With the Old Breed (35 page)

“The Nips must be pullin’ a counterlanding, and the 1st Marines’ givin’ 'em hell,” someone said tensely.

Could our comrades in the 1st Marine Regiment stop that attack? That was the question on everyone's mind. But one man said confidently in a low voice, “The 1st Marines'll tear their ass up, betcha.” We hoped he was right. With no more than we knew, it was clear that if the Japanese got ashore on our right flank and counterattacked heavily on our left and front, our entire division might be isolated. We sat and listened apprehensively in the darkness.

As if things didn't seem grim enough, the next order came along. “Stand by for possible Jap paratroop attack! All hands turn to. Keep your eyes open.”

My blood felt like icewater throughout my body, and I shuddered. We weren't afraid of Japanese paratroopers as such. They couldn't be any tougher to deal with than veteran Japanese infantry. But the fear of being cut off from other U.S. troops by having the enemy land behind us filled us with dread. Most nights on Peleliu we had to keep a sharp lookout to front, rear, right, and left. But that night on Okinawa we had to scan even the dark sky for signs of parachutes.

We lived constantly with the fear of death or maiming from wounds. But the possibility of being surrounded by the enemy and wounded beyond the point of being able to defend myself chilled my soul. They were notorious for their brutality.

A couple of Japanese planes flew over during the night (we recognized the sound of the engines), and I experienced a dread I had never known before. But they passed on without dropping parachutists. They were bombers or fighters on their way to attack our ships lying offshore.

The Japanese and American artillery fire to our left front rumbled and roared on and on with frightening intensity, drowning out the rattle of machine guns and rifles. To our right, elements of the 1st Marine Regiment kept up their small-arms and mortar fire out to sea for quite some time. We heard scattered rifle fire far to our rear. This was disturbing, but some optimist said it was probably nothing more than trigger-happy, rear-echelon guys firing at shadows. Rumors passed that some enemy soldiers had broken through the army's line on our left. It was a long night made worse by the uncertainty and confusion around us. I suffered extremely mixed emotions: glad on the one hand to be out of the fighting, but anxious for those Americans catching the fury of the enemy's attack.

At first light we heard Japanese planes attacking our ships and saw the fleet throwing up antiaircraft fire. Despite the aerial attack, the ships’ big guns began heavy firing against the Japanese on land. Toward our right and rear, the firing of our infantry units slackened. We learned that radio messages indicated the 1st Marines had slaughtered hundreds of Japanese in the water when they tried a landing behind our division's flank. The sound of scattered firing told us some enemy had slipped ashore, but the major threat was over.

Our artillery increased its support fire to our front, and we were told that our division would attack during the day. We would remain in position, however—an order we found most agreeable.

Word came that the army troops on our left had held off the main Japanese attack, but things were still grim in that area. Some enemy had gotten through, and others were still attacking. While ⅗ remained in reserve, the 1st Marine Division began its attack to our front, and we heard that the opposition was ferocious. We received orders to be on the lookout for any enemy that might have slipped around the division's flank during the night. There were none.

There was a massive enemy air attack against our fleet at this time. We saw a kamikaze fly through a thick curtain of flak and crash-dive into a cruiser. A huge white smoke ring rose thousands of feet into the air. We heard shortly that it was
the cruiser USS
Birmingham
that had suffered considerable damage and loss of life among her crew.

The Japanese counterattack of 3-4 May was a major effort aimed at confusing the American battle plan by isolating and destroying the 1st Marine Division. The Japanese made a night amphibious landing of several hundred men on the east coast behind the 7th Infantry Division. Coordinated with that landing was another on the west coast behind the 1st Marine Division. The Japanese plan called for the two elements to move inland, join up, and create confusion to the rear while the main counterattack hit the American center.

The Japanese 24th Infantry Division concentrated its frontal attack on the boundary between the American army's 7th and 77th Infantry divisions. The enemy planned to send a separate brigade through the gap in the American lines created by the 24th Division's attack, swing it to the left behind the 1st Marine Division, and hit the Marines as the Japanese 62d Infantry Division attacked the 1st Marine Division s front.

If the plan succeeded, the enemy would isolate and destroy the 1st Marine Division. It failed when the two American army divisions stopped the frontal assault, except for a few minor penetrations, with more than 6,000 Japanese dead counted. At the same time, the 1st Marines (on the right of the 1st Marine Division) discovered the enemy landing on the west coast. They killed over 300 enemy in the water and on the beach.

Heavy rains began on 6 May and lasted through 8 May, a preview of the nightmare of mud we would endure from the end of the second week of May until the end of the month. Our division had reached the banks of the Asato Gawa at a cost of 1,409 casualties (killed and wounded). I knew losses had been heavy during the first week of May because of the large number of casualties I saw in just the small area we were operating in.

On 8 May Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally. We were told this momentous news, but considering our own peril and misery, no one cared much. “So what” was typical of the remarks I heard around me. We were resigned only to the fact that the Japanese would fight to total extinction on Okinawa, as they had elsewhere, and that Japan would have to be invaded with the same gruesome prospects. Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon.

The main thing that impressed us about V-E Day was a terrific, thundering artillery and naval gunfire barrage that went swishing, roaring, and rumbling toward the Japanese. I thought it was in preparation for the next day's attack. Years later I read that the barrage had been fired on enemy targets at noon for its destructive effect on them but also as a salute to V-E Day.

