Interview with Copperopolis WWII Veteran Mel Ogg ~ By, John Howsden

A Feather Merchant Goes to War

By John Howsden

In 1942 Mel Ogg was a short, skinny, nineteen-year-old kid working as a dish washer at a Chinese restaurant in Texas. He got five dollars a week and one free meal a day. Up to then he had never shot at anyone, never seen a pile of dead bodies, or ever heard a dying man cry out for help—but all that was about to change.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States jumped into WWII with both feet. With the country in need of fighting men, Mel’s cousin suggested they join the Marines, Mel agreed. He kissed his girlfriend, Nadine, good-by and headed for the nearest recruiting station. After the recruiter praised them on their stellar judgment for picking the Marines, they signed on the dotted line.

After a seven week boot camp where he trained as a machine gunner, Mel got on a converted luxury liner and sailed for the south pacific. His first taste of combat was at Empress Augusta Bay at Bougainville. While they were unloading ammunition from the ship’s hole, the air raid sounded. He stuck his head out of the hole just in time to see Japanese airplanes strafing and dive bombing the ships. A near-by sailor, blazing away with a 40mm gun, bellowed, “Get your butt back down in the hole Marine.” Not wanting to be in a hole crammed full of ammunition, he did what any red blooded marine would do; he ignored the sailor, stepped into the shadows and watched the show.

Mel Ogg receiving a 1st place ribbon at the 2011 Copperopolis Homecoming for the Copperopolis Veterans.

Surviving the air raid, he, along with several thousands of his buddies landed on Bougainville, becoming part of the operation called, Cherry Blossom, which was to establish a beachhead around Cape Torokina for the construction of an airfield for our fighters and bombers.  Although Mel was trained as a machine gunner, his primary job was that of combat engineer. At the time, there were not enough Marines to push the Japanese all the way off the island, so they had to endure constant bombing and artillery raids from the Japanese holding out on the other side of the island. 

Air raids are horrifying and confusing, yet one in particular stood out for Mel. One day a bomb exploded near a large coconut tree, cutting it in half.  When the tree crashed to the ground, a body of a Japanese sniper flopped out. The fact of a sniper being tied to the tree wasn’t usual, but that it was a female took everyone by surprise. Mel said, “I can’t prove it, and the brass may deny because they wouldn’t want the word to get out that we were killing women, but I was there and I saw her.”

Bougainville itself was a miserable island fraught with the enemy, diseases, mosquitoes and snakes. The only thing worse was perhaps your buddy’s sense of humor, as an example. In the middle of the day, Japanese dive bombers attacked the airbase. Mel dove into the nearest foxhole and hugged the soggy earth as bombs exploded around him. He was feeling a little better knowing he was at least below ground when he felt a snake squirming underneath him. Before he could stop himself, he jumped out of the foxhole.  With his face in the dirt, looking at the foxhole he desperately wanted to occupy, he spied a rope stretched across the bottom of it. With his eyes, he followed the rope to the next foxhole. Crouching inside that foxhole was two of his buddies laughing as they gently tugged on the rope. Mel swore if he lived long enough, he’d get even with his buddies. As it turned out, he survived, but he never got around to getting even.

After Bougainville, Mel’s unit was shipped back to Guadalcanal where they rested, refitted and trained for the invasion of Guam. Once while they were at sea as floating reserve, they trained to climb up and down cargo nets for the preparation of the coming invasion. Cargo nets were strung high above the bow of the deck. All you had to do was climb up the nets, swing over and climb back down. What you didn’t realize was that from the top of the net the deck looked to be only two feet wide. The swaying of the ship causing the net to swing out over the water only made it worse. As long as you didn’t look down it was it doable. Unfortunately, one young Marine couldn’t resist and looked down just before he reached the top. He panicked, locked his hands together and froze, swaying back and forth fifty feet in air.

When Mel saw the marine grasping the net in a death grip, he climbed up and tried to talk him down. First he jokingly told him it would only hurt once if he fell, or if he didn’t come down he would have to eat sea gulls to keep from starving to death. The marine just squeezed is eyes shut and hugged the net that much harder. It got so desperate that Mel whispered into the guy’s ear, “I have a chocolate candy bar in my pack down below. If you climb down the net, I’ll split it with you.” The marine opened his eyes, looked at Mel and said, “Really?” After a little more cajoling, they made it down the net together. It cost Mel half of a candy bar, but that’s what you do for a fellow marine.

Once trained and rested, the Marines invaded Guam on July 21, 1944. On a sunny morning, Mel found himself crammed into an amphibious tractor grinding his way towards the beach. Instead of being taken to the beach and dropped off as planned, they were dumped off 300 yards short and had to wade into shore. Things were going relatively well, for an amphibious landing, when he fell through a hole in the coral reef. Standing only five foot seven inches and loaded down with a pack and machine gun, he went straight to the bottom and was not coming up.  A passing marine pulled him up by the pack and said, “What are you doing down there buddy?” After sucking in a lung full of sweet, tropical air, Mel replied, “Fishing.”

While Mel was one of the lucky ones to make it to shore that day, many didn’t. He remembers seeing an amphibious tractor coming ashore packed with marines taking a direct hit from a mortar round. There were no survivors. Even later, when they were on the island, death came quickly and in big numbers. Although a cardinal rule in combat is to never bunch up, seven platoon sergeants inexplicably gathered for a quick meeting. The momentary lapse of good judgment didn’t go unnoticed by the enemy. Within a few seconds, a mortar round landed in the center of the group killing all seven men.  

The saying goes that it’s the bomb or bullet you don’t hear that’s kills you, which may explained why one day Mel woke up in sick bay with a dislocated shoulder and no idea how it happened. All he remembers is chopping away on a palm tree while on a work detail out in the jungle. The next thing he knew he was waking up in the aid station. When he asked what happened, all they could say was they found him unconscious on the jungle floor next to a palm tree. A wounded marine on the cot next to him kept shaking his head saying, “Man I thought you were dead when they brought you in here. You weren’t even breathing.” Mel surmises that a random artillery shell landed on the other side of the palm tree. The explosion knocked him out, but the tree protected him from the shrapnel.

Mel recovered from his injuries and returned to his unit. It took twenty-eight months, but Mel finally made it back to the states in one piece. Mel was still in the Marines when the war ended. He was standing on a street corner in San Diego waiting for a bus when people started cheering and yelling that the war was over.

The days of snakes, snipers and sudden death were over. Mel holds no animosity towards the Japanese. “They were soldiers doing their job just like me,’ explains Mel. Oh, and that girlfriend in Texas he kissed before he went off to war. They married, had three children and shared a wonderful life together until her passing sixty-one years later.