B Comany 5th Engineers, 5th Marine Div WWII

Geritol_Ranger · #1 (**permalink**) November 21st, 2007, 06:43 PM

Hi,

I am hoping someone here might direct me in the right direction or have some additional information to assist us.

We have come into a very interesting hand carved wooden book that was made by men of B Company 5th Engineers of the 5th Marine Division in 1945. I have attached a web link below of the book and scanned pages in it.

The book states only 250 handmade copies were done, but alot of limited information in the book. We know these men came from Camp Lejeune 1944 to Pendleton and have matched these men up to the 5th Eng being attached to the 27th Marines on Iwo.

We are trying to see if we can get the a list of names for the "250" men this book was made for to see if anyone is still alive. In our copy of another book we bought to help in our search, The Spearhead 5th Marine Division from 1948, we can match the names that are listed in the book to men of B Company 5th Engineers attached to the 27th Marines, except the artist named Pete Klinfelter, though there is a Perry Klinefelter with the 27th.....but there are more then 250 names in that list.

I think the books were made for the men of the original group that came from Camp LeJeune and went onto Pendleton possibly.

The photo's in the book some are easy to identify, other not. have run into some dead ends and at this point not much information is available. Any thoughts or help is truely appreciated, we want to honor these men, but knowing who they are is a difficult task.

The link is: http://geritolranger.tripod.com/index.html

Slipdigit · #2 (**permalink**) November 21st, 2007, 07:55 PM

Great looking book and a BIG undertaking. I wished I had info to give you. Best of success to you and your friends on this project.

Skipper · #3 (**permalink**) November 21st, 2007, 08:38 PM

Have you tried the archives at the Camp Lejeune Highschool? 1944 was also the first year so there may be some docs, rolls of honnor etc... at the current base. You may actually already have tried these leads, but just in case here is a link from wikipedia:
I don't know about the B section in particular.

Lejeune High School - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geritol_Ranger · #4 (**permalink**) November 21st, 2007, 10:48 PM

Thank You all for the information

I tried calling the main post, but I found out they really have no "historical" person or a museum as we had thought they might. Now I will try the highschool link that might be useful! I was blessed with a contact not long ago today from another Marine Corps website that was very useful. They connected me with the 5th Marine Association of which I was honored to be able to speak with a Marine that was actually on Iwo Jima himself. It was amazing to listen to him talk about a few of his memories which were so clear in his mind being he is in his 80's now! That was so amazing and I felt privledged as well.

He may not know any of the men of that particular group personally but he was going to do some looking for me. It would be just miraculous to speak with someone alive yet from this paticular group, but just speaking to him and his wife was close enough.

I again appreciate your help!
Geritol Ranger

Skipper · #5 (**permalink**) November 22nd, 2007, 09:32 AM

I'm certain that at least some of these brave men are still alive. Once you find one you may have a link to find another. the problem is to find the first one, but if it was too easy it wouldn't be fun. I noticed there is a group picture in the book. Maybe you could show this picture at the veteran association. I will try to find out more about this 1944 Lejeune group.