CHAPTER TEN

Black Smoke, White Sand

Peleliu

By summer 1944, the brass authorized Army General MacArthur’s plan to retake the Philippines. MacArthur, however, wanted to see Peleliu neutralized first, because the fortified island contained two airfields and 11,000 troops that threatened his flank. Some generals argued that Peleliu could be bypassed and cut off using airpower, at minimal loss of life. Instead, MacArthur ordered the 1st Marine Division to invade.

WAYBURN HALL

We were in a convoy with all the other ships headed for the invasion. We must have been ten days at sea. To go to Peleliu we were assigned aboard an LST with all our gear and equipment. Ours had bay doors that opened on the front end. On the lower deck, they loaded it with those amphibious tractors, amtracs or LVTs [landing vehicles, tracked], twelve or fifteen of them.

On our ship, we had an LCT [landing craft, tank] on the top deck. An LCT is a flat-bottom smaller boat that’s used for transporting supplies, like tanks, from a ship to a dock. I slept on the top deck, up on this LCT they had up there. No cover, just a poncho, and it was always raining and miserable. And it was close confinement on board. All you could do was eat your chow and look over the rail and play cards and smoke cigarettes.

R. V. BURGIN

I remember First Sergeant Paul Bailey telling us about where we were headed to. He was a helluva good Marine. He said the fighting wouldn’t be easy, and that a lot of us wouldn’t be coming back. But we were going to take it as quick as possible with as few casualties as possible. The faster we killed those Japs, the faster we’d get off the island. General Rupertus [the 1st Marine Division’s commander] told us it would be a real quickie, that we’d be in and out in two days, three days at the most. We ended up fighting on Peleliu for thirty days.

We didn’t have any intelligence on that island beforehand. Nobody knew that Peleliu was a coral island with over five hundred man-made caves. Nobody knew there were swamps up to your armpits. Nobody knew it was going to be 100 to 120 degrees hot, every damn day we were on it. Nobody knew we were going to hell.

JIM ANDERSON

The night before we were to land, they issued us six K rations—small packets covered in wax paper, to make them waterproof. You could also start fires with the wax paper. I think those K rations were left over from WWI. They also issued us two canteens of fresh water that you hooked onto your belt.

Predawn, September 15, 1944…

STERLING MACE

You could tell when our ship stopped because all the motors went silent. It was four in the morning. We crawled out to see what was happening, but we couldn’t see the island yet. All I saw was the flash from one of the ships firing onto the island. We’re taking in the firing as we were all waiting to be called down to the mess hall. Then it started getting lighter, and we could just see the island’s shape. Everything was dark blue. Then we started seeing all the battleships and cruisers and whatnot. They started blasting away.

We watched a Navy Hellcat fighter being shot down. When that thing got shot down, everybody’s attitude was a little more serious. We went down, got the farewell breakfast, which is always steak and eggs.

WAYBURN HALL

The Navy always tries to feed you well before you go ashore. That steak and eggs was a delicacy after being on Pavuvu.

The bell rang. You grabbed your gear and followed your instructions. They got us all lined up and we went down into this steel cavern in the belly of the ship.

STERLING MACE

It’s like a big steel garage down there. The deck, the walls, the ceiling—it’s vast, and all these amtracs were in there, and the motors were running, getting warmed up. The deck was steel and the tractors were made of steel, so it’s nothing but squeaking and screeching.

JIM YOUNG

We were ordered to board. The amtracs were ready to launch although the doors in the mouth of the ship were still closed. All these small landing craft had their engines running. There was so much exhaust it was like we were in a blue fog. Some of the guys got sick. There were big fans that were supposed to clear the air, but they didn’t do very well. The noise drove us nuts. Even though we were nervous about what lay ahead, we just wanted to get the hell out of there.

WAYBURN HALL

The amtrac we were in didn’t have a ramp on the rear. You had to crawl up on the track and get up in it that way, and then when you got to the beach, you had to jump over the side of the darn thing, which was about six or eight feet out of the water.

JIM YOUNG

The big doors opened and bright light poured in. The first thing that hit us was the horrendous noise of the pre-invasion bombardment. In addition to battleships, a new weapon was being used—“rocket ships.” The rockets were in racks, each holding about a hundred. There were four racks of these on the bow of the rocket ships. They fired two racks at a time and the noise was awesome. We could see Peleliu. It was completely covered by smoke and fire.

STERLING MACE

Someone had the audacity to roll a 37mm cannon into our amtrac. We could hardly get in with that damn cannon in there. But finally we got squared away.

