The Pacific (73 page)

Among the many magazines Sledge's mother sent him in February he found a month-old copy of
Life
. It featured a story on the Battle of Peleliu written and illustrated by a USMC combat artist who had landed on D-day, Tom Lea. Lea offered a vivid and unforgiving look at the brutality. The carrier planes had wiped out "visible targets" three days before the marines arrived, so "the 12,000 Japs on Peleliu" had moved into their bunkers and waited, as Lea observed, "with plugs in their ears and hatred in their hearts."
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In a large portrait he entitled "The Last Step," Lea caught a marine in the final seconds of his life, at the moment when he realized he could not move because the last explosion had torn away large parts of his flesh, muscle, and bone. The artist had seen that man in that moment and knew "he never saw a Jap, never fired a shot." Lea quoted Colonel Herman Hanneken, who like Colonel Chesty Puller had fought in many wars in his thirty-one years of duty: "This is the bitterest, fiercest conflict I've ever seen."

At one point in the narrative, the author asked, "How much can a human being endure?" Eugene sent the clipping of Lea's article home to be saved. The question posed by the author was one he was struggling to answer himself.

THE NINETEENTH OF FEBRUARY DAWNED CLEAR AND WARM, TOO BREEZY TO BE hot. John Basilone and his men went through their routine and their amtrac dropped off the tongue of the LST about ten thousand yards from shore. The panorama of violence and power stormed above them, around them, ahead of them, magnificently. They churned slowly to four thousand yards from shore. The island's volcano rose gradually on the left. The shelling stopped at eight a.m. A wave of bombers made a run on the island, followed quickly by dozens and dozens of carrier planes, which swarmed over Iwo Jima for twenty minutes. At eight twenty-five, the planes disappeared and the navy's ship bombardment resumed. Five minutes later, the first wave of amtracs uncoiled from its circle, moved into line abreast, and crossed the line of departure. The second wave followed. Then the third caught John's attention. Then his own wave straightened out and motored toward shore about three hundred yards behind the wave in front.

The amtracs churned through the line of battlewagons, close enough to feel a heat flash each time a salvo crashed forth, the guns firing faster and faster in the final minutes until it stopped just before nine a.m. The carrier planes made another pass, sweeping up from the south past the volcano at 150 knots, flying low and strafing the ground, putting on a show. An amber parachute flare burst over the beach. The first wave had landed. John's amtrac was a few hundred yards from shore, Futatsu Rock just off to his left.

His LVT crawled out of the water at 0912. Coming down the back ramp, he would have noticed that most of the LVT (A)s, the first wave, were milling around near the water's edge; they were supposed to have gone inland to engage targets with their 75mm guns. Empty amtracs were grinding back toward the ships. John felt his feet sinking into the black sand. Carrying his carbine, he slogged to the foot of the black dune, its crest fifteen to twenty feet above his head. There were no ladders in sight. It took both hands digging and both legs pumping furiously to gain the top of the height, as the loose black sand offered little purchase. A fair number of men lay at or near the crest.
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As his head popped over the edge, he looked across an open swath of beach to another, smaller terrace of black sand. Some marines had crossed to the next terrace; some were making their way between enemy mortar explosions, but about 70 percent had not. The expanse of black beach offered no cover from the enemy mortar shells.

They were also confused. Baker Company had landed on Charlie's beach. Officers and NCOs of both companies were shouting and struggling mightily to get their platoons organized while huge navy shells shrieked overhead. Japanese mortars exploded on the open ground. There were wounded men. On the next terrace above him, he would have just discerned the impatient staccato of machine guns firing.

As gunnery sergeant of Charlie Company, John's job was to make sure his men got organized properly into squads and fire teams at their rendezvous area. The riflemen needed supporting arms. Machine gunners needed ammo carriers. They all expected to fight next to men they knew and trusted. John needed to help get the fire teams organized and moving forward. He would have tried.

