The Pacific (44 page)

Christmas Eve found the 2/1 in a flurry of action as they made final preparations. Each man received ammunition, salt pills, Halazone tablets (for water purification), Atabrine, and some of the army's good K rations. Christmas packages from the Red Cross were also distributed. "Headquarters Company," Deacon observed of the distribution, "got the best as usual." In the evening, Lieutenant Colonel James Masters, Sr., gave his battalion landing team a talk. Masters had just come over from the States, so he was green. The word was he had lost a brother at Wake Island. Masters ordered his men to "kill the bastards whenever we could." He reminded Sidney Phillips of his father. "I liked the man immediately; he hated the Japanese just like the rest of us." One of Sid's friends took to calling their battalion "Masters's Bastards."

The air raid alert went off a few times that night. It sounded again at four a.m., a half hour before reveille sounded on Christmas Day. After chow, they set about policing up their camp. The NCOs inspected their packs. How Company walked up the gangways of LCI 30 at two twenty p.m. Unlike the LCT with which they had trained, the LCI looked like a regular ship, although on either side of its bow a set of stairs could be lowered to water level. Sid's ship steamed out of port at three p.m. bound for New Britain, accompanied by the four other LCIs, twelve LCTs, and fourteen LCMs carrying the marines and equipment of LT- 21. Two destroyers escorted the convoy, which used the cover of darkness to cross the Dampier Straits.

THE PRESSURE HAD BEEN BUILDING INSIDE OF JOHN BASILONE FOR SOME TIME. AS the date approached for his return to duty, December 26, the discussion became pointed. His family and friends could see his discomfort with the situation as it existed. They had heard he had turned down an offer to be promoted to second lieutenant. None of them understood his unease. His future looked so bright. The $5,000 war bond meant that he could afford to set himself up properly with a fine home and a car. As for the war, he had done his part. It was "somebody else's turn."
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John should accept a cushy job, enjoy his hard-won success, and be near his family.

All of it made perfect sense to everyone except John. He was thinking of settling down with the right girl and even of starting a family eventually. However, he had had a glimpse of the life that awaited him at Marine Corps Headquarters. It involved sitting behind a desk and filing reports. John had dropped out of the eighth grade for a reason. Although the Marine Corps knew his weakness in administrative work, it seemed willing to ignore it.
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Providing ceremonial security details for high-ranking officers and special events meant observing protocols and strict military decorum. Neatness and military bearing had never been John's strong suits; in D.C. they were inescapable. Outside the buildings, officers saluted when they recognized him, as a mark of respect for the thin blue ribbon bar with white stars that hung above all the other medals on his Class A uniform. In Raritan, Manila John was a famous hero and a credit to the Italian community. The John Basilone Day Committee wanted to raise money to build the John Basilone Public Library. John, however, regarded himself as a "professional marine." He wanted to get back to the life that made sense to him.

He could not put all that into words. Just before Christmas, he told his mother he was going to ask to be reassigned. "I don't want to go to Washington, but I have to go for two days to tell them."
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He did not want a desk job. His older brothers, Carlo and Angelo, tried to talk him out of it. "Johnny, don't go back. You did enough. Why go back?" Angelo asked.
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John had been offered a job as a machine- gun instructor as well. He was good at that and it was safe. John obviously viewed the job of instructor as meaning more of the same: being on call whenever the Treasury Department or the Marine Corps needed a hero. He told his family he was "fed up with being an exhibition piece."
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For all of those who were so passionate about the Medal of Honor and what it meant, he offered to give it to the parade committee for display at the local library if they thought it would help.
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The idea would have seemed almost sacrilegious to his family.

