Billy Harrell - a good ol' boy from Mercedes who went to war and defied death

Editor's Note: Since the U.S. Medal of Honor's establishment in 1861, Congress and presidents of the United States have awarded the citation to more than 3,440 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen.

It is the highest honor a service member can receive after time on a battle front.

Only three have been awarded to men either born or raised in the Rio Grande Valley - Jose M. Lopez of Mission; William "Billy" Harrell of Mercedes; and Alfredo "Freddy" Gonzalez of Edinburg.

Each served his country with extraordinary gallantry and is remembered for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Harrell's story follows. Lopez's and Gonzalez's stories can be found exclusively at www.themonitor.com.

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SAN ANTONIO - In the wee hours of Aug. 9, 1964, the family of U.S. Medal of Honor recipient William "Billy" Harrell arrived home after a trip to New York World's Fair.

Harrell's 9-year-old son, Gary, bounded out of the cab as his mother, Olive, and 11-year-old sister, Christie got the luggage.

Gary ran back to the cab and said, "Mom, there's something wrong with Dad. He's lying in the yard."

Harrell's body lay half in the yard and half on the driveway of his home in an upper middle class neighborhood on San Antonio's north side.

The Rio Grande Valley native had been shot in the head. Nearby lay his friend Ed Zumwalt, also shot in the head. Between them lay Harrell's M-1 Garand carbine.

Olive rushed to call the police.

There was another grim discovery inside the house. Zumwalt's wife was crumpled in a corner of the kitchen, also with a fatal gunshot wound to the head.

Why had this happened?

How did a national war hero, a man known both for his indomitable spirit and sense of humor, get to this point?

No one will ever know.

He began his journey in Rio Grande City.

William George Harrell was born June 26, 1922, to Roy and Hazel Harrell. He was the youngest, behind Dick and Virginia.

Roy was a former ranch hand and cavalry veteran. After World War I, he joined the U.S. Bureau of Immigration. It would later become the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. His skill with horses came in handy when he joined the U.S. Customs Service as a mounted officer patrolling the river.

The family settled in Mercedes.

Billy's father soon gained his own reputation for shootouts with the bootleggers along the border.

In 1931, Roy died from a cerebral hemorrhage. The boys had already inherited his love of horses. Upon graduation, Billy entered the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. It would become Texas A&M University the year Billy died. He had his eye on becoming a veterinarian.

World War II broke out while Billy was taking a year off from college to earn more tuition money. He tried to enlist, but was rejected twice by the Army Air Corps, once by the Navy and once by the Marine Corps because he was color blind.

On July 3, 1942, the U.S. Marine Corps decided to let him sign on the dotted line, though. Billy quickly rose to the rank of sergeant and was trained in the use of the flamethrower.

IWO JIMA

On Feb. 19, 1945, Billy was with the first wave of Marines to hit the beaches of Iwo Jima.

Only five miles long and shaped like a pork chop, the volcanic island was a desperately strategic point for allied forces' emergency airfield of U.S. bombers returning from Japan.

It would turn out to be the bloodiest real estate in Marine history. Before fighting ended on March 16, the United States lost more than 5,500 and more than 17,000 wounded. Only one Marine in Billy's outfit left the island without a scratch.

More than 23,000 Japanese dug in, many hidden in caves that covered the rocky side of Mount Suribachi. Before the Marines stormed ashore, the Japanese had already survived 75 days of aerial bombing and naval shelling. They had been hit with everything short of the atomic bomb, which was still in development.

The fighting was grim, bloody and methodical.

Cave by cave, the Marines went.

First came the bazookas, then riflemen, satchel explosives and men like Billy with flamethrowers.

"The caves were honeycombed, connecting," Harrell said in a 1960 interview. "You'd clean one out, then another, only to find the first one was full of Japs again."

At night, he shared a foxhole with Andrew Jackson "Duke" Carter from Paducah, Texas. They took turns standing watch and sleeping. It was one hour on and one hour off.

