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The speeches are over.
A Marine Corps file review reveals the real WWII service record of actor Lee Marvin, debunking the popular Iwo Jima Navy Cross legend and showing his true wartime history on Saipan.
Key Takeaways
- Lee Marvin's documented WWII record differs substantially from the popular Iwo Jima Navy Cross legend.
- Primary sources such as personnel files, telegrams, and medical reports can correct celebrity war stories.
- Marvin was wounded at Saipan in June 1944 and received a Purple Heart rather than the Navy Cross.
- The true service history is documented in detail and is arguably more compelling than the myth.
What the video covers
- The video analyzes Lee Marvin's Marine Corps personnel file to separate documented facts from the popular Iwo Jima Navy Cross story.
- The file shows Marvin enlisted at 18 in 1942 and was trained as a quartermaster clerk before requesting a transfer to combat roles.
- He was reclassified as a scout sniper and served with division scouts who went ashore on outlying islands before the Saipan landing.
- A 1944 telegram reports him wounded in action, and a doctor's report describes an oblique wound to the buttock, not a dramatic injury.
- The Navy Cross and Iwo Jima details in the legend are not supported by the file; he received a Purple Heart.
- The file records a disciplinary confinement shortly before Saipan and a discharge to duty within weeks of his wound.
- Later neurological complications (neuritis) led to a medical discharge; his file shows he requested discharge in 1945.
- The video argues that the documented record of Marvin's service is more interesting than the myth built around him.
- The creator uses the file's specific dates, unit histories, and forms to build a case against popular anecdotes.
- The analysis also contrasts Marvin's record with the story of Sergeant Robert James Keshan, a Marine whose exaggerated account is discussed as a parallel.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: The Story vs. The File
- 00:48Enlistment and Early Marine Corps Service
- 03:00Wounded at Saipan: The Telegrams and Medical Records
- 06:23Reclassification as a Scout Sniper
- 09:00Island Operations and Disciplinary Record
- 12:00Post-Wound Medical Discharge
- 15:20Awards and the Iwo Jima Legend
- 18:00Conclusion: The Documented Record
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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happened. What really happened is better, and it is all in his Marine Corps file. a telegram to his parents. A metal that was not allowed to name the island. A doctor's report that measures the wound to the centimeter. One line of
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Lee Marvin, United States Marine, wounded in the Pacific at 20.
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puts company 1, third battalion, 24th Marines aboard the transport. Fuller, Maui, Pearl Harbor, any talk and on June 15th, Saipan. The next [music] strip is one line long. Participated in the battle of Saipan, Mariana's Islands from the 15th of June, 1944 until and then a
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You have probably read where Ewima with a Navy cross beside a sergeant who became Captain Kangaroo.
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regret to inform you that your son, Private First Class Lee Marvin, has been wounded in action. Nature of wounds not reported. The telegram is dated July 18th. So is the next page. a letter from his mother to the commonant of the
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He never wrote a word of that story, and it is not what happened.
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her. Washington answered in August. The report states only that your son was wounded in action during the invasion of Saipan Island. In December, almost 6 months after the bullet, a second letter gave her eight more words. He sustained
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What really happened is better, and it is all in his Marine Corps file.
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five asterisks. In wartime, even his own medal could not say where he had been. A month later, the sensor let go.
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A telegram to his parents.
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Signed by a brigadier general, and delivered through the commanding officer of a Navy hospital, Saipan, not Ewima. A purple heart, not a Navy cross. The doctors were blunter than the general.
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A medal that was not allowed to name the island.
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The famous story says he was shot in the backside. That is the one line in it his file supports. Look at the date though, the 17th. The metal says the 18th and so does the stamp in his book. The same
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A doctor's report that measures the wound to the centimeter.
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an oblique wound 5 cm x 12 down to the muscle. By the Marine Corps's own history of the battle, his battalion went into the attack on the morning of the 18th on the left of the fourth division and machine gun fire stopped it
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One line of the famous story turns out to be true.
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says sniper and it says Saipan. Page one of the file is signed by his parents. August 10th, 1942. Lamont and Courtney Marvin of East 79th Street in New York do freely consent to the enlistment of a minor. He was 18. On the
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I will show you which one, where he really was on the morning the Marines hit Ewima.
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The Marine Corps looked at a boy who could type [music] and sent him to quartermaster school. His instructors wrote three words on the data sheet.
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And what is in Captain Kangaroo's own Marine file?
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ridden at desk to the end of the war. Page 15. July 1st, 1943. His company commander writes to Washington. Corporal Marvin has stated that he does not desire to remain in quartermaster work and has shown he is incapable of
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June 1944.
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his qualification card under duty desired, somebody has written his first choice, engineers [music] line duty, and his second, infantry. Headquarters wrote its answer by hand in the corner of the page, reduced to private line. On August 1st, it was done. You are hereby reduced
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A typed strip pasted into his service book puts Company 1, Third Battalion, 24th Marines aboard the transport.
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Then the card changes. A new classification appears beside his name, Scout Sniper, specialty number 761.
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Fuller, Maui, Pearl Harbor, anytime, and on June 15th, Saipan.
