Franklin Nash: Fearless
Franklin Nash
“Fearless. He was absolutely physically fearless.”
A young rancher from the mountains of Colorado was the only American who served as a Coastwatcher in the jungles of the Solomon Islands, providing vital intelligence to Allied forces in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.
His daughters Julie and Jane recall him confronting poachers and trespassers who came onto the family ranch without a hint of backing down. The man who had lived with the certain doom of beheading by a samurai sword if captured did not find 16-inch hunting knives and rifles waved in his face intimidating.
Franklin Nash was born at Canon City, Colorado, in 1918. His father, Walter Nash and grandfather, Benjamin Nash, homesteaded in the area in 1905 and 1906. Walter Nash purchased the family’s first registered Herefords in 1914.
“Today, we can trace our cow herd back to those heifers that came to Walter through Canada,” said Franklin’s daughter, Jane (Nash) Deewall, who carries on the Nash Hereford herd with her family. “They were traced back to the 18 original Herefords that were the first to be imported from England to North America.”
Franklin grew up steeped in Herefords, and decided when he was five years old that he would raise Hereford cattle as well.
“I have a scrapbook that he made of Hereford cattle photos that he had cut out of sale catalogs and the Hereford Journals when he was in first grade!” Jane said.
When Franklin was 16, he and his father bought two Hereford bulls that became the foundation of the family’s linebreeding program.
He was a sophomore in college at the University of Colorado in Boulder when the United States entered the war.
Franklin enlisted immediately.
“Dad often said that he regretted not being the first in his county to enlist the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed,” said Julie Nash. “He felt there would be no more ranching, no more Herefords and no more America if those offered agricultural deferments took them.”
After his enlistment, he went to California for training, where his excellent marksmanship skills earned him a position training other recruits. For a time, it seemed like he was going to have a stateside job for the war, but he pressed his superiors for a combat assignment.
Corporal Franklin Nash was assigned as a radio operator to the 410th Signal Company. They arrived at Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, in January, 1943. Nash helped install and operate the first Allied radio control tower at Henderson Field, a vital airstrip recently taken from the Japanese. Here, he earned a Bronze Star for staying in the control tower and safely guiding Allied pilots to the ground while under heavy enemy bombardment.
At Guadalcanal, Nash learned about the Coastwatchers: Royal Australian Navy (RAN) volunteers who established island posts to observe and report Japanese military activity. Most were not military men, but, according to Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, RAN wartime director of the Coastwatchers, “were generally postmasters, harbormasters, schoolteachers, police or railway officials—people who had at hand the means of passing information by telegraph.”
Feldt code named the Coastwatchers “Ferdinand,” after the children’s story about “Ferdinand the Bull,” saying: “Ferdinand… did not fight but sat under a tree and just smelled the flowers. It was meant as a reminder to coastwatchers that it was not their duty to fight and so draw attention to themselves, but to sit circumspectly and unobtrusively, gathering information. Of course, like their titular prototype, they could fight if they were stung.”
Coastwatchers worked alone or in pairs, and in cooperation with native island scouts. They worked independently, needed to be self sufficient and capable, resourceful and able to navigate the wild terrain without losing their bearings or revealing themselves to enemy soldiers. This appealed to Nash.
“The Coastwatchers were men who had grown up in the islands of the South Pacific,” Julie said. “Their mission was to hide on Japanese occupied islands in pairs, with native support, and spy on bases and troop movements while recovering downed Allied pilots and occasional sailors. This was extremely dangerous work. The men had amazing survival and tracking skills as well as intimate knowledge of native culture. The job required sneaking behind the Japanese lines and remaining undiscovered for months at a time. Being discovered resulted in death by beheading.”
Nash, who had learned early on the ranch how to use whatever he had at hand to accomplish what needed doing, found himself helping the Australians at the Coastwatcher Headquarters on Guadalcanal, ‘headquarters’ being a leaky tent. As a radio operator, he learned that the Coastwatchers were rescuing downed pilots and shipwrecked sailors, and that their intelligence about Japanese movements enabled the interception of enemy vessels. Their work “intrigued the hell” out of him, as he told an interviewer years later.
When he learned that the 410th was going to be moved, he volunteered his services to the Australians.
