Hometown: Durand, IL
Branch: U.S. Army 
Unit: 132nd Infantry Regiment, 33rd Infantry Division
Military Honors: Purple Heart
Date of Sacrifice: April 16, 1944 - KIA on Bougainville Island
Age: 25
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

Conrad C. “Carlyle” Wise was born on August 20, 1918, while his father, Conrad J. Wise, was serving with the U.S. Army in France during World War I (1914-1918).

Clara (Petitt) Wise was at home raising young Carlyle—and later his siblings Gerald, Duane, Robert, Lowell, Twyla, and Joyce. Like their father, all five of the Wise boys would end up serving their country in the U.S. military.

The family lived in Durand, Illinois, a small village of just over 500 people at the time, located near the Illinois-Wisconsin border. As a young boy, Carlyle was an avid stamp collector and a Boy Scout. He earned spending money as a newspaper carrier.

Wise was an outstanding student-athlete at Durand Community High School. He played football, was captain of the varsity basketball team, and was a track & field standout. According to The Durand Gazette, at the Pecatonica Relays Wise broke his school’s record in the broad jump at 19’ 8-3/4”. In the high jump he cleared the bar at 5’ 7”. Wise graduated with the class of 1937.

In late April 1941, Wise and four other young men from Durand traveled to Chicago for their physical exams. After passing, the men were sent to Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois for training.

Just two decades after his father came home from the “war to end all wars,” war was again raging in Europe and in the South Pacific. Carlyle Wise and his brother Duane trained at Camp Forrest, Tennessee in October of 1941—as the world waited for a reluctant United States to get directly involved.

On the day of Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii—December 7, 1941—Carlyle Wise volunteered for a task force that would take him far from home, into the Pacific Theater of Operations.

SSG Wise’s Army service took him to Australia, Guadalcanal, New Caledonia, the Fiji Islands, and to Bougainville Island—east of Papua New Guinea, in the Solomon Islands archipelago.

The American effort in the war’s Pacific Theater brought years of brutal island-to-island combat against an entrenched enemy who refused to surrender. By 1944, the United States had turned the tide against Japanese advances in the Pacific—but at an extremely high cost in terms of both lives and materiel.

Decisive, hard-fought American victories in the Battle of Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and at Guadalcanal did little to diminish the ferocious resistance of Japanese defenses on the numerous islands south of Japan.

In November 1943, Allied forces turned their attention to the jungle island of Bougainville. The invasion of Bougainville was part of a strategy to isolate the rest of the Solomon Islands, and to establish airstrips to put the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, on the island of New Britain, within reach of Allied bombers.

SSG Wise’s 132nd Infantry Regiment arrived on Bougainville on Christmas Day, 1943. By March 1944, American forces had won control of the island. Thousands of remaining Japanese soldiers fled to the cover of the jungles. They remained on the island but were cut off from resupply and no longer posed a significant threat to the heavy Allied presence.

For the remainder of 1944, there were no major engagements on Bougainville. But the Allied forces and stranded remnants of Japanese soldiers continued to engage in frequent firefights and small battles.

On April 16, 1944, SSG Carlyle Wise was killed in action on the island of Bougainville. He was 25 years old.

A friend and fellow soldier, Sgt. Jim Slocum, wrote a heartfelt letter to Wise’s mother. The letter arrived at the Wise home two hours before the War Department telegram informing the family of Carlyle’s death. The letter read, in part:

Without violating censorship regulations, I can’t tell you of the circumstances surrounding the field and scene of the tragedy, but be assured, Mrs. Wise, I shall never forget the most minute and intimate details, and I pray to God that I may return soon to explain to all how it occurred.

Carlyle was my friend and best “buddy”. We shared pleasures, discomforts, and even the inferno of war together and men thus attached become closely united. We shared a mutual feeling of esteem and respect—your loss is most certainly mine.

I have never known anyone who possessed courage and valour of a more sterling quality, nor a more pleasing and engaging personality.

Four years later, Staff Sergeant Conrad C. “Carlyle” Wise was laid to rest in his hometown, in a ceremony coordinated by Durand American Legion Gold Star Post 676.

Sources
Details submitted by Mr. Shirl Wise, SSG Wise’s nephew.
The Durand Gazette, April 24, 1941: Durand Men Inducted Into Service
Go for Broke National Education Center: Bougainville
Warfare History Network: Battling for Bougainville
U.S. Army: Jan. 30, 1944: Riding a tank to victory at Bougainville
The Durand Gazette, May 11, 1944: Carlyle Wise is Killed in Action
The Durand Gazette, May 25, 1944: Services Tuesday for Carlyle Wise
The Durand Gazette, July 08, 1948: Bury Soldier Here Today
Burial Site: Find a Grave