Since antiquity, the scout has always served as the eyes and ears of an army, the most vulnerable soldier on the field of battle.

So while taking stock of his life to date, Gedeon LaCroix, 84, remains incredulous that he survived World War II’s Pacific Theater. As an intelligence scout with the 3rd Marine Division, he served in three of the war’s bloodiest campaigns.

LaCroix’s duties, like all scouts, was to operate ahead of the main forces, and thus expose himself to danger with little support or protection. He said that his experience in the Marines was invaluable to his postwar accomplishments.

“A scout is both active and lonely, and his life expectancy in combat is measured in days,” LaCroix said. “The fact that I made it may be miraculous, but also deeply influenced the rest of my life”

Retired steel industry executive and Bennington County native Gedeon LaCroix at his farm in West Arlington. LaCroix recently reflected on his WWII service. Photo courtesy of Telly Halkias

A Bennington Boy

That life was a window on Bennington in the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. LaCroix’s father was a weaver at the Leonard Holden Mill, and his grandfather led a horse wagon team that helped erect the Bennington Battle Monument.

“As kids we always found time to have fun,” LaCroix said. “My friends and I would chase the milk train when it came in town from Rutland. We would run through the woods across Dewey Street and follow it across Main Street all around the base of the Monument, where the rail bed still exists today.”

LaCroix grew up on Adams Street, attended Sacred Heart School, and in 1941 graduated from Bennington High School. He then attended the University of Vermont. LaCroix said that following Pearl Harbor, campuses experienced a mass exodus of men enlisting in the service, or holding down manufacturing jobs until conscripted.

LaCroix retuned to Bennington to work at Union Carbide. In July 1942, he decided to enlist, and hitchhiked to Pittsfield, Mass. to join the Marines. LaCroix was sent to Parris Island, S.C. for basic training and then assigned to Headquarters, 1st Battalion, 21st Marines, 3rd Marine Division in San Diego.

“I didn’t even know what a Marine was, but I found out quickly,” LaCroix said. “Those three months in basic training were brutal, but looking back, necessary for what was ahead. You never really think of it much when you’re in combat because you have to instinctively go back to your training and react for survival.”

To Hell And Back

In February 1943, Private LaCroix’s unit deployed to New Zealand to help deter a potential Japanese invasion, then later to Guadalcanal for mop-up operations following the successful U.S. campaign. On Nov. 1, 1943, LaCroix’s 20th birthday, he hit the beaches of Bougainville in what was the first of his three amphibious assaults.

“The jungle was so thick on Bougainville, and it rained every day,” LaCroix said. “Our regiment landed in knee deep mud and was directly engaged with the enemy for two months. At one point, I hadn’t removed my boots in weeks. Flesh would just rot off our feet. Suddenly our past training, which is the toughest in the world, seemed like a holiday.”

Plucked from that cauldron after showing leadership under fire, LaCroix headed stateside for Officer Candidate School. After three months, an argument with administrators found him dispatched back into the Pacific Theater as a replacement.

Showing his independent Vermont streak, LaCroix circumvented the chain-of-command and convinced a ranking officer to assign him to his former unit, which invaded Guam in July 1944.

“If I was going back under fire, I wanted to go with buddies who had been through it with me before,” LaCroix said.

Following Guam, the 3rd Marine Division landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945, an operation that was estimated to take several days. By then LaCroix had been promoted to Corporal and was made acting head of his battalion’s scouts.

The battle for Iwo Jima instead lasted five weeks. During that time, LaCroix captured the first Japanese POW on the island, and earned the Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds. He also witnessed both flag raisings.

As a result of his three month break in combat duty, LaCroix did not have the amount of service points necessary to redeploy to the States following the American victory on Okinawa in 1945. By then the enlisted leader of his battalion’s scouts, he began preparing for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, an operation that historians have estimated would have cost a million American lives.

Given this, LaCroix said that he figured his end was near. But in August 1945, the U.S. used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war ended a month later. LaCroix recalled waiting to invade Japan, and cited examples of presidents mishandling war, first mentioning Bush with Iraq, then recalling Kennedy and Johnson with Vietnam.

But he did not include Truman as a misguided leader. Instead, in 1945, LaCroix—now fervently opposed to any nuclear weapons—became a Vermont boy who just wanted to see home again.

“I survived those campaigns, hoping I’d get back to the States,” LaCroix said. “While training to invade Japan, all I could think was that my luck had run out and I was going to die.”

Gathering No Moss

After the war LaCroix wed the former Jean Griswold, a neighbor who had grown up on nearby Safford Street in Bennington. He studied business at Middlebury College and gained an MBA from Wayne University. LaCroix then spent the next 35 years in the steel industry, rising to Vice President of Operations for the Shenango Furnace Company in Pittsburgh.

In this capacity, LaCroix oversaw four mills and a fleet of ships that hauled materiel on regional lakes and waterways. He also was the company’s first manager to promote blacks as foremen, a point of pride to this day.

But LaCroix always maintained his Green Mountain roots, buying and restoring a one-room schoolhouse in Sandgate as a vacation home.

Upon retirement in 1985, LaCroix kept up his pace. Acquiring the 36-acre farm on which they still live, the LaCroixs renovated the buildings while starting an antique business, The Farm Furniture.

Since moving back home, LaCroix was active with the local Chambers of Commerce, Planning and Zoning Commissions, and the Boy Scouts. He is also past president of the Vermont Antique Dealer’s Association.

From 1987-1991 he was chair of the Bennington County Regional Planning Commission. He served on the state Council on Regional Commissions, and was chair of the George D. Aiken Resource and Conservation District for Vermont’s southern six counties. His decade as a trustee of the Bennington Museum ended in 1998 as a Trustee Emeritus.

LaCroix said that running the farm is now a full-time occupation. He still roams its expanse with a shovel or a wheelbarrow, repairing fences, filling potholes, and performing any number of daily tasks required to maintain the property.

He credits his Marines service with demonstrating the value of loyalty in trying circumstances, and an overarching sense of communal purpose.

“My wartime experience taught me to appreciate others, however different they were from me, and the importance of working together,” LaCroix said. “In terrible times we watched each other’s backs to preserve not only our lives, but our freedom.

“As a result, we returned to society better able to achieve common goals with our neighbors.”

Telly Halkias is a writer and editor from Bennington. Email: tchalkias@aol.com.