“Perimortem trauma [occurring at the time of death] is present in the form of a series of skeletal lesions consistent with damage from bomb fragments on the anterior and inferior surfaces of right ribs #3-#8, the anterior surface of the right scapula, the anterior surface of the left and right ilia, and the anterior surface of the sacrum,” Hillary wrote in her report, an opinion endorsed by Kristen and by John, who had seen his share of such injuries in the field. The affected areas revealed “thermal alteration”—burning—that surrounded a series of “depressed fractures and nicks. That the trauma occurred perimortem is indicated by the consistency of coloration along fractures with surrounding bones.”2
Hillary had been initially confused about what appeared to be burn marks on many of the osseous materials discovered in Cemetery 27. However, as the data piled up, she and Kristen realized that those dark marks were an anomalous decomposition pattern seen only in remains affected by the rubberized-canvas ponchos. Although Sandy’s remains had incidental contact with poncho material from adjacent graves, the shrapnel-damaged areas of his scapula, ribs, pelvic, and hand bones were not affected.
History Flight essentially was pioneering a new micro-study in the effects of being wrapped in a poncho in tropical sand for seven decades.
“This appears to be due to microclimates inside the ponchos. That’s not something that DPAA has really looked at,” Hillary said, “so it’s new territory.”3
I was caught off guard two months later when DPAA forensic anthropologist Laurel Freas, who conducted the agency’s examination of my grandfather’s remains, concluded that “no perimortem trauma was observed.”4
Kristen wasn’t surprised in the least.
“The management is very strict and risk-adverse there. They also are very limited in the types of analysis and judgments they can make. For instance, they are only allowed to use the references listed in their SOP (standard operating procedures), so they don’t have or use the reference we used to help ID that type of trauma,” she told me. “Basically, sometimes they can’t call a spade a spade because someone thinks that might be going out on a limb.”5
Where Freas had made her determination in a lab thousands of miles from the recovery site, Kristen and Hillary had made theirs based on a large and growing body of evidence from remains found in the same, distinctive environment. That critical context was completely unavailable to Freas.
Puzzled, I asked Capt. Edward A. Reedy, science director and medical examiner for DPAA, about the discrepancy. For starters, he confirmed Kristen’s assessment of the agency’s caution.
“Our forensic anthropologists are conservative when assigning damage as perimortem trauma,” he said.6
Reedy said the DPAA analyst concluded that the discolored and damaged ribs, pelvic bones, scapula, and hand were probably due to the age and fragility of my grandfather’s remains, despite the fact that the damage occurred in an isolated pattern, not generally. But, he told me, “This is not to say that no perimortem trauma was present.”7 In other words, the agency didn’t dispute History Flight’s findings.
Hillary and Kristen found DPAA’s caution absurd. They’d seen plenty of brittle, crumbling bones in poncho-covered remains uncovered at Cemetery 27, and the damage to Sandy’s remains was of an entirely different character. What’s more, the distinctive trauma was restricted to his right ventral torso and hand, which had lain on sand and was otherwise well preserved. Consistent with every other set of remains recovered from the trench so far, the only portions of his skeleton in a notably fragile condition were those on his left ventral side, which had been in contact with the rubberized poncho material from grave #18. DPAA’s remote assessment of the trauma contradicted everything History Flight’s experts had observed regarding the highly anomalous environments created by ponchos at Cemetery 27.
The agency’s timidity opened my eyes to the critical importance of context, and the absolutely irreplaceable value of observation in the field, when it comes to forensic anthropology.
I knew now that there was no evidence that my grandfather had been struck in the head by gunfire, but that there was extremely compelling evidence that he’d suffered perimortem shrapnel wounds to his right side.
The forensic evidence was conclusive: Sandy Bonnyman had not been shot in the head. And evidence that he’d suffered extensive perimortem shrapnel damage extending from his right shoulder to his right hip compellingly suggested that he was not prone, but had been standing or, at the least, kneeling, when he received mortal wounds from grenade or mortar shrapnel that penetrated one or more vital organs, perhaps in combination with gunshot wounds to soft tissues.
