Go on, why not sponsor this page for $5.00 and have your own message appear in this space. Click here for details

Click here for details

Those Who Died That Others Might Be Free

 

Bob Holmes

 

Date and Place of Birth: April 9, 1923 Troy, Missouri
Date and Place of Death: February 22, 1945 Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands
Baseball Experience: Minor League
Position: Pitcher
Rank: Second Lieutenant
Military Unit: 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division USMC
Area Served: Pacific Theater of Operations

 

Robert D "Bob" Holmes was born in Troy, Missouri on April 9, 1923. He attended Buchanan High School in Troy, where he played baseball, football, basketball and track, and later attended Central College in Fayette, Missouri, where he was a star pitcher.

 

Holmes signed with the New York Yankees after graduating from Central College in May 1942. He reported to the Kansas City Blues on June 2 for his initial training and was then sent to Joplin in the Western Association. He won his first professional game against Muskogee on June 12, as the starting pitcher in the second game of a double header.

 

Holmes also pitched for Binghamton and Norfolk before entering military service in 1943 with the US Marine Corps. As a private he entered Miami University in Lafayette, Indiana, under the V-12 officer training program. He went to Parris Island, South Carolina for regular Marine recruit training in March 1944 and was commissioned a second lieutenant at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in October 1944.

 

Second Lieutenant Holmes later served at Camp Pendleton, California before leaving fro the Pacific in December 1944.

 

By February 1945, Holmes was on his way to Iwo Jima to help secure the island for use as a base for long-range fighters to escort bombers on their missions to Japan.

Iwo Jima, 750 miles south of Tokyo, is the middle island of the three tiny specks of the Volcano Islands. Five miles long with Mount Suribachi at the southern tip, the island is honeycombed with excoriated volcanic vents. Hundreds of natural caves communicate with deep sulphur-exuding tunnels. Steep and broken gulleys cut across the surface, ragged sea cliffs surround it. Only to the south is there level sand, but it is fine, shifting, black pumice dust making the beaches like quicksand and rendering it impossible to dig a fox-hole when in need of cover.

The island was riddled with pillboxes, gun-pits, trenches and mortar sites and a three-day naval bombardment beginning on February 16 was intended to rid the island of much of its defense. But despite its enormity the bombardment had minimal effect.

 

 

On February 22, 1945, Second Lieutenant Robert Holmes died of wounds received "while gallantly spraying the enemy on Iwo Jima, with machine gun fire," according to the Troy Free Press on March 23, 1945. Seriously wounded, Holmes was being evacuated from the beach to the hospital ship when he died.

 

He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in Hawaii.

 

Thanks to Jerry and Betty Eppard for help with this biography.

 

Added October 23, 2006. Updated December 19, 2006.

 

Copyright © 2007 Gary Bedingfield (Baseball in Wartime). All Rights Reserved.