Category: Interesting stuff
Want to get better at handling the hard hitters? Here are six ways to reduce felt recoil from the bench.
When we shoot from a bench rest, we’re usually sighting in a rifle or testing ammunition. When doing either, it’s important to get the best shot to shot results we can. The problem is that sustained recoil can negatively impact not only your shooting but also your enjoyment. There are some ways you can mitigate felt recoil when shooting from a bench rest, and these techniques become very important when you crawl behind a hard-kicking rifle.
The general consensus among firearms trainers is that most experienced adult shooters can withstand about 20 shots from a bench rest with a .30-06 Springfield rifle without experiencing excessive discomfort or a negative impact on accuracy and precision. The amount of free recoil energy the average .30-06 rifle with a scope will generate is right at about 20 foot-pounds. Of course, some rifles recoil much harder. A .338 Winchester Magnum can generate almost twice as much free recoil energy.
But it’s not always about free recoil energy.
Due to the configuration of some rifles and their lack of a soft butt pad, even lighter recoiling rifles can be uncomfortable to shoot, and too, everyone has different recoil tolerance levels.
Years ago, I purchased a Marlin 1895 Cowboy lever action rifle in .45-70 Government. Based on recoil calculations, that rifle recoiled with just a tad more than 20 foot-pounds of free recoil energy.
However, because of the way the rifle was configured with its thin hard plastic butt plate, it was painful to shoot from the bench. Shooting while standing offhand wasn’t bad at all, but after four or five shots off a bench with full-power loads, your eyes would start watering.
If you’re going to be doing a good bit of shooting from a bench rest with a rifle that has a bit of bite, try some of these techniques to help diminish that bite. Individually they all work, but by combining them you can usually make a rifle that’s no fun at all to shoot from a bench at least tolerable enough to allow you to test several loads and/or sight it in.
1: Hold Her With Passion
As soon as a rifle fires, it will begin moving to the rear. If there is a space between the rifle’s butt pad and your shoulder, that movement and impact will enhance recoil pain. This is especially true if the rifle does not have a soft butt pad.
Before you press the trigger, make sure the butt stock is snug against your shoulder—but be careful not to pull the rifle back into your shoulder forcibly. The stress of your muscles will make it more difficult to hold the rifle on target steady.
2: As Mom Would Say: Sit Up!
When most shooters get behind a rifle positioned on a bench rest, they tend to position the rifle as close to the bench as possible. If you do that and you’re about 6 feet tall, with most benches you will need to lean over to get low enough to place your shoulder on the rifle stock and your eye behind the sights. This position puts more of your body behind the rifle and when the rifle recoils your body will absorb—feel—more of the recoil because your body will not move easily to the rear.
The closer you can sit to an erect position when you shoot from a bench the less you will feel the punch on your shoulder. It more closely replicates shooting from a standing position. A gunsmith I know who builds dangerous game rifles built his test shooting bench high enough to shoot from while standing to limit felt recoil.
3: Get Yourself a Sissy Pad
One of the easiest ways to limit the pain associated with recoil when shooting from a benchrest is to use a sissy pad. These are pads you strap on your shoulder to help mitigate recoil. Caldwell and PAST offer several versions—and they do work. Your range buddies might call you a sissy and rag on you for using one … but just ignore them.
Remember, the reason you’re shooting from a bench is to evaluate ammo or sight in your rifle, and both need to be accomplished with as much precision as possible. You don’t shoot from a bench rest to demonstrate your manhood.
4: Slings Aren’t Just For Shoulders
When I am doing a lot of shooting from the bench with a rifle that has stiff recoil, I like to take the rifle strap and loop it firmly around the top front sandbag(s). This can tremendously reduce the reward force of the rifle during recoil, because the rifle must pull against the weight of the sandbag as it moves to the rear. If you’re using a real sandbag—filled with sand—as opposed to those filled with polymer pellets, this technique works like a lead sled.
