The Pacific (71 page)

The process of packing up their gear had begun when the sergeants of the Twenty-seventh Regiment threw a Christmas party. Few officers were invited.
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It was the kind of evening when the marines provided some of their own entertainment. Some doggerel written by the 1st Marine Division in Australia had become a favorite.

Bless 'em all, Bless 'em all
The long and the short and the tall
There will be no promotion
This side of the ocean
So cheer up, me lads, bless 'em all.
They sent for MacArthur to come to Tulagi
But General MacArthur said, No.
He gave for the reason it wasn't the season,
And besides, they had no U.S.O.

Taken from an English drinking song, it was the kind of ditty that had new verses added every time it was sung. A few days after Christmas, the Twenty- seventh Regimental Combat Team began departing the camp. Another two weeks and the New Year's Eve celebration, however, passed before John's battalion got on the trucks to ride to the dock. They boarded USS
Hansford
and steamed around the Hawaiian Islands for a few days, watching while naval officers practiced maneuvering the big fleet.

The days of boredom ended with their ship pulling into Pearl Harbor. After being in Hawaii for six months, the 1st Battalion would at last get its chance to go ashore in the big city. Standing on the ship's deck, they could see that ships of every kind jammed the harbor, including the transports holding about twenty thousand marines of the 4th Division. John had to tell his men that liberty would be granted to only a quarter of his men each day.
Hansford
and the ships weighed anchor two days later, much to the disgust of half the men. The fleet stood out from Pearl Harbor on January 21, prepared to take on the Japanese.

The next morning, though, found them drilling again, this time as a division. The careful landing plans disintegrated into a snafu.
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Ships as big as LCIs missed their marks; smaller boats swamped. The marines raced out of their LVTs and toward their objectives. The soft volcanic ash made movement difficult for men and machines. The ash pooled around their feet; it rose in great clouds of fine dust.
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They were told that this island closely resembled Island X, their target.
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After a cold dinner of K rations, they spent an even colder night on the island.
Hansford
and the rest of the fleet returned the division to Pearl, where half the men could debark each day. Free beer and sporting equipment were made available near the docks. Honolulu was eight miles away and every mode of transportation was strained to capacity. Lots of marines chose to buck the crowds, feeling the need to pull a liberty in the big city.

Gunnery sergeants had a lot easier time having fun in Hawaii than enlisted men. John and his friend Watters managed to look up John's brother George.
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They passed a few pleasant hours and took another photo for their parents. It was not like John to get serious about what awaited them. As they were leaving, he said, "See you on the beach."
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Before he shipped out, John wrote his mom to tell her he was okay. He apologized for not writing sooner, "for we were a little busy," and let her know George "sure is looking good mom." He had gotten a letter from Mary and Delores just the other day. "Tell Delores everybody liked her picture she sure came out beautiful in it." He sent "love and kisses to all. Love always, Johnny."
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SID PHILLIPS SAW A NOTICE FOR THE V-12 PROGRAM ON THE BULLETIN BOARD OF NAS Boca Chica. It offered the chance to become an officer, a prospect for which Sid had no enthusiasm, and the chance to earn college credits, about which he was "extremely anxious." The first stop was his unit's top sergeant, who checked the private first class's folder and exclaimed that he had never seen a higher score on the general aptitude test. Sid had the qualifications. An officer had to sign the application, though, and they both knew their major was a mean and vindictive man who might step in Sid's way. The sergeant said he had a way around the major if Sid could be patient.

At the end of the year, a colonel from Washington, D.C., came to inspect the marine detachment. Colonel Hill wore the 1st Division patch, so Sid knew he was "one of us." The colonel finished his inspection with a short talk to the marines standing before him on the parade ground. He offered them the chance to come see him in the office if they needed something. "As he said this the top sergeant looked right at me and nodded his head ever so slightly."

Sid stowed his gear and raced over to the office. The top sergeant appeared as well, making sure Colonel Hill understood. Hill looked over the application and put it in his briefcase. He turned to Sid "and told me to pack my seabag, that the papers would be on the Commandant's desk Monday morning." Hill asked Sid if he had ever met General Vandegrift. Sid told him a story about bathing in the Lunga River on Guadalcanal with a lot of others. A bar of soap had floated down to him. Sid looked upstream to see his commanding general with his hand out, asking for it back. Hill laughed and promised to remind Vandegrift of it, at which point Sid "saluted and floated out of the office. I wanted to hug the top sergeant."

On Wednesday morning, Sid was told to report to the office. "The top said, 'Here are your papers. You catch the bus at the main gate in one hour.' My cobbers carried my seabag out to the main gate and bid me goodbye." The bus off the Florida Keys and on to Miami had plenty of seats. "It seemed the pattern in the service," he observed, was "to constantly alternate between mountain tops of joy and deep valleys of misery."

COLONEL SHOFNER MET UP WITH THE U.S. ARMY'S FOURTEENTH CORPS IN PORT Moresby, New Guinea--not a long trip from Pavuvu. Shifty "had no love for the Army and no interest in serving with them. He had heard that all of the men who served with MacArthur were chosen for their loyalty to MacArthur and not for their ability on the battlefield."
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He reported to the corps headquarters and was assigned to its 37th Division as an observer. Without any official duties, he stepped aboard USS
Mount McKinley
on December 31 for the trip from New Guinea to Luzon. His ship sailed past Mindanao, still in enemy hands. A week later, as the convoy of ships neared the northern tip of the Philippines, Japanese planes flew out to attack them. These planes did not attempt to drop their bombs on the ships. These planes were bombs. Their pilots attempted to crash themselves into the largest, nearest ship they could find, preferably an aircraft carrier.

