CHAPTER TWELVE
Peleliu
While the Army troops and 7th Marines assaulted the ridges, on September 28, 1944, K Company and the 5th Marines staged an amphibious assault on tiny Ngesebus Island, north of Peleliu.
JIM ANDERSON
When we got to the north end of Peleliu, we was put on amphibian tractors again, and we had to cross a short spit of water to get over to a small island, Ngesebus. It was an island with a fighter strip on it and, guarding this fighter strip, a battalion of Japanese.
R. V. BURGIN
On Peleliu we had all the enemy’s artillery knocked out within three days’ time. We did have one section of Jap guns on Ngesebus that they were firing over to the mainland of Peleliu. Ngesebus was a small island about five hundred yards away from the northern end of Peleliu. We were thinking that at low tide they’d come across to the mainland. So we were sent out there to make sure they didn’t come across.
STERLING MACE
Ngesebus was shaped like a boomerang, with a beach and an airstrip at the bottom of the boomerang. There was a causeway between Peleliu and Ngesbus, about fourteen hundred yards long. We were all lined up on the Peleliu side, ready to go across. Cruisers shelled the beach. Corsairs flew up and down the beach, strafing and bombing. It was like watching a beautiful show, seeing those guys in the Corsairs go back and forth. Finally we got the signal to go across. We were on the left flank.
R. V. BURGIN
We got in amtracs and went across the bay. The Corsairs bombed and strafed for us. Those Marine pilots were the best ever. Absolutely fantastic. You’d see them in a steep dive, bombing and strafing, and they’d disappear in smoke. You’d think, My God, they crashed! But then you’d see them pull out the other end. They did a hell of a job, I tell ya.
It was about eight-thirty in the morning when we hit the beach. We moved forward. The airstrip was pretty small. There wasn’t any real resistance. Just some sniper fire.
JIM ANDERSON
Captain Haldane and all of K Company moved along the fighter strip. We ran into some pillboxes along the north end of Ngesebus. We could hear soldiers talking in there. An interpreter went and talked to the Japanese. I suppose he told them to come on out. But they never did. We threw in hand grenades. But they never would give up. In all the front-line duty I ever had, I never ever seen one Japanese soldier surrender.
Captain Haldane wanted me to go back and bring up two tanks to knock out a pillbox. Instead of giving a direct order, he said to me, “Andy, would you go back to battalion and bring up a couple of tanks?” In a nice manner. So I put my rifle on my shoulder and headed back. We was then ahead of the lines, and I had to walk along the airport to get to the tanks.
I was walking along, I had my M1 in my hands, and here, fifty yards away, a Japanese soldier stepped out. All I did was pull my rifle up a little bit and fire from the hip. I missed. He put his rifle up to his shoulder and shot at me at that distance, and I seen the flames come right out of the muzzle. But he missed me, too. By that time I had my rifle to my shoulder. I sited right down the barrel, and I shot him, two quick shots, and saw him fall. That’s the closest call I ever had with a Japanese soldier. Even today if I close my eyes, I can see that flame shoot out the end of the muzzle of his rifle.
I saw other figures firing in my direction from a cave. Then I did a smart thing: I ran—maybe fifty to sixty yards—and jumped into a shell hole. Some other Marines jumped in with me. All of a sudden, bang, one of the guys was shot in the shoulder. Nobody knew where the shot had come from. I put my hands over his wounds on the front and back of his shoulder. The blood was coming out, gushing. In a few minutes he was dead.
I got back to where the tanks were and brought them up to K Company. I rode on the back of a tank. The tanks went up there and did their job on the front lines. When the tanks went back, the Japanese soldier I’d shot wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe his friends came and got him.
STERLING MACE
On the left side of the beach toward the end of the island was a ridge, probably fifteen feet high. It ran the whole length of the island. The left side of that ridge sloped down to the shoreline, then the beach itself there was only three feet wide. My platoon covered that ridge the whole time going. Just moved out slow, catching a Jap here and there.