5: It’s Time to Get a Suppressor
The baffles inside a suppressor redirect and slow the gas produced when a rifle is fired. This, in conjunction with the weight a suppressor adds to the rifle, helps reduce free recoil energy, sometimes by more than 25 percent.
But when it comes to felt recoil, the reduction can seem even more. With big-bore, hard-kicking rifles, the reduction is very noticeable because big-bore rifles require big, heavy suppressors. For example, the Banish V46 V2 suppressor, which will work on 0.375- and 0.458-caliber rifles, weighs right at 1 pound.
6: It’s OK to Put on Weight
The Caldwell Lead Sled is a mechanical rifle rest that has a cradle for your rifle’s forearm and a pocket for the butt stock. It’s adjustable and holds the rifle reasonably firmly. If you add one or more bags of lead shot to the undertray, it can eliminate a lot of felt recoil. The system, however, is not perfect because you are dramatically altering the way the rifle reacts to recoil … and this can alter your point of impact.
If you sight in your rifle with a lead sled, you should confirm your zero without it. Also, with extremely hard-recoiling rifles, the lead sled can strain the bedding of the rifle and, in some cases with extensive shooting, cause damage.
A lead sled still has application and is especially useful with new or young shooters who are very recoil sensitive, but if you properly employ the first five techniques a Lead Sled is not necessary.
Don’t Overdo It
All these techniques—individually or combined—can help you make hard kickers more tolerable to shoot. But even with these techniques, some rifles can still be uncomfortable. It’s not just the impact on your shoulder; it can be the sort of whiplash sensation applied to your neck.
One of the best things to do when shooting a heavy recoiling rifle is to shoot in moderation. A sustained pounding is what puts professional fighters on the canvas, and it does little to help you shoot your best.
Physics Lesson: Free Recoil Energy
If you use the internet as a source for recoil calculation, you’ll find various calculators you can plug data into to determine the recoil velocity, recoil energy and recoil impulse of a gun. Ironically, just as two shooters will experience the felt recoil of the same gun differently, these calculators will give you different results—they’ll be close but rarely identical.
But does it matter?
Not really, because none of these calculators will tell you exactly what it feels like to shoot a specific gun with a specific load. Still, because humans are conditioned to rate or score everything by numbers, we want a numerical answer to everything including how hard a gun will kick.
The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) sets the specifications manufacturers follow when they make guns and ammo and is a great source for free recoil energy information.
According to SAAMI, the momentum of a free-recoiling firearm is equal and opposite in direction to the momentum of the bullet (or shot charge/slug and wad column) and the propellant gases. Because propellant gases are extremely difficult to weigh, SAAMI equates the propellant gas weight to the powder charge weight.
But SAAMI tempers the velocity of the propellent gases based on gun type. The way the different calculators express the velocity of propellent gases is one reason you’ll see different results from different formulas.
According to SAAMI, the formula for determining the free recoil energy (FRE) of a firearm can be expressed as:
FRE = WF/(2×32.17) ((WEVE + WPCVEf)/(7000 x WF))2
where:
WF = weight of firearms in pounds
WE = weight (in grains of the ejecta—bullet or shot and wad column)
VE = velocity of the ejecta in feet per second
WPC = weight of projectile charge in grains
7000 = conversion factor for grains to pounds
VEƒ = velocity of the propellant gases (VE) multiplied by gun factor (ƒ)
where the value of ƒ =:
High Powered Rifle – 1.75VE
Shotguns (average length) – 1.50VE
Shotguns (long barrel) – 1.25VE
Pistols & revolvers – 1.50VE
Given this formula, a 7-pound high-powered rifle firing a 165-grain bullet with a powder charge weight of 40 grains at a muzzle velocity of 2,700 fps would have 18.26 foot-pounds of free recoil energy (FRE):
WF WE. VE WPC VE ƒ WF. FRE
7/(2×32.17) ((165*2700+40*(2700*1.75)/(7000*7))2=18.26 foot/pounds
I plugged this same data into three online recoil calculators, and the results were: 18.19, 18.2, 18.88, for an average of 18.42 foot-pounds for free recoil energy. You can take the time to work the formula, but that time will be mostly a waste because we’re all going to experience recoil force differently … at least by as much as the varied results provided by online calculators.
