Hero of the Pacific (20 page)

There are men who quite literally love war, the rattle of auto matic fire, the crack of a single rifle shot, the song of the bullet's ricochet, the sweet reek of gunsmoke hanging blue in the air, the heightened tension, the living (and too often dying) on the edge, the adrenaline rush, the yelling and shouting, the sound and the fury. Many of such men are Marines, veterans of different wars in different climes and down through the ages. I have myself after a firefight heard Marines coming out of the fight and back inside the wire coarsely enthusing, “Lieutenant, I love this shit.” In a book I wrote about motivation, about what draws Marines to the guns rather than, more rationally, away from them, a few Marine critics carped that of all the various reasons Marines fight, I had scanted the sheer love of a fight, the appeal of battle, the call to the guns, the passion warriors bring to battle. Manila John Basilone seems to have been one of those men, one of the war lovers.

By the late summer and early autumn of 1943, Basilone had been for some months distanced from combat, death, and the war, had been home long enough seeing family and old friends, appearing before cheering audiences, consorting with Hollywood movie stars, to understand that the medal had given him some leverage, and that perhaps the time was nearing when he might start using it. He had never been much of a politician, but this could soon be the moment. Perhaps the bond tour had lost its charms, had become boring, the parroted, scripted phrases grown glib, so easily tumbling from the lips. Maybe Virginia Grey's ardor had cooled. The shrewder of the brass may have begun to sense that their pet machine gunner was no longer as docile and instantly obedient, no longer entirely on board. He'd gotten over his stage fright, his anxiety at being the center of attention, the bashful unease of being “gawked at.” He'd picked up the sales jargon for the war bond drive—“Back the Attack,” that sort of thing—and preached it on demand. Or was that cynical even to suggest?

For the first time, and quite specifically, Basilone bridled at being “Manila John.” After all, Manila was no longer the town he once knew, where he found and loved Lolita, where he'd first tasted a small fame as he boxed undefeated, was backed in wagers and cheered on by his fellows, and where General Douglas “Himself” MacArthur, who lorded it over the poor Filipinos, vice regal in style and manner, had still found time to come back to the dressing room to shake his hand after a winning bout over a tough sailor. That Manila no longer existed, wasn't Manila anymore; it had been a “Jap” city for more than eighteen months, “Yokohama South.” If there was in Basilone no longer any affinity for the place, why should people still be yammering questions at him as Manila John? Or worse, “Manila John the Jap killer”?

Basilone by now might well have been asking himself, what did civilians, even those who loved or just plain admired him, the home folks, the kids, the reporters, the girls, the fans, with their glib queries about “killing Japs,” really know about war, combat, and death? So, to mollify a performer apparently growing antsy and querulous, the brass again offered Basilone a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, the same rank that Mitch Paige, while they were both Down Under, had quickly accepted. And now six months later, the sergeant in Basilone would again turn it down. He was an enlisted man, a noncommissioned officer, and happy to be so. None of this “officer and a gentleman” snobbery for him. The brass then tried another incentive. Would Basilone like to go to Camp Pendleton at the pleasant seaside town of Oceanside in Southern California as a gunnery instructor and run machine-gun training there? He loved machine guns, knew the weapon intimately, was a proven teacher of the weapon's construction, operation, usage, its deadly effect. In a way, this would be a perfect fit, a dream assignment. Thanks, sir, but no thanks.

Then just what did John Basilone want? What would it take to keep him out there visiting war plants, selling bonds, doing interviews, boosting home-front morale? To Basilone, if to few others, the answer was simple: he wanted to return to the Pacific, to go back to the old outfit, to “his boys,” to combat and the war. He was starting to mouth off about missing the Pacific, missing being a Marine and being tired of his role as a performing seal.

Every Marine senior NCO or officer who ever served knew guys like Basilone. They could be great Marines, the very men you wanted in the next hole to you in combat, but when it came to the chain of command, the regulations, to getting along, “brown-nosing” a little if he had to, the man could be a pain in the ass. There was the usual old commissioned snobbery at work still in the Corps, the occasional officer's snarl about “shifty-eyed enlisted men” or about “a guy who every morning you ought to punch right in the face because you know damned well before the day is over, that bastard is going to fuck up one way or another.” Basilone was hardly that, not a troublemaker or a malingerer, not after three years in the Army with consistently excellent fitness reports, or in combat as a Marine. He was by late 1943 a thorough professional. But he was also a Marine who wanted his way and kept after you until he got it.