Finally this guy, Nippo Baxter (they called him “Nippo” because he was always looking for Japs), spotted two Japs down by a sinkhole. The sidewall of the sinkhole had a cave. So he fired down, killed two, and then spotted me because I’ve got the BAR. He pointed down, meaning he wanted me to take care of things. I studied the situation and thought maybe I could come around and go over top of them. So I climbed the ridge. In hindsight it was stupid because the Japs could have been down there looking at me climb. But I’ve got a machine gun squad ten yards back watching my every move.
As I am going up there, I hear a voice on top of the ridge. Who the hell is talking? When I got up a little higher, this guy from headquarters company was spotting for the 81 mortars. He was looking at his map and then calling in his coordinates. So I told him, in a whisper tone, “There’s Japs right below you.” He looks at me like “So what, f—k you.” Whatever. I had no qualms about putting my head over the ridge.
I peeked over and looked down. Three Japs. I can still see the first one—this moon face, yellowish skin, dark-shaded hair, helmet on, he’s in uniform. He had his rifle and was trying to line up Baxter. The Jap looked up and saw me. Real quick, he stared straight at me, then swung his rifle around. But I already had my BAR on him and let about eight shots go. I got him and the two Japs lying in front of him—the three of them were trying to get Baxter.
We figured there might be more Japs near the cave in that same position. So I ducked back and hollered to the machine gunners to throw me up two hand grenades. They did. I pulled the pins and dropped the grenades in. We had to wait. Somebody said, “Get a flamethrower.” A sergeant brought up a bazooka guy, which won’t do any good in that situation. We needed a flamethrower to blast into that cave—even if you don’t kill them with the flame, you suck all the oxygen out and get them that way. So they brought up a flamethrower, but his flamethrower doesn’t work. So he’s got to go back, and we got to wait for another flamethrower. Then another flamethrower came, and he did a nice job. He squirted just enough in so in case there were any Japs in there, they’d come running out. And then he gave it the full blast.
We moved up the line. About ten minutes later we heard, “Fire in the hole!” That was the composition man behind us. He put this stuff like putty around the entrance of the cave, then wired it up, and it exploded to seal the cave.
JIM ANDERSON
Most of us were carrying Composition C. It’s an explosive that looks and feels like stiff putty. To blow down a pillbox door, you break it in half, put the Composition C against the door with a detonator, and set it off. Bam! There you have it. Or if you wanted, you could also use it to heat your coffee. You put water and coffee in a tin cup, tear off a piece of Comp C about as big as the tip of your thumb, put it up against the side of your cup, and light it with a match. When the explosive is out in the open like that, it doesn’t explode. Instant hot coffee!
STERLING MACE
Nippo Baxter was the greatest Marine I ever saw. When we would take a ten-minute break or something, he would be out running around looking for Japs and souvenirs! I’m certain he would go out at night into the Japanese area, because the souvenirs he had, you couldn’t pick up just running around. He picked up a saber. He picked up a Japanese record player with records. He picked up a Japanese officer pack, which was covered with fur. When we moved out, Nippo had the saber on, the fur Jap pack, and then on top of this pack was the freaking Japanese record player. When we stopped and he would play a record, we couldn’t tell if they were singing kids or singing goats. They were awful.
But anyway Nippo got it later on, killed in a mortar barrage.
R. V. BURGIN
The mortar section moved in about two hundred yards across the airstrip, to where there was an empty Jap bunker with a few shell holes around it. The bunker faced the channel. Our orders were to set up our guns on the far side of the bunker, so we started to dig in. Our gunny sergeant, W. R. Saunders, confirmed that the bunker was clear. Two of our men began laying a phone line.
But Sledge wasn’t convinced. “Burgin,” he said, “there’s Japs in that bunker.”
“Hell, Gene,” I said. “You must be cracking up. Saunders said there wasn’t any Japs in there.”
