CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Pavuvu
After Peleliu, the 1st Marine Division returned to Pavuvu in early November 1944.
JIM YOUNG
When we pulled in to Pavuvu, the beach was lined with new recruits, but the big surprise is that a bunch of our guys who we thought were killed were here to greet us! There were tears in the eyes of a lot of us. It was a real great feeling.
R. V. BURGIN
This time, Pavuvu looked pretty good to us. At least nobody was shooting at us. They’d fixed it up a bit since we were last there. The rotting coconuts had been cleared away and the tents were new. At the pier when we embarked were half a dozen Red Cross girls standing behind tables. They gave us cups of grapefruit juice to drink in paper cups. It felt strange to me, them welcoming us here. What the hell were they doing in the middle of a war?
Sledge resented this, too. He proved to be a good Marine once we got to Peleliu, and never hesitated to do anything I asked him to. You can’t ask much more than that from a Marine.
JIM YOUNG
After marching from the docks to our tents, we found four recruits had been placed in the bunks of our lost buddies. What hurt me most was seeing one of them in Corporal Brown’s bunk (who had his head shot off when he jumped from the amtrac). The new boys were all over us asking how it was on Peleliu. They thought we were real heroes.
We all talked long into the night and the boys drank their ration of beer. I didn’t drink, so I had a Coke. I hit the sack and got one of the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.
WAYBURN HALL
Eventually our complete outfit returned. Then everybody was finding out who got back and who didn’t. We had a parade or two. I got a Purple Heart pinned on my chest. I’d say the whole outfit was pretty docile for a while. We’d had our fill of what battle was like.
R. V. BURGIN
We didn’t do much for the first ten days or so. They let us alone to rest and regain strength. Florence’s letters caught up to me. She sent me newspapers. And a fruitcake, which the guys ate while I was out of my tent.
You had to balance the joy of being alive with bitterness of where we had been. Peleliu was a waste. To me, it was the roughest battle of the Pacific War, and it was a battle that should have never been fought. MacArthur wanted the airstrip on Peleliu secured. But we had already bombed that airfield three months before. Hell, we could have gone on bombing it for the rest of the war. There was no way the Japs could have rebuilt it to make it usable again. They were pretty much finished as an air power by then anyway.
It was a damn unnecessary battle. I’ll say that to any man today. And what makes it worse is that no one has even heard of it. Since a lot of our top brass thought the battle would be over so quickly, not a lot of reporters and photographers went there. I’d say that pretty much everybody has heard of Guadalcanal and Okinawa and Iwo Jima—the big battles of the Pacific. But the majority of American people today don’t know about Peleliu. Many have never even heard of the island.
The 1st Marine Division lost over a thousand men the first day on Peleliu. Thirty days later, when the Army finally relieved us, we had 6,526 casualties by then. The Army had over 250 killed and 1,200 wounded. So that made up more than 8,000 casualties on this island that nobody ever heard of.
JIM ANDERSON
Pavuvu wasn’t much different the second time, except we had better food. The guys who had fought in three campaigns left for the States. Pop Haney was on that ship—he’d had enough and said this was a young man’s war. I was promoted to corporal but remained a runner for Captain Haldane’s successor. Captain Stanley was a fine, fine gentleman and a good warrior. Captain Haldane was our number one commander, but Captain Stanley was a close second. Some officers treated you like a servant, but Captain Stanley, when he was going to tell you to do something, he would say, “Could you do this for me?” He was quite similar to Haldane. Captain Stanley also called me Andy. He must have heard that from Haldane. He probably learned a lot from Haldane.
R. V. BURGIN
Captain Haldane was going to put me in for a Silver Star for securing that bunker on Ngesebus, but he was killed before that happened. Stumpy Stanley took over as company commander, and he never put anybody in for anything. I asked him about that one time, and he said, “Ah hell, I always thought everybody deserved a damn medal, so I never put anybody in for one.” I told him, “That’s a hell of an attitude to have.”
JIM YOUNG
After two and a half years, for me, it was finally over. What was left of us “old salts” boarded a liner, the USS General William Mitchell, bound for the USA.
This ship was returning from the China-Burma-India theater of war when Admiral Nimitz made them stop and pick up us survivors of three campaigns and drop us at the San Diego Marine Base. This was lucky for us because it may have been months before another ship was available.
The people on this ship were mostly women and children. There are also about twenty nuns with the largest hats I’d ever seen. These people were rescued just before the Japs were able to trap them. We had a great time with the kids. Many of them were orphans. We kept giving them all the candy they could eat. The nuns gave us heck and said we were spoiling them. I guess we were. The orphans hung onto our hands and walked the decks with us. They were lonely and a lot of them had lost their parents.
At San Diego there was a Navy band playing for us. The Red Cross was there with hot coffee and donuts. Some of the fellows kissed the ground as they left the gangplank. We ate, listened to the band, then boarded trucks for the ride to the Marine base. From the docks we headed right down the main street of San Diego. Every building was camouflaged, and there were camouflage nets strung from one side of the street to the other. People on the streets were cheering us. It was a wonderful welcome.
The Marine base was a beautiful sight. The cooks at the mess halls threw a big feast for us, with just about anything you could think of and all the ice cream you could eat. Our orders were issued. We got new uniforms and got ready to board trains for the East Coast. I was to report to Quantico Marine Base in Virginia.