And while more speculative, there was also the intriguing evidence of the morphine syrettes. The uncapped, bent syrette found stuck to one of my grandfather’s ribs suggests the possibility that he, or perhaps someone else, had administered morphine to himself as he lay dying atop the bunker.
Physical evidence is the gold standard, and my grandfather’s remains bore mute testimony to vindicate my long suspicion that the account of his death published in Joseph Alexander’s 1995 book Utmost Savagery was not accurate. I didn’t blame Harry Niehoff, on whose memories Alexander had based his version (and something about his highly specific recollection that he had used my grandfather’s lifeless body as a shield has always rung true to me).
But I did fault Alexander, who should have known better, for accepting one man’s fifty-year-old memories as definitive proof that all other previous accounts were incorrect, thereby diminishing my grandfather’s achievement.
I raised the issue with Alexander in 2014. He told me he found “the essence of (Niehoff’s) comments to be plausible and positive.” He noted, however, that he had chosen not to publish Niehoff’s claim that he and John Borich had planned the assault on the bunker, finding it implausible.
I asked the author whether it would have made more sense for Niehoff to receive the Medal of Honor, rather than my grandfather. After all, in his account, he had stood alone—or rather, lain alone—firing on the Japanese counterassault. I reminded the author of the citation for Niehoff’s Silver Star, which made no mention of such a stand, and the fact that he had put my grandfather’s name forward for the Medal of Honor.
“Did he inject a more significant role for himself?” Alexander answered. “Likely so. We all do.”8
Sadly, Alexander died of cancer in September 2014. He never received the good news about finding Sandy Bonnyman and I was never able to present him with the compelling physical evidence of Cemetery 27. I still think highly of Utmost Savagery, but Alexander’s counterfactual rewrite of my grandfather’s history led later historians to repeat his errors; one author even contacted men who had fought beside my grandfather and questioned whether he even deserved the Medal of Honor.
“You go ahead and write whatever you want but all those guys who were there said he deserved it,” Sandy’s former commanding officer Joseph Clerou told the man, according to his son, George. “I’m sure as hell not going to let some author tell me what happened.”9
Nor was I.
In the end, the skeptical author’s book did not even mention my grandfather, except to note his Medal of Honor and print the citation.10
Thanks to History Flight, 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. has spoken from the grave, and I hope the indisputable evidence of his bones will forever banish Joseph Alexander’s revisionist history of what happened atop that bunker on Betio on November 22, 1943.
The Saturday after Sandy was recovered, the History Flight team met four guys from an Australian road crew who used an excavator to strip away the layer of crushed coral to extend the unit another meter to the west. But everyone had been working nonstop for weeks, and that was it for the day (except for Hillary, who was busily processing and documenting my grandfather’s remains).
That night, Kristen made dinner at her small rented beach house on Betio’s tail. As we ate shrimp, rice, and baked pumpkin (the Kiribati name for squash), she
and Hillary engaged in forensic anthropologist banter about the various odors of decomposing bodies (everything from barbecue to kalamata olives), while John put forth the theory that the Tarawa marines had been sacrificed to aid Admiral Chester Nimitz’s aspirations for higher office and Hobbes, Kristen’s sleek, orange adopted tomcat, entertained us with acrobatics. We drained a bottle of Hillary’s Roughstock whiskey and started in on some (much-inferior) Jack Daniel’s.
Sunday morning, John and Paul approached me for a confidential conversation. Like me, they were uneasy about how this might now play out with DPAA. All remains would be surrendered to the agency and flown to Hawaii, where scientists and technicians at the Central Identification Laboratory would simply repeat all the testing and reporting done by History Flight before issuing any legal identification.
I had seen a couple of the agency’s reports and found the level of detail unnecessary for the job at hand, which was identifying remains. For example, the report on Pfc. Manley Forest Winkley (recovered from Cemetery 25 in 2013) expended fifty words to explain why the image of Mercury on the back of a dime is sometimes mistaken for Lady Liberty. (Weirdly, given that taxpayers foot the bill, DPAA reports include a note that, “This document contains information EXEMPT FROM MANDATORY DISCLOSURE under the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT”; in other words, the agency claims the right keep its reports secret.)
