Military history

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Last Words

Present Day

A message from the Marines to the generations of today…

WAYBURN HALL

Every young guy ought to put a hitch in the Marine Corps so he could learn and grow as a young man. I am prejudiced toward the Marine Corps. I told my sons if they got any military training whatsoever they would be in better shape out in the world than most other kids. Two of my boys went in the military and did very well. I’m appreciative of kids today of all races, minorities, especially, knowing how tough some have it. I had hard times growing up in the Depression, so I can relate to them. I know the Marine Corps enabled me to move up out of the situation I was in. I learned to work effectively with people, and when I got out, I got with a great company, moved up the ladder, and eventually owned my own business. I think all young people, in some capacity, should serve the country. It’ll help the country and help their lives as they grow.

I am not a true Texan—I moved here when I was eleven—but I guess I’m a die-hard Texan now. I’m proud of the Texas history. Texas is a leader in the nation. We’re fortunate because of what we have here. If everyone in the U.S. loved America the way Texans do, we wouldn’t have any problems anywhere. We have a hodgepodge here, lots of different people, and I love all of them.

JIM ANDERSON

To be in combat is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. It puts a permanent mark on your life and it’s hard to shake. A politician would never declare war if he went through it. It’s always the old-timers who have never seen war or who forget what war is who send our boys off to fight. Every politician who gets to vote for a war should be a veteran first.

A couple of months ago a friend of mine taped a special on the History Channel about the battle of Peleliu. He gave me the tape, so I sat down here one evening and started to watch it. After about ten minutes I had to shut it off. I can’t hear very good, but boy, those sights were getting to me. That about says it. We went over there, did it, but can’t even watch what we once lived through. Too many bad memories.

JIM YOUNG

I always listened to my mother. I never wanted to do anything to hurt her feelings. That’s what you’ve got to always think of. What would your mother say?

You’ve got to pick your company. If you’re going with a group of guys, you don’t do what the toughest guy says, you do what your mind tells you is right. Stay away from the temptation of booze and narcotics. I never hung around with guys who wanted to do something destructive.

In the Marines I found real friends, good friends. We were kids that played, played hard, had our own games, but we didn’t have anybody who stole or hurt other people. We avoided guys who were uncouth and troublemakers. Most of them didn’t amount to nothing. They just stayed down as privates. In and out of the brig.

Anytime a kid asks me about the military, I tell them, “If you want to see the world, you’re going to see it with the Marine Corps or the Navy.” The reason the Marine Corps still seems like a good idea to me is because everybody seemed to really like each other. Everybody. Everybody was worried about you. And you wouldn’t do nothing to jeopardize them. We were very close, a brotherhood.

HARRY BENDER

I never pressured my father to tell me any stories about the First World War, but I wish I had. He was in five of the six major battles of WWI. But he never talked about the war.

I don’t think today’s generations can appreciate anything. Some of these kids just don’t realize what they’ve been given.

CLINTON WATTERS

Some of my Marine buddies talk about how they’ve never forgiven the Japanese and bear them animosity to this day, but I’ve never felt that way. They did a terrible thing with Pearl Harbor, yes. But I believe that the majority of the Japanese soldiers were doing what their officers and government told them. That’s where the problem was. After the war I never really had any feelings that we should never deal with the Japanese anymore. I drive Toyotas, and some of my buddies think that’s terrible. But it’s a good car.

There’s a college here in Ashland, about fifteen miles from here, where a number of foreign exchange students attend. Our church used to sponsor potluck dinners for the exchange students, to make them feel welcomed in America. I went to many of those and met many Japanese students. They were always polite and very nice. Several times, we hosted the potlucks at our house and we had Japanese students in our house.

I have real difficulty with some of our young people today. I guess it’s because I’m a crotchety old man. When I see all of these people gathering and protesting and making all the noise and disruptions, all they are really looking for is attention for no good reason. Something for doing nothing. I have a really difficult time when I see the college kids of today. I wonder how many of them are really serious about getting an education and wanting to work? I don’t think they need to go in debt like they often do. I don’t think they all need iPods. I don’t think they all need luxury goods. They ought to find jobs, even if it’s nothing but washing dishes, if it helps them support themselves. So many don’t want to do dirty jobs or work at all. I wonder if they’re just putting in their time. It’s an awful attitude to have, but I feel that way.