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Huh!!!
In the high-stakes landscape of 2026, Poland has emerged as the undisputed heavy-armor capital of Europe. Facing a volatile “Zero Line” to the east, Warsaw has executed a “Full-Stack” procurement strategy that many Western observers initially doubted: the simultaneous deployment of two world-class Main Battle Tanks (MBTs), the American M1A2 Abrams and the South Korean K2 Black Panther.
By mastering the transition to this “High-Low” hybrid fleet, the Polish Land Forces (Wojska Lądowe) are building an “Iron Ceiling” designed to achieve total overmatch against any potential armor threat in the Suwalki Gap.
Poland’s acquisition of 366 Abrams (a mix of M1A2 SEPv3 and M1A1 variants) serves as the “Sledgehammer” of the military. 
Strategic Positioning: The Abrams fleet is primarily assigned to the 18th Mechanized Division (the “Iron Division”) stationed in eastern Poland. Their mission is clear: act as a “Digital Trench” that stops an invading force in its tracks. Survivability and Punch: With its depleted uranium armor packages and the legendary 120mm smoothbore gun, the Abrams is the “High” component capable of absorbing massive punishment while delivering “Industrial Warp Speed” destruction to enemy MBTs. The Logistics Hub: In 2026, the Abrams Regional Sustainment Center in Poznań has reached full operational capacity. This ensures “Industrial Resilience,” allowing Poland to maintain and repair the fleet locally without relying on the “Silicon Ceiling” of overseas shipping.While “low” usually implies inferior, in the Polish context, the K2 Black Panther represents a lighter, more agile “High-Tech” maneuver element. Poland’s order of 1,000 K2s (including the K2PL variant) is the “Industrial Endurance” play.
Agility in the Mud: Weighing roughly 55 tons compared to the Abrams’ 70+ tons, the K2 is perfectly suited for the soft, marshy terrain of northern Poland and the Masurian Lake District. Its hydropneumatic suspension allows it to “kneel,” providing a superior “Digital Ghost” profile in defensive hull-down positions. Autoloaded Lethality: The K2’s autoloader reduces the crew to three, allowing for a higher rate of fire and a smaller turret profile. This makes it an ideal “Software-Defined” predator for rapid-reaction maneuvers where speed is the primary defense. Sovereign Industrial Capacity: The “K2PL” program represents Poland’s path to “Digital Sovereignty.” By 2026, domestic production lines in Poznań have begun rolling out Polish-made hulls, ensuring that Warsaw owns its “Full-Stack” armored supply chain.Critics once argued that a dual-tank fleet would be a “logistical nightmare.” However, Warsaw has turned this into a “Digital Resilience” advantage.
Operational Redundancy: By operating two distinct platforms, Poland avoids a “single point of failure.” If a specific supply chain for American parts is throttled, the South Korean pipeline remains open, and vice versa. Terrain Optimization: The high-low mix allows Polish commanders to match the tool to the task. Use the Abrams for “Iron Ceiling” static defense and urban breakthroughs; use the K2 for “Zero Line” flanking maneuvers and rapid reconnaissance in difficult terrain. Training and Interoperability: Through “Minilateral” cooperation, Polish crews are training at the “Abrams Academy” in Biedrusko and South Korean facilities, creating a “Full-Stack” tank corps that is fluent in both Western and Pacific armored doctrines.The Abrams and K2 hybrid fleet is the definitive signal that Poland has mastered the transition to a modern, multi-domain defense. By balancing American “brute-force” protection with South Korean “high-tech” agility, Warsaw has proved that “Industrial Resilience” is found in diversity.
In the high-stakes landscape of 2026, Poland is no longer just a member of NATO; it is the Alliance’s armored “Zero Line,” standing ready with a shield made of both American steel and Korean silicon.