I also knew that one of the most damning findings in the 2013 Government Accountability Office report was that JPAC had let remains languish on its shelves, sometimes for years, before identifying them. That was the case with Pvt. Herman Shermer, the clue that led Mark Noah to Cemetery 27, who was found in 2002 but not identified until 2011.
Under US law, DPAA is the only entity that can officially identify battlefield remains. Now, despite the slam-dunk identification of my grandfather’s bones—soon to be confirmed by a team of top odontologists flown by History Flight to Betio in June—I worried that someone at the agency might delay the process, perhaps even deliberately, as a slap at a pesky “avocational.” I’d seen that kind of behavior before, after all.
John and Paul, former Green Berets, didn’t trust DPAA, either, and had come up with a plan: Hillary and Kristen would finish up their report on my grandfather, then pack up his remains and material evidence in a Pelican case. When I boarded the plane for Fiji the next day, I would simply check the case as baggage.
“You can’t trust these people,” John said, explaining that I would only be doing what any next of kin (I had been designated my mother’s legal power of attorney) had a right to do. Think of it this way, John said: Were I to keel over on Tarawa, my wife would have every right to retrieve my body. “This is the same thing,” he said.
I loved the idea; it was exactly the kind of thing Sandy Bonnyman might do. And there was even a recent precedent for a family claiming remains without DPAA involvement: the case of Army Pfc. Lawrence Gordon, the World War II pilot who had to be identified by German and French labs when JPAC had declined to get involved.11
But I also knew that Mark Noah had signed agreements with both the DPAA and the government of Kiribati regarding repatriation of all remains found. For me to try to force the issue might not just land me in jail, but could theoretically spark a minor international incident. More important, attempting to spirit away my grandfather’s remains might well jeopardize History Flight’s ability to continue working on Tarawa. As much as I distrusted DPAA, based on past experience, I just couldn’t agree to the plan.
Mark Noah had not yet informed DPAA about the discovery of Cemetery 27, fearing interference. But the agency was scheduled to send a team out in July to review History Flight’s work and conduct its own research, so our cat was wriggling in the bag already (I had to hold my tongue when DPAA archaeologist Jay Silverstein sent me a friendly note in May to let me know his team would be looking for Cemetery 27). Mark expected that the agency would take all the remains back to Hawaii in late July.
“So,” I said flatly as we stood in the shade of a coconut palm on Black Beach, “we will hand my grandfather over to them and they will have custody. I will no longer have any say in anything.”
It was true, Mark said. But he promised to do everything in his power to make sure they didn’t unnecessarily delay my mother and aunt from burying their father.
I didn’t like it one bit. But I had a few cards up my sleeve, too.
The day after we removed Sandy Bonnyman’s remains from his grave in Cemetery 27, I ran across the causeway just as the sun was rising. Toad the Wet Sprocket was playing on my iPhone—“Would he fly from Heaven/To this world again?”
Before returning to the hotel, I took a detour on the rutted, dusty road that passed Admiral Shibasaki’s bunker, Bonnyman’s Bunker, and the pier. When I arrived at Kiribati Shipping Services, Ltd., the guard smiled and waved me through the gate.
Peeling back a tattered blue tarp, I climbed down in the hole and sat on the flat sand where my grandfather had rested for so long. One by one, I thought of all those who had been shattered by his death: the little girl left to mourn by herself; Sandy’s “curly blonde,” doomed to a life of addiction and mental illness; Aunty Alix, yearning to know everything she could about her missing father; Granny Great sitting quietly in the sun room at Bonniefield, heart forever broken; Alex Bonnyman, burdened by memories of clashes with his beloved son; my aging Uncle Gordon, painfully stooped with progressive supranuclear palsy, weeping at visions of his beloved older brother; and even myself, missing a man I never knew but needed so much, more like me than I had ever imagined but whose courage I feared I lacked.