“I don’t give a damn what Saunders said. I hear ’em jabbering. I know damn well there are Japs in that bunker!”
So I eased up against the side of the bunker and looked down in a vent. Sure enough, a Jap had his face stuck right up inside the vent. I shot him right in the face. Then I stuck the barrel of my rifle further down the vent and emptied the clip while wiggling it around. I put another clip in and did the same thing again.
Then all hell broke loose. Well, that was kind of like walking up and kicking a beehive. It swarmed. I didn’t have a clue how many Japs were in that bunker, but from all the commotion, I knew it was a bunch. They started shooting their machine guns and rifles, and throwing grenades out at us. Everything got real tense. We messed around there with those rascals for a while, maybe twenty minutes or so, and two of my men got hit by grenades. They weren’t evacuated, but the doc had to patch them up. I was the only NCO there, so I needed to do something. All the rest of the men were private first class. I started thinking, “Hell, this could go on for a damn week. Some of my men are going to get killed unless I wrap this thing up.”
I knew that an amtrac was down on the beach. I ran down there, about two hundred yards, and got the driver. All I said was, “I need your help for a few minutes. Follow me.” On the way back I ran into Corporal Charles Womack, who carried a flamethrower on his back. So I brought him up, too.
When we got up there, about thirty-five yards out, I stopped the driver and told him what I wanted him to do: blow a hole in the side of that bunker. It was about a foot of steel-reinforced concrete. I said, “Knock me a hole in there. It’s full of Japs.”
So he did. He had a 75 howitzer, and it took three shells to knock a twenty-four-inch hole in the side of the bunker. As soon as he was through, Womack came up and scorched them with his flamethrower.
Some of the Japs ran out and we shot them. Some stayed in there. I don’t know how in the world any of them could live, but I wanted to make damn sure everything was secure, so I went down in the bunker to find out myself. John Redifer followed me in. One of the Japs was moving. So I stuck my foot in his ribs under his right arm, and sure enough he wasn’t dead. I shot him in the head with my .45 at point-blank range. That was the only alive one in there. We killed seventeen Japs there—ten inside and seven outside. We didn’t lose a man, and I was proud of that, so I thought that was a job well done. We secured that bunker.
JIM ANDERSON
On Ngesebus, Don Shwance, another friend of mine, got wounded. He gave me one of his most prized possessions, a pair of dry socks. I hadn’t picked up any souvenirs at all. But off of one soldier, I picked up a Gospel of St. John, written in Japanese. Their religion is Shintoism, so how he ever got this, I don’t know.
R. V. BURGIN
We were only on Ngesebus overnight. I was in a shell hole that night with our bazooka man, Sam. As always, one guy was supposed to stand guard while the other slept. One hour each. I woke up early, when it was still Sam’s time to stand guard, and saw that he was asleep. That kind of negligence could have got our throats slit.
I straddled him on his stomach and put him in a chokehold. He thought the Japs had him and fought like crazy. I got him choked down until he was about to black out and then I turned him loose. I told him, “You son of a bitch, if I ever catch you asleep when you’re supposed to be standing guard, you’ll never wake up!”
Then I told Captain Haldane about it, about the two instances, including the time Sam left his bazooka behind. I said, “Captain, if I can’t trust this man, I don’t want him in the unit.” Haldane was always fair and reasonable. When we got back, Sam got transferred out of K Company, to an MP outfit some place.
The battle for Ngesebus raged throughout the following morning, September 29, and into the afternoon.
STERLING MACE
We kept moving up. Suddenly our fire team leader, Corporal Van Trump, called me. “Mace. I want you to take your assistant. Go forward and take a position up twenty yards ahead. If you see any Japs—maybe they’re trying to surround us—you come back and tell us.” I looked at this guy like he’s got two heads—Are you kidding? I know we didn’t have more than thirty yards left to the end of the island! But he was a corporal and I was a PFC and you’ve got to follow orders. The only reason Van Trump was working with our lieutenant was because our sergeant was walking around with his thumb up his ass.