The intensity of the enemy mortars exploding on Red Beach Two dramatically increased at nine thirty-five a.m.
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Every marine started digging a hole. With every handful of ash scooped out, another slid back in. There was no other cover. The noise made it impossible to hear a shout from a few feet away. The officers of Charlie Company, like John, could see that a crisis had come.
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John shouted, "Come on, you guys, we gotta get these guns off the beach!"
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He stood up, signaled the men near him to "follow me" and started his legs churning forward.
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A few marines followed. Picking his way through the men lying in the black sand, he crossed to the next terrace. Another stretch of open black sand lay ahead. The marines there were ducking under enemy machine-gun fire. John could tell he had joined the men of the first wave because they wore a heavy white cream on their faces to prevent being burned by gasoline fires. The flash cream gave them a ghoulish appearance. The fury of mortars made yelling at the men pointless. John got up and ran across the terrace to the next lip. A machine-gun team lay there.

Basilone thumped the gunner's helmet to get his attention, then pointed at the aperture of a blockhouse.
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The marine turned to him. It was Chuck Tatum, the young man from Baker Company he had met a year ago on his first day back. Tatum was unsure. John had him look right down his arm and that did it. The snout of a large-caliber cannon emerged from a large concrete blockhouse in the face of a small ridge. The cannon was firing at the beach to their right. Into his ear, John yelled, "Get into action on that target!" Tatum slapped down the tripod and his assistant put the pintle into the slot. They loaded it; Tatum cocked it and pulled the trigger. Nothing. Opening the breach, the young marine saw it was clogged with black sand. Tatum rolled a bit and left his assistant to get the cleaning gear from his pack. He began cleaning the firing mechanism with a toothbrush. Basilone waited. Tatum snapped the cover shut, pulled the bolt and started firing. John took one look at where the tracers were hitting and realized the angle was bad. The firing port faced to their right. He signaled Tatum to shift to his right. Tatum and his buddy picked up the gun and moved about thirty yards along the terrace.

When they opened fire, their bursts found the mark. Pinned down, the Japanese inside quit firing. John had already spied the next move. He sent Pegg, a demolitions expert, forward. Moving alongside Tatum's bullets, Pegg got near the pillbox. Basilone ran over and whacked Tatum's helmet. The machine gun stopped firing. Pegg threw the satchel full of C-2 explosives into the aperture and ran like hell. Everybody ducked. After it exploded, it was the flamethrower's turn. Tatum fired a few rounds to cover his approach. The flamethrower stuck the barrel into the mouth of the pillbox and gave it a couple of long squirts.

John handed Tatum his carbine, unlocked the Browning from its tripod, grabbed the bail with his left hand and the handle over the trigger with his right, and sprang forward. Gaining the ridge, he fired at the soldiers who were escaping out the back of the burning pillbox. Holding the machine gun at his hip, he fired full trigger at eight or nine Japanese, most of whom were covered in burning napalm. It was a textbook approach. Tatum, his assistant gunner, and other riflemen joined him. They fired at the bodies. Basilone exchanged the machine gun for his carbine and waved them to follow.
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They left the black ash behind and moved into a nightmarish landscape. The stunted trees and bushes had been burnt into blackened stumps. The coarse grass and twisted limbs still burned with napalm. The bombs had cratered the earth and demolished the network of low rock walls that had once divided the area. They paused frequently, looking for pillboxes and timing explosions. John led them through the few hundred yards from the last terrace to the edge of the airfield, Motoyama Number One. A steep embankment off to their right revealed where the main runway ended, its grade well above their heads. They ran around the southern end of the runway. They clambered up the embankment as explosions went off near them, so they jumped into holes. Basilone landed in one with Tatum, the assistant gunner, and two riflemen. They caught their breath. In one direction lay the wrecked planes and equipment with the shell-pocked airstrip just beyond. The volcano, about fifteen hundred yards away in the opposite direction, towered over them. Looking back, they saw the way they had come. No one was there. Tatum looked at his watch. "It's 10:33. We landed at 0900. We have been on Iwo for one hour and thirty minutes."
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The barrage grew intense. It sounded like some of it was coming from Suribachi, above them, and some from the other side of the airfield. Then the navy started shelling them--the rolling barrage was rolling back. It was like sitting in the bull's-eye. Two marines began moving back to the beach.