Due to volcanic activity, the ground on the island itself was so hot they had to stand on their ponchos in the foxholes.

"At night, we were chilled from the waist up and burning up from the bottom," Billy said in his old interview. "We used to put our C rations in the foxholes to warm them up."

On March 3, 1945, Billy and Duke were in a rocky hole 20 yards in front of the unit command post.

At about 5 a.m. Billy was awakened by the crack of Duke's M-1 as he killed four Japanese sneaking up on them. Billy heard some groans in front of their position and fired. The noise stopped.

Duke's rifle jammed. He jumped out the foxhole to get another.

While Duke was gone, a Japanese grenade landed in the hole and exploded. Unable to see because of the smoke and dust, Billy felt fingernails scratching his left forearm. His vision cleared and Billy saw it was his left hand, blown off and just hanging by some muscles and tendons.

He tried to stand, but the explosion had shattered his left hip. His body was riddled with 100 shrapnel wounds.

"TWO-MAN ALAMO"

Duke returned with a new rifle, fired one shot - and then it jammed. The volcanic dust was playing hell with their weapons. Billy kept firing his rifle with one hand.

An enemy soldier ran up to the foxhole. Duke skewered him with the bayonet of a Japanese rifle he had been keeping for a souvenir.

A Japanese officer slashed Duke's left hand with his saber. Unable to reload his M-1 with only one hand, Billy grabbed his .45 pistol and shot the officer twice in the head.

Sure that he was bleeding to death, Billy ordered Duke back to the command post.

"There's no use both of us dying here," he said.

Duke said he was leaving - but only to get help.

Slumped against the side of the foxhole, Billy watched a Japanese soldier jump in, landing not three feet from him. Another crouched beside the hole. They began discussing Billy.

When they realized the Marine was still alive, the one in the foxhole armed a grenade and set it next to Billy's head. As he climbed out, Billy shot him dead for his trouble.

Still holding the .45 in his remaining hand, Billy shoved the sputtering grenade toward the other enemy soldier.

"I guess I wasn't fast enough," Billy said. The grenade exploded, killing the other guy, obliterating Billy's pistol and blowing off his right hand.

No more Japanese came that night.

At dawn, Duke returned with help. There were 12 dead Japanese around what their commander would later call the "two-man Alamo."

As he drifted in and out of consciousness, Billy heard two corpsmen arguing over whose sulfa disinfectant they would use.

"I don't give a damn whose sulfa you use," Billy growled. "Just put some on me."

Duke grabbed the dead officer's sword as a souvenir for Billy. He would later mail it to his folk's home in Mercedes.

"One of my earliest memories is that sword hanging on the wall above my bed in San Antonio," his son Bill later said.

A corpsman assured Billy that he would survive.

"I'll see you in about a year," he said. A year and a day later they met on a San Antonio street corner.

Billy would later theorize that the combination of explosions and volcanic ash helped seal his wounds and kept him from bleeding to death.

LIFE AFTER WAR

Going into the hospital, Harrell weighed 145 pounds. The cast he was wearing weighed 155 pounds.

"I stayed in that same cast from March until I came out of the hospital in June," Harrell said. "They started to call me ‘Stinky.'

"I was just happy to be alive."

Caring for him in the Naval Hospital at Mare Island, Calif., was Larena Anderson, a pretty nurse from Vallejo, Calif.

A famed Philadelphia surgeon named Capt. Henry Kessler was in charge of the hospital. He came up with innovative procedures to help people like Billy.

His hooks screwed into plastic pieces on the stumps of his arms. They were connected to cables attached to the opposite shoulder. He moved his left shoulder to open and close his right hook and vice versa. With a twist of his wrist Billy would be able to use a fork or a pen.

On Oct. 9, 1945, Billy received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman. Billy also was awarded the Purple Heart and the Good Conduct Medal.

"The Good Conduct Medal was the hardest to get," he used to always joke.

He was honorably discharged from the Marines on Feb. 9, 1946. He married Larena 10 days later.

Back home in the Valley, local citizens showed their gratitude.