The tractors revved up their motors, making all this smoke and shit. We start forward and move up towards the doors. The tractor is grinding away. We’re going up very slow. And then we get to the peak of the ramp and she drops down, like you’re going to go straight into the waves. But once we were out in the ocean it was okay. We could look back to the ship. Sailors were standing on the deck, in white T-shirts with towels around their necks and coffee in their hands. They were waving good-bye and giving us this “give them hell” shit. Hoo boy, you’re almost saying then that you joined the wrong outfit.

WAYBURN HALL

It was a relief to get out of the hole of that LST. I wound up in the back left hand corner of the amtrac. My back was against the end of the amtrac, and my arm was lying on the gunwale. I could lean out and put my arm on it. Once we were in the water, I could drag my hand in the water. We were running that low in the water. I think those amtracs go about four to five miles an hour in the water. We stopped and formed a circle. Did that for a little while. Started toward the beach again, then circled again. The Higgins boats were directing the amtracs, directing us to the proper area.

R. V. BURGIN

We hit the water in our LVTs and wallowed around like a buffalo until we got the word to go in. While we were heading to the beach, the Navy was bombing and strafing, sixteen-inch guns; all the big guns were working it over. It looked like the island was on fire.

STERLING MACE

Everybody’s looking over the side because we’ve got plenty of time. We’ve still got a half hour yet. Ahead of us in the water was a whole line of ships loaded with rockets. Just as we got even with them, they let loose with those rockets. Twelve thousand of them were supposed to hit the beach just as we got there. That was a good sight to see.

I heard the destroyers and battleships grinding away. Putting shells on shore. Those shells couldn’t fly in fast enough for me. Then all I saw ahead was black smoke. I couldn’t see the island at all. Then the smoke cleared a bit, and I could just make out the beach. The water looked black then, and the contrast made the beach look even whiter.

JIM YOUNG

We were about three miles out and started to form long, straight rows which we called waves. These waves were numbered, and my boat was in the second wave. Some of the new Marines yelled that there wouldn’t be any Japs left because of the heavy naval gunfire passing over us. I yelled at my men to keep their heads down because the shells were from Japanese shore batteries. All throttles on the landing crafts were now wide open.

K Company (K-3-5) would land in the first wave, in the center of the two-thousand-yard-wide beach. H Company (H-2-1) would land in the second wave, on the left side of the beach.

JIM YOUNG

We passed close to one of our gunships and could see they were fighting a fire on board. A Jap shell had made a direct hit on the starboard gun. The turret was mangled and we saw our first casualty of this invasion. A sailor was all entangled and crushed in the wreckage of the gun mount.

We approached the reef that surrounded Peleliu, at least a hundred yards out. We hit the reef and almost upset. After crossing the reef, all hell broke loose. We received all kinds of fire—small arms, machine gun, mortars, and some real heavy stuff. Some of it landed very close and we got wet from the near misses.

JIM ANDERSON

We thought nothing could possibly live through the bombardment. But even when we were several hundred yards away from the island we started receiving machine gun fire.

DAN LAWLER

I was a front-line machine gunner, .30-caliber, in the first assault wave. We could hear the machine guns ricochet off the side of the tracks as we were going in. Ding, ding, ding, ding. As a Catholic, I wore a scapula medal around my neck. Man, was I reaching for that.

STERLING MACE

Halfway to the beach our amtrac got hung up on a corral outcropping. Everybody in the amtrac started getting excited, hollering, wanting to get unstuck. It’s dangerous, sure—we’re sitting ducks there on that reef. The driver was getting nervous, everybody yelling at him like that. But you gotta figure he’s never done this before either. He kept his cool and did a good job backing off and getting us off the reef.

R. V. BURGIN

We got hung up on a reef. You could hear the track spinning and grinding. We were sitting targets. It seemed like we were hung up there for minutes. But it might have been only seconds. The Jap gun was already zeroing in on us. He hit to the left of us, to the right of us. Just as we broke free and pulled out, a shell landed right in front of us. I mean splattered water on us. In hindsight, I think getting hung up on the reef was a God thing—if we hadn’t gotten hung up, we’d have run right into that shell and never made it into shore.

WAYBURN HALL

We climbed up onto this coral reef, and our amtrac almost stood up on its nose. Man, that was scary. I didn’t know if we were going to fall over backward. But it righted itself. We were maybe in no more than three feet of water then, and we headed—chug, chug, chug—straight toward the beach.