Basilone sent in an official request through channels to rejoin the Fleet Marine Force Pacific, the famed FMF PAC for which he had fought as a member of the 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division. It was just as officially turned down. The Marine Corps didn't see any profit in returning a Medal of Honor man to combat and suffering the angst and second-guessing inevitable in getting a hero killed off.

And, the brass told itself, let's face it, this guy was good at selling war bonds. In a traveling troupe of heroic servicemen and Hollywood stars, Basilone was a movie star himself. The dark good looks, the hint of danger, of a coiled tension, a recklessness that appealed to women sexually and to men who wished they had something of that same aura, these were the qualities that made Basilone so good at what he did on the war bond promotional tour. The best thing about it was that he was a “movie star” who in real life had been as heroic as any Hollywood idol on a make-believe screen.

Basilone was the goods and people got it. They recognized him for the real thing, and when he spoke and cracked that lop-sided Italian smile, the crowd understood this wasn't just a practiced performer. This was a genuine American legend come to town or to the gates of the big war plant just outside, to say hello, to shake your hand, to congratulate the shift worker who'd exceeded his or her production goals that month, to the factory manager whose assembly line had earned an “E for Excellence” banner from the War Production Agency, to visit the local grammar school, to kiss the baby and muss the hair of the local kid, and to do it all with an easy grin, a half-bashful hello, a dashing young man in an honorable uniform, and, above all, that pale blue ribbon on his chest or the medal itself suspended from his neck by another matching pale blue ribbon. No wonder the girls and the women loved him, the men admired him, the kids shouted and ran after him. Louis B. Mayer of MGM, President Franklin Roosevelt's close friend and financial backer, couldn't have invented him, no Oscar-winning screenwriter could have written him, the marquee part of Manila John Basilone, a hero of the Pacific. As Basilone's brother George had remarked, “Everybody loves you, John.”

Basilone raised money, boosted morale, sold bonds, reaped publicity, did the damned job, a job he was continually told was every bit as vital to the nation's war effort as had been his ferocity in a fight, his mastery of the lethal Browning heavy machine gun, the man's sheer animal endurance, the physical courage, the killer instinct.

Basilone, not educated, naive but hardly stupid, must have been aware this was simply pious, full-blown press pageantry. Peddling war bonds door-to-door was important, of course, the war had to be paid for, but there were plenty of good salesmen in America selling everything else, from Fords to encyclopedias and patent medicines. There were only a relatively few men capable, strong enough, and sufficiently courageous to go into the jungle barefoot and armed in a tropical rainstorm at night and fight hand-to-hand against the flower of Japanese imperial infantry, out to kill you and your buddies, and fully capable, as they'd already shown on island after island, of doing so.

Bruce Doorly gives us this evocative and in ways shrewdly illuminating vignette of the restless hero paradoxically at rest, during that monthlong military furlough back home in Raritan as 1943 neared its end: “After bond tours and visits to war industries, John was granted a thirty-day leave which he was able to spend at home. While most of the attention bothered John, when the attention came from kids, he loved it. John's brother Carlo remembers that kids would gather outside the house at 113 First Avenue, yelling until John came out to talk to them. The kids would swarm over John, which he greatly enjoyed. His old boss from Gaburo's Laundry, Alfred Gaburo, remarked, ‘his greatest pride was the kids in the neighborhood. The kids idolized him and he idolized the kids.'”

“During the time that John was home after the big celebration [of September 19] he made special visits that those present will always remember. In between public appearances, John got some relaxation, visiting neighbors, feeling somewhat like a regular guy again.

“One weekday, John took time to pay a special visit to his niece Janice's school. . . . Janice was the niece who climbed on his lap at the rally on Basilone Day and had her picture on the front page of the newspaper. Janice, now 65, when interviewed for this [Doorly's] book, lit up and described how special that day was when her Uncle John, everyone's hero, came to visit ‘her' kindergarten class. He talked with kids and shook hands with many teachers. The whole school was excited and she was a very proud five year old. While Janice says she has only vague memories of the parade and rally on Basilone Day, and no specific memories of sitting on John's lap at the rally, she remembers vividly his visit to her school.