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Huh!!!
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An interesting theory
Everyone’s missing what the Iran war is REALLY about – and it’s not Israel. This is the real reason America has chosen to strike now. But as HAVIV RETTIG GUR writes, once you understand, everything else makes sense…
By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
The war in Iran is threatening to split the conservative movement, dividing it between those who see it as Donald Trump’s breaking of a promise against new wars and those who see it as a necessary confrontation long overdue.
Progressives, predictably, frame it as another Middle Eastern adventure driven by Israel. Anti-war libertarians call it regime change in a new dress.
And across the world, from Brazil to Beijing, London to Karachi, the argument is the same: America is fighting Israel’s war.
But this isn’t true. And the confusion matters, because if you misread what this war is actually about, you will misread everything that follows.
This is not a war about Israel. This is not a war for Israel’s sake. Israel is a beneficiary, a capable and willing local partner, but it is not the reason America is in this fight. America is playing a much bigger game, about more than what happens in the Middle East. The subtext, that Israel exercises outsize influence or ‘drags Americans into wars they don’t want’, borders on the conspiratorial.
This isn’t one war, but two.
There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood.
But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.
America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.
America is in this fight because of China (pictured: President Donald Trump with Chinese president Xi Jinping in October 2025)
Haviv Rettig Gur, a top Middle East analyst, talks about the real reason America has chosen to strike now
Iran, for most of its history as an adversary of the United States, existed only on the smaller board. It was a headache. It was a regional destabiliser. It funded terrorism, harassed shipping, threatened America’s allies, and kept the Middle East expensive and unpredictable.
But it was not, in any direct sense, a threat to American primacy on the global stage. It was Israel’s problem, the Gulf states’ problem, and only tangentially Washington’s.
That changed when Iran made one of the most consequential strategic miscalculations of the century.
Squeezed by decades of American sanctions and increasingly isolated, Iran turned to China as its economic lifeline. The relationship deepened rapidly.
Today, roughly 90 per cent of Iran’s crude oil exports go to China, processed through Chinese refineries that operate beyond the reach of American sanctions enforcement.
That oil revenue supplies around a quarter of Iran’s budget, a huge portion of which is spent on its military forces. Without Beijing, the regime cannot pay its security forces, cannot subsidise basic goods, and would soon face the kind of internal collapse that its own ideology has spent 40 years trying to prevent.
In other words, Iran has become – has made itself – utterly dependent on China.
China, for its part, was not being charitable. It was being strategic. Iranian oil, sold cheaply because Tehran has no other buyers, has helped Beijing build a strategic petroleum reserve exceeding a billion barrels, enough to sustain the Chinese economy for roughly 100 days in the event of a naval blockade.
China’s single greatest vulnerability is the American Navy’s ability to interdict its energy imports, especially at vulnerable choke points like the Malacca Straits. Iranian oil, flowing outside American oversight, was a direct hedge against that vulnerability. (So, by the way, was Venezuela’s, another US operation that was ultimately about containing China.)
‘Iran has become – has made itself – utterly dependent on China,’ Haviv writes (pictured: Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, left, and Xi Jinping)
But the energy relationship was only part of the picture. China was also arming Iran with systems designed to threaten commercial and American military assets.
Reports emerged in February of a near-finalised deal to supply Iran with supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles capable of speeds exceeding Mach 3 and engineered to evade the Aegis defence systems deployed on American carrier strike groups.
China was replacing Iranian government and military software with closed Chinese systems, hardening Iran against CIA and Mossad cyber operations. Joint naval exercises between China, Russia, and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz were becoming regular events, building real-time operational familiarity between the three navies.
Iran had switched from the GPS system to the Chinese BeiDou system. And Iran was providing China with the port at Jask, as part of China’s ‘string of pearls’ base system in the Indian Ocean.
