Ed McClees

When future coach Bum Phillips turned 19 on September 30, 1942, he was a freshman at Lamar Junior College in Beaumont. The very next day, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in San Antonio. After training at Camp Pendleton in California, he shipped out to the South Pacific as a member of the elite Marine Raiders—special operations troops formed to handle the toughest amphibious missions of World War II. By June 30, 1943, Phillips was serving with the 4th Marine Raider Battalion of the 1st Marine Raider Regiment when they hit the beaches of Vangunu, a small island in the Solomons. The odds were grim. The Japanese defenders outnumbered the Marines ten to one, according to Phillips’ 2010 autobiography "Bum Phillips: Coach, Cowboy, Christian." What followed was a brutal, four-hour fight in which two-thirds of his battalion were killed or wounded. When their ammunition ran dry, the surviving Raiders charged into hand-to-hand combat. “When men fell to the ground wounded, we created makeshift stretchers by tying shirts to bamboo poles,” Phillips recalled. “We hauled 360 Marines out. Soon, though, we lacked enough standing soldiers to carry every wounded man to safety.” It's pretty interesting that both Bum and Tom Landry had such intense war experiences, came back home to Texas, eventually became head coaches, and then faced each other three times, with Landry winning twice.