JIM YOUNG

We were still out from the beach about a hundred yards when we took a bad hit in the front of the amtrac and it stopped. I saw one of the drivers was hurt and slumped over. The other driver made signs that the amtrac was out of action. Some of the new Marines were very scared and looked pale. Our lieutenant seemed to be in a daze. He didn’t give any orders at all. We began to take hits on our starboard side. Some of our boys were hit. Some were screaming, “I’m hit! I’m hit!” The officer in charge seemed out of it. He was just sitting there.

Sergeant Miller and I knew we had to get the men off the amtrac as fast as we could because we were receiving more and more fire from machine guns. Miller was one of the old gang that had been picked to stay with the unit to help the new Marines in their first invasion. So was Brownie, my buddy who was on the beach with me the night the battleships shelled us. We decided to leave the amtrac regardless of what the lieutenant thought. He wasn’t talking anyway.

We told the young guys to follow us. Miller and Brownie started over the amtrac’s right side. As I went over the left side I noticed Sergeant Miller fall back in the amtrac like he was pushed real hard. I found out later that he was hit badly in the right shoulder. I didn’t see it but heard that when Brownie got out of the amtrac he had his entire head blown off. I’m glad I didn’t witness that.

I hit the water on the left side. The water came up to my chest. I started for the beach as fast as I could. It was very hard going. Small arms fire zipped all around me.

STERLING MACE

Luckily our tractor had a back ramp that dropped out. Our sergeant was right by the door, and as soon as he went out, I went out, too. Right on the beach was this little dog, running around, yapping. How the hell that dog made it through all that shelling, I don’t know. He ran away from us down the beach. That was the last we saw of him.

R. V. BURGIN

It was about eight o’clock in the morning by the time we landed on the beaches. The motto was to “Get the hell off the beach.” You’re a sitting target there. The Japs had the place zeroed in.

DAN LAWLER

They put someone with us who had been on Guadalcanal, to keep us all cool. He said, “Just put your head down and keep going.” We got on the beach and moved as fast as we could inland. It was hell. If you stood up, those Japs were all too glad to kill you.

When you stepped on the beach at Peleliu, you knew it was kill or be killed. The Japs didn’t take prisoners so we didn’t take prisoners either. The Army took prisoners, but we didn’t. When you went in, you knew that rule, in place ever since Guadalcanal.

JIM YOUNG

As I was making my way toward the beach, I saw another Marine about a hundred feet ahead of me. Just as I saw him, a huge shell hit between us. A huge geyser of water rose up about fifty feet in the air and I thought my eardrums were broken. When the water fell back, I could not see the other Marine. All of a sudden he rose up, took a few steps, and fell again. He must have been up and down about five times. I finally caught up to him, and he was screaming, “Please help me!” He put his arm over my shoulder and we started for the beach. We both fell about three more times. We finally made it to the beach. It had a five-foot-high bank where the waves had eroded the coastline. This offered us some safety from the Jap machine guns. I had no idea who this Marine was or what outfit he was from. We were both exhausted. I lay back against the bank to catch my breath and looked out to sea. From the reef onto the beach the water was littered with wreckage. Many of the amtracs were on fire. While looking, I saw one boat take a direct hit. Marines flew twenty feet in the air. It seemed to all be in slow motion. Body parts, legs, and arms splashed everywhere.

I turned my attention to the wounded Marine. He had been hit in the rear end. The right side of his rear was barely hanging to his body. I told him to stay put and to stay on his stomach. He was in terrible pain and thrashing around so much I was afraid he would tear his whole ass cheek off. I pulled him up as close to the bank as I could. I took a quick look back toward the boat that I was on, and I saw nothing of my men. What men I did see were from other units. I told him I had to go forward and try to locate my outfit. He was begging me not to leave him. Then I left. I never saw him again.

WAYBURN HALL

Our amtrac stopped right on the edge of the beach. Of course, when our driver stopped, we were immediately supposed to jump out over the side, get our gear, and get off the beach.

Mortar rounds began landing around us. Somewhere off to our left was a Japanese gun emplacement, and it seemed to me they had a straight trajectory of fire right to us. Boy, those rounds were coming fast and furious. I was scared to death.

Each guy worked in tandem with a buddy. A guy from South Carolina was my partner that day. As we jumped over the side of our tractor, a mortar round exploded, right on the end of our tractor. In the blast, I lost my helmet and my rifle. We landed in the water, both belly-up. The water was about knee-deep when the waves came in, about ankle deep when they went out. My partner looked at me.

“You’re hit,” he said.

