February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The island was Roi-Namur and it was held by the Japanese. Gleason was in the foxhole with fellow members of G Company of the 23rd Regiment of the 4th Marine Division. Somebody decided to call the invasion of this God-forsaken atoll “Operation Flintlock,” but at that moment it was more of a deadlock.
And in the hole, precise unit numbers didn’t count for much.
The name of the island gave a clue as to its nature. It was in fact two side-by-side sand spits that barely met the definition of islands. Roi and Namur were indeed tiny, both less than a square mile. But there were an estimated 3,000 Japanese troops defending them and they had done everything possibly to fortify their positions against attacks from the sea.
“We had just landed. An awful lot of guys got banged in that landing. They were shooting at us, we were shooting at them,” Gleason said.
“There is this guy. He’s in F Company, and he’s in the hole with us. His name was Esposito.”
What followed was one of those moments that most people never face in a life, and those that do, remember it in the most vivid detail.
“[An enemy soldier] threw a grenade in the hole and Esposito jumped on top of it. He saved us all,” he remembered.
When he got back to New York, Gleason visited the Italian-American Esposito family in Brooklyn to thank them for their son’s ultimate sacrifice, and for the fact that a young Irish-American kid had been given another chance of life.
That chance was very nearly used up a little deeper into the Pacific campaign.
After surviving Roi-Namur, Gleason later found himself battling through the hell that was Saipan. The battle was in its final stages when Gleason and his G Company buddies were checking out small caves that the Japanese had used as defensive positions.
“I heard the ping,” Gleason said.
The ping came from the spring on a grenade that had been released after the pin had been pulled. A Japanese soldier in a small, unseen cave had thrown it out at the passing marines.
The grenade exploded beside Gleason. Miraculously, he survived and was able to fire into the hole. He killed the Japanese soldier but it quickly became evident that Gleason was in bad shape.
He remembered a doctor staring down at him and telling him the bad news that one of his legs was going to have to come off.
“And I just smiled back at him,” Gleason said. The wounded Marine was being pumped so full of morphine through a needle inserted in his spine that he thought he was having a grand old time.
Sixty years later, Tommy Gleason was smiling at the prospect of a grand day leading the 243rd St. Patrick’s Day Parade up Fifth Avenue.
Never mind the fact that he lost his leg in the war or that the other one still carries shrapnel and was recently the target of a knee surgeon. He intends to leave his law office in Bowling Green Wednesday morning and tackle the long green line up the avenue and be thankful of the chance every step of the way.
“I couldn’t believe when they asked me to be grand marshal, the 79-year-old Gleason said.
At the time of speaking, it was 48 hours to the start of the parade and Gleason had been checking out the weather forecast. It’s going to be brisk enough but it would take a blizzard to slow down a man who has been keeping a schedule lately that would tire a man half his age.
The phone rang every few minutes. Family and friends were calling to supply details of when and where they will be, or just delivering congratulations.
The Irish comedian Hal Roach was on the line telling his old friend that he was hoping to be at the parade.
Roach runs a center in Ireland for challenged children. It’s called the Hal Roach Center For Exceptional Children. The comedian asked to speak with the interviewer and insisted that the word gets out that Gleason has been one of the center’s greatest benefactors.
A few one-, two- and three-liners later and Roach was off the line and Gleason’s mind returned to the parade.
Most of his immediate family would be at there, he said.
That family is made up of his wife, Catherine, nine children, their spouses and eight grandchildren.
As is widely known, Gleason will be heading the parade exactly 20 years after his father, Thomas “Teddy” Gleason, was grand marshal.
Gleason’s law practice focuses heavily on labor law. Even as he deals with all the dinners and receptions that come with the grand marshal’s sash of office, he is involved in the critical stages of negotiations on behalf of longshoremen working the ports that stretch up the coast from Texas to Maine.
He will be 80 in October.
But Teddy Gleason has survived Roi-Namur, Saipan, not to mention sparring sessions as a Marine recruit in a boxing ring with Rocky Graziano and Billy Conn.
After that, what’s a little walk cheered on by thousands?
So he will walk, all the way thinking of family, his dad, the hero Esposito and his Marine pals who never made it back from the Pacific.
“I love the parade. I hope it goes on forever,” he said.