I feel really sorry for the kids coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq. We never encountered, in all my time over there, any civilians. The enemy was anyone out in front of you.

These poor souls fighting today, they don’t know who the enemy is. Every child, every woman, every person a soldier sees is potentially a threat. They’re all around them. Our guys are under stress constantly. They’re never out of danger. I think that would be a tough, tough deal to serve over there. I tip my cap to them.

CHUCK TATUM

I generally tell young people that freedom is not free. Somebody paid for us. It’s beholden on everybody to accept their share when danger comes.

T. I. MILLER

I look at my grandson, Jeffrey, who joined the Marines, he turned out to be an A-1 Marine, he turned out great. When I see young people at a football game in the band or playing on the field, and they are gung ho, that restores my confidence in America’s youth.

When I see crackheads going around with their butts showing and their pants below their knees, ragged and dirty-lookin’, I just call them a poor specimen of Americanism. Look at kids with tattoos; one or two I have no problem with, but dozens? Or when I see boys with rings in their ears and girls with rings in their lips, I think, What are they doing? I just call them a little bit odd and let it go at that. Maybe they are lacking self-respect.

The Marine Corps is the world’s greatest school for self-respect. You learn to respect superiors as well as the new recruit when he comes in. You learn to respect the flag for what it represents. You respect others who serve, like the police, fire officials, and so forth. They teach you independence. That stays with a man when he gets home. He has a certain kind of discipline for life. You look and act like a Marine. You’ve learned to respect yourself. You’re an individual.

The way our military works, each individual is expected to perform at different levels. If every noncom is put out of commission, some PFC could automatically stand up and take control. This didn’t exist in the Japanese Army. I learned this firsthand; if they lost their leader, they didn’t know what to do. They would do a banzai charge or take their own lives. They didn’t know how to surrender. They worried about their reputations they would have back home. They were not strong individuals.

The new generation needs to know this. Get these skills and you’ve got it made. Becoming a strong individual is key to it all. You’ll look and act the part. If you maintain a great degree of self-respect, it automatically helps you to maintain respect for others.

Our esprit de corps in the Marines was reflected in how every man in the squad had pride in himself and his buddy next to him. That made for a strong unit that couldn’t be defeated. That pride in the American way is central. But now there are elements in this nation that do not respect America. It threatens the preservation of our way of life. My message is respect America. Love it or leave it!

ART PENDLETON

In all of the history of war, we have learned several different things. It can be created by one man. It can be created by a lot of men. It can be created for many different reasons. Many of them don’t make sense at all. But the reality is, you don’t have to have war. It’s not absolutely necessary to exist on this planet.

As a kid in the United States you are taught a religious belief. That belief stays with you for the rest of your life. How about a belief that you can solve problems without killing each other? I believe the human mind can be consciously aggressive as well as consciously forgiving. I just don’t understand, with people as smart as they are, that we can’t change the system a little bit. We can get to the moon and back.

I think if an old war veteran started saying to kids, “Hey listen, guys, you’ve got to change your thinking,” that’s a start. But it’s not going to happen overnight because the whole world has to be involved. It starts with kids. Now, in saying that, kids and teenagers are not going to understand a word of what I’m saying and they’ll probably care less.

R. V. BURGIN

I’d want today’s generations to know that there was a war fought, not only in Europe during WWII but in the Pacific as well. We got very little publicity out there. Most of the media was in Europe. People today don’t know of all the islands in the Pacific that we had to take back from the Japs. Sure, they’ve heard of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. But nobody has ever heard of the Battle of New Britain. Or Peleliu. Just so many little islands that our military needed to go to and spill our American blood. And nobody ever heard of them.

I had an opportunity in April 2007 to go back to Okinawa. Harry Bender and I were guests on a twelve-day cruise full of history buffs. On Okinawa they have two modern museums we toured, but very, very little information about the war. We wound up in Japan and caught a plane out of there. You can ask young Japanese now, and they don’t know anything about WWII or the brutality their people did. It’s one thing for American kids to not know their history. It’s another thing for the Japanese to be that way. I don’t know which is worse.

Personally, I don’t think the Japanese have ever reformed as a country. I think they’re just biding their time. The civilians, maybe they’ve had a change of heart. But not the military. I think they’ll gradually build up and then get back into it again. They’ll pull the same stuff, if the world will last long enough.