Shofner watched the air attacks, which the Japanese government had referred to in the Tokyo newspaper as its Kamikaze Special Attack Force; they had been expected. The enemy suicide planes did not hit
McKinley.
They struck other ships in the convoy, however, by the dozen. The navy pilots aboard the escort carriers lived on full alert, as did the ships' AA gunners. The numbers of kamikaze involved in this effort and the praise of the special attack force found in the Japanese media betrayed the rapid growth of a serious problem. The eagerness of the enemy to commit mass suicide in order to raise the cost of the U.S. victory came as no surprise to a veteran of Peleliu.

The invasion day bombardment was also something Shofner had seen before, although not to this scale. One thousand ships filled Lingayen Gulf on January 9 as the opening salvos from the battlewagons cleared away all life- forms in the soldiers' paths. The 37th landed that day and so did Shifty at the same location the Japanese had invaded in 1941. He watched the companies and battalion perform. General MacArthur had 131,000 combat troops and another 80,000 in support. Very quickly Shofner became highly critical of the army leadership at the corps level and above. The assault, he felt, took too long to drive inland.
^ag
His disgust came partly from interservice rivalry; it resulted also from his intense desire to free the Americans locked inside Cabanatuan POW Camp Number One.

His attitude won him few friends on the Fourteenth Corps staff. Shifty also believed that the army commanders "brushed aside" the guerrillas, refusing to use them for anything more than scouts and intelligence. Although he had no direct contact with General MacArthur, Shofner came to believe that the general refused to involve the Filipinos because they had continued to fight the enemy long after he had fled. The attitude, one Shofner considered prevalent among army officers, angered him because he believed the Filipino guerrillas were "heroes" who had "committed their lives and fortunes and their sacred honor to fight the Japanese and care for their people."

The officers of the 37th Division would have questioned the logic of Shofner's insistence that one of the most powerful invasion forces ever assembled should coordinate its advance with the large and well- intentioned, but fractious and ill-equipped, guerrilla movements on Luzon. To the soldiers, the visiting marine colonel's assessment also overlooked the decades of service in the Philippines by General MacArthur and some of his top generals. Moreover, MacArthur's staff had been in constant communication with the guerrillas for years. Shifty had firsthand knowledge of MacArthur's relationship with the guerrillas, however, just as he had with the general's leadership of the battle of Bataan, and it led him to a different conclusion.

In a meeting on January 23 Shifty Shofner insisted that the 37th Division needed to focus on helping the POWs. Thousands of Americans had died slow deaths and had been buried in unmarked graves. To rescue the surviving POWs, the soldiers would need the help of the Filipino guerrillas. The army officers brought in a stenographer to type up his comments.
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Shifty gave a description of Cabanatuan and Camp O'Donnell and Bilibid Prison. Having been a prisoner, though, meant that his geography was a little fuzzy. He believed, however, that this memo was exactly the reason he had been brought to Luzon.
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That same day, he found himself detached from further duty and sent to the airport to await transport. On the twenty-seventh he boarded a flight to Guadalcanal and from there winged his way to Pavuvu.

A LOT OF THE MARINES SPENT THEIR IDLE HOURS ON PAVUVU FIGURING OUT WAYS to ferment raisins or anything handy into moonshine known as "raisin jack." The beer bottles issued a few times a month were not enough to wash down the boredom and not all marines were interested in the stacks of books in the recreation hall. After one beer ration was issued, Eugene "sat on my bunk and watched the drunks beat each other. Finally after tearing up their bunks they were quieted by the O.D. [Officer of the Day]. The whole thing was certainly disgusting to me but to them was more fun. So I continue to sell my beer to the suckers and let them show their caveman instincts for bashing each other." At least the poker games--which Eugene noticed tended to end with guys "at each others throats"--were usually held in the tent next door.

Gene liked to hang out at his tent with the men in his squad. Drill or an inspection usually took up the morning, but in the afternoon they had time to shoot the breeze. Aside from an occasional steak or scoop of ice cream, the chow they were served was, like the training, part of the hardship they endured together. They shared the goodies their families sent. No family sent as much as Dr. and Mrs. Sledge, but Snafu got a big can of fried chicken for Christmas, which he shared. Gene smoked one of the pipes his father had sent him and showed off some of the Confederate money from his "good old Rebel country." The marines who had been in Australia told so many stories, the new guys assumed "the Battle of Melbourne may have been the biggest battle the Marine Corps ever fought."
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Snafu might have had something to do with enhancing that reputation, but not R. V. Burgin. His time in Melbourne had been devoted to one Miss Florence Riseley and Burgin had promised to make it back to her. Gene read a bit from one of his mother's recent letters out loud. She declared that "Peleliu was spoken of with awe." His buddy George jumped in with, "Yeah, with aw hell!" The joke got a good laugh. It was just a little moment, one of many that Gene treasured. He belonged.

In the New Year the 1st Division began to train its men in "street fighting," which encouraged the enlisted men to guess about the location of their next assignment. Formosa, mainland China, and Japan itself were mentioned.
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Gene's mother always wanted to know about what was going on in her son's life. She asked questions. She wondered how his experience compared with his brother's war in Europe. "Ed's outfit," Gene replied, "certainly is good to get so many commendations. I hear we got the Prez citation for Peleliu. I don't know if it's true or not."
^ah
When Mrs. Sledge began to wonder about his next assignment, he wrote: "Don't try and figure out the things the higher-ups do--I long ago learned its useless figuring. Realize we are in God's hands, and he will unite us all at Georgia Cottage before long."