Williams, Leslie
Posted on 15 September, 2021 by in Veterans By Name, W
19 October 2018 by Larry Martin
I went to Washington D. C. in mid August 2001 to attend a Marine Raiders reunion. While I was in DC I went to a reinturnment at Arlington Cemetery of bodies of Marines killed at Makin Island I believe. I was in DC about one month before the attack on 9-11-01 on our country. This man Sgt. Leslie Williams briefly told me his story of his fighting while in the Marine Corps during WW II.
Leslie enlisted in the Corps in June of 1940 and was discharged in Aug. 1946. He was a corporal at the battle of Guadalcanal he also fought on the island of New Georgia and Okinawa. Leslie’s weight dropped to 103 lbs (probably at Gudalcanal) so he was sent to the hospital at San Diego, California.
Leslie talked about a man that I had read a lot about in different accounts of the fighting on Guadalcanal named Maj. Kenneth Bailey. Leslie was at the scene of Maj. Bailey’s death. On page 272 of the book Guadalcanal by Richard B. Frank the story of his death on Guadalcanal is related. A quote by Bailey told to a civilian reported named Richare Tregaskis he said that if a patrol was going to be particularity tough he would go himself ( my friend Bob Goss 36th Inf. Div. Italy, France, and Germany was a squad leader and he told me the same thing that he would go out as a scout rather than send new men out on a very dangerous patrol). This is what Bailey did on the day of 27 Sept. 1942 where he was killed by machine gun fire. Maj. Bailey was awarded the Medal of Honor for his last battle.
Leslie Williams said that he thought that Bailey was bitter because his brother at the Japanese because his brother had been on the Bataan Death March. Leslie did not say whether his brother survived the march or not. Leslie also said that Bailey was a very brave man.