Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993 TAG: 9303160076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG LENGTH: Long
REVERED MARINE FINDS POETRY IN PAST
"ANOTHER GENERAL, in another time, called his very best man Stonewall," a\ Marine commander recently said. "Today, the Marine Corps calls its best man\ simply, `The Ironman.' " At 92, Bill Lee still relishes the glory of war.
William Andrew Lee is a white-haired man of 92 who lives in a tiny brick ranch with six bird feeders in the yard. Most mornings, he carries a bag of peanuts outside and feeds the neighborhood squirrels. Lee calls the squirrels his pals, and laughs and talks to them even though they just snatch his peanuts and run away.
It's almost as though the squirrels know whom they're dealing with, that this kindly old man has a body hashed with scars and a head full of bloody memories. Bill Lee is better known as "The Ironman." He is one of the most decorated, and legendary, living Marines.
Born in 1900, Lee is a veteran of both World Wars and of skirmishes in Central America. He was the first three-time winner of the Marine Corps' highest honor, the Navy Cross. He was right hand to the most mythic Marine of them all, Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, who ended up with five Navy Crosses. Lee has survived 14 knife fights and 36 shootouts, and killed a man in a duel.
He has a picture in his house of a group of men aiming guns through a fence. Right after he shot the picture, Lee shot the men. They were Nicaraguan bandits waiting for a train.
So maybe it's best to approach this stoop-shouldered grandfather with caution, even when he's bearing gifts. Because The Ironman still sees the glory in violence.
Lee will meet you at the door with a confused look, but the gunmetal eyes lock quickly like sights on a target.
"Did you eat lunch?" he snaps. "Because I wasn't going to cook for you."
Two cats, one gray and one white, sit on the couch in his cluttered living room. Between the couch and a worn easy chair, a table is piled elbow deep with letters and copies of Leatherneck magazine and various hats, including one that reads, "I'm retired, this is as dressed up as I get." Lee wears a black, long-sleeve T-shirt, blue sweatpants with Kleenex in the pockets, and white tennis shoes.
He has a handful of clippings and photographs, all about his fighting career. "This lad in back of me," Lee says, pointing out a Nicarauguan in one photo, "had an enormous appetite. He berated the mess sergeant for not giving him enough food, so I'd scrape food off my plate and give it to him. I gave him my ammunition belt to wear. He marched behind me with a loaded gun. I told him if he ever got far enough behind me so I couldn't reach back and touch him, I'd cut his . . . throat."
He laughs, and then comes to attention. "Now, you sit over there . . . and I'll show you a movie."
Shot last fall for military TV, the video shows a November ceremony in which the Marine Corps training center at Quantico dedicated a new, $5 million shooting range to Lee.
"Another general, in another time, called his very best man `Stonewall,' " said the Quantico commanding officer in the keynote speech. "Today, the Marine Corps calls its best man simply, `The Ironman.' "
After the speech, the video cuts to Lee on the shooting range. He had shucked his sportcoat and asked to take a shot at a target. He fired nine times with an M-16. He scored nine hits.
Watching himself on TV, Lee snorts: "I hated like the devil to miss that Desert Storm."
The video ends, and Lee cuts it off. He pulls on a green fatigue jacket and agrees to have his picture taken. He takes a good look at the camera. "Made in Japan?" he asks. It is. With that Lee launches into a flowery and derogatory poem about the origins of the Japanese.
Lee was held prisoner by the Japanese for 44 months during World War II. His captors caned the soles of his feet until they swelled up like footballs, he says. Every day, he was beaten, "just on principle." His teeth were knocked out. He was boxed in the ears so many times that he is nearly deaf.
Lee never has gotten over his hard feelings toward the Japanese. But he won't repeat the insulting poem. "I better not comment on all that," he says. Instead, he offers a different poem, one he recited at the Quantico ceremony and at the General Assembly last month when that body commended him for his military accomplishments.
It is called "A Salute to Our Flag," and as Lee recites it his Massachusetts accent thickens like that of an old-fashioned orator:
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air
She tore the azure robe of night
And placed the stars of glory there.
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle-bearer down
And placed unto his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
A United States Marine
Immortalized the theme
When he wrote: The Stars and Stripes Forever.
Our flag - respect it,
And protect it.
He didn't get that from some book, he says; "It's from Bill Lee." The Ironman is a poet.
Adventures in Nicaragua
Lee's parents were from North Carolina but settled in Massachusetts, making him "a Yankee of Rebel parentage," he says. His ancestors fought in the Revolution and later for the Confederacy. Lee's father was an engineer for a shoe manufacturer.
