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THE MOVIE "PACIFIC" WAS BASED ON HIS SQUAD DURING WW2.
HE IS BURIED AT THE BOWMAN-DEDON CEMETERY IN ST FRANCISVILLE, LA
Other Comments:
Merriell Shelton was a Louisiana Cajun. He was a gambler prior to his enlistment into the Marine Corps and was a lifetime smoker of non-filter cigarettes. He spoke with a thick Cajun accent which at times made him difficult to understand until you got used to hearing it. Later in life he worked on repairing and installing air conditioners and was considered a quiet man with a hard look about him. Some consider him to have been somewhat of a loner outside of his family.
As a young man during the Depression, Shelton served in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He joined the Marines during WWII and fought with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division and was given the nickname, "SNAFU", a military acronym for "Situation normal, all fouled up", (thats the cleaned up version) which was not the case at all with this brave young man.
After the battle of Cape Glouchester, which Shelton had participated in, a replacement named Eugene B. Sledge joined the unit and after a brief time, he and Shelton became friends. Shelton gave Sledge the nickname of "Sledgehammer". Shelton and Sledge's exploits on Peleliu and Okinawa are chronicled in Sledge's 1981 classic memoir, "With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa." Additionally, his relationship with Sledge was also written about in Iain C. Martin's book, "The Greatest U.S. Marine Corps Stories Ever Told." The HBO special "Pacific", produced by Steven Speilberg and Tom Hanks, relates some of SNAFU and Sledgehammer's story as well as those of other Marines who served in the Pacific during the war. When Shelton died in 1993, Sledgehammer was one of his pallbearers.
Merriell A. Shelton was awarded the following decorations for his World War II service:
-Combat Action Ribbon (awarded in the 1960's to all combat Marines back to 1941)
-Presidential Unit Citation (Navy/Marine Corps)
-American Theater of Operations Campaign Medal
-Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations Campaign Medal with three bronze campaign stars (for Cape Glouchester, Pelelilu and Okinawa)
-World War II Victory Medal
Ryukyus Campaign (1945)/Battle for Okinawa
From Month/Year
March / 1945
To Month/Year
June / 1945
Description The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg. was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi (550 km) away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall). Four divisions of the U.S. 10th Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) and two Marine Divisions (the 1st and 6th) fought on the island. Their invasion was supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces.
The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of kamikaze attacks from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Based on Okinawan government sources, mainland Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds). Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria caused Japan to surrender less than two months after the end of the fighting on Okinawa.