The picture that emerges from all of this is, as I have said, of a Chinese forward base, a lynchpin of the country’s naval architecture; cyber efforts; an economic Belt and Road influence programme – every element of Chinese power projection and empire-building – positioned at the throat of the global oil supply, armed with weapons designed to penetrate American defences and kill American sailors, and embedded in a strategic architecture whose explicit purpose is to constrain American military freedom in any future conflict over Taiwan.
When Iran began to look like that, it stopped being Israel’s problem and became America’s.
The administration itself has struggled to explain this, and it’s not clear why. On March 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that the US had launched pre-emptive strikes against Iran because the administration knew an Israeli attack was imminent and wanted to prevent ‘automatic’ Iranian retaliation against American bases. He said intelligence showed Iran had pre-delegated orders to military commanders to strike US assets the moment the regime was attacked by any party.
How many have been killed in the war on Iran
United States
Six US service members killed
Eleven people killed, including nine in an Iranian
missile strike on Beit Shemesh on March 1
Israel
At least 77 people killed by Israeli attacks
since Monday
Lebanon
One person killed after a fire broke out in Bahrain’s
Salman Industrial City following a missile interception
Bahrain
Four people, including two Kuwaiti soldiers, killed
in Iranian attacks on the country
Kuwait
One person killed after a projectile hit a Marshall
Islands-flagged product tanker off its coast
Oman
Three people killed
UAE
At least 1,230 people killed
Iran
Reports emerged in February of a near-finalised deal to supply Iran with supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles capable of speeds exceeding Mach 3
Rubio emphasised that the US chose to destroy Iran’s offensive capabilities first rather than ‘sit there and absorb a blow’ that would have resulted in higher damage to American personnel.
It’s hard to take this explanation at face value. If the trigger was simply an Israeli strike, America could have told the Israelis to sit tight. It’s done it before, repeatedly and even recently.
And it doesn’t fit the nature of the war. For one thing, American media reports tell us that America, not Israel, chose the timing.
Reliable sources tell us the CIA, not Mossad, tracked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the Saturday meeting of Iranian military leaders struck by Israel, and Trump, not Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pulled the trigger on the joint attack.
The Americans went to war together with the Israelis because that’s the best way to fight a war like this.
Having a capable and loyal local ally willing to deal damage and absorb blowback lowers the costs to America and increases the chances of success. If America ever finds itself in a kinetic fight with China, it presumably expects Japan and Taiwan and South Korea to play a similar role in the fighting.
But American forces have used this operation to target Iranian military positions and assets that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Iranian face-off.
In the first 24 hours of the war, American strikes, as confirmed by US Central Command (CENTCOM), focused on Iranian naval vessels, submarines, ports, and anti-ship missile positions along the southern coast.
It was the CIA that tracked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (R), and it was Trump who pulled the trigger on the joint attack
The port of Bandar Abbas, headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, was hit. So was Jask, which China had hoped would become a permanent naval foothold on the Indian Ocean. Isfahan and Tabriz, hubs of ballistic missile production and drone assembly, were struck.
The goal, explicitly stated by US officials, was not merely to degrade stockpiles but to destroy the industrial base from which those weapons are produced, so China cannot spend the next few years quietly rebuilding it.
President Trump announced the operation in terms that could not have been more direct, explicitly mentioning elements of Iranian power – the navy, the missile production sites – that would serve as that second front in a war with China.
One of the more revealing subplots of this war has been the behaviour of Iran’s supposed allies. Russia signed a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran in January of last year. China has been Iran’s economic patron for years.
And yet when the bombs started falling, neither moved.
Russian radar systems in Syria went dark, transponders reportedly switched off, apparently to avoid accidentally drawing American or Israeli fire. China issued statements. Neither fired a shot in Iran’s defence.
This matters beyond the immediate moment. The entire architecture of the alternative world order that China has been constructing – BRICS (the Belt and Road Initiative), the network of partnerships meant to demonstrate there is a credible alternative to American-led institutions – rests on the assumption that China is a reliable partner.
Every government, from Central Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America, is now watching China leave its closest Middle Eastern ally to burn. That is a blow to Chinese soft power that no diplomatic offensive can easily repair. It is an American success that will be felt for years, irrespective of how the Iran operation turns out.