“Dad later remarked that it was a good thing he knew how to make desks and chairs out of orange crates so he could make the right impression,” Julie said. “The job of Coastwatcher held a huge appeal for him.”
Nash was already a master at tracking as anyone who rode a horse with him on his Colorado ranch could attest to. An isolated post away from “civilization” was the perfect fit for a rancher. Solving problems on his own was nothing new, it was exactly what a rancher did every day.
“He could figure anything out,” Julie said.
Lieutenant Commander Hugh Mackenzie happened to need a good radio operator and accepted Franklin’s offer. He had to apply for temporary reassignment from the U.S. Army to the RAN.
“Dad was technically AWOL while all the paperwork was being handled,” Julie said.
But Franklin Nash wasn’t looking back.
He was assigned to assist Sub-lieutenant Arthur Reginald Evans at his post high on the small volcanic island of Kolombangara, just east of New Georgia. The two made a good team, and Nash could not have asked for a better mentor to train him in his new job.
Franklin Nash and Reginald Evans saw flames against the night sky on the night of August 1-2, 1943, when Lieutenant John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 was struck by a Japanese destroyer. The two searched the coastline the next day, seeing wreckage in the water, but not finding any survivors. Days later, native scouts reported to the pair of Coastwatchers that they had found survivors on a nearby island. Evans dispatched the natives with a canoe and a message ‘strongly advising’ the commander –JFK – to return with the scouts so that “we can finalize plans to collect [the] balance of your party.”
As the war progressed, Nash moved to new posts several times, frequently being sent in to scout the territory ahead of Allied advances.
In October, 1943, Nash and a small crew made their way to the island of Mono, following a rumor that several downed American airmen were holed up on the island hiding from the Japanese. They returned with updated intelligence and the men they were looking for.
Nash was one of a handful of Coastwatchers who landed on Bougainville to scout ahead of the Allied forces arrival.
“Our basic job on Bougainville,” Nash recalled, “was to go up in the bush and keep an eye on the Japs so they wouldn’t come back down while we built an airstrip at Torokina. There was a lot of Japs left on Bougainville.…We had to be prepared at a moment’s notice.” The Japanese did, indeed, try to take the airbase. “They didn’t get it done,” Nash said succinctly.
A 1945 letter of commendation from Lt. Gen. Stanley G. Savige, the Australian commander who accepted the Japanese surrender on Torokina, referenced Franklin’s “forest craft, courage, initiative [and] leadership,” adding, “S/Sgt. B.F. Nash…has carried out extensive patrols and scouting missions in enemy territory, accompanied only by natives, for the purpose of gathering intelligence and organizing guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Many of his patrols yielded valuable information and resulted in the killing and capture of numerous Japanese.”
Franklin didn’t write home about his activities, but he frequently mentioned the cattle in his letters, instructing his parents to use his pay to “Buy more registered Hereford heifers.”
Others were more forthright. Jesse Scott, an airman Nash rescued from the island of Mono, wrote to Nash’s parents. “[He has] saved a lot of us fliers, as well as taking care of a few of the…Japs himself.”
“Dad had a very keen mind that led him to the why and how of any situation,” Julie said. “For him, the question was: how do we win this war as soon as possible? Waiting for each day’s visit from Japanese airplanes wasn’t to his liking, nor did he see it as a winning strategy. The Allies needed a way to be the offense, instead of defense, to ultimately win the war. The Coastwatchers provided the ‘how’ of this equation and Franklin Nash was all about being part of the ‘how.'”
Throughout his life, his children recalled that “men would find him.”
“He didn’t remember them, but they remembered him,” Julie said. “Growing up, guys would show up at the ranch, and say ‘you pulled me out of the ocean,’ or ‘you hid me for so many days and got me out of there.'”
Most were downed pilots or gunners that he had rescued and hidden until they could be taken back to safety.
“These men had searched diligently for him in those pre internet days,” Julie said. “Some became lifelong friends and visited the Nash Ranch every summer.”
Some were Australian and called yearly. Reginald Evans called every summer, and he and Franklin would reminisce over their time in the islands.
“They snickered about how any other PT boat captain whose vessel was in the path of a Japanese destroyer and run over by that destroyer would have lost their commission,” Julie said. “History obviously sees the infamous and deadly incident differently.”
