The Pacific (64 page)

The next day, the third day of the "three-day campaign," as someone surely noted, King moved east. The roads and buildings gave way to swamp. A small road crossed the marsh on a natural causeway of earth about a hundred yards in length. It widened into a clearing where the riflemen met some resistance. The #2 gun, along with marines from Item Company, ran across the narrow causeway and supported the assault on a small group of buildings in the larger clearing on the far side.
²⁶⁰
The Japanese had abandoned most of their bivouac sites there, but there was a blockhouse with large antenna above it.
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King, supported by Item and elements of the 2/5, worked through the small-arms and mortar fire of the garrison and wiped out all resistance. King lost thirteen men wounded in action, its first day of double-digit loss.
²⁶²
Nearly surrounded by thick mangrove swamp, King and Item dug in facing the only avenue toward solid ground and the enemy: south.

THREE DAYS HAD PASSED BEFORE LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHOFNER STEPPED back ashore on Peleliu. He did not know why they had held him for so long. A small neat bandage covered the wound on his arm.
²⁶³
He set off to find the regimental headquarters of the Fifth Marines and report to Colonel "Bucky" Harris. No one would have been in a good mood at regimental HQ, and Shofner's first impression would have been that the battle was not going well at all. Losses were high and progress slow. Harris had been wounded in the knee by a shell that had burst in his CP, killing a man near him; he had refused evacuation and now walked with a painful limp. Bucky informed Shofner that he would not be returning to command 3rd Battalion. A major had been given the job and so far he was doing well. The colonel designated Lieutenant Colonel Shofner his regimental liaison officer with division HQ.

Shofner considered the liaison appointment a make-work job. As a colonel with access both to the regiment and the division, though, he was in a position to learn a lot about what was happening on the battlefield. There was a lot of bad news. The jungle canopy had obscured the terrain beneath it. The aerial reconnaissance photographs had shown a ridge north of the airfield; combat had revealed a much bigger problem.
²⁶⁴
The bomb blasts and the engulfing flames of napalm had exposed an expanse of roughly five ugly, wartlike coral ridges, twisted and cut into a maze of peaks and gullies. The enemy had turned each of these myriad facets into a fortress, the coral escarpments riddled with pillboxes, caves, and nasty little spider holes.

Against this fortress Chesty Puller had driven his First Marine Regiment. The First Marines had always known that their mission was the toughest. Every day since D-day, Chesty had lashed his men, exhorting them to attack, to breach the defenses. His battalions had sustained horrendous casualties. The delay in cracking open the bastion just north of the airfield had angered Chesty's boss, General Rupertus. Rupertus's dour disposition had become nearly insufferable.
²⁶⁵
He hobbled around division headquarters, pained by an ankle injury sustained a few weeks earlier, demanding results.
²⁶⁶
The plan was for the Seventh Marines, who were finishing up their conquest of the southern tip of Peleliu, to support the First Marines' attack on the ridges. The Fifth Marines would continue to receive the easiest of the three assignments.

AFTER A QUIET NIGHT, KING COMPANY SPENT SEPTEMBER 19 MOVING SOUTH across another strip of land and onto another islet on the east side of Peleliu.
²⁶⁷
A road ran through the open area bordered by mangrove swamps and dotted with a few buildings. On their left flank, Item got into a short firefight at a blockhouse. King faced almost no resistance.
²⁶⁸
Behind them, the enemy's heavy artillery fire began to slacken. It also became harassing fire because it was obviously not targeted.
²⁶⁹

The job of patrolling this confusing checkerboard of soil and swamp was not completed by the end of the day. The temperature relented, though, dropping into the high eighties.
²⁷⁰
The next morning most of King Company walked out to still another islet, this one with a coastline on the Pacific, and set up camp on Purple Beach. Captain Haldane ordered a reinforced patrol; he joined Burgin's #2 gun, the war dog and his handler, and a machine- gunner squad to the riflemen of the First Platoon, their mission to search the southern tip of the larger islet behind Purple Beach.
²⁷¹
They moved out. Eugene eyed the war dog curiously because he loved dogs, but he had learned back on Pavuvu never to attempt to pet one.