The decision to return to a line company had come hard--not because he did not know what he wanted, but because of the expectations of others. Sergeant John Basilone left Raritan the day after Christmas, a Sunday. As soon as he could that next week, he went to Lieutenant General Vandegrift. Vandegrift, also a holder of the Medal of Honor for his service on Guadalcanal, always tried to make time for the men who had stood with him on the Canal. He was pleased to hear John say, "There is still a big job to be done over there and I want to be in at the finish."
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General Vandegrift promised him he "would be among the first Marines to land in Tokyo."
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ACT IV

"HAZE GRAY AND UNDERWAY "

December 1943 - June 1945

MOST OF 1943 HAD PASSED IN A SLOW, GRINDING WARFARE CONDUCTED BY America and her allies along the periphery of the Japanese empire. Less noticeable, the enemy had struggled to make up its losses in weapons and men. As the Imperial Navy shrank, the U.S. Navy experienced an unprecedented expansion. The war entered a new phase in late 1943 because Americans in factories, laboratories, and training camps had spent the last two years producing a vast arsenal of military weapons and equipment, as well as men and women trained to use them. The arrival of this awesome power fueled two separate drives aimed at Tokyo: one led by General Douglas MacArthur through the South Pacific; the other by Admiral Chester Nimitz through the central Pacific. The onslaught reduced the Empire of Japan to one set of military tactics.

THE PASSWORD FOR DECEMBER 26, D-DAY ON CAPE GLOUCESTER, WAS "GUADALCANAL." Just after five a.m. the mortar platoon watched a long stream of bombers off to their left and assumed they were bombing the main invasion beaches. The two destroyers nearby began firing their five-inch guns at the beach at seven thirty. Sid heard a friend beg Uncle Sam "not to be too thrifty" and fire more rounds, damn the expense. The shelling, however, halted after fifteen minutes and a squadron of fifteen medium bombers bombed and strafed the beach.
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The bombers' fighter escort shot down eight enemy airplanes. The 2/1 landed at 8:05 a.m. against no opposition. Sid walked down the portside stairs and through knee- deep water to shore. The word was "the japs fled leaving everything." Abandoned packs, rifles, ammunition, and supplies indicated the enemy had occupied the area just prior to the morning's assault. The enemy's departure made more and more sense as the marines discovered the level of destruction wrought by the bombardment. All hands turned to the work of setting up the perimeter, unloading the ships, and getting their camp organized. Inexplicably, no chow had been unloaded for lunch.

The object of their invasion, the coastal trail, turned out to be "nothing more than a single footpath," so far as Sid could tell. The trail ran along a ridge about twelve hundred yards inland, paralleling the ocean. The 2/1 made the ridge and its section of trail the apex of its semicircular perimeter, with the line running back toward the beach on both sides. The perimeter enclosed an area of about three city blocks, all of it on an angle from the shore to the ridge. Beyond the ridge, the ground rose precipitously upward to the top of nearby Mount Talawe, at sixty-six hundred feet. In the center of his perimeter, Colonel Masters put his 81mm mortar crews and a battery of 75mm guns. The day after the invasion, the #4 gun squad continued building their firing positions in the rain. It rained two and one-half inches that day, the water finding its way through the dense underbrush to the sharp ravines leading to the sea. The rain and the work continued the next two days. The working parties beat back and tramped down the mass of vegetation, which grew thicker and denser than the jungle of Guadalcanal. They strung barbed wire. They enjoyed eating the K rations, a step up from the C rations, although K rations convinced them the army got the best chow. They were glad when the cooks got their galleys operational on the twenty-eighth. Shots rang out along the perimeter several times that morning, and three patrols had reported skirmishes by noon. Marines manning the lines in Company E's sector saw enemy soldiers moving toward them. It was only a matter of time. Sid and all the others not manning foxholes on the line swung in their hammocks that evening, grateful for a dry place to sleep.

