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Felix Cervantes, III (Admiral Ese)-Historian
to remember
Wainwright, Jonathan Mayhew, IV, GEN.
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Contact Info
Home Town Walla Walla
Last Address San Antonio, Texas
Date of Passing Sep 02, 1953
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
General Wainwright was born 23 August 1883, at Fort Walla Walla, Washington, the son of a U.S. Army officer and a descendant in a line of distinguished U. S. Naval officers.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1906, and was commissioned in the cavalry. Over the next several years he served with the 1st Cavalry in Texas, 1906-08; in the Philippines, where he saw action against Moro rebels, 1908-10; and at various posts in the West.
He graduated from the Mounted Service School, Fort Riley, Kansas, 1916. Promoted to Captain, and in 1917 was on staff of the first officers training camp at Plattsburg, New York.
In February 1918 he was ordered to France. In June he became Assistant Chief-of-Staff of the 82nd Infantry Division, with which he took part in Saint Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives.
Promoted to temporary Lieutenant Colonel in October he was assigned to occupation duty in Germany with the 3rd Army until 1920, in which year, having reverted to Captain, he was promoted to Major.
After a year as an instructor at the renamed Cavalry School at Fort Riley, he was attached to the General Staff during 1921-23 and assigned to the 3rd Cavalry, Fort Myer, Virginia, 1923-25. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1929 and graduated from the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1931, and the Army War College in 1934. He was promoted to Colonel in 1935, and commanded the 3rd Cavalry until 1938, when he was advanced to Brigadier General in command of the 1st Cavalry Brigade at Fort Clark, Texas.
In September 1940, he was promoted to temporary Major General and returned to the Philippines to take command of the Philippine Division. As the senior field commander of US and Filipino forces under Douglas MacArthur, he had tactical responsibility for resisting the Japanese invasion that began in late December 1941.
Pushed back from beachheads in Lingayen Gulf, his Philippine forces withdrew onto the Bataan Peninsula early in January 1942, where they occupied well prepared defensive positions and commanded the entrance to Manila Bay.
In throwing back a major Japanese assault in January the defenders earned name of "battling bastards of Bataan." When MacArthur was ordered off Bataan in March 1942, Wainwright, promoted to temporary Lieutenant General, succeeded to command of US Army Forces in the Far East, a command immediately afterward redesignated US Forces in the Philippines. The Japanese attacks resumed in earnest in April.
A small core of the now starving, ill and unsupplied garrison pulled farther back onto island fortress of Corregidor, leaving 70,000 defenders on Bataan to surrender on April 9. The Japanese gained a foothold on Corregidor on May 5 against a furious defense, and the next day he was forced to surrender the 3500 men on the island.
Under orders that he was forced to broadcast, local commanders elsewhere in the Philippines surrendered one by one, and on June 9 the US command in the Philippines ceased to exist. He was then held in prison camps in northern Luzon, Formosa, and Manchuria until he was liberated by Russian troops in August 1945.
After witnessing the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, he returned to the Philippines to receive the surrender of the local Japanese commander. A hero's welcome in the US was accompanied by promotion to General and the awarding of the Medal of Honor. In January 1946 he took command of the 4th Army, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
He retired from active duty in August 1947. He died in San Antonio, Texas, 2 September 1953.
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, IV, United States Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty from March 12 - 7 May 1942, while serving with U.S. Army Forces in the Philippine Islands.
General Wainwright distinguished himself by intrepid and determined leadership against greatly superior enemy forces. At the repeated risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in his position, he frequented the firing line of his troops where his presence provided the example and incentive that helped make the gallant efforts of these men possible. The final stand on beleaguered Corregidor, for which he was in an important measure personally responsible, commanded the admiration of the Nation's allies. It reflected the high morale of American arms in the face of overwhelming odds.
His courage and resolution were a vitally needed inspiration to the then sorely pressed freedom-loving peoples of the world.
