Curtis F. Shoup

By dawn on 20 September 1944, Captain Everett Parker Pope had only eight effective riflemen left on a shattered coral hill at Peleliu. His machine guns were out of action, ammunition and water were nearly gone, and Japanese troops had attacked his position throughout the night from three directions. Pope and his Marines had thrown rocks among their dwindling grenades, fought at close range, and refused to surrender the ground they had captured. Only when daylight brought renewed enemy fire and orders came to withdraw did they leave the hill. That desperate defense became one of the defining actions of the Battle of Peleliu and earned Pope the Medal of Honor. United States Marine Corps University Major Everett Parker Pope was born on 16 July 1919 in Milton, Massachusetts, and grew up in North Quincy. He graduated with honor from North Quincy High School in 1936 before attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. At Bowdoin he distinguished himself as both a scholar and athlete, captaining the tennis team and graduating in June 1941 with a Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, with honors in French. He was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. United States Marine Corps University Only months before the United States entered the Second World War, Pope began his Marine Corps career. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps Reserve on 1 November 1941 and trained at Quantico, Virginia, and New River, North Carolina. In June 1942 he deployed overseas with 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division. On 7 August, as leader of a machine-gun platoon, he landed on Guadalcanal and entered his first major campaign against Japanese forces. United States Marine Corps University After Guadalcanal, Pope and the 1st Marine Division moved to Australia to rebuild. He later returned to combat as a company commander during the Cape Gloucester and New Britain campaign from December 1943 into 1944. During the operations that followed the main fighting, Pope led a 14-man patrol over roughly twelve miles of jungle trails. The official Marine Corps biography records that the patrol killed 20 Japanese soldiers and captured seven in a single day. United States Marine Corps University His service at Guadalcanal and New Britain brought another important recognition. Bowdoin College records that Pope received the Bronze Star Medal for valor for his service in those campaigns. In Pope's National WWII Museum oral history, the Bronze Star is associated with his leadership of patrols during the New Britain fighting. A complete formal Bronze Star citation has not yet been located in the publicly accessible records reviewed for this biography, so the award should be described from the surviving institutional evidence rather than embellished with an unverified citation. Bowdoin College Obituaries Pope's most extraordinary battle was still ahead. In September 1944, now a captain commanding Company C, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, Pope landed with the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu in the Palau Islands. On 19 September, his company was ordered against a steep coral position in the Japanese ridge defenses. Point-blank cannon fire and intense machine-gun, mortar, and sniper fire tore into the Marines and badly disrupted the assault. Pope nevertheless rallied his men and led them to the summit. Congressional Medal of Honor Society What followed turned the capture of the hill into a fight for survival. Pope's depleted company was forced to defend the exposed position with its surviving Marines spread thinly across the ground. His machine guns became unusable, supplies were critically low, and Japanese forces repeatedly attacked during the night. Pope remained on the hill with twelve men and one wounded officer. As ammunition disappeared, the Marines resorted to hand-to-hand fighting and improvised methods of deceiving the attackers. Marine Corps accounts record that they threw rocks among their remaining grenades so the Japanese could not immediately tell which objects were explosive. By morning only eight effective riflemen remained. United States Marine Corps University Pope's Medal of Honor citation described his conduct as displaying "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life" and emphasized that his defense of the hill protected American units below from Japanese attack. The citation specifically recognized his leadership in rallying his company, seizing the summit, holding the position despite severe shortages, and continuing the defense against attacks from three sides until he was ordered to withdraw. Congressional Medal of Honor Society Pope was wounded in action on 20 September 1944, an injury for which he received the Purple Heart. Remarkably, he returned to duty the following day. His battalion's official honors record also confirms Presidential Unit Citations for the Guadalcanal campaign and the Palau Islands operation, the two World War II citation periods in which Pope participated. This is the basis for the Presidential Unit Citation with one bronze service star represented on his verified ribbon rack. United States Marine Corps University On 15 June 1945, President Harry S. Truman presented Pope with the Medal of Honor at the White House. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society records Pope's action as taking place on 19 September 1944 and identifies him as commanding officer of Company C, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division. Pope had been promoted to major in January 1945, several months before the White House presentation. Congressional Medal of Honor Society After returning from the Pacific, Pope studied Japanese at Yale University. On 16 July 1946, his twenty-seventh birthday, he went onto inactive status but remained connected to the Marine Corps Reserve. In Massachusetts he commanded the 2d Infantry Battalion, USMCR, at Hingham until August 1950, when his battalion was recalled following the outbreak of the Korean War. Pope subsequently served as executive officer of 3d Battalion, 2d Marines, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The official Marine Corps record does not document combat service by Pope in Korea, an important distinction from simply saying that he was a Korean War combat veteran. He was released from active duty in September 1951 and resigned his commission shortly afterward. United States Marine Corps University Pope's life after the Marine Corps was notable in its own right. He entered banking at Workingmen's Cooperative Bank in Boston and became its president in 1953 at age thirty-four. Bowdoin later described him as the youngest bank president in New England at that time. He became closely involved in higher-education financing, eventually serving as the first chairman of the Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation in 1982, and retired from banking in 1983. Bowdoin College Obituaries His connection with Bowdoin College lasted for decades. Pope served as an overseer from 1961 to 1977, president of the Board of Overseers from 1973 to 1977, and a trustee from 1977 until 1988. He chaired Bowdoin's Board of Trustees from 1984 to 1987 and helped establish scholarship support and memorial projects honoring alumni who had served in wartime. Bowdoin awarded him honorary degrees in 1946 and 1989. Bowdoin College Obituaries Pope and his wife, Eleanor Hawkins Pope, were married for sixty-six years and had two sons, Laurence E. Pope and Ralph H. Pope. Laurence later became a career diplomat and served as United States Ambassador to Chad. Pope himself remained closely connected to the Marines and to the memory of the men with whom he fought, but accounts preserved by Bowdoin indicate that he did not build his later life around public celebration of his own wartime heroism. His family's papers, military records, correspondence, photographs, and research material are now preserved in Bowdoin College's Special Collections and Archives. Bowdoin College Obituaries Major Everett Parker Pope died in Bath, Maine, on 16 July 2009, his 90th birthday. At his death, Bowdoin identified him as Maine's last surviving World War II Medal of Honor recipient. He was later laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Bowdoin College Obituaries Everett Pope's place in Marine Corps history rests on more than one night on Peleliu. He had already led Marines at Guadalcanal and through the jungles of New Britain before facing the coral ridges of Peleliu. Yet it was there, with his company devastated, his weapons failing, and his position surrounded on three sides, that his qualities as a combat leader were tested most severely. His Medal of Honor citation captured the official judgment of that stand, but the stark details tell the story more powerfully: twelve Marines and one wounded officer held through the night, eight riflemen were still fighting at dawn, and their commander remained with them until ordered to leave.