<p>
There will always be clear in the minds of those who knew him a memory of Joe, with his ready laugh, his fierce rages, his tremendous pride in his family and his outfit, his grim delight in riding off an opponent in polo (usually at no little risk to various lives and limbs) and his scornful impatience with any sign of pompousness. Those who knew Joe need no words from me to remind them of him. But there are many who knew only of him, and it is for them that this is written.</p>
<p>
<em>Joseph Ganahl</em> was born in Louisville, Kentucky, April 19, 1903. His parents were Margaret Griffith and Artemous Gould Ganahl. He entered West Point in 1923 and graduated in 1927.</p>
<p>
After a brief but spectacular career in the Air Corps as a student pilot, Joe was transferred to the 12th Field Artillery, at Fort Sam Houston. Later he was sent to Hawaii, where he served with the 13th Field Artillery and the 11th Field Artillery Brigade. While in Hawaii he was married to Constance Hale Otis of Cleveland.</p>
<p>
Then followed a tour as a member of the Battery Officers’ class at the Field Artillery School. Joe’s polo and jumping were so outstanding that his being ordered to take the Advanced Course in Horsemanship the next year was only natural. After completing that course, and adding to his collection of cups and ribbons, he was assigned to the crack 16th Field Artillery battalion at Fort Myer. In 1937 he became an instructor of the 37th Division, Ohio National Guard, with station in Cleveland. He joined the Armored Force as Battery Commander of Battery B, 68th Field Artillery, and then was appointed Assistant G-4, 1st Armored Division. In October 1941 he sailed for Manila.</p>
<p>
In the Philippines Joe was given command of the 1st Provisional Artillery Battalion of self-propelled guns. When he took it over the battalion was a heterogeneous crowd of American soldiers, Philippine Scouts, Philippine Army draftees, and Filipino civilian truck drivers. In a matter of days he made out of this group a unit which the corps artillery commander considered “a marvel of excellence and discipline”. Under Joe’s command, it was awarded three Distinguished Unit Citations.</p>
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The following account of Joe’s early campaigning with his unit is given by Clark Lee in his book <em>They Call It Pacific</em>:</p>
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“There were some American army trucks drawn up at the side of the road with a few officers standing beside them. One of them had a blood-soaked handkerchief wrapped around his head. His left sleeve was cut off at the shoulder and his arm bandaged.</p>
<p>
“He was Major Joseph Ganahl of Euclid Heights, Cleveland, a West Pointer and in peacetime a polo player and hunter. He and Major Williams and Major Noble and their Filipino Scouts had been fighting the Japanese advance from Vigan, down toward Lingayen, with a few mounted 75’s.</p>
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“‘We’ve been fighting these fellows for the past two weeks and holding them pretty well. Day before yesterday the Japs hit us with a large force, including tanks, and we started to withdraw slowly down the coast road to the cut-off to Baguio. Last night they surrounded us. We found them holding a bridge behind us, but we shot our way across, then turned into a road to our left, away from the beach and toward the mountains. All last night they were firing at us with rifles and machine guns.</p>
<p>
“‘At daylight this morning we could see their ships out there. A bunch of them landed on the beach and set up some 88-millimeter guns. We shot back and forth for quite a while with considerable damage on both sides. Finally, only one of my guns was firing and only about twelve of us were still alive and unbounded. The Japs were on the beach and on the road to the south of us, and we couldn’t draw back through the mountains.</p>
<p>
“‘We were sitting there, exposed, in the middle of the rice fields. Then their dive bombers came over, to add to the merry hell of it, and I stopped a piece of bomb and a fragment of a shell and a rifle bullet. Nothing serious, though.</p>
<p>
“‘We decided our only chance was to try to fight our way out to the south. I put the survivors in the two trucks that were still running. There weren’t many survivors, and most of them were wounded.</p>
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“‘We drove back onto the road without getting hit, and turned south. About a half mile up ahead the road passed through a cut-out in a hill, which rose to about twenty feet on each side. The Japs opened up on us from the top of the cut with machine guns.</p>
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“‘Our leading gun-truck was badly shot up and was limping along at only three miles an hour. The second one couldn’t pass it on the narrow road.</p>
<p>
“‘When we reached the cut-off we ducked low in the trucks and held our breath. Machine-gun bullets bounced down on us and a few of us got new wounds. We got through because the Japs were too stupid to drop a couple of hand grenades into our trucks. If they had been experienced soldiers we wouldn’t be here.’</p>
<p>
<em>J. P. K.</em></p>
<p>
“Ganahl told me that story many weeks later in Bataan. That evening he was too exhausted to talk much.</p>
<p>
“That night I asked him only one question. ‘What happened to the rest of our northern forces?’</p>
<p>
“He said. ‘Hell! WE are the northern forces, what’s left of us.’”</p>
<p>
There was enough of the battalion left to furnish the backbone of our dwindling defense of the peninsula and it is probable, according to survivors that Joe’s battalion fired the last shots in defense of Bataan.</p>
<p>
One veteran of the Philippines campaign reported that “even where heroes were counted by hundreds, Ganahl was outstanding”. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Purple Heart with three clusters. In recommending Joe for one decoration, the Commanding General of the 11th Division wrote, “It is the opinion of the Division Commander and of all others associated with Major Ganahl that there is no mark of distinction and appreciation within the gift of the War Department that should be withheld from him.” We all know how Joe must have snorted, it he read that. He was not one to accept praise modestly; he never accepted it at all.</p>
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Nor was he apt to lose his fine perspective. When an old friend just released from a hospital visited Joe’s command post on Bataan, Joe served not dull army fare but martinis, roast beef and fresh vegetables.</p>
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Not only in combat was Joe his typical self. When an exhausted Catholic chaplain had to discard all of his mass kit except the altar stone and chalice, and later was no longer able to carry even those, Joe—though recently wounded and though not a Catholic—took them and carried them all the way to Camp O’Donnel.</p>
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Joe’s days in the prison camps have been described by one of those who were with him: “During the days when we had enough food, Joe and I cut wood at one of the kitchens, to try to keep ourselves in good physical condition. After the mail began to dribble in he seemed to be the most fortunate of all of us. He was invariably generous with his news from home, always sharing with us the joys of his letters and pictures. He was terrifically proud of Timmy (his youngest son, born a week after Pearl Harbor) and used to come rushing down to parade the snapshots when they arrived”.</p>
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Joe lived through two transport sinkings while enroute to Japan. However, he was wounded during one of the bombings and upon arriving in Japan was taken to the hospital, where he died February 11, 1945.</p>
<p>
General Wainwright wrote in <em>General Wainwright’s Story,</em> “The senior American officers with the 13th and the 12th Infantry regiments. Lieutenant Colonels Moses and Noble, and Major Joe Ganahl, were three of the finest combat officers in my command. Ganahl, a spirited Texan, fought as few men have ever fought until the fall of Bataan. And then when he must have seen with haggard eyes the faint ray of liberation he met his death near the end of the war”.</p>
<p>
Joe is survived by his widow; his, two sons, Joseph Ganahl, Jr., and Timothy Hale Ganahl; and two stepchildren, Constance Hale Otis and William Edwards Otis, Jr.</p>
<p>
<em>—A Classmate</em></p>