In the steady rain of the next day, another patrol contacted a large enemy force near the village of Tauali. A gale gathered around them in the afternoon and darkness came quickly. Just after midnight, during "a wild howling monsoon lightning and rain storm," the shit hit the fan on the right flank. The observation post called in the coordinates; the spotter asked for a barrage along that side of the perimeter, where G and H companies' lines met.
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A fire mission so close to marines demanded careful leveling of the bubbles in the gun sights, the correct number of increments on the bottom of each shell, and precise calculations based on the range card. Each of the gun squads had been issued a one- cell flashlight for just such a contingency. Only Sid's worked, though. He moved from gun to gun as the others groped in the darkness. To get the rounds up and out of the jungle canopy, Sid had to keep the guns above a seventy-five-degree elevation. The big 75mm howitzers nearby lacked that trajectory and were therefore useless. The 81mms provided the fire support. An experienced gunner, Sid likened the job of firing a mortar in a jungle to standing inside a barn and "throwing rocks at the enemy . . . through holes in the roof." He walked the bursts to within fifteen yards of the front line. Some moments his squad could hear marines on the perimeter "pouring lead"; at other moments the concussions mixed with the thunder and became confusing. The soft cough of the 60mm mortars, being directed by his friend Deacon out there in the darkness, could not be heard at all.

Over the telephone came news of hand-to-hand fighting and a running total of banzai charges. Some of the men in Sid's OP were hit. The battle slackened after the fifth charge and stopped at about seven thirty a.m. The #4 gun squad dug out the base plate of their mortar. The concussions had forced it deep into the mud. Colonel Masters came to congratulate his 81mm mortar platoon on a fine performance. Masters asked his mortarmen to introduce themselves. He asked Private First Class Phillips to show him the one flashlight that had worked. It was a proud moment in an otherwise depressing situation. Instead of hot chow for breakfast--the cooks and the mess men had spent the night carrying ammo--they received more of the wax-paper cartons marked "U.S. Army Field Ration K" above a list of its contents. Slipping and struggling through the mud came the stretcher bearers, bringing back the dead and wounded. How Company had been hit hardest--of the six killed in action, four came from H Company; sixteen of the nineteen wounded had been How Company men. The surgical tent happened to be near the 81mm mortar platoon, so Sid got a good look at his friends' suffering. He felt helpless. They were in agony. He hated the feeling of not knowing what to do. In that moment a desire to learn to heal came to him.

The 81mm gun squads spent the morning cleaning up the mess around their mortars--most of it the packaging that encased their shells. Yellow range cards, one per canister, were strewn about. A few of them had been kissed by girls in the ammunition factory, imprinting the shape of their lips in red. Under the red lips the girls wrote messages like "Love you, Betty." Scrambling after these cards made the work go faster. "These cards were prized and passed around in the rain for everyone to kiss the red lip imprint and make obscene remarks about Betty." How Company prepared for another attack. The enemy body count arrived later. Someone said it was 185 and that "more japs were killed inside our line than outside."
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Five wounded Japanese had become POWs.

The enemy that the marines could not kill or capture was the rain. It drilled them relentlessly. The area inside LT-21's perimeter had become a morass of mud. Sid and W.O. and the rest of #4 gun squad threw away their underclothes and socks, wearing only their "dungarees and boondockers and helmets just like we had done on Guadalcanal." The rain fed a dense thicket of jungle, which they had taken to calling the green inferno. The infinite shape and variety of green vegetation could drive a man to distraction. Sid saw it a bit differently. The heavy rains faded the color of his dungarees. Storm clouds darkened the jungle around him until he saw only shades of black and white.

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS EUGENE SLEDGE HAD HOPED TO STAY AT THE RECRUIT Depot in San Diego and receive training at its Sea School, where a marine learned how to serve in a detachment aboard a navy ship. A marine's duties on board a battleship or a carrier included a fair amount of ceremony, like serving in an Honor Guard, along with providing security and handling some of the ship's AA guns. Sledge thought the most elite marines went to Sea School and was disappointed not to have made it. He arrived at Camp Elliott, outside San Diego, on Christmas Day and learned that it trained tankers as well as infantry. Relieved to be assigned a bunk in a big barracks "with hot showers, good lights, and steam heat," he recovered from a fever and set his sights on getting into the tank or the artillery corps. The Marine Corps quickly decided that Private First Class Sledge would make a fine mortarman, and assigned him to Company E of its infantry battalion.