I felt a sense of deep gratitude toward much-maligned Betio, whose sepulchral sands had, after all, preserved my grandfather’s bones for all those years. And remembering the day before, I knew I’d missed an opportunity to show real courage.
“When you are afraid of something, you know that you are alive,” Faulkner wrote. “But when you are afraid to do what you are afraid of, you are dead.”
I sat there, silent, for half an hour. And by the time I rose from my grandfather’s empty grave, I understood for the first time that my grandfather had never been fearless. He had just had the courage to choose life.
TWENTY-ONE
CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY
2014–2015
The discovery of Cemetery 27 had solved the mystery of grandfather’s death.
But even after five years of investigation, tens of thousands of miles traveled, countless hours of interviews, and the best efforts of the top researchers I could find, I still didn’t have answers to some vexing questions: Why was my grandfather denied the Medal of Honor in 1944, only to receive it two and a half years later?
“All medals,” Rich Boylan told me, “are political to some extent. And the Medal of Honor is the most political award of all.”1
He would know. In his thirty-six years with the National Archives and Records Administration, Boylan served as an expert witness in the cases of fifty-five eventual Medal of Honor recipients who were overlooked in World War I and World War II because of anti-black or anti-Asian racism or anti-Semitism.
Although the Medal of Honor is supposed to be awarded to individuals for discrete acts of “conspicuous gallantry” at the clear risk of one’s life above and beyond the call of duty, you need look no further than one of the medal’s most famous recipients to understand that those criteria are sometimes overlooked for reasons of politics, public relations, or even propaganda.
On the night of March 11, 1942, under orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur, his wife, his son, a nanny, and fourteen staff officers boarded a PT boat and fled the Philippine island of Corregidor for Australia. The general had been a powerful symbol of resistance and strength to Americans, and even the Japanese enemy, who would soon claim America’s far western Pacific outpost and initiate the brutal Bataan Death March.
Not long after, Gen. George C. Marshall gave the order to award MacArthur the Medal of
Honor, “to offset any propaganda by the enemy directed at his leaving his command.” Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had served under MacArthur from 1932 to 1939, strenuously objected, pointing out that his former boss hadn’t actually engaged in the kind of singular action required for the medal.
Whatever MacArthur’s qualities, his Medal of Honor was not so much to recognize actions, but rather to soothe anxious American reactions and, ostensibly, undermine Japanese overreaction.
But simply knowing that medals can be political didn’t tell me anything about what had happened in the case of my grandfather. At the beginning of my search, I was absolutely certain that somewhere, perhaps at the bottom of a dusty box in the deep recesses of the National Archives—à la Indiana Jones—yellowing pieces of paper would explain, at last, why Sandy Bonnyman was awarded the Medal of Honor after first being denied. To my great frustration, no such evidence materialized.
“I’ve searched as hard for this as anything I’ve ever looked for, and it’s just not there,” said researcher Katie Rasdorf.2
Experts cautioned me not to expect answers to my questions.
“There is a slim-to-none chance that such documents as you are looking for exist,” said Laura S. Jowdy, archivist for the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Award recommendation packets from World War II, she said, consist mostly of “a lot of ‘rubber stamps’ that say in essence whether the award is approved to go further up the ladder.”3
With no new information to guide me, I repeatedly pored over every page of my grandfather’s military records, as well as every letter that mentioned the medal, searching for the tiniest clue. Finally, a detail so mundane I had never noticed it before caught my attention: Every page in my grandfather’s case that had been examined by the awards board on March 8, 1944, bore a stamp reading, “FILE–SELECTION BOARD CASE” (some pages also bore the scribbled initials, “ngw” and “JM”). That stamp appears on just four pages of my grandfather’s military records, all those pertaining to his arrest for “rendering yourself unfit for duty by excessive use of intoxicants” in Wellington, New Zealand on July 27, 1943.
Bones of My Grandfather Page 23