The patrol went well during the day. They dug in near a lagoon in the late afternoon, the dense mangrove trees cutting visibility to a few feet. Another peninsula could be glimpsed on the far side of the cove. No one knew exactly how all of these pieces of land fit together. The word was there were fifteen hundred enemy troops over there. "We were there," as the #2 gun squad understood it, "to see that they didn't cross that lagoon while the tide was out." When someone reported hearing voices over there, the men began to wonder just when the tide went out. The vegetation rendered the 60mm mortar all but useless. Burgin took one last look before dark and concluded, "If the japs came across in mass swarms, they'd have killed every one of us."
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He had been with King Company during the Battle of Cape Gloucester, when it had held off a series of banzai attacks, but it had taken a lot more men and a lot more firepower to do it. They sat in the darkness waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

"It wasn't too long after dark this guy began to scream and holler." It horrified everyone. Even in the pitch-black darkness Burgin could tell the yelling came from the war dog handler because he was "within arm's reach." Orders to shut his mouth failed to stop his growing insanity. A medic found his way over and administered morphine. One shot made no effect. Burgin watched as "he gave him enough morphine to kill a horse. And it didn't affect him any more than if it had been water in the needle that he was using. And he went completely berserk, and he was hollering and screaming and he was giving our position away and, you know, that couldn't happen. And, uh, so he was killed with an entrenching tool that night, to shut him up." From the sound of it the crazed marine did not die immediately.

In the light of the next morning, it had to be faced. "One of their own" had been killed by one of their own. Most men concluded that it had had to happen. Burgin was grateful that he had not had to do it himself. Sergeant Hank Boyes called it "a terrifying night."
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No one spoke the name of the man who had wielded the entrenching tool. The lieutenant, a rifle platoon leader nicknamed Hillbilly, called Captain Haldane and "told him that he was bringing the troops in--he wasn't staying another night there." His small force could not hold off a force of that size."And so the company commander told him, 'Okay, bring them back.' So we come back and joined the company."
²⁷⁴

King Company had set itself up on the northern tip of the islet called Purple Beach because it fronted the ocean, far from the battle but not far from infiltrating Japanese. Gunshots could be heard on an islet across the canebrake from them. The shots came from marines in Item Company, who cleared it out and came over to say they had killed "about 25 japs."
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That day, September 21, ended without any casualties in King. Its men had survived six days on Peleliu. Their thoughts might have been with their friends in Love Company, still attacking the ridges near the airfield, and also with the thirty-four wounded and four marines killed thus far.
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These figures did not include the war dog handler, since he had not been on King's muster roll, but they represented a hefty toll on the 240 men who were.

JUST AFTER FIVE A.M. ON SEPTEMBER 21 THE PHONES RANG IN THE STATEROOMS OF the wolves aboard the flattop USS
Hornet
. They assembled in the ready room to get their preflight briefing on their target: the city known as the Pearl of the Orient, Manila. The wolves were here to start the process by which the Filipinos and the American POWs would be liberated. With the city of Manila bearing 250 degrees and 142 miles away, the skipper led the first deckload of SB2Cs off the deck at seven fifty-nine a.m.
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Mike walked out to the flight deck at about eight thirty. The clouds and squalls of rain surrounding
Hornet
would add another challenge to the day's mission. No rear seat gunner met him. The Hellcat, clad in a dark navy blue with white roundels, had clean, angular lines, which contrasted sharply with the rounded forms of the Helldivers spotted on the stern. For the carrier's second strike of the day, twelve fighters took off first, then Lieutenant Micheel's six fighter-bombers, followed by twelve SB2Cs.

