Fort Collins classmates fought battle for Peleliu

By Dan MacArthur
Correspondent

A pair of binoculars that have become a fixture at Colorado State University's Pingree Park Campus offer a local connection to a Marine's recollection of one of the most bloody, forgotten and needless battles of World War II.

The device--actually a 15-power Japanese spotting scope--is mounted in a meadow below the mountain campus' classrooms. It is used to view the surrounding terrain and at night is powerful enough to identify Saturn's moons.

But the scope's current serene surroundings are a long way from its original place and purpose. The 84-year-old scope was intended for use in warfare to spot targets and adjust the accuracy of artillery. The periscope-like device used internal prisms so viewers could avoid sniper fire.

The scope was recovered following the battle for Peleliu by a pair of Fort Collins classmates who headed off to war after graduating from the CSU School of Forestry in 1943. Happenstance brought them together again on the Western Pacific island where so many gave their all for what most now agree was a unnecessary battle to win a remote spit of coral some 6 miles long by no more than a mile wide. The Marines suffered 6,526 casualties, with 1,252 killed in action. Another 1,393 soldiers from the 81st Division were killed or wounded on Peleliu or the neighboring island of Anguar. The Japanese fought to the death with 10,900 killed and 202 captured-- mostly conscripted laborers.

"Peleliu developed into a hell of a battle," said Ken Ashley, 84, who lives with his wife, Ethel, on a rural south Fort Collins ranchette slowly being enveloped by suburban subdivisions. "I lost some good friends."

Ashley was one of the Marines there when the battle began 60 years ago this month on Sept. 15, 1944. What was expected to be a relatively easy undertaking to secure an airfield supporting Gen. Douglas MacArthur's retaking of the Philippines turned into a bloody slog that lasted two and half months to root out the entrenched Japanese. By then, MacArthur already had returned to the Philippines and Adm. William Halsey's advice to Adm. Chester Nimitz that he delay the Peleliu campaign seemed absolutely correct in retrospect.

"It was like a juggernaut that got its own momentum," said Ashley.

But none of that mattered to the fighting men like him who were sent there to do a job. Ashley has the same matter-fact-attitude about it today as he did after returning from the war to pursue a career as National Park Service ranger. He never talked about it much, he explained: "When we got back from World War II, there were thousands of us. We didn't exchange stories."

The story of the Pingree Park spotting scope would have remained one of those untold stories if Ashley hadn't been urged to document it for his descendants and to correct a wildly whimsical account on a dedication plaque.

That plaque presents a vivid but false portrayal that the scope came from the bridge of a captured Japanese aircraft carrier. It also incorrectly contends that Ashley and classmate Merle Tigerman commanded platoons capturing sniper-guarded portions of Peleliu and by a "strange chance of warfare...they recognized each other and fought alongside each other."

The truth is not quite so dramatic but is compelling in its own right.

Ashley and Tigerman went their separate ways after graduating--Tigerman to the Navy, Ashley to the Marines. Ashley said he was unable to verify much of his classmate's naval career other than he served on the destroyer U.S.S. Leon.

Serendipity did indeed bring them together at Peleliu. Tigerman's ship was stationed offshore while Ashley was on the ground as a forward observer directing the fire of a 155-millimeter gun battalion. The powerful weapon capable of firing 20 miles at first was considered useless in such close fighting until it was effectively directed into a highly fortified honeycomb of interconnected caves where the Japanese were well entrenched only 200 yards away.

After the battle, Tigerman came ashore to survey the situation when he chanced onto Ashley and they found the scope. "How (the binoculars) came to be on Peleliu where we found them remains a mystery," Ashley wrote in his remembrance.

While both agreed that they'd like to donate them to CSU, "We had kind of a hot potato on our hands," Ashley recalled. Scavenging such war souvenirs was prohibited for fear they could be booby trapped. It became clear that the only way to get the trophy back home and to Pingree Park was to send it back with Tigerman. "We had to kind of slip them out to his ship," he said.

Ashley strongly suspects Tigerman secured permission to bring the scope home by fabricating the tale--later memorialized on the dedication plaque --of its salvage from the bridge of the captured Japanese aircraft carrier. Tigerman returned and apparently presented the scope to the campus before going on to a successful career in his family's business, according to Ashley.

Ashley went on to face more action as a field artillery observer in the battle of Okinawa before his discharge in December 1945. He didn't even know that the scope had made it back until some 20 years later. Ashley saw Tigerman only once again at the 40th class reunion in 1983. Tigerman died in 1999.

At that reunion, Ashley said he and Tigerman shared sheepish glances while reading the dedication plaque, but neither of them knew how to graciously correct the errors.

But now, 20 years later with the survivors of that bloody battle fading away and taking their untold stories with them, one man decided it was time to tell the story and tell it straight so future generations don't forget their sacrifice.