Scratched canteen brings history home

BY STACI WILSON

The story of Harris Ayres begins in Montrose and winds its way with him through some of the most pivotal times in the country’s history.

On Friday and Saturday, Harris Ayres’ story returned home with former U.S. Marine, and lawyer turned author George Derryberry returning home to tell the Ayres’ story he discovered and detailed in his book “Path of Valor” which detailed the life of Ayres, and his Marine unit’s training and service in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Derryberry recounted personal stories about Ayres and the men he served with during a talk with Montrose Area High School students on Friday afternoon, June 6 – the 70th anniversary of the Invasion of Normandy, D-Day.
Ayres’ WWII story, however, took place in the Pacific Theater. For Derryberry, it all started with a canteen.

In 1962, one of Derryberry’s Marine Corps buddies was put in charge of disposing World War II canteens when he noticed a battered one with a scratched message on it.

The etching read:
Suribachi taken. I’m on it. Killed 3 Japs. Iwo Jima rouf go. Moving on to caves. If I don’t make it back tell Betty – H.C. Ayres, 23rd Marines, 2/23/1945

Going against his directive, Derryberry’s friend took it – always meaning to look for information on the canteen’s owner. But he never got around to it, and when his health began to fail, he passed to canteen on to his friend and fellow Marine in 2006.

Derryberry resolved to find out all he could about the canteen’s owner and the enigmatic message scratched on the object during one of the war’s most famous battles. His research brought him to Montrose.

At the Montrose High School on Friday, Derryberry said by 1962, the name etched on the canteen already meant something to people in Montrose. Harris Ayres – one of the two men the Ayres-Stone VFW Post 5642 was named after. The other man – Homer Stone, a member of the U.S. Navy, went down with the U.S.S. Indianapolis.

Intrigued by the message, Derryberry said he started his search with a call to the high school – where Ayres graduated in 1941 and the Potts family of Forest Lake, where Ayres had worked on the family’s farm. He credited teacher Lori Lass for helping him launch his research in the Montrose area.
Norville and Delbert Potts, along with members of the Montrose VFW attended Derryberry’s presentation at the high school.

Derryberry’s described that time in America as “idyllic” with the country’s isolationist policy keeping the U.S. out of the escalating conflicts in Europe and Asia.

All of that changed December 7, 1941.

Derryberry said Ayres was at the Potts’ home, relaxing with his girlfriend when they heard the announcement of the attack over the radio.

Potts’ family witnesses said Ayres jumped up and said, “We have to do something about this.”

He then enlisted in the U.S. Marines. At Parris Island boot camp, Ayres qualified first on rifle in his platoon. Moving on to training at Camp LeJeune, he became a machine gunner. He rose to the rank of sergeant within two years of his joining the Corps.

In July 1943, he shipped out with the 23rd Marines to Camp Pendleton in California; and in January 1944, he boarded a boat with an unknown destination in the Pacific Theater.

Ayres’ unit was engaged in the assault on Roi-Namur; and led the assault on Saipan; Tinian; and he was also a personal witness to the West Loch Disaster where six Landing Ships, Tanks (LSTs) sank as the result of a munitions handling error that set off explosion, creating a chain-reaction of explosions and fires of nearby ships.

Ayres was on his ship at the time the explosions started, he – along with his buddies – jumped into the water to survive.

Derryberry described the battles to the students, with accounts taken not just from the historical records, but also from his interviews with WWII veterans who served with Ayres; and family, friends and letters sent home from the servicemen.

Ayres’ unit moved onto take Iwo Jima from the Japanese. The island was prized for its airfields. Derryberry said the battle was expected to take three days but lasted 36 – from Feb. 19, 1945- March 26, 1945.

The taking of Mount Sirabachi happened twice – both on the fifth day of the battle – and was immortalized in the Jim Rosenthal photograph that became the iconic symbol for the war in the Pacific.

Ayres had been on Sirabachi, as he wrote on his canteen he was “moving on.”

The battle took him to Hill 382, Derryberry said, where fierce fighting in Iwo Jima’s “Meatgrinder” for control of “Turkey Knob” and the “Amphitheater” were some of the toughest in the battle.

It was during a night attack March 8-9, 1945, where Ayres was killed.

Derryberry said he uncovered three versions of the Montrose man’s death.

But all versions agree that Ayres was supplying the machine gunners and riflemen when he was killed.

Ayres was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star – the fourth highest individual military award given for heroism, acts of merit, or meritorious service in a combat zone.

Derryberry said families were given a choice to have soldiers killed in action sent home for burial or buried overseas in an official United States military cemetery. Ayres’ father elected to have his son buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as “the Punchbowl” in Oahu, Hawaii.

When Ayres enlisted, Norville Potts was a young teen; his brother Delbert was about eight or nine years old.

Ayres gave Norville his Remington .22 caliber rifle before he left for the war and told him to keep it if he didn’t make it back. Norville said he still has the gun.

Delbert said he found it interesting that someone would research a part of Ayres’ life that – as the youngest in the Potts’ family – he really didn’t know anything about.

And although just a boy when Ayres went off to serve the country, Delbert remembered a time “Ayresie” was working in the hay mound in the horse barn and hit his head on a nail.

Although bleeding, Delbert recounted, Ayres kept working until his task was finished. With his face and neck covered in blood, Norville and Delbert’s mother asked him why he didn’t come in sooner.

Ayres replied: “When there’s a job to do, you don’t stop doing it until it’s a done job.”

“That has stuck with me to this day,” Delbert said, adding he has tried to pattern his life on that idea.

“Path of Valor: A Marine’s Story” by George Derryberry is available on Amazon.com