John stopped them. "We took this ground and now it's up to us to hold it! Dig in! I am going back for more men! Stay here come hell or high water!"
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With that, he ran back for the beach. Racing down two terraces, John found three tanks struggling to get out of the terraces and minefields. Tanks drew fire like magnets. He had been trained to get behind the tanks and get on the phone and direct them. Instead, he stood up in front of the lead tank, so they could see him. Exposing himself gained the trust of the skittish tankers, who had already lost four of their comrades. John was calm as he walked them to solid ground.
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With the tanks headed into the brush, John ran for the beach. Hundreds of marines watched him from the safety of shell holes, aghast.

The enemy barrage on Red Beach Two had become a torrent.
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Large-caliber artillery shells exploded at regular intervals moving in one direction parallel with the beach. At a certain point, the explosions shifted a hundred feet toward the beach or away from it, and came walking back. Heavy mortars also came swishing down in great numbers. The violence of it all overwhelmed the senses. Every marine knew he had to run forward. The knowledge made his heart pound. Yet to run forward without expecting to get hit was like expecting to run in a rainstorm without getting wet. The soft black sand, which made walking difficult, also sucked their bodies into ground level, and that felt wonderful. The amtracs, now aided by Higgins boats and LCMs, had succeeded in getting the regiment ashore.
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The entire regiment was pinned down.
^ak
The enemy's guns had turned enough landing craft into geysers of water, wood, and metal that landing operations had been shut down. The numbers of wounded and dead were climbing fast.

John gathered up some more men and set off for the airfield, running from shell hole to shell hole.
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Clearing the last terrace, he happened upon Clinton Watters and some of his squad. John jumped in a shell hole with his buddy. Watters had lost a lot of men just crossing the beach. Some had been hit; others were still endeavoring to heft their machine guns up the terraces. The area in front of them, so quiet on John's first trip, had come alive with small-arms fire.

Watters had been stopped by a couple of Japanese throwing grenades from a trench system ahead. John yelled, "Let's you and I go in. You go that way and I'll go this way. We'll go in."
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An explosion caused Watters to duck. John did not wait. By the time Watters caught up to him, John had jumped into the enemy's trench and was shooting them with his carbine. Once they killed the soldiers, Watters heard John yell something about "let's do this . . ." and set off. For the next twenty minutes, every rock seemed to have become a pillbox. Before Watters understood either the target or the plan, John surged forward to go do it. Not every gunnery sergeant would have chosen to lead the attack rather than direct it, but Basilone did not even look back to see if they were following him. Watters chased Basilone. The rest of the squad followed.

As they crossed the plateau of burnt scrub brush and shell holes on the way to the airfield, the artillery fire grew intense. The Japanese were plastering the area to halt the advance. The navy guns were preparing the airfield for the advance of the marines. Carrier planes roared overhead, dropping canisters of napalm. Small-arms fire was coming from every direction. Watters and Basilone and their rump squad got separated.

John still had four NCOs behind him as he approached the end of the runway. They jumped into some foxholes. A mortar round exploded in the hole with the four NCOs. Charlie Company lost more of its leadership.
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John stood up to run. Bullets hit him in the right groin, the neck, and just about blew off his left arm completely.
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John Basilone died a painful death in the dirt near Motoyama Airfield Number One. In the rain of fire the men nearby could not reach him, nor was it their job to do so. The dead were left for the graves registration unit. The word went out, though. "John got it."
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Watters heard those words when he reached the hospital ship a bit later. The sailor who said them did not know Clint or his relationship with Basilone. Everybody knew John.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE, LENA BASILONE happened to see a newspaper headline on February 19 as she was cooking in the mess hall. It announced that ten thousand marines had landed on Iwo Jima. Though she had never heard of the island, it startled her and she spilled the pan of hot grease she was holding. The grease burned her badly on her lower leg and foot. She was taken to sick bay.