Quite frankly, I’m glad I got to fight in the Pacific. Sure, the horrors never leave you. But I can say until my dying day that I fought with the United States Marine Corps. I fought the Japanese on the islands. The men I served with were outstanding Marines. They were great men. Maybe the best warriors the world has ever seen.

RICHARD GREER

I do a lot of speaking, and I make sure they understand we didn’t start the war. We were pulled in. Roosevelt had no choice.

I read a lot about the history of man, and I wonder if wars will ever stop. Maybe they never will. I don’t know. We had despots in Europe then, and we have them in the Middle East today. Plenty of countries want to be the big dog in the world, and they just keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

I’ve been all over the world, and as far as I’m concerned, the United States is the greatest country ever. This place is worth doing everything you can do for it. When I finished working, I set about doing things for the nation. That was my definition of success—to keep serving.

ROY GERLACH

Some call us heroes, but I would say we just did what we had to do. I don’t know if we were heroes or not, but we were survivors.

The fighting we did in World War II was for a good cause. A few years back my wife and I were on a bus trip to a historic farm near Philadelphia. The tour guide said a couple from Melbourne, Australia, was on the tour. I said to my wife, “Melbourne! I got to talk to them!” So after the tour I hunted them up and told them who I was and so forth. The lady got tears in her eyes. “If it wasn’t for you Yanks,” she said, “I would be speaking Japanese today.” I’d never thought about it before then. The work we did stood for something. We might not have always realized it here in this country, but the folks who stayed free in other countries sure did.

SID PHILLIPS

They teach so little history now. I talk to young people, twenty-five to thirty-five years old, and they hardly know anything at all about WWII. I spoke with one intelligent young lady who had never heard of Adolf Hitler. This is bad. We need to know the history of our country, and teach it. There’s so much history that isn’t taught anymore. Freedom isn’t free, and we need to repeatedly fight for our liberty.

Governments need to be controlled. People expect too much from the government, but that only promotes inactivity. A government can’t give you anything. They’ve got to take it away from you first. The amount of freedom a people has is directly related to the amount of government it has. Smaller governments mean more freedom.

We need to revive patriotism. It’s a serious thing, and if we don’t do it, we’ll decline and become a has-been nation.

I have heard the reference to our generation as “the greatest generation.” We were a great generation, no doubt about it. We were patriotic, we had a job to do, and we needed to do our duty. Yet I think the greatest generation is still a generation to come. It’s a generation that will turn our nation back to God.

CLARENCE REA

I’ll be ninety-two soon, and I’ve got everything to be thankful for. A great family, a great wife, a bunch of great friends. I thank God that I’m still here, and still able to get around and take care of myself.

I’m one of the luckiest men on earth. I was in the right place at the right time, it seems like all the time. I loved the military, and I’ve got a lot of good memories.

My message to anyone is care about your country. America is a great country, and it’s worth taking care of.

That’s my story.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to extend deep thanks from me and Marcus Brotherton to the following people for their help with Voices of the Pacific:

To the Marine veterans who reached deep into their memories to awaken the stories for this book: Sidney Phillips, Jim Young, Roy Gerlach, Art Pendleton, Richard Greer, R. V. Burgin, T. I. Miller, Jim Anderson, Chuck Tatum, Clinton Watters, Clarence Rea, Dan Lawler, Sterling Mace, Wayburn Hall, John Marmet, Jesse Googe, and Harry Bender. To our belle of the home front, Katharine Phillips Singer, and the Marine fighter pilots whose stories can now be found on the author’s website: Lyle Bradley, Sam Folsom, and Gene Morrison. Thank you all for mentally returning to World War II so that we might learn from your sacrifices.

To my editor at Berkley Publishing Group, Natalee Rosenstein, a tremendous advocate for this story who believed these Marines’ voices needed to be heard. To my publisher at Penguin Group, Leslie Gelbman, and her team, thanks for giving the green light to share this book with the world.

To the veterans’ relatives and spouses, thanks for sharing photos, stories, and your loved ones. Special thanks to Jerry Cutter and Diane Hawkins, to Vera Leckie and Joan Leckie Salvas, to David Marmet, David Miller, Steve Moore, Charles and Sue Phillips, Sid Phillips III, Audrey Phillips, Jeanne Sledge, Henry Sledge, John Sledge, and Evelyn Tatum. To the historians, experts, and friends who supported this book, Robin Barletta, Dana Caudle, Dwayne Cox, Richard Frank, and Joe Gohrs.

