CHAPTER FOUR

Rest and Respite

Australia

After a stopover at the island of Espiritu Santo, the sick, battered men of the 1st Marine Division arrived in Australia, their home for the next nine months and a place of needed respite.

SID PHILLIPS

First we sailed to Brisbane and dropped anchor. Our 5th Regiment had already been there for a week, but they were so full of malaria and mosquitoes that medical crews decided it was too much of a hazard for the Australian population. We never went ashore at Brisbane. After a few days, we sailed for Melbourne. None of us had a map in our pocket and we didn’t know where that was. It took us about a week to sail there.

JIM YOUNG

On arrival at the docks in Melbourne, we were rushed to trucks as fast as possible. The Marine Corps didn’t want the people to see how dirty and grimy we were. Our clothes were in tatters. Pant legs had rotted away, and some of the guys’ private parts were showing. There were a lot of ambulances lined up to take the sick and wounded to area hospitals.

RICHARD GREER

Within the first two weeks of arriving in Australia, there were ten thousand cases of malaria in the hospital. Any hospital anywhere was full of Marines. We went into Guadalcanal with the strength of twenty thousand men, lost around seven thousand one way or another; that dropped us down to about thirteen thousand. When we got to Melbourne, malaria broke out and we had three thousand men effective at one time if you can believe that. Slowly, with good food, good veggies, and plenty of quinine [the treatment for malaria], we got better. I had malaria then and I had it off and on for the next forty-five years.

ART PENDLETON

I had malaria when we went to Australia. At first I was in a confinement area with a big barbed wire fence patrolled by men with rifles loaded with ammo. They didn’t want anyone infected mixing with the local populace. Then I was placed in an Army hospital filled with Marines with dysentery and malaria, Oh boy! They said in a good climate it takes twelve to fourteen weeks to get rid of malaria but mine lasted off and on for fourteen years.

SID PHILLIPS

I came down with hepatitis A. A lot of guys had it then. Most of us were in terrible physical condition. When I went over to sick call, the doctor just took one look at me, nodded, and said, “Stand over there.” A whole floor at the hospital was set up with nothing but hepatitis cases. Fortunately, I got better.

JIM YOUNG

Our battalion was billeted in the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It was a stadium, something like the Madison Square Garden in New York City. Bunks were placed over the bleacher seats. Our mess halls were where concessions stalls were. The front facing the game field was enclosed with plywood up to about eight feet from the top. When it stormed, the guys up there got wet.

After a week, we were still not allowed to go on the town because we had no uniforms. Ours went down with the ship at the ’Canal. But finally the Aussies donated us army pants and jackets. They had to be dyed green before we could wear them on leave. After that we had a ball.

The 1st Marine Division decided to issue shoulder patches, two per Marine, to commemorate their victory at Guadalcanal.

RICHARD GREER

Ah hell, everybody had the patch on in little or no time. I had at least five of the originals—you could buy them in Melbourne. We had a lot of pride in that patch, absolutely. The patch actually bore kinship to the flag of Victoria, the Australian state where we stayed. Their flag is blue with red elements and theirs had five white stars in the same pattern.

The stars on the patch are in the shape of the Southern Cross, which represents the southern hemisphere of fighting. You could make out that star formation all over the South Pacific. Everybody could pick that out. The word Guadalcanal was written on the patch. That was a little unusual, to define your division around one battle. It was a good deal for us who were at Guadalcanal because it became world famous.*

When I look at that patch, I think of two nations fighting our asses off over a ninety-mile strip of land that wasn’t worth a damn, but strategically whoever held it held Australia. It cost all told fifty thousand lives, forty-eight warships, two thousand warplanes, and it was one of the most savage battles of World War II. That’s what that patch brings to my mind.

SID PHILLIPS

We were ordered to assemble on the Cricket Grounds for an award ceremony. General Vandegrift, Colonel Edson, Sergeant Mitchell Paige, and Sergeant John Basilone were all to receive the Medal of Honor. Basilone was what we called an old Marine. He’d been in the service in the Philippines before Pearl Harbor. They called him “Manila John.” We were in different regiments, so I never met him. Remember, back then I was an eighteen-year-old private in the rear rank of the Marine Corps. I was an absolute nobody.

