Ireland earns medal during Mariana Islands campaign

Editor’s note: This is the 32nd in a series of stories about past and present Jackson County residents who earned the Purple Heart Medal, which is awarded to military personnel wounded or killed in the line of duty.

The names of those profiled in these stories will be among those placed on a special monument for Purple Heart Medal recipients currently under construction in Holton’s Linscott Park.

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Russell Ireland of Holton earned his Purple Heart medal during the Mariana Islands campaign in the Pacific during World War II, but according to his daughter, Mary Dexter, he never said much about either the medal or the war.

“I think he felt like he did nothing extraordinary,” Dexter said of her father, a veteran of the U.S. Navy. “He was just serving his country as he felt obligated to do.”

According to information provided by Dexter, Ireland, born May 19, 1923 to Lawrence “Shorty” and Nancy Ireland, had graduated from Holton High School in 1941. He was on his way to Vancouver, Wash., to join a construction crew that was building an airport runway when he realized he was going to be drafted into the military.

With that realization in mind, Ireland and a friend went to sign up for military service, but the friend was picked for the U.S. Army while Ireland went into the Navy. He was not alone, however, as his girlfriend, Pauline Desbien, followed him from Holton to Washington, and they were married on Oct. 26, 1942, after which she returned to Holton.

He was inducted into the Navy on April 22, 1943, and in a matter of weeks, he was transferred to Farragut, Idaho, then the second-largest naval training station in the country, according to a Holton Recorder article from that time.

Eventually, Ireland was trained as a sonarman and assigned to the USS Norman Scott, a recently-christened destroyer named for a Navy rear admiral who was killed during the Battle of Guadacanal. The ship was assigned to serve in the Mariana Islands campaign, escoring heavy bombardment ships and conducting its own fire support missions.

The Norman Scott was sent to cover a “feint landing” on the south side of the island Tinian to draw enemy fire away from an actual landing on the north side of the island in the summer of 1944. The ship was firing on Tinian on July 24 of that year when the battleship Colorado came under fire, and the Norman Scott maneuvered to draw fire away from the Colorado.

At that time, Ireland was bringing ammunition to a five-inch gun mount on the Norman Scott’s rear deck when the gun mount sustained a direct hit — one of six hits from Japanese artillery on Tinian’s shore. The force of the hit knocked Ireland backwards, breaking his arm, and leaving shrapnel wounds in his arm and head.

Despite the wounds he received in the attack — including a hole in his arm — Ireland got up, got his wounds bandaged and continued to help shipmates who were also wounded in the attack. Not long afterward, someone noticed the extent of Ireland’s wounds, and he was placed on a Navy hospital ship to recover.

After his recuperation, Ireland was stationed on the South Pacific island of New Caledonia, waiting to be reassigned to the Norman Scott. He reportedly served on a “sub chaser” in the South Pacific later in the war and was discharged from the Navy on Nov. 17, 1945, at Norman, Okla.

Ireland returned to Holton, and he, Pauline and their two-year-old son, Lawrence, moved to a farm west of town where they raised Lawrence, as well as a daughter, Mary, and two other sons, Micheal and Dennis, who came along later. Dexter said her parents “lived there their entire 53 years of married life.”

Russell and Pauline took over the Holton Community Sale from his parents, and they ran the sale until the early 1990s, Dexter said. He worked as an auctioneer, stockman and farmer in the years after the war and watched as Lawrence would go on to military service of his own, serving in the Army during the Vietnam War.

Dexter said her father received other medals in addition to the Purple Heart, but he was not sure when he received that particular medal. It remained in a storage box until his death, she said, adding that Lawrence would end up with the medal.

“As a child, I remember asking Mom to take it out of the cupboard so I could look at it and touch it,” Dexter said. “I didn’t fully understand how important (it was) or what that beautiful purple heart on the ribbon truly stood for.”

Pauline Ireland died Nov. 15, 1995; Russell would follow her 10 years later, on Nov. 19, 2005.

Of their children, Lawrence went into law practice, as did Micheal, who later served as Jackson County District Court Judge for nearly a decade. Lawrence died in 2012; Micheal died in 2015. Dennis Ireland and Mary Dexter continue to reside in Holton.