“Where?” I said.

“Your face.”

I put my hand up. Sure enough, my upper lip was hanging down bloody all over my lower lip. I guess I’d caught a piece of shrapnel right across my face. It cut a gash about 3 inches long just under my nose, straight across my lip. Luckily it didn’t damage my teeth. But it went on through to my gums and took the upper part of my gums.

Other guys were jumping out, all around us.

“Let’s get out of here!” my partner said.

“Let’s go,” I answered back.

Quickly we crawled around to the front side of the tractor, where it was snub-nosed, and took cover there. We thought we were being safe, I guess. The amtrac backed up from under us. There was no way I could get back on that amtrac and go to the ship. That guy was backing out as soon as he unloaded, to go get another load.

I never found my helmet or saw my rifle again.

We crawled up on the beach a little ways. There was a bomb crater there, a pretty good size in diameter, and maybe three feet deep. I climbed in the shell hole. My buddy needed to keep going. He wasn’t wounded. So he kept crawling up there with the rest of the platoon.

It wasn’t long before a corpsman came by and saw me in this hole. He put some sulfa drug in my wound. It was all bloody and hanging down. He put a bandage around my lower face and tied it around the back of my neck.

“Just stay in this hole,” he said. “Don’t move.” We’d been trained to get off the beach, but he thought I was safe there, and I probably was. It would have taken a direct hit inside the hole to get me.

So I just stayed there. I had a ringside seat to the waves of amtracs coming in behind us. They were going and coming, and the Jap gun over there to the left was knocking them out something terrible. You could see bodies flying in the air, and equipment burning on the tractors, and all that bad stuff.

STERLING MACE

I turned and started heading up the beach toward the mangroves. Right away a machine gun opened up. I ducked behind an amtrac to find out where the fire was coming from. But the amtrac drove off, so I quickly ran and dropped in a hole. There were seven other guys already in there. I can still hear our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Shifty Shofner. He was up on a knoll ahead of us, yelling, “C’mon! There’s not a Jap alive on the island!” And everybody believed him. We got up and heard all kinds of shots. Somebody said he saw a dead Jap. We kept moving. I heard “Corpsman!” And then I knew for sure the enemy was out there. Then all I heard was “Corpsman!” here and “Corpsman!” there.

JIM ANDERSON

In all the experiences I ever had on the front lines, that day on the beach at Peleliu was the heaviest fire I ever seen or experienced. The noise was deafening. You couldn’t hardly talk to the man next to you. I legged it just as fast as I could, ran up to the first shell hole I saw, and jumped in. As soon as I got my breath again, I ran farther inland. That’s what a man did. You just kept moving farther and farther in from the beach. I didn’t think I’d live another hour if I had to stay under that heavy fire.

The farther I moved inland, at first I didn’t see anything to fire at, so I didn’t shoot at all. I came up to a pile of sand and looked over the top. Here was some Japanese running along a trench on the other side. By the time I got my rifle around, they were gone. Lesson number one: always be ready. In combat, if you’re not quick, you’ll be dead.

I went another fifty yards inland and crawled up on another little hummock of sand. I pushed my rifle ahead of me, and sure enough a few yards over there was another Japanese soldier. I pulled the trigger on my M1 without even aiming. Quick, about four times. It was bang, bang, bang, then I didn’t even look anymore. I ran to get away from there. When you’re that scared, you don’t take time to see what happened. I would swear that I killed that man. I presume that because he never shot back and because I’m here and he ain’t.

JIM YOUNG

I jumped over the bank, crouched down, and started to run for another spot of safety. An explosion knocked me to the ground. I said to myself, I’m hit, but I must be in shock. I could feel what I thought was blood running down my right hip and leg. I put my hand on my leg and there was no blood on it. I realized that a big piece of shrapnel had ripped through my canteen. What I thought was blood was just water.

The noise was deafening. As I looked around a big tree stump, I felt as if someone had pinned me to the ground. When I twisted around, I almost passed out. A Sherman tank had come in and stopped with one of his tracks resting right on my pack. The tank had come in from the sea blind. All openings were taped shut to keep water out. The driver saw me when he came out to take the tape off. He yelled, “Are you okay?!” and got back in and moved off of me. My toothpaste and some of my rations were squashed. I thought to myself, Someone must be watching over me.