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Melu Island, Quadulin atal. By the core's history, the scouts went ashore on those outlying eyelets the day before the main landing to open the passes into the lagoon. His book says it in eight words, participated in battle of
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The next strip is one line long.
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One of them listed only as an unnamed island. Another of the seven was Alu Gak Lab. You will not find it on a map today. In 1952, the first hydrogen bomb test erased it. February 19th landed on Regile Lee Island and participated in
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Participated in the Battle of Saipan, Mariana Islands, from the 15th of June, 1944, until and then a rubber stamp, June 18th.
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The legend needs it later. 3 days after that, the scouts were lent to another regiment for the last fight of the atal on Perry Island. The commander of that regiment wrote to their general afterward, passing on the report of the
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Four days.
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the loan of those fine troops. The letter does not name Private Marvin. A note in his book does the company [music] of which he was a member was commended. I count 15 islands on that strip in 7 days. Most of the entries say
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His service card says why in three words.
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his own book names 17 places where he went ashore and it does not need four more. In March, the scouts were renamed.
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Wounded in action.
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One last entry before Saipan. The file gives it six lines, so I will give it one at C. 10 days before the landing, a debt court gave him 5 days confinement for leaving a post before he was relieved and for disobeying an order.
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The day is on the card, too.
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fragments. And then a line I did not expect. On the 26th of July 1944, he was discharged to duty. Less than 6 weeks after a sniper bullet, the doctors marked him fit for duty. It did not last. In August, he was on the sick list
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But somebody's pencil mark sits right on top of it.
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second time. In December, the pain was back, and this time, the doctors gave it a name, [music] nuritis, a nerve caught in the scar. A long time for regeneration of nerve fibers was predicted, the report says, and he was
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His parents got the telegram a month later.
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11th of February, 1945. Now take the date I asked you to keep. February 19th, 1945. The Marines land on Ewima. By the corbs history, his old battalion landed there that same day. It is the day the legend puts Lee Marvin on
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Deeply regret to inform you that your son, Private First Class Lee Marvin, has been wounded in action.
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In March, the hospital gave him 30 days leave to his parents' address on East 79th Street. In May, a board of Navy doctors wrote its finding unfit for [music] full duty. Two neurosurgeons had looked at the scar and decided that
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Nature of wounds not reported.
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asked him whether he [music] wanted it. His answer is the shortest page in the file and it is signed in his [music] own hand. I, Private First Class Lee Marvin, desire to be discharged from the US Marine Corps Reserve and not retained in
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The telegram is dated July 18th.
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The last form sums up three years in one typed line. Military specialties, quartermaster supply man, rifleman, [music] rifle NCO, sniper scout. That fall, a Marine Corps office mailed him a card to ask how he was getting on. He filled it
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So is the next page.
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[music] ask which awards he had earned. The Marine Corps answered with a checklist. The Purple Heart, the presidential unit citation given to the fourth Marine Division for Saipan and Tinyan. [music] The Asiatic Pacific campaign medal with two bronze stars.
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A letter from his mother to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
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Lee Marvin died in August of 1987. By early 2002, the story was going around by email written as a transcript of the Tonight Show. In it, Johnny Carson says that Marvin won the Navy Cross on Euoima. And Marvin answers that
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She already knew her son had written to her himself from a hospital ship called the Solace, and his letter beat the telegram by two weeks.
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exchange. And nobody who has examined the story has produced one. So I will not tell you what he never said. I can show you what the Marine Corps wrote down. And here is what it wrote about the sergeant. Robert James Keshan,
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What she did not know was how bad it was, and nobody would tell her.
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The fighting on Euima had ended in March. On the day he took the oath, the recruiting station sent him home to wait for orders. He reached Paris Island at [music] the end of June. On September 1st, the day before Japan signed the
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Washington answered in August.
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enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve on the 14th of June, 1945 after completion of a 4-year academic high school education. In 1946, he spent about 3 months at Pearl Harbor, came home, and was discharged a private first class.
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The report states only that your son was wounded in action during the invasion of Saipan Island.
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he never claimed anything more and said [music] plainly that he saw no combat. He was never a sergeant, and when the Marines landed on Euoima, he was a 17-year-old finishing high school in Queens. Two honest files. One email took
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In December, almost six months after the bullet, a second letter gave her eight more words.
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Go back to the photograph. Here is what the 89 pages behind it add up to. A clerk who gave up his stripes to carry a rifle. 16 islands in the marshals with the division scouts. Five of them on his
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He sustained the gunshot wound of the hip.
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Two returns to duty before they stopped trying [music] and one sentence of his own asking to go home rather than serve at half strength. He died in 1987 and he is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The stone does not mention
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The medal was just as careful.
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is enough. The legend needed Ewima and [music] he never did. This film is my reading of a public record and every page of it is in the National Archives catalog. [music] The number is in the description. You are free to disagree
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This is the record of his Purple Heart, dated July 10th, 1944, the day after Saipan was declared secure, for wounds received in action against the enemy at and then five asterisks.
Topics:Lee MarvinSaipanMarine CorpsWWIIIwo Jimamilitary historyNavy CrossPurple Heartpersonnel filecelebrity myths
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