During childhood trips to Asheville, N.C., Lee spent summers on a Cherokee Indian reservation. He learned to track and hunt and shoot, first with a bow and then with a rifle.
He went on to win several national marksmanship titles, once beating 5,800 rivals. He was a distinguished marksman with both a pistol and a rifle, a rare combination.
Lee lied about his age to enlist in the Marines during the waning months of World War I, and combat had all but ended by the time he deployed to France. At 6 feet and 185 pounds, Lee was rugged, strong and aching for combat.
He got his chance in Nicaragua in the late 1920s. As part of a Marine expeditionary force, Lee worked with that country's Guardia Nacional to protect the U.S.-backed government from rebels led by Gen. Cesar Sandino - the revolutionary who gave his name to the Sandinistas.
Lee was paired with Puller in the legendary Company M, which roamed the countryside skirmishing with bands of rebels. According to Marine lore and historical accounts, a bandit chieftain once put a $50,000 price on Lee's head. Another rebel challenged Lee to a duel with knives, and didn't live to tell about it. Lee and Puller saved a new train track from marauding Indians just in time for the Nicaraguan president to drive the ceremonial final spike. And Puller dubbed Lee "The Ironman" after one particularly bloody expedition:
"We were up in the Boca River valley, in northern Chontallis," Lee The past clutters his living room - commendations, mugs, certificates, a statue of a bulldog, a ceremonial machete, a maritime print. says, "and we were on the Inca trail that dates back thousands of years, and goes from Honduras on down to Salvador. And we run into a band of at least 250 rebels, maybe more, and they used the sub Thompson [machine guns], BARs [Browning Automatic Rifles] and Lewis machine guns, and dynamite bombs, against us.
"I was leading the patrol, and they let me go through until they opened fire on the main body, and that's where we were holed up. We don't know how many of them we got, but we mowed them down. I was carrying my two pistols, a .45 automatic and a .44 Smith & Wesson special. Geez, that seems like yesterday.
"You can't say much more. We turned back for the wounded . . . I was wounded in the head and in the right arm. I had a Stetson hat on, a field hat. When I raised my hat, about a cupful of blood came over my head and shirt and arm. One of the Guardia looked at me and said, `. . . the lieutenant is dead.'
"I come back on foot 125 miles and through two more ambushes. When we got down on the plains of Jinotego, to the aviation field, there was a plane waiting for us. It was another 125 miles into the hospital of Managua.
"A month later I was back on patrol again with Company M."
The warrior at home
After Nicaragua, Lee went to China, assigned to keep an eye on the Japanese buildup.
The day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese moved in and took Lee prisoner. He didn't escape until atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 44 months later. As he and other Americans fought their way out of their prison camp, Lee picked a particularly vicious guard and impaled the man against a wall with his bayonet.
Back in the United States, Lee served awhile as commanding officer of the shooting ranges at Quantico. His wife died in 1949, and when the Corps declined to send the aging warhorse on a tour in Korea, Lee decided in 1950 to quit. He retired as a lieutenant colonel. He never took another job.
Remarried now for 28 years, with four daughters, Lee spends much of his time attending veterans' functions and corresponding with admirers and buddies. The past clutters his living room - commendations, mugs, certificates, a statue of a bulldog, a ceremonial machete, a maritime print. There's even a painting of a young Lee, looking like Indiana Jones, in the Nicaraguan jungle in 1929.
He is often alone, when his wife is at work for the county welfare agency, but never without the squirrels, the cats, the memories. "Don't wake me from my dreams," he says with a laugh.
He also has his poems. Lee never writes them down and he refuses to reveal when any were composed. "A long time ago," is all he'll say. Sometimes they almost seem spontaneous. Conversation lags, his face goes blank and suddenly Lee says, "I'll give you another one."
By late afternoon, Lee is deep into the past. When it's time for visitors to leave, he lingers at the front door. At the last minute, The Ironman calls out, "Come back in 10 years. I'll still be here."
And it's hard not to think of one more of his poems, "A Salute to the Deceased Warriors that Cannot Be With Us Tonight:"
As a soldier of the sea
I ask for a moment's silence
To honor those heroes that sleep beneath the sod.
The muffled drums' sad roll have beat
The warrior's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade
Shall they meet the brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread
And glory guides with solemn round
The bivouac of those that have gone before us.
I thank you.
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