nielson. In 1944, a memorial bearing his name was placed in Cemetery 33 (Plot 7, Row 1, Grave 8) by well-meaning Navy Seabees – but his real burial place was a complete mystery. In 1949, Nielson was declared permanently non-recoverable.

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, hoped to find one of the missing mass graves near Red 3 – a place called “Cemetery 27” by the Navy;  “8th Marines Cemetery #2” or “Division Cemetery 3” by the Marines. Some forty men were reportedly buried in the area – some identified by name, others unknown. Postwar attempts to find the grave had failed; a large marker commemorated the fallen, but no bodies were buried nearby.

The History Flight team started their operations near the spot where PFC Herman Sturmer‘s remains were found in 2011. They soon discovered an original “burial feature” containing the remains of several men wearing Marine Corps boondockers. The first individual they exhumed – still wrapped in the remnants of a poncho and his hand around an entrenching tool – was Roger Nielson.

History Flight had not set out specifically to find Nielson, but he was among the first of nearly forty men positively identified from the Cemetery 27 expedition. On 24 September 2015, Roger Kieth Nielson was officially accounted for and returned to his family for burial in Colorado.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing
Memory Grove Memorial, Salt Lake City, Utah

FINAL BURIAL
Fort Logan National Cemetery, Denver, Colorado