WAYBURN HALL

Near the shell hole I was in, there was a big two-by-two concrete block buried in the sand. It was an obstacle that the Japs had placed there. There was another one just like it about twenty feet down. Between them was a shiny thing sticking out of the sand. It dawned on me, that’s a darn land mine or a bomb set in there. A vehicle came along, maybe a jeep that they’d already got ashore—I didn’t see it closely, but it ran over that mine. It exploded and blew sand everywhere. Man, you couldn’t imagine the sand that blew up. I was just covered with sand in that shell hole. I didn’t get a scratch, but it blew my bandage right off my face. It was completely gone.

So I was still just hunkering down. There’s fire all over the beach, but it was all going over my head.

Another medic came along, dumped some more sulfa on me, and put another bandage on.

“Stay in this hole,” he said. “Don’t move.” So I didn’t.

JIM YOUNG

I couldn’t find any of my squad. While helping the wounded Marine, I had veered to the left while my squad went straight. I came to what we called a Jap tank trap. I leaped in and there were about fifteen other Marines in there. As I looked around, I didn’t see anyone that I knew.

Private Bender, from my outfit, jumped in the tank trap and said, “Where in the hell is everyone?” About that time one of our sergeants dropped in and said, “Follow me.” We crawled about a hundred yards to the right, and there was Private Dignan, also from our outfit. The sergeant told us to stay put while he looked for more of our men.

The shit was really hitting the fan, the enemy fire was so intense. I saw a Jap run out of one of the caves. He was in flames from head to toe. He was cut down by gunfire before he had gone two feet. Private Dignan screamed, “I’m hit! I’m hit”! Shrapnel had broken his right hand in half. I asked him if he could crawl back to the beach, and he said he thought he could if he didn’t have to carry his rifle. I told him to forget the rifle and just go.

R. V. BURGIN

We got off the beaches and got inland a bit. I remember Sledge didn’t smoke. But it wasn’t twenty minutes after we got off the beach that Sledge said to me, “Burgin, you got a smoke?”

“Yeah, but you don’t smoke,” I said.

“Yeah, but I do now,” he said.

I gave him a cigarette. He was really nervous. Rightfully so.

DAN LAWLER

We moved up the beach and moved as far as the airstrip. There was a blown-up Japanese tank there, next to us. It had taken a direct hit from some kind of shell. I looked inside, and what I saw couldn’t be put on paper. Severed heads. Two heads on the floor. One guy’s arm is off. All blood, everywhere. Everybody dead. The shell had blown the tank to hell. It was real rough, I tell you. I thought, Well, this is a hell of a good start.

WAYBURN HALL

You lose track of time. I think we hit the beach about 8:30 A.M. Maybe about an hour later, maybe two, the firing started to let up. Somebody came along and said, “If you’ll crawl up the beach, there’s an aid station set up in a ditch on the other side of that mound there.”

So I got up and crawled, with my lip dragging in all that sand up the side of that mound. It might have been a hundred yards. The Japs had dug an anti-tank trench running parallel to the beach, and our side had set up an aid station in it. It was pretty well protected. I was sort of out of it by then, maybe from blood loss, but I just rolled down to the bottom of that ditch. About the time I stopped, somebody got a hold of me. They put a shot of morphine in my arm, pumped me up real good, and laid me up on the other side of that ditch with my feet toward the bottom alongside—oh, I don’t know how many other guys they had laid out like that—and I was gone then. That’s all I knew.

JIM YOUNG

We moved inland from the beach about three hundred yards, to the edge of the airstrip, and could see Japs scurrying around on the other side. We needed our mortars bad. Most of the new men had dropped them on the beach because of the ferocious gunfire. We sent men down there looking for them. The men got back and no one was hit. They located the parts of two of our mortars and we quickly put them into action. We fired across the airstrip. There were some large buildings there and the Japs were running all around. We figured they were planning an attack in an attempt to drive us into the sea.

We got word from our spotters that at least eleven Jap tanks were preparing to attack across the airstrip. We increased our volume of fire and had to keep pouring water on the guns to cool them down.

Above all this noise we could hear their tanks getting ready. The tanks came from in back of the buildings and headed at our lines full-blast. The tanks were covered with Japs. Some were even tied and chained to them. We opened up with everything we had in an effort to stop them: mortars, machine guns, bazookas, and hand grenades. Airplanes flew over.

We got lucky and destroyed all but one tank. That one tank jumped over our lines and got stuck in an old bomb crater, pinning a Marine under it. The tank swung its turret gun toward the back of our defense line and started to rake our lines. A captain yelled, “Blow that damned tank!” Other Marines yelled that there was a Marine trapped underneath it, but the captain yelled back, “Blow that tank right now!” It was hit with several rounds of bazooka shells. That was a tough thing to do, but I’m sure it saved many other lives.

