Warren Gordon Nelson

Warren arrived in the world on 14 April 1923, born on the Nelson family farm in Rubin Township, North Dakota. As a boy, he attended school in a small country schoolhouse – walking in the warmer months, or riding in a sleigh with other children in the winter. Lunch was often a potato brought from home and cooked in the school’s wood-burning stove. In the early 1930s, Oscar and Lillie Nelson moved their family to Lakota and enrolled the children in the town’s public school.

The Nelsons were part of a large extended Finnish-Norwegian family of Hatulas, Fredericksons, Eskos, and Ojas. Warren was popular among his many cousins – especially the younger ones, who he would treat to ice cream on hot summer days – but was especially close to his younger sister, Marie Jane. They were siblings, schoolmates, and friends, even sharing a passion for music. Both performed with the Lakota High School band; Marie on the drums, and Warren with the trumpet.

After graduating from Lakota High in 1941, Warren went to work for the Great Northern Railway depot. He thought about college, but the attack on Pearl Harbor shifted his priorities towards military service.

Warren made the long journey from Lakoa to Minneapolis – possibly along the Great Northern route – in order to enlist in the Marine Corps. He took the oath on 13 December 1942, and was soon on his way to Recruit Depot San Diego for boot camp. After a grueling training period, Private Nelson earned his coveted Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem and was ready for duty.

The Corps examined each new recruit for civilian skills that might have a military application. One of these skills was “ability to furnish entertainment” – singing, performing, or playing musical instruments. Warren’s trumpeting talents were noted, and he was detailed to Field Music School to learn military bugle calls. While there, he might have befriended a fellow trumpeter from Missouri, Robert E. Franciskato.

In April the class of “Musics” received their new classification and assignments to further duty. Warren, Bob Franciskato, and others were detailed to infantry training at Camp Elliott. Their bugles were useless on a modern battlefield; in combat, Musics delivered messages, carried stretchers, or fought with small arms ranging from carbines to bazookas. By July, they were deemed ready to deploy overseas as members of the 23rd Replacement Battalion.

The SS President Polk arrived in New Zealand in August 1943, and discharged her troops. A large contingent, including Field Musics First Class Nelson and Franciskato, were assigned to the 8th Marines at Camp Paekakariki. Nelson wound up in the Easy Company 2/8, and embarked on yet another round of training. This time, however, the tactics were more advanced, the exercises more realistic, and his instructors combat veterans of Guadalcanal.

In October 1943, 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.

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 FM1c Warren Nelson. According to modern news sources, Nelson was helping to carry supplies from Betio’s central pier to the front lines when a sniper’s bullet cut him down.

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. Nelson was among those buried in “Division Cemetery 3.”

Warren Nelson’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 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 Warren Nelson.


DNA analysis, plus additional material and circumstantial evidence, finally identified Warren Nelson in August 2016. He was officially accounted for on 6 October 2016, and returned to the United States for final burial in his hometown. The memorial service was conducted at Lakota Lutheran Church – the place where Warren was baptized ninety-four years earlier.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Lakota Cemetery, Lakota, North Dakota