Duty, Honor, Country
by Kara Reibel
Roy Nicoloff tried to enlist while still in high school, but the recruiter told him he didn’t weigh enough at 123 pounds and to come back after he’d bulked up. Nicoloff was drafted in August 1943, after high school, and decided to join the Marines. A month later, he did his basic training in San Diego and was later sent to machine gun training school at Camp Elliott in California.
Nicoloff’s first brush with death occurred while boarding a Higgins boat near the Mariana Islands. After 10 days of shelling the island, it was time to go ashore on Saipan. While he was descending a cargo net on the side of the ship, his foot slipped and he ended up hanging upside down. A guy on the Higgins boat wedged his rifle between the boat and the ship to prevent Nicoloff from being crushed. He fell into the boat with a thud.
Another brush with death came just prior to leaving Saipan when a sniper’s bullet hit Nicoloff’s helmet, grazing his head. It was bleeding profusely, but the medic said it was just a scratch. Nicoloff also fought on Tinian Island, where he had a bullet fragment lodged in his shoulder. He turned down the opportunity to fill out an application for a Purple Heart, out of concern his mother would think he was seriously wounded. “Roy is a Marine’s Marine,” says friend Duane Hodgin. “He represents the best of the ‘Greatest Generation’ with his selfless service and patriotic devotion to his country.”
Okinawa was next on Nicoloff’s Pacific tour of duty. His unit stayed on ships performing a “fake” invasion on the south end of the island. Their unmanned decoy boats loaded with rockets were fired upon by the Japanese and exploded. The Marines (and Navy) were under constant attack from kamikaze pilots. Their unit had more casualties than the other two divisions that landed ashore.
Nicoloff’s final experience in the Pacific was walking through Nagasaki on Sept. 18, 1945, after the second atomic bomb had been dropped on Aug. 9. He walked through eight inches of ash in some places, unbeknownst to him the lingering radioactive fallout still in the air. Upon being transferred from the 2nd Marine division to the 5th division, Nicoloff shipped back to the U.S. on Dec. 5. The journey was not without incident, having sailed through a typhoon en route. He was finally back on U.S. soil on Dec. 23, 1945, in San Diego.
Nicoloff joined the reserves and was called up to active duty five years later for the Korean War. He was one of the lucky ones, due to being in the right place at the right time; Nicoloff spent the war at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, where he was in charge of the convoys. Coincidentally, Nicoloff and about 25 other men were selected to be in the movie “Flying Leathernecks,” starring John Wayne and Robert Ryan. “You can’t tell who any of us were, but we know we were there,” says Nicoloff.
Between WWII and Korea, Nicoloff worked in Indianapolis, and it was here that he returned after the Korean War. Having graduated from Tech High School in 1943 where he had printing experience from working on the school newspaper, “The Cannon,” he worked for a printing company that printed the menus for the Ayers Tea Room, among other things. After his military career, Nicoloff worked for the then “Indianapolis Times,” the “Star,” WIBC and finally for a car dealership for 20 years selling Oldsmobiles.
Nicoloff and his wife have five kids, eight grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren in Greenwood and are happy to have all of their family nearby. Roy Nicoloff’s story is one of 84 stories central Indiana WWIIveterans shared in the book “WWII: Duty, Honor, Country” by Steve Hardwick and Duane Hodgin. The book is available at BarnesandNoble.com.
Kara Reibel lives in the Geist area with her family. In addition to writing, she owns Geist Pilates.
