The list of accolades is long. The medals, shiny. The monuments, towering.
But the tales of how those awards were won are dark and scary. The complete stories of death and destruction are rarely fully told.
“Anything you see about World War II, you will hear lot of what was accomplished. You never hear what had to be done to accomplish it,” says Gabriel Kinney, softly but sternly.
Last month the 99-year-old Daphne resident and eight other survivors of what are known as Merrill’s Marauders – U.S. Army soldiers who slogged across 1,000 miles of thick jungle during World War II to capture the enemy-held Myitkyina Airfield – learned President Donald Trump had signed the final paperwork that would honor them with the Congressional Gold Medal.
Kinney, now just four months shy of his 100th birthday, is careful as he recounts the dark, difficult details of those months in the jungle. Some of the date are foggy. Names slip in and out of reach. But the moments, the struggle is clear.
“We should understand war is violent, very violent,” he says. “If I told you what we had done you would think we were bad boys.”
Kinney was born and raised in Stouts Mountain, Alabama, a small farming town tucked snugly between Birmingham and Huntsville. He was one of 12 children born to a father who immigrated from Ireland and a mother from Scotland.
When Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Kinney was working at U.S. Steel in Birmingham. The terror of that day seemed distant and unconcerning. Roughly one year later, Kinney, like thousands of young Americans, decided he wanted to be a pilot. The line was long, the slots, limited. He was sent to the infantry instead.
After basic training Kinney was prepared for overseas service and eventually boarded a Norwegian freighter filled with American soldiers headed to New Caledonia, 700 miles east of Australia. The unaccompanied and undefended ship made the cross-Pacific trip by zig zagging back and forth to avoid enemy attacks.
After a stop in New Caledonia, Kinney and F company, 35th regiment of the 25th Infantry were sent to Guadalcanal. It was August,1943. The bulk of the hard fighting was over, Kinney says, but his unit was sent to “mop up,” handling raids by small groups of enemy soldiers here and there.
The next month the unit, now combat experienced, was asked to volunteer for a hazardous mission, a request that came directly from President Roosevelt. Their mission: to capture Myitkyina Airfield, the only all-weather airfield in Northern Burma.
Kinney says he doesn’t have a good reason, if any, for volunteering. “At the time it seemed like a good thing to do,” he says.
The secret mission operated under the code name GALAHAD but quickly became known as Merrill’s Marauders, named after the group’s leader, Brigadier General Frank Merrill.
Over 3,000 men were sent to covert training operations in Central India before the group began the grueling march up Ledo Road, a dense, jungle laden trek through the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains and into Burma. They were accompanied by no tanks or other heavy equipment. Weapons, food and supplies were carried on their backs or on donkeys.
The men walked for four months, 1,000 miles and fought in five major battles and 30 minor engagements against the elite Japanese 18th Division. It became the longest uninterrupted instance of jungle combat in U.S. history, matched only by the First Marine Division in Guadalcanal. As they moved along the route, they disrupted enemy supply and communication lines. But they also succumbed to disease, starvation, injury and death.
Kinney says he lost count of how many times he was beaten, scratched, and shot.
“Everyone was wounded more than once,” he says.
By the time the Marauder’s reached the airfield, there were 200 men left to take their prize, including Kinney.
The Marauder’s were heroes. The unit was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, six Distinguished Service Crosses, four Legions of Merit, 44 Silver Stars, and a Bronze Star for every member. Thirty have been inducted into the prestigious Army Ranger Hall of Fame.
But in the press back home, Kinney says the unit was given the unfair characterization of being “renegades and misfits,” a description Kinney calls incorrect and hurtful.
“I was 23 and I was oldest in my platoon,” he says. “The rest were 23 – 16. We were kids not misfits.”
In 2016, 72 years after that victory, a handful of Merrill’s Marauders veterans marched again, up and down the corridors of Capitol Hill in an effort to sway members of Congress to award the unit the Congressional Gold Medal.
The medal is awarded by Congress as a way to thank Americans for distinguished achievements and contributions. Other recipients include George Washington, the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison.
It’s not easy to receive. Nominees must be presented through a bill that is co-sponsored by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, meaning 67 senators and 290 congressmen needed to agree the Marauders deserved the medal.
Earlier this year attorney Frederick R. Eames of Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, in Virginia, took up the veterans’ cause, pro bono.
“There are a lot of worthy and sympathetic causes out there for Congress to support. Even people who have done great things don’t necessarily deserve a congressional gold medal,” Eames says.
And, even after the bill receives enough signatures, a vote is only guaranteed for the first three nominees received in a two-year Congressional cycle. After that, nominees who receive the signatures and overwhelming support may never have an opportunity to be voted on.
Eames says the rules help to preserve the special nature of the award.
“In this cycle one of the bills was for cyclist Greg LeMond. I’m sure his achievements deserve a lot of praise, but I’ll take Merrill’s Marauders,” Eames says.
Kinney is one of just eight Marauders left. It is unclear whether there will be an official ceremony in Washington D.C. in the coming months due to the spread of the Coronavirus.
Kinney, the only Marauder in Alabama, and the oldest, says to receive the medal is “amazing.”
“We appreciate it. We definitely do. But I don’t think it will mean as much to us as it will our survivors and for the survivors of those who didn’t make it,” he says. “It would definitely mean a lot to them.”