← Back to the front page

Fascinating and Lesser Known People Who Changed American History

Khalid Elhassan May 5, 2020 33 min

Normandy landings - Operation Overlord — Men of the 320th in Normandy. YouTube

22. Tracking Down the Saipan Stare Marine

Another photo of Thomas Underwood taken by W. Eugene Smith. 1st Battalion, 24th Marines

Evidence supports that photographer W. Eugene Smith had correctly labeled the photo for what it was: that of a Marine in Saipan. The subject is wearing a Marine camouflage cover on his helmet. He is clad in Marine dungarees. His equipment is secured by Marine straps, not Army ones. Photos before and after on the photographer’s contact sheet depict personnel with unit patches of the 1^stBattalion, 24h Marines.

Finally, the photographer’s original caption for the image reads “T. E. Underwood, 24th Batt. St. Petersburg, FL“. There was a PFC Thomas Ellis Underwood from Saint Petersburg, Florida, who fought in Saipan, serving as a squad leader with Company B, 1/24 Marines. He fought in Iwo Jima the following year, earned a Bronze Star, and was killed in action at age 22.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.