America, meanwhile, has demonstrated something important: that it retains both the will and the capability to act decisively when its core interests are genuinely threatened. Not Israel’s interests. Not abstract liberal internationalist ideals. American interests, defined coldly and specifically.
None of this means the war is without risk. Strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure, Houthi threats to close the Bab el Mandeb Straits, the escalation in Lebanon: these are real dangers, and the costs of miscalculation are enormous.
Iran, aware that it is facing an existential moment, is doing what cornered regimes do, setting as many fires as possible in the hope that the pain forces a negotiated exit. And we cannot forget the risk shouldered by Israeli civilians.
But the logic of the American position is not difficult to follow once you’re looking at the right chessboard. Iran embedded itself so deeply in China’s strategic architecture over the past couple of years that removing it became a prerequisite for American freedom of action in East Asia.
This is also why President Trump seems to be pursuing a strange sort of regime change – something very different from what George W. Bush or the neocons meant by the term.
Trump doesn’t care one whit about democratisation, or, as Venezuela showed us, about changing any element of a regime that doesn’t stand in America’s way.
He’s interested in regime change in Iran only because it is, in its founding theology, unswervingly anti-American. It is thus not swayable from the Chinese orbit by any other means. He doesn’t need a democratic Iran, he just needs a not-anti-American Iran.
It must be said: Israel is also at war with Iran, and has focused its strikes on Iranian targets that specifically threaten Israel, such as the ballistic missile launchers.
But there are nevertheless two different wars underway in Iran, each taking place on very different strategic scales.
The best-case scenario that could emerge from this war is a stable, democratic-leaning, US-orientated Iran, a more secure Gulf, a weakened Hezbollah and thus a more stable and successful Lebanon, a more secure Israel – and above all, a China less able to threaten America’s Pacific allies.
None of that is nation-building. There is no Marshall Plan in the wings, no democratic project, no idealism of the kind that animated the adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is colder and more coherent. So why can’t Secretary Rubio say it? Why hem and haw?
One obvious answer: they don’t want to push the Chinese to more overt responses. One should always give one’s enemy an excuse not to respond in kind. It’s a sensible ambiguity on the world stage, but it’s causing damage at home. It may be time for the administration to speak clearly on its strategy – in articulated statements that answer the good-faith questions of many Americans.
Once you understand the real reasons for America to strike now, everything else about this conflict clicks into place. The loudest voices in the debate are still arguing about the smaller chessboard. The war is being fought on the larger one.
Haviv Rettig Gur is The Free Press Middle East Analyst and host of the Ask Haviv Anything podcast. A version of this article appeared in The Free Press.
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A Victory! COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad I am so grateful!! If I was in Charge Interesting stuff Leadership of the highest kind Manly Stuff One Hell of a Good Fight Our Great Kids Paint me surprised by this Real men Soldiering Some Red Hot Gospel there! Stand & Deliver This great Nation & Its People War
Another, this man is one Hell of a stud!! William Frederick Harris
William Frederick Harris (March 6, 1918 – December 7, 1950) was a United States Marine Corps (USMC) lieutenant colonel during the Korean War. The son of USMC General Field Harris, he was a prisoner of war during World War II and a recipient of the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism during the breakout in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. He was last seen by American forces on December 7, 1950, was listed missing in action and is presumed to have been killed in action. Harris was featured in the book and film Unbroken.[1][2]
Biography
William Frederick Harris was born on March 6, 1918, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, to Field Harris (1895–1967) and Katherine Chinn-Harris (1899–1990).[1]
Harris graduated from the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, in the class of 1939. He was in A Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines[3] and was captured by Japanese forces during the Battle of Corregidor in May 1942.