“One night on leave, John stopped by the local tavern, Orlando's. The owner, Tony Orlando, was very dedicated to the local servicemen. He posted their pictures on the wall, wrote them letters, sent them packages. To have John Basilone, Raritan's hero, stop in to socialize, was an honor for the Orlando Tavern. All eyes and attention that night were on John. His drinks were, of course, ‘on the house.'”

Another favorite local hangout, for Pop Basilone's generation more than the son's, was the Star of Italy Mutual Aid Society building on Anderson Street. This was an outfit that helped recently arrived immigrant Italians to get started in America. Since Basilone was officially still “under orders,” even on leave, he was pressed into service, speaking to an audience of a hundred about the appeal, patriotic as well as financial, of war bonds. The club's president, Charles Franchino, recalled young Basilone as “likable, regular” and, according to Doorly, Franchino was surprised to hear Manila John talking during his leave about wanting to get “back into action,” and asked why. Basilone, possibly having fun and kidding an older civilian, said, because he liked the feel of firing a machine gun.

It wasn't all small-town, back-home camaraderie, laughter, dinner dates, and drinks on the house. Basilone was no longer on the war bond tour hustling sales, but the publicity mill, like the war itself, ground on.

“Basilone was featured on the radio a few times toward the end of 1943,” Doorly recalls. “The NBC show entitled ‘Marine Story' had John talk about his experience at Guadalcanal. Legendary Ed Sullivan, who had a variety show on radio, similar to his later TV show, had John Basilone on the air. Ed and John would come to know each other as ‘friends.' They met at a bond rally at the Capital Theatre in New York where Sullivan was the master of ceremonies. At this rally, John spoke to the crowd about his Division's action on Guadalcanal. When he finished he received a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. Ed Sullivan wrote a few times about John in his newspaper column for the New York Daily News [then the biggest circulation newspaper in the country selling three million copies per day], John wrote that ‘Ed went out of the way to do things for me and he took pleasure in whatever he did. I shall never forget him and his sincere friendship.' Even years after John's death, Ed Sullivan continued sending John's family free tickets to his newly launched and successful TV show. John's sister Dolores recalled Ed to be very personable and caring.”

Phyllis Basilone Cutter recalled her brother's new love affair with New York, the big city just across the Hudson a few miles (and a world) east of little hometown Raritan. “New York, supposedly the city without feeling, took me into her heart. Every door was open to me. Ed Sullivan of the New York Daily News and Toots Shor took me in tow. They went out of their way to do things for me and what I liked about them both was that they took real pleasure in whatever they did. Both are grand fellows and I shall never forget them and their sincere friendship. It was a privilege and an honor to know them.”

To those who knew Sullivan, then or later, he was a self-important and rather cynical man mostly involved not with others but with himself. Basilone's and his family's impressions of Sullivan's goodness of heart may say more about Basilone and his folks, their own decency and their essential niceness and authenticity, than about the worldly Sullivan. Regarding Toots Shor, a large, vulgar man who ran a “great joint” (his own description), a Marine enlisted man of Basilone's age and appearance, without the Medal of Honor, might not have been entirely welcomed by Toots or his doorkeepers. If you were famous, even marginally, it was, “Come right in, pally. The drinks are on us.” Otherwise it might be, “Beat it, Marine. Try the joints under the El on Third Avenue.”

There is a wonderful small and telling scene in Sydney Pollack's
The Way We Were
burlesquing popular nightspots such as Shor's, the Stork Club, and El Morocco during wartime, where the headwaiter at the velvet rope smilingly welcomes the colonels and the ranking naval officers and then curtly dismisses a GI and his girl, enraging Barbra Streisand's feisty character, the “pinko” scold, who promptly ushers the young couple swiftly past the rope and chews out the flunky, dressing him down as “You fascist rope holder!” That's how it was at Shor's joint back then and would have been for Basilone, had he been just a sergeant on his own, without a medal or an escort of military PR flacks.