To my dad, Robert Makos, whose deep friendship with the Marine veterans opened doors for Marcus and me. When we needed help with our interviews, we called upon you. To my brother and right-hand man, Bryan Makos, who designed this book’s maps, photos, and cover, turning a body of literature into a work of art. To my mom, Karen Makos, and my sister Erica Makos, thanks for serving as my focus group, reality check, and proofreaders. To my sister Elizabeth Makos, thanks for pitching in where you can and mostly just making us laugh.

To my great-uncle, the late Bob Castelli, a World War II Seabee who served in the islands and gave me his treasured photo album when I was a boy. Your stories brought the Pacific to life. To my grandfathers, World War II veterans Mike Makos and Francis Panfili, one of you served in the Pacific aboard PBY seaplanes and the other was destined to storm the beaches of Japan until the war ended first. Thanks for telling the stories that lit a spark in me.

Last, thanks to you, the reader who purchased this book. You chose to discover the Marines on these pages and in doing so, to honor them. Now, the Marines of the Pacific have passed the torch to you. Keep the flame alive. The legacy of great men lies in your hands.

Adam Makos is a journalist, historian, and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller A Higher Call. In his fifteen years of work in the military field, Makos has interviewed countless veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and present-day wars. He has flown a B-17 bomber and a T-38 fighter with the Air Force, and was one of the few journalists privileged to examine Air Force One with its pilots. In pursuit of a story, Makos has met with presidents, had tea with Prince Charles, and toured the DMZ border in Korea with American troops. The high point of his work occurred in 2008, when Makos traveled to Iraq to accompany the 101st Airborne and Army Special Forces on their hunt for Al Qaeda terrorists. Visit him at his website, www.valorstudios.com.

Marcus Brotherton is a journalist and professional writer known internationally for his literary collaborations with high-profile public figures, humanitarians, inspirational leaders, and military personnel. He is the author of We Who Are Alive and Remain, A Company of Heroes, and Shifty’s War, and the coauthor of Call of Duty with Lieutenant Buck Compton. See his website at www.marcusbrotherton.com.

Scenes from boot camp, where the USMC turned boys into Marines

Scenes from New River, early 1942

Art Pendleton (L) sets up a machine gun.

Sid Phillips holds a BAR.

W.O. Brown (L) and Phillips in a photo booth.

Roy Gerlach.

H Company’s Number 4 gun squad: Tatum, Phillips, Lucas, Ransom, and Doyle.

Scenes from Guadalcanal, August to December 1942

The aftermath of the Tenaru battle.

An H Company 81mm mortar crew. Pictured (L–R): Tatum, Lucas, Doyle, Phillips, and Ransom.

More scenes from Guadalcanal, August to December 1942

Robert Leckie with his .30 caliber machine gun.

Scenes from Australia, January to September 1943

John Basilone (L) and Richard Greer.

R.V. Burgin.

Art Pendleton (L) and “Stretch” Campbell.

Pendleton aims his gun during training.

Scenes from the “Green Inferno,” New Britain, December 1943 to May 1944

(L–R): Andrew Haldane, T.I. Miller, and Jim Anderson.

More scenes from New Britain

A memorial service for the fallen.

Scenes from Pavuvu, May to August 1944, and new arrivals

Carbine training.

Eugene Sledge.

Robert Leckie (R) and his friend Russ Davis.

H Company machine gunners in the company street.

Sterling Mace.

Scenes from Peleliu, September 15, 1944

An amtrac motors for the beach.

Marines stay low to avoid Japanese gunfire.

H Company on White Beach. Jim Young is visible in the lower right corner, third from the right.

More scenes from Peleliu, September to October 1944

Chesty Puller’s 1st Marines depart the front lines with H Company among them.

The survivors of K Company just before leaving Peleliu.

Scenes of John Basilone between battles, Stateside, 1944

Basilone and Clarence Rea’s nieces.

Basilone and his sergeants in Hawaii before shipping out to Iwo (top, L–R) Jack Wheeler, Clarence Rea, Clinton Watters (bottom, L–R) Basilone and Ed Johnston.

The Basilone wedding party. The women worked with Lena, whereas the men were sergeants under John. Three of these men would be killed on Iwo Jima and two wounded. (L–R) Jack Wheeler, Rinaldo Martini, John Basilone, Ed Johnston, and Clinton Watters.

Scenes from Iwo Jima, February to March 1945