He escaped with Edgar Whitcomb, future governor of Indiana,[4] and on May 22, 1942, swam 8+1⁄2 hours across Manila Bay to Bataan, where he joined Filipino guerrillas fighting Japan just after the Battle of Bataan.[5] In the summer of 1942, Harris and two others left Whitcomb and attempted to sail to China in a motorboat, but the engine failed and the boat drifted for 29 days with little food or water. The monsoon blew them back to an island in the southern part of the Philippines where they split up and he joined another resistance group.[6] Harris headed towards Australia hoping to rejoin American forces he heard were fighting in Guadalcanal, but he was recaptured in June[7] or September 1943[8] by Japan on Morotai island, Indonesia, around 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Bataan.[9][10]
Harris was taken to Ōfuna POW camp, arriving February 13, 1944[11] and became acquainted with Louis Zamperini. Harris experienced malnutrition and brutal treatment at the hands of his jailers, notably by Sueharu Kitamura (later convicted of war crimes). Due to malnutrition, by mid-1944 the over 6 feet (180 cm) tall Harris weighed only 120 pounds (54 kg) and had beriberi.[12] In September and November 1944, Harris was beaten severely, to the point of unconsciousness, by Kitamura.[13][14] According to fellow captive, Pappy Boyington, Harris was knocked down 20 times with a baseball bat for reading a newspaper stolen from the trash.[15] Harris was near death when he arrived at a POW camp near Ōmori in early 1945. Zamperini provided Harris with additional rations and he recovered.[16] William Harris was chosen to represent prisoners of war during the surrender of Japan, aboard USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.
After World War II, Harris remained in the Marines. He married Jeanne Lejeune Glennon in 1946 and had two daughters.[1]
He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War.[2] He was the commanding officer of Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced) in the Korean War. During the breakout in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, his unit stayed behind as a rear guard to protect retreating forces. Despite heavy losses, Harris rallied his troops and personally went into harm’s way during the battle. Harris was last seen by American forces on December 7, 1950, walking and carrying two rifles on his shoulders. He was listed as missing in action, but after the war when former POWs had neither seen nor heard of him, Harris was declared to be dead. He was awarded the Navy Cross in 1951 for his actions at Chosin. Because of his penchant for escape and survival exhibited during World War II, his peers and family were reluctant to accept his death. A superior officer held on to his Navy Cross for a number of years, expecting to be able to give it to Harris personally.[17]
Remains thought to be his were eventually recovered. His family doubted the remains were his, and conclusive testing using DNA had not been attempted as of 2014.[1]
Awards
For his leadership and heroism on December 7, 1950, Harris was awarded the Navy Cross.
The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Lieutenant Colonel William Frederick Harris (MCSN: 0-5917), United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United Nations while serving as Commanding Officer of the Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressor forces in the Republic of Korea the early morning of 7 December 1950. Directing his Battalion in affording flank protection for the regimental vehicle train and the first echelon of the division trains proceeding from Hagaru-ri to Koto-ri, Lieutenant Colonel Harris, despite numerous casualties suffered in the bitterly fought advance, promptly went into action when a vastly outnumbering, deeply entrenched hostile force suddenly attacked at point-blank range from commanding ground during the hours of darkness. With his column disposed on open, frozen terrain and in danger of being cut off from the convoy as the enemy laid down enfilade fire from a strong roadblock, he organized a group of men and personally led them in a bold attack to neutralize the position with heavy losses to the enemy, thereby enabling the convoy to move through the blockade. Consistently exposing himself to devastating hostile grenade, rifle and automatic weapons fire throughout repeated determined attempts by the enemy to break through, Lieutenant Colonel Harris fought gallantly with his men, offering words of encouragement and directing their heroic efforts in driving off the fanatic attackers. Stout-hearted and indomitable despite tremendous losses in dead and wounded, Lieutenant Colonel Harris, by his inspiring leadership, daring combat tactics and valiant devotion to duty, contributed to the successful accomplishment of a vital mission and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
— Board of Awards, Serial 1089, 17 October 1951[18]
Harris also received the Purple Heart, the Prisoner of War Medal, the Combat Action Ribbon, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, the Korean War Service Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.[19]
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