Things slowed after the tank attack, and we prepared for nightfall.

WAYBURN HALL

It might have been late afternoon when I felt somebody kicking me on the bottom of my boots. I woke up. “Can you get up?” he said. I said, “Yes.”

He talked to all of us stretched along there. “All you guys who can walk, get up and go down to the beach, and an amtrac will be sitting down there, and he’ll take you out to a hospital ship.”

About four or five of us could stand up. Another guy, we helped him hobble down.

This amtrac had a ramp on back of it, and we were able to get up on the tractor. He turned around and headed to the edge of the coral reef where a Higgins boat was sitting. We transferred into that, and it took us out to the hospital ship. It was flying a flag, to let them know where to go to.

I don’t know how long it took us to get out to the ship. But when we got there, they dropped a line down with a hook to put on each end of that Higgins boat. The water was pretty rough. We bounced up against the side of the ship. The guys were trying to corral that hook, and one guy got hit with the hook and got knocked cuckoo. Anyway, they finally got us up to the main deck.

This one doctor took a look at me and washed out my wound. Then took a needle and stitched it up right there. He didn’t give me no shot or nothing. Then they moved me out of there to a lower deck and put me in a bunk.

STERLING MACE

We ran around until ten o’clock that night, until we finally dug in. You wanted to laugh. You couldn’t dig in even if you had a drill. That coral was hard as rock. So guys would wake up, two in the morning, and you’d hear somebody still trying to dig. He’s not satisfied with the hollow he’s scooped out of the coral. That’s how we spent the night there. You didn’t sleep.

R. V. BURGIN

Picture an island completely made out of coral rock. That was Peleliu. I tell you, all that rock was tough on your skin. It bloodied your knees. Your elbows. It just shredded your clothes apart. There was no place to sleep at night. You couldn’t make a decent foxhole because you couldn’t dig. If there was any loose coral around, you’d kind of pile it up around you. That was your foxhole.

Every place we made a beach landing we had gas masks. I think every single guy on Peleliu was rid of them by the day’s end. I know I was and my men were. If they didn’t gas us when we hit the beach, we figured they weren’t going to.

JIM YOUNG

When night fell, the naval guns fired flares over us. It helped in case of a mass attack by the Japs. The flares made the landscape look like scenes out of hell. They hung from small parachutes, which swung and swayed. This caused creepy dancing shadows that looked like Japs.

Word came from the general that everyone was to stay put where they were and that after dark to shoot anyone, standing up or crawling, on sight. This meant if you had to take leak or crap, you did it right where you were.

For about an hour some wounded man out in front of our lines kept screaming, “Oh God! Someone please help me!” We didn’t know if the cries really came from a Marine or a Jap. He kept begging for help and it was about to drive us crazy. One Marine yelled, “For Christ sake, will somebody shoot that S.O.B.!” Nobody did.

DAN LAWLER

I was in light and heavy machine guns. We used the heavy ones at night mostly. The air-cooled we used during the day. That first night the sergeant sent me back to the beach for more ammunition. When I came back, there was no one to share a foxhole with. You’ve always got two guys in a foxhole. One sleeps while the other keeps guard. Finally I found a rifleman, and we shared a foxhole. I had a carbine, and he had a rifle. He put his bayonet on his rifle and stood it against the corner against the dirt. He took the first watch while I slept. Sometime in the night, he shook me.

“My rifle’s gone,” he said.

“What do you mean, it’s gone?” I said.

“It’s gone,” he assured me. “Give me your carbine.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You lost one. You ain’t gonna lose this one. It’s all we got.”

At daybreak the sergeant walked by our foxhole, motioned behind us, and said, “Hey, you two did a great job.” I wondered what the hell he was talking about. My foxhole buddy just shrugged.

Well, we sat up and looked behind us. “Holy shit,” I said. My buddy’s rifle and bayonet were behind us. Impaled right on top of the bayonet was a Jap. He must have tried to jump into our foxhole in the middle of the night. But he landed right on the bayonet without a sound.

WAYBURN HALL

I woke up in the middle of the night on the hospital ship and there was a guy on the bunk next to me. He had a rubber sheet under him, and it was full of blood. I’m afraid that sometime after that he died, because when I woke up the next morning, he wasn’t there. The hospital ship pulled anchor and got under way.

So that was my experience at Peleliu.

If you find an error or have any questions, please email us at admin@erenow.org. Thank you!