Medal of Honor Monday: Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Francis Pierce

As the chaos of World War II’s Battle of Iwo Jima unfolded, Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Francis Junior Pierce refused to leave any wounded men behind. The hospital corpsman showed fearlessness throughout the turmoil. That valor led him to receive the Medal of Honor. 

Pierce was born Dec. 7, 1924, in Earlville, Iowa, to Frank and Rose Pierce. He grew up on a farm and had a younger brother named Donald.

Pierce turned 17 the day Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, which thrust the U.S. into World War II. Shortly thereafter, he enlisted in the Navy to do his part for the war effort.

After completing training to be a hospital corpsman, Pierce served the early part of the war at various duty stations in the Carolinas. He rose to the rank of pharmacist’s mate before being transferred in January 1944 to the newly activated 4th Marine Division in Camp Pendleton, California. Soon after, the unit was deployed to the Pacific.

Pierce’s first time in combat was in February 1944 during the Marshall Islands campaign, when the division landed on Roi-Namur, a small island in the Kwajalein Atoll. During that battle, Pierce saw fighting that made him reject the corpsman’s code to remain unarmed. Going forward, he was never without a submachine gun. According to naval historians, he “used it so effectively that the Marines nicknamed him ‘the Angel with a Tommy Gun.’”

For the rest of the year, Pierce’s unit, the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, remained almost continuously in combat, fighting on the islands of Saipan and Tinian in the Mariana Islands chain.

Their next stop — Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic island that, if taken from the enemy, would put Allied aircraft in striking distance of the Japanese mainland. It became the bloodiest campaign of the war for the Marine Corps, a monthlong battle in which 27 men later received Medals of Honor for their heroics, including Pierce.

Throughout the battle, Pierce carried out dangerous volunteer missions that put him under near-continuous enemy fire. He became an expert on the terrain, going back and forth about 25 miles of the landscape to memorize details and draw a map marking enemy forces he’d encountered.

On March 15, 1945, Pierce was in a group of medics who were carrying two wounded Marines to an aid station when they got caught in heavy enemy fire that injured a corpsman and two stretcher bearers. Pierce quickly took charge and carried the newly wounded men to a shelter, where he gave them first aid and directed them toward an evacuation route.

Pierce then stood out in the open and blasted his weapon toward the enemy to draw their fire, giving six other stretcher bearers a chance to reach cover. From there, he focused on the Marines who’d been injured before the latest chaos erupted.

As Pierce was attending to the profuse bleeding of one of the Marines, the victim was struck again by a bullet from an enemy hiding in a cave about 20 yards away. With no concern for his own safety, Pierce put himself in harm’s way to draw out the attacker and kill him using the last of his ammunition.

Now unarmed, Pierce lifted the wounded Marine onto his back before moving across 200 feet of open, bullet-strewn terrain to get him to safety. It was a harrowing trip, but Pierce pushed through his exhaustion — as well as warnings from his peers — to go back across the same fire-swept path to rescue the second Marine. That effort paid off, and they both reached safety.

The next day, Pierce led a combat patrol to a sniper’s nest. As he was attending to a stricken Marine, he was shot in the shoulder and suffered shrapnel injuries. Pierce refused aid for himself, though, instead directing others to continue attending to the wounded Marine’s treatment while he laid down cover fire for their protection.

Pierce’s fearless actions inspired his entire battalion. He was initially awarded a Silver Star and the Navy Cross, but they were later combined and replaced by the Medal of Honor.

Pierce received the nation’s highest honor for valor on June 25, 1948, from President Harry S. Truman during a White House ceremony. The medal was also bestowed upon Army Staff Sgt. John R. Crews and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jackson Charles Pharris that day.

Aside from Pierce, three other pharmacist’s mates were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions on Iwo Jima: Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Jack Williams, Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class George Wahlen and Navy Petty Officer 1st Class John Willis. 

Pierce was discharged from the Navy in 1945 and worked for a short time as a logger back in his home state. Later that year, however, he moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to finally meet Lorraine Decker, with whom he’d been corresponding throughout the war, according to the Grand Rapids Press newspaper. The pair married in August 1946 and had two sons.

Pierce went to work as an officer for the Grand Rapids Police Department, working his way up the ranks from beat patrolman to deputy chief by the time he retired in 1982. The Grand Rapids Press said among his many duties, he was the city’s bomb disposal expert.

After Lorraine Pierce died in the 1970s, Pierce spent his remaining years with his second wife, Madelyn, before succumbing to lung cancer on Dec. 21, 1986, at age 62.

Pierce is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Grand Rapids.

In 2003, toy maker Hasbro released a commemorative G.I. Joe figurine of Pierce. To date, he’s the only hospital corpsman to be honored with his own action figure.