So Charlie Allman, my assistant gunner, and I moved up without the rest of our unit. We sneak up and find a nice spot, I mean it looked nice. Our position looked like a miniature dormant volcano. We got into that recess in the top, and you couldn’t see us, but we could see if anybody was passing by. I knew it wasn’t a perfect spot though—if we got into a firefight we couldn’t have gotten out. We both got in there and took a look around into the jungle.
We sat there awhile. Pretty soon between the sounds of gunfire, we heard twigs snapping to our left and right. The Japs were walking around out there—we knew it. I said to Charlie, “Don’t open your freaking mouth, don’t say a word, don’t sneeze, don’t do anything, because these suckers are walking all around us.” I caught a glimpse. We were surrounded by Japs. When we were sneaking up the ridge, they were sneaking the other direction toward our lines. All they had to know was that we were in there, and it would have been just “hands up.” They kept walking. We kept waiting.
Something else was wrong. I whispered to Charlie, “I can’t hear any gunfire. We got to get out of here.” But we couldn’t make a run for it until we knew the goddamn Japs were gone. Finally, I said to Charlie, “I think they’re gone—I don’t hear any snapping of leaves.” He didn’t hear anything either, so we start back slowly. When I felt we were clear enough, we made a run for it to the place where our unit had been.
None of our guys were there. There was a poncho lying on the ground with a slew of unspent bullets and a pool of blood. So we’re wondering, What the hell happened here? Everybody in our unit was gone.
There was nobody around; I mean no Van Trump, no Levy—they were all gone. We started running through the jungle. We were getting stabbed with freaking branches all over, but who gives a shit? When we get out of the jungle, we reach the beach and see the whole battalion getting on the amtracs, ready to leave Ngesebus. Now I’m furious because I figured the guys just up and left us. I am really pissed, so I start looking for Van Trump because he knew we were out there.
I spotted him sitting on a stretcher. His whole head was just wrapped with bloody bandages. He had taken a bullet on the left side of the chin, and the bottom of his jaw was blown away. So that’s why they had to pull him out. Charlie and I didn’t know this until we saw him. So I didn’t say anything to him.* Instead, I went over to the sergeant and had some words with him. I was still pissed off that they left without telling us, but I got over it.
R. V. BURGIN
We left Ngesebus that afternoon. We’d knocked out their artillery and killed about five hundred Japs. We had a few wounded and about fifteen men killed, but they didn’t butcher us up like they did when we came into Peleliu. We came back to the regular island to pick up where we’d left off.
STERLING MACE
They told us we were going to leave Peleliu. We were so happy to leave, that Levy and I started trucking—you know that jitterbug dance from the 1940s where you’ve got one finger up and all.*
But the next morning when we got up, they said, “The Japs have got the high ground. We’re going to head up to take a ridge.” So we weren’t leaving Peleliu after all. You talk about being disgusted.
* Sterling Mace would remember, “You should have seen Van Trump when he come back up from the hospital on New Caledonia. He was gonna make the trip back to the States, and they stopped in Pavuvu. He looked like that cartoon Andy Gump. No chin. He couldn’t even talk. He was really pissed because they weren’t moving fast enough. He spent eight years at a VA hospital. For some reason, after the war he never saw me. Maybe he thought I was pissed off at him, but I wasn’t. I would have been just as nice to him as to anybody.”
* Mace would remember, “There was a film crew right on the beach filming us…when Levy and I saw the film crew, we broke rank for about a minute and started cutting up for the camera. It was probably the last “fun” moment we had. I think the film still exists because someone claims to have seen it a long time ago. At any rate, the film would be worth a lot to me, to see myself again at twenty years old with a very good pal of mine.” If any reader has seen this film, please contact Mace or the author.