At Quantico, my duties were to train FBI agents on firearms. I didn’t like this job, so they gave me one training officer candidates in the art of the 81mm mortar. This was a real neat duty. But after five months I became ill and spent twenty-nine days in the Quantico Naval Hospital, an aftereffect of my time in the islands.
Meanwhile on Pavuvu…
R. V. BURGIN
They started to work us, and that helped us put things behind us. I was promoted to sergeant. We had a lot of replacements come in. They were raw, straight from the States. So we did our best to get them in shape. They think they’re combat-ready, but they’re not. Whenever you’re going into battle with someone for the first time, you’re never sure how they’re going to react. Most of them do their duty. I’d say 98 percent do. But you always worry about your new men.
One new Marine assigned to K Company was Harry Bender.
HARRY BENDER
I was born and raised in Chicago. When Pearl Harbor hit, I was about fourteen, I guess. I had been to the movies, and I came home. My parents were all talking about it. I didn’t even know where the hell Pearl Harbor was.
When I was seventeen, I enlisted in the Marines. I was five-foot-three. You were supposed to be five-foot-four to get into the Marines, but because I was seventeen, they figured I’d still grow. So I got a waiver. My father was chairman of the draft board in our area, but he didn’t push me in either direction. He had been in the Marine Corps in WWI and approved of my decision.
I was a grunt, meaning I was in the infantry platoon. I was the youngest, the shortest, and the orneriest. You could say it was chosen for me. They asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, “Communication.” They said, “Well if you don’t do communication, then what?” I said, “Okay, photography.” My parents had given me a 35mm camera, and it was really nice. I wanted to be a combat photographer. I thought I’d be good at it. I ended up in the infantry.
After we finished advanced infantry training, we shipped out. We were scheduled to go to Peleliu as replacements. But the division pulled out of Peleliu, so we went right to Pavuvu.
Some people think of Pavuvu as some goddamn country club. That’s bullshit. Sure, Pavuvu had been fixed up a bit since the time the guys were first there, but Pavuvu was still bad news. The land crabs were terrible. Pavuvu was a combat area without snipers in the trees. There was nothing there.
Actually, there were two things we did on Pavuvu: There was good swimming there. And they showed a movie damn near every night.
The unit’s veterans were not hostile to us. They knew you proved yourself in combat. You didn’t prove yourself in training. So I had to wait. My only problem was I couldn’t complain too much. Everybody knows you by your serial number, whether you’re an enlistee or a draftee. All the draftees’ serial numbers started with nine. I wasn’t a draftee. My serial number started with five. So if ever I started bitching about something, they’d ride you a little and say, “Shit, you asked for this shit.” You get to the point where you don’t complain anymore.
WAYBURN HALL
After Peleliu we trained some more and took on some new replacements. All of the old guys were sent home. We were mostly a new outfit. Some of the old sergeants were still around, but I know my platoon sergeant was gone after Peleliu.
I was made corporal and a gun squad leader, in charge of about six other men. We started training the new guys, breaking them in on the guns.
The Marines celebrated Thanksgiving 1944 with all the trimmings…
HARRY BENDER
It was Thanksgiving and the officer’s mess was roasting their turkeys the night before. I was on guard duty for officer’s mess that day. A buddy of mine decided we were going to steal one of the goddamn turkeys from the officer’s mess. So he stated that he was going to start a fire in an area a little ways away. And that I was going to react to it by leaving my post. Which he did, and I did. We stole a turkey and quite a few of us that night ate turkey. My buddy and I took the bones and scattered them down L Company’s street.
Next day I was called to the XO’s office. “Shadow” we called him. Lieutenant Loveday was his name. He was a real prick. He asked me about the turkey, but he didn’t believe a damn word I said. Nothing was ever done about it.
Mind you, we were going to have turkey anyway on Thanksgiving. It wasn’t like we were going to do without. But we just wanted to eat another turkey the night before as a snack. We were getting a head start on things.
WAYBURN HALL
The scuttlebutt came around that we were going to make another push. Everybody wondered where. At first, they said Formosa, and we made some practice landings on Guadalcanal just to get used to landing on the beach in Higgins boats and all.
HARRY BENDER
I had mess duty. Some older guys told us about making jungle juice. So I scrounged around and found some peaches, then we had these fruit bars that came in K rations. Nobody ever ate the damn things. So I told the guys to give me theirs, and we saved them up. We had dried peaches, and the fruit bars, some yeast and sugar, put it in a five-gallon can, and we started brewing. But we didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to seal the can, you were just supposed to put cheesecloth over it. We sealed it, and then took off for two weeks in Guadalcanal.
We went up to Guadalcanal and made a landing in preparation for Okinawa. They had us up there maybe two weeks. There’s this kunai grass that grows about six feet high. You get in the middle of that and its so hot you pass out. Guys were passing out left and right. Finally a Navy doctor called the exercise off.
They had a PX there, but you could only get into the PX if you had khakis. There was an Army signal unit nearby where we bivouacked. Next day after we saw that, there was a lot of Marines running around in Army clothes. That’s how we got in the PX.
When we got back from Guadalcanal, our goddamn jungle juice had fermented all right, but then because we’d sealed the can, it had gone and exploded. Everything inside our tent smelled like rotten peaches. So much for making jungle juice.