Retired Lt. Col. Roy Elrod of Virginia who joined ret. Maj. Richard T. Spooner on this trip said he wanted to come back and see the place where he was wounded and he found it.
He said, “John and Gordon [Marciano of PDI] were really helpful. It was between Garapan and Mt. Tapochau. I had come down from the side of Mt. Tapochau and was headed toward Garapan when I was wounded.”
In an interview at American Memorial Park, Elrod said coming back to Saipan brings a mix of emotions for him. “It is very difficult for me to describe. I have all kinds of emotions.”
The 92-year-old former Marine said coming back was one of the things he had wanted to do.
“I knew I didn’t have too many more years to do this. I feel very pleased that I have done this,” he said.
Elrod said he celebrated his 25th birthday on Saipan 67 years ago.
“I was a Marine captain in charge of four 75 mm cannons and they had machine guns on them too. My primary mission was to attack the infantry and knock out pillboxes and gun emplacements,” said Elrod.
He also described the island then as “noisy” and “dangerous” due to the heavy exchange of fire between the Japanese and the American forces.
Saipan was his third campaign and he had participated in two previous campaigns in the South Pacific for 32 months prior to coming here.
“I was in the Pacific for about 32 months. My unit was the first wave of American ground troops to leave the States after Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7 and we sailed to the South Pacific on Jan. 2,” recalled Elrod.
He said for their first campaign, they spent some time in Samoa first, then Guadalcanal, and he also joined in the assault in Tarawa. Then they landed on the beaches of Saipan on June 15, 1944.
The WWII veteran, who was born and raised in Texas, told reporters that “the beaches are about the only thing I could recognize now.”
He said, “We left it a wreck.”
Elrod, who now lives alone in Virginia, said there is nothing nice about the war.
He was wounded on Saipan and spent five and half months in the hospital before returning to duty in San Francisco.
He said when he learned that the war was finally over, “I was very pleased. There is nothing nice about a war but this was what we needed to do and we did it.”
Elrod retired from the Marine Corps in 1961 as a lieutenant colonel. He served for 21 years.
As a retired Marine, he ventured in the construction business. “I had a construction company and built all types of buildings and created subdivisions.”
In 1994, he decided to shut down the business; however, he wasn’t ready to retire completely.
“I am doing ajoint venture now with a guy I consider as my son and we are building levies in New Orleans,” he said.
A widower for four years now, Elrod said he was married for 63 years.
Having seen Saipan in a wreck when they left it 67 years ago, coming back this time left some good impressions on him.
Saying that the beaches were the only thing he could recognize to this day, he said, “We left it a wreck and you made it a pretty place.”