The people of Mercedes collected enough money to buy Billy a small ranch outside Boerne.

Mary Wade, a member of the Mercedes High School class of 1946, said, "Our project was to buy a calf for his ranch."

Harlingen residents bought him a Palomino stallion he named Charlie.

Billy taught himself to ride Charlie with his hooks.

"He didn't let anything stop him," his son Bill said.

In October 1946, Billy went to work for the U.S. Veterans Administration in San Antonio as the coordinator for prosthetic and sensory devices for disabled vets. He covered 66 counties in South Texas.

Billy and Larena had two children, William Carter Harrell and Linda Gail Harrell. Billy and Duke had pledged to name their first children after each other. Duke's son was named James Harrell Carter.

But the marriage didn't last. Larena and the children moved to California.

"We moved to Hollywood so my mother could try her hand at the movies," Bill said.

Billy remarried, and he and Olive had Christie Lee and Gary.

The son of Billy's older brother Dick, Richard grew up in Mercedes. He said his family would often take short vacations up to San Antonio to visit his uncle.

"I thought it was kind of cool to have an uncle that had such honors heaped on him," Richard said. "And he was the kindest person you'd ever want to meet."

They spent many an afternoon in the swimming pool at Landa Park in New Braunfels.

"He used to put me on his back and swim across the pool," Richard said. "There was nothing he couldn't do."

Never one to sit still, Billy built a brick barbecue in the back yard complete with a grill and an oven. He also built his own fishing boat.

The man was generous to a fault, his family members say. Generous with time and money to both friends and strangers - which makes his end even stranger.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Richard, now 62, spent that final month in the summer of 1964 with his Uncle Bill while he worked for the Coca-Cola bottler up there.

The Zumwalts were frequent guests in Billy's home. Richard never saw any evidence of any ill will or a love triangle between Billy and the couple.

Richard's parents picked him up about 12 hours before the bodies were discovered. Everything seemed normal at that time.

According to a story by United Press International, the coroner said Billy shot Mrs. Zumwalt in the kitchen and chased Zumwalt out to the driveway where he shot him.

Then Billy turned the carbine on himself. The first shot creased his scalp. The second shot killed him.

No motive was ever discovered for the killings.

No fingerprints were found on the carbine - but then, Billy didn't have any fingers. That still doesn't convince Richard.

"Anybody could have wiped the fingerprints off the gun and thrown it back down," Richard said. "They think he might have done it, but I don't care what they think.

"I think somebody else was there."

Richard said his uncle was later exonerated due to lack of evidence.

But questions remain unanswered - such as how does someone fire a carbine three times in his driveway, late at night and in an upscale neighborhood - and nobody notice?

Bill said he doesn't believe his father was a murderer or that he would kill himself.

"It goes totally against his character," Bill said.

Gary - who discovered the bodies that grisly night - doesn't hold the same view, however.

"I think he's guilty," he said of his father. "I think something happened and he just snapped."

Gary paused for a moment and then added, "I don't blame him for anything, but it was different back then. It was hard back then growing up without a dad."

HONORING ‘A HUMBLE MAN'

A memorial is located near the intersection of Texas Boulevard and Business 83 in Mercedes. The ROTC building at Mercedes High School is named for Billy, as is a dormitory at Texas A&M University.

Bill and Richard both followed his lead and joined the Marines. Each served multiple tours in Vietnam.

The children of Medal of Honor recipients are eligible for free tuition at any of the U.S. military schools. Gary graduated from the Naval Academy in 1976. He recently retired at the rank of commander.

Billy's mother remarried after his father died and had another son named Arnold who still lives in Mercedes. Efforts to contact him were unsuccessful.

Billy's niece and Richard's sister, Dixie Leavell, also live in Mercedes. She remembers her famous uncle as a kind and gentle person.

"He was a humble man," Richard said of his uncle. "He just wanted to be thought of as a good ol' boy."

"He never thought of himself as a hero," Gary said. "He said he was just a Marine doing his duty to the best of his ability."