The 6th Marine Division moved into the line on our right, and our division shifted toward the left somewhat. This put us in the center of the American front. As we crouched in our muddy foxholes in the cold rain, the arrival of the 6th Marine Division plus the massive artillery barrage did more for our morale than news about Europe.

The 5th Marines approached the village of Dakeshi and ran into a strong enemy defensive system in an area known as the Awacha Pocket. Talk was that we were approaching the main Japanese defense line, the Shuri Line. But Awacha and Dakeshi confronted us before we reached the main ridges of the Shuri Line.

When our battalion dug in in front of Awacha, our mortars were emplaced on the slope of a little rise about seventy-five yards behind the front line. The torrents of rain were causing us other problems besides chilly misery. Our tanks couldn't move up to support us. Amtracs had to bring a lot of supplies, because the jeeps and trailers bogged down in the soft soil.

Ammunition, boxes of rations, and five-gallon cans of water were brought up as close to us as possible. But because of the mud along a shallow draw that ran to the rear of the mortar section, all the supplies were piled about fifty yards away in a supply dump on the other side of the draw. Working parties went off to carry the supplies from the dump across the draw to the rifle platoons and the mortar section.

Carrying ammo and rations was something the veterans had done plenty of times before. With the others I had struggled up and down Peleliu's unbelievably rugged rocky terrain in the suffocating heat, carrying ammo, rations, and water. Like carrying stretcher cases, it was exhausting work. But this was my first duty on a working party in deep mud, and it surpassed the drudgery of any working party I had ever experienced.

All ammunition was heavy, of course, but some was easier to handle than others. We praised the manufacturers of hand-grenade and belted machine-gun ammunition boxes. The former were wooden with a nice rope handle on each side; the latter were metal and had a collapsible handle on top. But we cursed the dolts who made the wooden cases our .30 caliber rifle ammo came in. Each box contained 1,000 rounds of ammunition. It was heavy and had only a small notch cut into either end. This allowed only a fingertip grip by the two men usually needed to handle a single crate.

We spent a great deal of time in combat carrying this heavy ammunition on our shoulders to places where it was
needed—spots often totally inaccessible to all types of vehicles—and breaking it out of the packages and crates. On Okinawa this was often done under enemy fire, in driving rain, and through knee-deep mud for hours on end. Such activity drove the infantryman, weary from the mental and physical stress of combat, almost to the brink of physical collapse.

A great number of books and films about the war ignored this grueling facet of the infantryman's war. They gave the impression that ammunition was always “up there” when needed. Maybe my outfit just happened to get a particularly bad dose of carrying ammo into position on Peleliu because of the heat and rugged terrain and on Okinawa because of the deep mud. But the work was something none of us would forget. It was exhausting, demoralizing, and seemingly unending.

In this first position before Awacha, those of us detailed to the working parties had made a couple of trips across the shallow draw when a Nambu light machine gun opened up from a position to our left. I was about midway across the draw, in no particular hurry, when the Japanese gunner fired his first bursts down the draw. I took off at a run, slipping and sliding on the mud, to the protected area where the supply dump was placed. Slugs snapped viciously around me. The men with me also were lucky as we dove for the protection of a knoll beside the supplies. The enemy machine gunner was well concealed up the draw to our left and had a clear field of fire anytime anyone crossed where we were. We were bound to lose men to that Nambu if we kept moving back and forth. Yet we had to get the ammo distributed for the coming attack.

We looked across the draw toward the mortar section and saw Redifer throw out a phosphorous grenade to give us smoke-screen protection when we came back across. He threw several more grenades, which went off with a muffled
bump
and a flash. Thick clouds of white smoke billowed forth and hung almost immobile in the heavy, misty air. I grabbed a metal box of 60mm mortar ammo in each hand. Each of the other men also picked up a load. We prepared to cross. The Nambu kept firing down the smoke-covered draw. I was re-
luctant to go, as were the others, but we could see Redifer standing out in the draw, throwing more phosphorous grenades to hide us. I felt like a coward. My buddies must have felt the same way as we glanced anxiously at each other. Someone said resignedly, “Let's go, on the double, and keep your five-pace interval.”

We dashed into the smoky, murky air. I lowered my head and gritted my teeth as the machine-gun slugs snapped and zipped around us. I expected to get hit. So did the others. I wasn't being brave, but Redifer was, and I would rather take my chances than be yellow in the face of his risks to screen us. If he got hit while I was cringing in safety, I knew it would haunt me the rest of my life—that is, if I lived much longer, which seemed more unlikely every day.

The smoke hid us from the gunner, but he kept firing intermittent bursts down the draw to prevent our crossing. Slugs popped and snapped, but we made it across. We rushed behind the knoll and flung the heavy ammo boxes down on the mud. We thanked Redifer, but he seemed more concerned with solving the problem at hand than talking.

“Boy, that Nip's got the best-trained trigger finger I ever heard. Listen to them short bursts he gets off,” a buddy said. We panted and listened to the machine gun half in terror and half in admiration of the Japanese gunner's skill. He continued to fire across the rear of our position. Each burst was two or three rounds and spaced:
tat, tat… tat, tat, tat… tat, tat.

Just then we heard the engine of a tank some distance across the draw. Without a word, Redifer sped across the draw toward the sound. He got across safely. We could see him dimly through the drifting smoke as he contacted the tankers. Shortly we saw him backing toward us slowly, giving the tankers hand signals as he directed the big Sherman across the draw. The Nambu kept firing blindly through the smoke as we watched Redifer anxiously. He seemed unhurried and reached us safely with the tank.