After the war, Franklin returned to Colorado and to his beloved Herefords. He married Clara Louise Giem in 1947, and the couple raised six children on the ranch. He spent almost all his life raising a linebred herd of Advance Domino x President Mischief Hereford cattle. At one point, Franklin and Walter ran cattle on 40,000 acres, maintaining a registered herd and a commercial herd. One family purchased Nash bulls for over 60 years; in fact, they continue to buy bulls from Jane’s family to this day.
Franklin met challenges on the ranch with the same resourcefulness that he employed in the Solomon Islands. He started a bull feed test program in which, instead of feeding the bulls everything they could hold, he fed them a limited ration. The idea was to find the bulls that could do it on as little feed as possible. When dwarfism showed up in Hereford cattle in the 1950s, he created his own test to determine that his herd was free of the gene.
“I went with Dad when he went to the neighbors and bought 18 cows that had dwarf calves at side,” Jane recalled. “He bought them to test his herd bulls on. At that time, if you bred a bull to 18 known carriers and they didn’t produce a dwarf calf, your bull was considered clean.”
With the Nash linebreeding program, likely it would have been evident if the gene was in his cows, but Franklin had to make sure that his cattle were free.
“Dad was very adamant that his cattle were easy to look at with a lot of capacity to convert range grass to pounds,” Jane said. “Thickness, correctness, and cleanness with a lot of good Hereford character and style were a must to be a member of his cow herd.”
Franklin expected his cows to do well without pampering or coddling. If they didn’t produce a calf, or if they had any issues with sickness, they went to town.
“He had a unique way of wintering his bred mature cows,” Jane said. “He put them in a pasture that we called the basin. It had live water all winter and a lot of south slopes; even with a lot of snow, the south slopes melt off first. His cows were never fed hay in the winter. He would take them a whole truck load of pellets that he had made with a self-limiting amount of salt. They would run the herd for three weeks. They ate them and his good winter grass. He never saw them calve. They calved in the basin. If they didn’t come out with a calf in the spring, they were put in the dry pasture and sold in the fall to the slaughter plant at the prison.”
Bulls were turned out in late July for a May 1 calving date, so that there was green grass growing when the calves were born.
“He trailed those cows out of the basin, and by the time they arrived at the summering sorting pasture, he knew which calf belonged to every cow. He got so excited about the good ones!” Jane said. Jane described her father as a tough Dad, who wouldn’t stand for any back talk or crossing. “We knew better,” she said.
A time schedule for feeding their 4-H calves was adhered to down to the minute: five a.m., noon, and six p.m. The discipline paid off; the Nash children were always a force at the Fremont County fair.
He believed in good fences, and the children helped build a lot of fences over a lot of rough mountains.
“His famous saying was that ‘a herd was just as good as that breeder’s fences,'” she said.
It may have been hard to get Franklin off the ranch, but he was always learning new things
“He read books like you wouldn’t believe!” Jane said. “In the summer, when we lived at the ranch, he would drag all six of us kids to the library and have each of us check out some books. He would check out two large grocery sacks full for himself. He always finished his before any of us did.”
“He was really smart,” Julie said. “My cousin used to say he had a big mind. He had endless curiosity, and was always learning.”
Franklin Nash was awarded the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, two Presidential Citations, and the King George Medal from Britain; he received a personal letter of commendation from General Millard Harmon, and the South Pacific Combat Ribbon with two battle stars. He made it clear that he had not served for glory or recognition when he threw his medals away. Thankfully his wife rescued them from the trash.
His time in the service was not something he talked about. His family only learned when they received his service records after his death that he and a handful of native soldiers had eliminated a group of 60-70 Japanese soldiers.
“He never mentioned that. Never,” Julie said.
The man of strong opinions held no animosity against the Japanese. When Julie was in college, he spent an afternoon with one of her art professors, Yuji Hiratsuka, who was Japanese.
“‘He had nothing to do with the war,’ dad told me. People are just people.”
Nash was upset by people’s tendency to stay home in fear and avoid normal life after the 911 terrorist attacks.
“I did not spend months on a damned island for this to be how we live in America!” he said.
“We owe him a lot,” Julie said. “More than most kids owe their parents. We could use some of their grace and guts.”
Nash died Aug. 1, 2005 in Canon City, Colorado.