This Day in History: Eddie Albert's WWII Service

On this day in 2005, Green Acres star Eddie Albert passes away. You might know him for his success in Hollywood, but do you know about his service during World War II? Perhaps most notably, Albert supported Marines as they fought to secure the Tarawa Atoll and its important airstrip late in 1943.

He even received a Bronze Star with Combat “V” for the stunning rescues he made.

That invasion began on November 20 as Marines landed on the tiny island of Betio, along the southwest side of Tarawa.

“Few American battles of this century,” Col. Joseph H. Alexander explains, “featured such savage fighting at sustained point-blank range within such a confined arena. . . . two proud, seasoned, well-armed, ably-led, opposing forces locked in mortal combat on a tiny island from which there would be virtually no escape.”

A preliminary naval bombardment had proven insufficient, and our Marines came ashore under intense fire.

Then-Lt. (j.g.) Albert was right in the middle of it: He and others were manning USS Sheridan’s Higgins boats, tasked with taking Marines ashore.

Things were moving slowly, and the wave with Sheridan’s boats didn’t head to shore until the 21st.

“[B]y now the tide was lower than it had been the previous day,” authors Captain James E. Wise, Jr. and Anne Collier Rehill explain, “and there was barely two feet of water, with parts of the reef already dry. The boats could not get over the coral, and the Marines left their landing craft 500 yards from the shore, wide-open targets.”

Enemy fire raked the area, and casualties mounted both on the beach and in the water.

Albert raced into danger, making several trips back and forth to pick up wounded Marines. “There were maybe over a hundred in the water there,” he later told an interviewer. “They couldn’t go to the shore because the closer you got—the machine guns were strafing all the time, back and forth, and they couldn’t go into any deeper water of course.”

He made several trips, estimating that he rescued about a dozen each time. On his last trip, he effectively commandeered four additional boats, ordering men off to make room for more wounded. Staffed with skeleton crews, the boats returned together.

Albert went in first. The source of the enemy fire had been pinpointed, so the other four covered him as he went in.

The Marines clearly made an impression because Albert often spoke of what happened next. As he loaded wounded Marines into his landing craft, he could see unwounded Marines still in the water. They’d lost all their equipment, but they refused to get in Albert’s boat.

“One of them yelled at me, ‘Did I hear you say you were coming back?’” Albert remembered. “Then one of the Marines said, ‘If you come back, bring us some rifles.’ And somebody in the back there yelled, ‘You heard the kid. Go on and bring us back some rifles.’”

By the time he returned, they were gone. Did they make it to shore? Had they been killed? He never knew, but the bravery of those Marines stuck with him.

The island was secured by the 23rd, and Albert was among those decorated for his bravery.

He loved meeting survivors more than that Bronze Star. Once, a man flagged him down in the street. “You pulled me out,” he remembered the veteran saying, “when all of the wounded were drowning, you picked me up.” The man turned to his children: “This is the man that pulled your papa out of the trouble!”

“I don’t really care how I am remembered as long as I bring happiness and joy to people,” Albert once said.

Many might think the 1965 Green Acres premiere accomplished this feat. But the families of several dozen Marines know that he actually accomplished it decades earlier on a small island in the Pacific.

Rest in peace, sir.

Constitution4Kids.com

Primary Sources:

• Captain James E. Wise, Jr. & Anne Collier Rehill, From Tarawa to Hooterville (Naval History Mag.; August 1997) (reprinted HERE)

• Col. Joseph H Alexander, USMC (Ret.), Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (1995)

• Douglas R. Pricer, Taking Charge on Red Beach Two (Naval History Mag.; Nov. 2013)

• Jacob Damiani, Eddie Albert in the battle of Tarawa (Michigan Tech: Military History of the Upper Great Lakes; October 16, 2016)

• James E. Wise & Anne Collier Rehill, Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America’s Sea Services (2007)

• Oral History Interview with Eddie Albert (May 1, 1993) (reprinted HERE)

• Thomas J. Cutler, Remembering Eddie Albert (U.S. Naval Institute proceedings; July 2005) (reprinted HERE)

• WWII Veteran Interview: Eddie Albert (The Pennsylvania Veterans Museum)