James Wren’s hearing is mostly gone, but his eyes are as sharp and steady as they were more than 70 years ago when they cut through the darkness and two miles of beach on Saipan to spot Japanese soldiers perched high on a ridge.
In a secluded corner of the first floor of Baton Rouge’s Marriott, the 92-year-old recently leaned on the armrest of a couch—the five stars on his cap proudly displayed—and told his story to 225.
To sensationalize would be a disservice to a man who chose to relive his memories only in private, like a man of faith taking a moment for quiet prayer and reflection. The facts are these: He served on two ships, the USS Dorothea L. Dix and the USS Fremont. He stormed the beaches in Gela, Italy, and again on the islands of Peleliu, Saipan, Leyte and Iwo Jima. He watched the flags go up on Iwo Jima. He was stranded for 10 days in Saipan. He pulled a soldier’s body from bloody waters with his own hands and still regrets not checking the man’s dog tags for a name to reach out to the family.
He remembers one incident clearly, when he was in the first wave on the beaches of Sicily. Though the battle isn’t as famed as Normandy, Wren and his comrades were dive-bombed all day by the “same damn Germans” as the soldiers of Normandy were.
“The Germans had [an armored infantry support gun] they called a ‘Stupa,’ and it screams as it comes down. You’ve probably heard it in the movies. It hollers when it comes down like a siren, and that makes people run,” Wren says. “It also tells on them. I heard them screaming, and I looked and whirled the boat to the left, hard. The bomb came down and hit close enough to splatter water in the boat. Well, it didn’t go off. As I was fixing to get up, it was flipping up in the air like a damned old watermelon, coming back down the second time. And it didn’t go off the second time. Bless their heart, it’s probably still in the damn sand now. But all I’m saying is, that’s when I decided that I had an angel with me.”
Though Wren was with the USS Dorothea L. Dix in the European wing of the war, he did most of his fighting with the USS Fremont in the Pacific. It’s the Fremont that has brought Wren and his wife, Shirley, whom he married shortly after the war, to Baton Rouge today from their home near Nashville.
Each year a different veteran of the Fremont organizes a reunion, each time in a different part of the country. They’ve visited landmarks across the U.S., from Niagara Falls to the USS Kidd, catching up and reminiscing on their service together.
But as time passes, the Fremont crew is dwindling.
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