I remember it was a bright sunny day. We were standing there at rigid attention during the speech making, and Ransom kept mumbling, “Hurry it up, c’mon, hurry it up, let’s get this over with, hurry it up!” I’ve often thought of the humor of that. Here we were at this auspicious event, and we were all wishing it would hurry up and be over so we could go on liberty.

RICHARD GREER

By the time we got to Australia, I was invited to move into the staff NCO tent, and that’s where I lived with Basilone and the other sergeants. Basilone and I never really discussed that night he turned back the Japs in the Battle of Henderson Field. We lived together and hit the town together, but we never discussed that. I don’t know who wrote Basilone’s Medal of Honor citation, but they brought it to me to type up. I typed it up and kept a copy for myself.*

I knew Mitchell Paige. He was a professional Marine, a platoon sergeant in F Company. He always thought he should have had the first Medal of Honor given to an enlisted Marine [in WWII] instead of Basilone—but Basilone’s action happened a day before his. John never paid any attention to that. They both deserved the medal, John just earned it first, so he got more of the glory.

JIM YOUNG

Pretty girls were everywhere. There were dance halls, amusement parks, and beer parlors. Artie Shaw’s Navy Band came to the USO, and when they started to play, the music was heard outside on the busy street. All of a sudden the sidewalks and streets were jammed with Aussies listening to the music. The city ended up closing off the whole block to traffic. It was something to see all those people singing and dancing in the street.

The division put on a big parade for the people of Melbourne. There were about seventeen thousand of us. It was just like a New York City ticker tape parade. The Australians loved us! They said if it weren’t for us, the Japs would be bombing them by now. They took many of us into their homes and treated us like their own.

SID PHILLIPS

I can’t quite express the joy and jubilation the Marines felt to be back in civilization. We had been so far away from all that, then to suddenly be around streetcars and grocery stores and restaurants, it was just a wonderful feeling, it really was.

RICHARD GREER

Basilone, J. P. Morgan, and me made a lot of liberties together. J. P. Morgan was Basilone’s best friend. They were the closest of all. Morgan had been in the Marines since at least 1940. He was a sergeant. He and Basilone were down in Cuba together.

When we got a three-day pass, Basilone, Morgan, and me, we’d catch a train and go about ten miles outside of the city to some nice little town that had a good hotel and a good kitchen and a good bar. We would make our arrangements—we just had a flat price on everything—and we’d spend our time there, the three of us. We didn’t bother anybody or anything. Mealtime would come and we’d hit the kitchen. Otherwise we’d hit the bar. Basilone was our bartender. That’s the way we spent most of our liberties.

ROY GERLACH

We lived high on the hog. We’d go off base and get steak and eggs and ate a lot of that. Pretty good stuff. Now, I’d never eaten lobster, and didn’t know anything about it. One time another fellow and I went into this busy restaurant. The Australians ate lobster. So I said to this fellow, “I’m going to get a lobster tail.”

“You get your lobster,” he said. “I’m going to get steak and eggs.”

When the lobster came, they set a bowl of melted butter in front of me, and salt and pepper, and all this stuff you’re supposed to pour over the lobster. But I didn’t know that. I just dove in, tore a chunk out of it, put it in my mouth, and chewed and chewed and chewed. It didn’t appeal to me. I pushed it back and ordered steak and eggs.

We were in a booth. In the course of time, two Australian Air Force men came in and sat on the other side of our booth, because it was so busy. One guy pointed at my lobster and said, “You going to eat that?”

“You’re welcome to it,” I said.

So they both dove into it, dipping it into the melted butter and salt and pepper, and saying, “Oh, it’s good, good, good. Try some.”

So I did. I liked it better then. So that’s how I learned to eat lobster.

RICHARD GREER

Australia was full of absolutely beautiful theaters and what threw me about the theaters was you could smoke inside them during the movie.

Everybody was pretty calm in the city and in the streets, but there were still bar fights from time to time. Morgan was a middleweight boxing champion at one time, so he wouldn’t back away from a fight. When he and Basilone were together, Morgan would get in a brawl and Basilone would get in it to back him up or pull him out. That’s the way it goes.*

Best of all, Melbourne was also full of women who had not been properly chaperoned around since 1939 because all the Australian men were in North Africa because of the war. Of course we Marines were half-dead with malaria, but we still had a wonderful time down there. I doubt if there are a half dozen Marines in the whole division that didn’t have some kind of serious girlfriend during that eight months.

