Sidney Asa Cook

Sidney (or Sydney) Asa Cook was born in Meigs County, Ohio on 18 February 1911. Hugh and Blanche Estelle (Humphries) Cook had a small farm in Bedford Township, and the Cook children – Dorothy, Ray, Charles, Jerome, and Sidney – grew up with the usual rituals and routines of a rural family. As a youth, “Asa” busied himself with farm work and school work: he graduated from Chester High School with the class of 1932, but showed no inclination to leave farm life behind. The hard work was balanced by the local church community and occasional social affairs.

As he approached his mid-twenties, however, Sidney evidently began thinking about a change of pace. He joined the Athens unit of the Ohio National Guard and, finding military life to his liking, decided to join the Marine Corps.

On 18 March 1925, Sidney Cook entered a recruiting office in Chicago, Illinois, and volunteered for a four-year enlistment in the regular Marine Corps. Two days later he arrived at Parris Island for boot training.

Private Cook’s first tour in the Corps was largely uneventful. His first two years were spent with E/2/5th Marines based out of Quantico, Virginia, but in March of 1937 he embarked on the USS Omaha for a stretch of duty with the Special Service Squadron. Private (eventually PFC) Cook saw a great deal of the Caribbean and Central America from the decks of the Omaha, the Babbitt, the Tattnall, and the Charleston. Finally, in January 1939, Cook joined the gunboat USS Erie and spent the last months of his enlistment on duty in New York Harbor. He was discharged on 17 March 1939, with a character rating of “Excellent” and a Good Conduct Medal.

Sidney Cook was not through with the Marine Corps, though: he reenlisted in the Reserves the very next day, and was placed on inactive duty with the rank of Sergeant. He was assigned to the Chicago-based 9th Reserve District, and headed back home to Meigs County to live with Hugh and Blanche – now in their early seventies. For the 1940 Census the four Cook boys, all bachelors, were back in their childhood home and working on the farm.

The evident approach of war caused the call-up of the reserves, and Sergeant Cook was back in uniform on by August 1941. He was sent off to California to join to Easy Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines, and by 5 January 1942 – less than a month after Pearl Harbor – was back at sea and bound for Tutuila, American Samoa. The regiment would spend several months on garrison duty, preparing to repel an expected Japanese attack that never came. Sergeant Cook got a crash course in the duties of an infantry NCO – not a skillset he had exercised in his previous hitch – and also stood duty as the company police sergeant.

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 Cook’s actions during the campaign have since been lost; he made it through to the end without being wounded in action, and his combat performance was rated as “excellent.” He also sent home a Japanese sword as a souvenir.

During the summer of 1943, Cook’s regiment rested and re-trained in New Zealand. His career continued to climb, with promotions to Platoon Sergeant and Gunnery Sergeant during the months spent at Camp Paekakariki.

That October – almost exactly a year since they departed from 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.

One of those who fell on the first day was Gunnery Sergeant Cook. He was simply recorded as “killed in action” by “gunshot wounds” – no further specifics of his fate are known.

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. Gunny Cook was the twenty-fourth man buried in “Division Cemetery 3.”

Gunnery Sergeant Cook’s burial ground was “beautified” by Navy garrison troops in 1944; a single large cross was put up and the names of the fallen painted on a plaque nearby. 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 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. The remains of 46 men were recovered by History Flight – and among them were those of Sidney Cook.

DNA analysis, plus additional material and circumstantial evidence, finally identified Sidney Cook in August 2016. He was officially accounted for on 6 January 2017, and returned to his family for final burial in Arlington National Cemetery

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery
Watch the Full Honors Burial, or see photography by Dean Laubach in “Long Awaited Homecomings.”