Growing up in Massachusetts in the 1930s and ’40s, Stu Weatherhead spent his summers with his grandfather working in Jefferson. When he dropped out of high school after his sophomore year, he moved to Lincoln County full time.
He worked for the owners of Wavus Camp for several years, milking cows and working in the woods. “Those were long days,” Weatherhead said; “On my 17th birthday, I said see you later.”
World War II was in full swing and Weatherhead “couldn’t wait to ship out,” he said. His father served in WWI in the Navy, and Weatherhead joined the Marines.
“The Marines are a good outfit, but I should have been Navy,” he said. “The Navy guys live cleaner. They got their sack, they got their chow right there, and they’re not fighting in the mud.”
He shipped from San Diego in a fleet of “at least 300 ships” to Guadalcanal, where his division, the Sixth Marines, was formed. It was the only Marine Division formed overseas.
“Guadalcanal was secure at the time, but it was a mess,” he said. “The jungle was full of cuckoo birds and snakes and malaria.”
Weatherhead’s language was unflinchingly colorful as he described the war between spits of chewing tobacco during an interview at his home on Bunker Hill Road on May 20. He is 84 and still living independently.
His wife, Carol Weatherhead, died a few years ago, and he’s lived alone since. His son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Kim Weatherhead, live on Goose Hill Road and his daughter, Pamela Geswaldo, lives in Massachusetts.
He’s proud of the fact that he takes care of himself and, despite crippling back pain, is still able to cut wood and do things on his own. He’s also proud of his children, who, he said, “always back me up.”
He is a member of the American Legion, the VFW and disabled vets, Weatherhead served as chaplain for the Jefferson Legion for years. For Weatherhead, as it is for many who know him, the image of him as a chaplain draws a hearty laugh. “There were only a few of us left at that point, and I didn’t go to the meeting when they elected officers,” he said.
After the Sixth Division formed in Guadalcanal, they invaded Okinawa on April 1 – an Easter Sunday.
The combat on Okinawa was “nasty,” he said, and mostly consisted of “digging a hole and moving out.” The mud they moved, fought and slept in was thick enough to stop tanks and “all those [Japanese soldiers] were dug into the hillside like chipmunks,” Weatherhead said. “Have you ever tried to get a chipmunk out of a hole? You had to get pretty close with flamethrowers and grenades.”
For all the brutality, the most common image in Weatherhead’s description is the mud. He said he started smoking because the cigarettes were white.
“The ration was four, clean, white cigarettes, and everything else was brown with mud,” he said. “The whole time you’re in combat, there’s nothing white except cigarettes.”
He smoked for the next 60 years, until he had open-heart surgery in 2004.
Weatherhead fought in Okinawa as a rifleman and runner until he was injured on June 4. As a runner, he delivered messages and picked up the wounded, he said.
He recovered from the shrapnel in his leg at a field hospital in Guam until about a week before the atomic bomb was dropped. Then he shipped to mainland Japan for the final invasion.
When they arrived, the Japanese soldiers had largely surrendered their arms and “everything went pretty well there.” Toyko was in horrific shape, Weatherhead said. “It was gruesome, all the buildings were destroyed, but it’s a war.”
About seven months later, on March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day – he returned to the United States.
On the GI Bill, he went to two years of prep school and two years at Wentworth Institute in Boston, where he learned to lay brick and earned a degree in building construction. He stayed in Massachusetts for about 20 years until 1971, when he returned to Jefferson permanently.
He worked as a brick layer in Jefferson for decades until he turned his business over to his son a few years ago. He built the house he lives in and “probably most of the chimneys and fireplaces around here.”
He said the war made him appreciate what he has: “freedom; the will to do about the best you can.” The images of combat were haunting, but “you don’t dwell on it too much. You have to put things out of your head.”
Ultimately, “I’m glad to have had that experience and survived,” he said. “I did what I could. You mind your own business and try to help people out.”