Pvt. William G. BRADY

WILLIAM G. BRADY
_________________

William G. BRADY

Pvt. D Company , Rifleman

K.I.A. Monday 21 February 1945

Private Willian Gatewood Brady was a 2nd platoon rifleman and was killed during a skirmish shortly after the platoon debouched from Cheney Ravine onto the beach. He had waded into the sea to take a position behind an unexploded 500 pound aerial bomb that stood upright in the shallow water from where he could support his platoon's attack on a cave near the water's edge. He was shot and killed there in afternoon of 21 February.

John Lindgren

John Lindgren's version is to be preferred to Devlin's account (below) which cannot now be accepted as accurate in as much as Brady is concerned.

My searches of the "D" Company history show that Brady is not recorded as either killed or wounded in the accounts given of the Wheeler Point battle, which must color the account given. The accounts refer to Brady's death as follows:

" 21 Feb 45. The Co. went out to clean Japs out of ravine below the big gun position and to clean the caves along the water's edge. A field artillery and mortar preparation was fired before the company moved out and at 0830 the company moved into the ravine. About a third of the way down the ravine four Japs were found hiding under a culvert and killed. Two more were found in a pillbox further down the trail and killed. A Jap water point was found which was much better than former points. As the patrol continued down the trail barbed wire entanglements and land mines were encountered. Six Jap anti-aircraft guns were found. About twenty well-armed Japs were encountered in a cave along the water's edge. One squad approached the cave from one side while another circled it and came in from the other side. During this attack, Private Brady was killed and Lt. Buchanan and Bowers, attached medic, were wounded."

Doc Bradford accompanied D Company on this foray and describes it in his manuscript "Combat Over Corregidor."

Paul Whitman

Defending Battery Cheney this night was Lieutenant Joseph A. Turinski's Company D, 503d Parachute Infantry. Turinski's men were newly established in the battery, having captured it late in the afternoon of the eighteenth. Because the 2d Battalion's night defense order had not been issued until sundown on the eighteenth, neither Lieutenant Turinski's company, which sat on the south side of Cheney Ravine, nor Lieutenant Bailey's Company F troopers on the ravine's north side had enough time to physically tie in with each other before darkness. As result, the 500-yard gap which separated those two companies had to be covered during the night by artillery and mortar concentrations

Twenty-year-old Corporal Alan C. Bennett of North Haven, Connecticut, was a member of a security detachment that had been placed forward of Battery Cheney at dusk on the eighteenth to provide early warning of the enemy's approach. Although he had graduated from jump school only a year and a half ago, Bennett already had twenty-one jumps to his credit. Like most young paratroopers, he had always thought of himsef as a lucky man. But ever since a Japanese rifleman shot six holes in his parachute while he was descending on the Rock, Bennett sensed that his luck might be running out. At 5:15 A.M. on the nineteenth, Bennett caught a glimpse of five shadowy figures moving below him in the ravine. In keeping with the regiment's shoot-first, ask-questions-later policy, he immediately squeezed off five short bursts with his submachine gun, then emptied the rest of the magazine into another group of dark forms moving straight toward his position. Two of Bennett's companions, Privates William C. Bracklein and William C. Brady, joined in by throwing grenades, which seemed to halt all movement in the area.

For the next few moments there was silence as both Bennett's squad and the Japanese paused to take stock of the situation. But then all hell broke loose when a rain of hand grenades fell on the Americans, killing Bracklein and Brady outright and wounding Bennett in the chest, both arms, and face. Assisted by his friend, Private Ernest Griffen who gave him first aid, Bennett found his Thompson. Then, even though partially blinded by the exploding grenades, he resumed firing, killing eighteen of the enemy in as many seconds.

Gerard M. Devlin

Back to Corregidor

St Martin's Press, New York (1992)
(out of print)