General Orders: War Department, General Orders No. 80, September 19, 1945
Action Date: March 12 - May 7, 1942
Service: Army
Rank: General
Division: U.S. Army Forces in the Philippine Islands
World War I/St. Mihiel Campaign
From Month/Year
September / 1918
To Month/Year
September / 1918
Description St. Mihiel, 12 - 16 September 1918. By September 1918, with both the Marne and the Amiens salients eliminated, there remained but one major threat to lateral rail communications behind the Allied lines-the old St. Mihiel salient near the Paris-Nancy line. Active preparations for its reduction began with the transfer of Headquarters First Army, effective 13 August, from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre in the Marne region to Neufchateau on the Meuse, immediately south of St. Mihiel. On 28 August the first echelon of headquarters moved closer to the front at Ligny-en-Barrois.
American unite from Flanders to Switzerland were shifted into the area near the salient. The fourteen American and four French divisions assigned to the First Army for the operation contained ample infantry and machinegun units for the attack. But because of the earlier priority given to shipment of infantry (at the insistence of the British and French) the First Army was short of artillery, tank, air and other support units essential to a well-balanced field army. The French made up this deficiency by loaning Pershing over half the artillery and nearly half the airplanes and tanks needed for the St. Mihiel operation.
Shortly before the offensive was to begin, Foch threatened once again to disrupt Pershing's long-held desire to carry out a major operation with an independent American force. On 30 August the Allied Commander in Chief proposed to exploit the recently gained successes on the Aisne-Marne and Amiens fronts by reducing the size of the St. Mihiel attack and dividing the American forces into three groups-one for the salient offensive and two for fronts to the east and west of the Argonne Forest. Pershing, however, remained adamant in his insistence that the First Army should not now be broken up, no matter where it might be sent into action. Fina1ly a compromise was reached. The St. Mihiel attack was subordinated to the much larger offensive to be launched on the Meuse-Argonne front in late September, but the First Army remained intact. Pershing agreed to limit his operations by employing only the minimum force needed to reduce the salient in three or four days. Simultaneously he was to prepare his troops for a major role in the Meuse-Argonne drive.
The St. Mihiel offensive began on 12 September with a threefold assault on the salient. The main attack was made against the south face by two American corps. On the right was the I Corps (from right to left the 82d, 90th, 5th, and 2d Divisions in line with the 78th in reserve) covering a front from Pont-à-Mousson on the Moselle westward to Limey; on the left, the IV Corps (from right to left the 89th, 42d, and 1st Divisions in line with the 3d in reserve) extending along a front from Limey westward to Marvoisin. A secondary thrust was carried out against the west face along the heights of the Meuse, from Mouilly north to Haudimont, by the V Corps (from right to left the 26th Division, the French 15th Colonial Division, and the 8th Brigade, 4th Division in line with the rest of the 4th in reserve). A holding attack against the apex, to keep the enemy in the salient, was made by the French II Colonial Corps (from right to left the French 39th Colonial Division, the French 26th Division, and the French 2d Cavalry Division in line). In First Army reserve were the American 35th, 80th, and 91st Divisions.
Tota1 Allied forces involved in the offensive numbered more than 650,000-some 550,000 American and 100,000 Allied (mostly French) troops. In support of the attack the First Army had over 3,000 guns, 400 French tanks, and 1,500 airplanes. Col. William Mitchell directed the heterogeneous air force, composed of British, French, Italian, Portuguese, and American units, in what proved to be the largest single air operation of the war. American squadrons flew 609 of the airplanes, which were mostly of French or British manufacture.
Defending the salient was German "Army Detachment C," consisting of eight divisions and a brigade in the line and about two divisions in reserve. The Germans, now desperately short of manpower, had begun a step-by-step withdrawal from the salient only the day before the offensive began. The attack went so well on 12 September that Pershing ordered a speedup in the offensive. By the morning of 13 September the 1st Division, advancing from the east, joined hands with the 26th Division, moving in from the west, and before evening all objectives in the salient had been captured. At this point Pershing halted further advances so that American units could be withdrawn for the coming offensive in the Meuse-Argonne sector.
This first major operation by an American Army under its own command took 16,000 prisoners at a cost of 7,000 casualties, eliminated the threat of an attack on the rear of Allied fortifications at Nancy and Verdun, greatly improved Allied lateral rail communications, and opened the way for a possible future offensive to seize Metz and the Briey iron fields.