The sky cleared of mist as they arrived over Manila Bay. Campbell's earlier strike had left a fleet oiler of the IJN smoking badly and listing hard. It was just one of about fifteen ships out in the center of the vast natural harbor. Mike could see another ten ships inside the breakwater of Manila's port.
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Most of them looked small enough to qualify as interisland steamers, sampans, or boats. He focused on the most important ship, the destroyer. His fighter-bombers went first, the echelon rolling over into steep dives to avoid the canopy of flak with which the destroyer covered itself. The F6F could handle a steep dive. The destroyer turned too fast, though, and all six five-hundred-pound bombs missed. The SB2Cs made the second pass and also missed the "tin can." After their runs, the Helldivers joined up to return home, their gas tanks reading half empty.

Unlike the Beasts, though, the F6Fs had plenty of gasoline. They also had rockets under their wings. Mike set his men free to hunt for "targets of opportunity." Downtown Manila was off-limits and they ignored the island of Corregidor. Some of them went looking for airfields. Most followed Mike, racing along the shore of Manila. Japan's three- inch and five-inch AA guns emplaced along Dewey Boulevard threw up lots of flak, but they failed to so much as dent the fighter- bombers. With their rockets, Mike's wing of Hellcats set the small ships at the piers on fire. At the outskirts of the city, he triggered the six .50-caliber machine guns on "anything that looked like Army vehicles running down the road." He noted with satisfaction, as the others joined up on his wing, that "there wasn't much left."

Micheel landed back aboard in time for lunch. Two more strikes on Manila and its environs were launched off his flattop later that day. His friend Hal Buell took a turn.

The next morning began with bogeys flying toward their task group. Two raiders appeared on the radar screens just after five a.m. These faded from the screens after the CAP was routed out to meet them, and the first strikes against Manila took off. The bogeys kept coming, though, dancing in and out of the radar's range.
Hornet
began to lead her group in a series of course and speed changes as more enemy aircraft popped onto her radar screens. The Hellcats of the CAP reported "splashing" a few bogeys, but just before seven a.m. "two bomb explosions in the water on port bow, 225deg, 2700 yards," made everyone jumpy. Had the two bombs been jettisoned by a U.S. plane? No one could say for sure. Mike's flattop continued her evasive maneuvers, signaling its task group "to form cruising disposition 5V." Changing direction away from one bogey, though, sent it toward another, and she came about again. Fifteen minutes later, a bogey attacked
Monterey
, off
Hornet
's starboard quarter, dropping two bombs that landed a few hundred yards from her port- side bow.

Hornet
signaled "for emergency speed 25, turn right to 300deg." The carrier came out of its left-hand turn and swung right (starboard) as she sped up. The port battery of AA opened up on a Zeke, or an enemy fighter, "diving from clouds 190deg relative, approximate range 4500'." The aft battery also fired as the bogey made a strafing run on the aft flight deck, the pilot matching his plane's 7.7 machine guns and 20mm cannon against
Hornet
's five-inch, 40mm, and 20mm guns. "The plane then made a sharp left turn and pulled up and away on port quarter." Its bullets had hit one of the carrier's gun tubes and left the wooden planking of the flight deck smoldering. The screening vessels continued to fire at the Zeke and the CAP vectored out after it. With her guns blazing at a second bogey, Mike's carrier continued her sharp turn until she almost collided with
Wasp
. As the captains evaded one another,
Hornet
's gunners opened fire "on Zeke on [the] port quarter bow outside of screen."
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Firing at an enemy plane off the far side of their destroyer screen meant they were jumpy. The bogey got away again. In the break, a lot of talk between the ships of the task group concerned AA guns firing too close to other ships of the group. The sky cleared enough for strike waves to be launched and recovered. Another wave of bogeys arrived around eleven a.m., though, and the flattop remained on high alert for the rest of the day, as the ship's gunners and her combat air patrol protected their carrier.