SID PHILLIPS

Deacon Tatum was a good friend of mine. He and I and W. O. Brown did everything together. Deacon was about five years older than I was, maybe twenty-three, and mature for his age. I was still a kid. Deacon had been preparing to become a minister before the war and was always trying to straighten me out. He said I was a “bad case.” I kidded him back, because he smoked, chewed tobacco, and dipped snuff all day long. He was a great friend and took me under his wing.

There were two girls in Australia that Deacon and I took up with—sisters. Deacon found the older sister first. When he took her home, her mother told him that her daughter could not date one-on-one with a Yank. It always had to be a double date. So Deacon had to find somebody to date the girl’s sister. He came to me and said, “I’ve got a blind date for you.” And I said, “I don’t need your help.” But he said, “Come on there, just one date. You will not be sorry.”

So we met the girls, and the sister, my date, was really pretty. I mean, really pretty! She was as gorgeous as Elizabeth Taylor. Shirley was her name. She was sixteen years old. I was eighteen then. The girls’ mother was a widow—her husband had died from effects of being gassed in WWI, and right away the mother gave us a talking to. If we Yanks were to date her daughters, we always needed to stay in a group. Neither Deacon nor I was ever to take either sister off by herself. Most of the time, we’d go to the movies with the girls. Or we’d go to this amusement park they had there with merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels and whatnot. Or we’d go to historical sites in Melbourne. So we had two nice girls who remained nice girls. People let their imaginations run wild when they think of us Marines romancing the Australian girls. I’d say most of the relationships were old-fashioned and nonsexual. They were good girls and we respected that. Every relationship I ever had with a girl in Australia was chaste.

The first month we had liberty almost every day, and we loved going out to these girls’ house. The girls’ grandmother lived with them, too. The family worked but were really poor. They didn’t have a refrigerator or even electricity. But they were very kind, and we got to be close with the whole family. There was no food rationing in Australia except for tea, and we didn’t give a damn about tea, so Tatum and I would go by the grocery store and get great big steaks and potatoes and go by the house, and the mother would prepare the food for all of us. We did not want to be an expense to the family. At least once or twice a week we ate in their home. We had a wonderful time.

ROY GERLACH

I never had malaria, but I got yellow jaundice in Australia. I turned yellow. I was in the Army hospital there for about thirty days. They said I got it from going from eating a poor diet to a high diet too quickly. On Guadalcanal there wasn’t much to eat of course. When you have jaundice, it can make your eyes weak. They got my color straightened out then they gave me liberty. It was great.

RICHARD GREER

Despite all this fun we were having, we were training all the time. We got new supplies, including semiautomatic M1 Garand rifles. We’d been fighting with the old bolt-action Springfields. Replacements came in from the States, and our division began to get back on its feet. It would take months and months.

Among the Marine replacements arriving to Australia that spring 1943 was twenty-year-old Romus Valton Burgin who went by the name “R.V.”

R. V. BURGIN

I grew up on a farm in east Texas, a town called Jewett. I picked cotton from age three or four on up. After school. Weekends. Whenever. In high school, I was involved in everything—I played basketball and football. When we played basketball, we played at night. The bus wouldn’t wait, so after each game I’d walk home, all eight miles of it. I did that a lot. Football games were played in the afternoons because we didn’t have a lighted field. I played both sides of the field, defensive end and cornerback. My senior year, the team voted me captain of the football team. That meant a lot to me because it came from the other players. Lord no, I wasn’t a big kid. I weighed 140 pounds. But I was fast and I could hit hard.

I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t have two quarters to rub together, so going to college was not something I could do. When Pearl Harbor hit, I was working in Dallas and living with my sister. I got a job as a traveling salesman for the Columbus Stationery Company, selling personalized, engraved stationery door to door. I was enjoying myself out on the road, so I kept postponing enlistment as long as I could. There was a general expectation throughout the country that all young men would do their duty and enlist. People I met on the road would often ask me why I wasn’t in uniform. No matter what day of the week, I always told them I was going to enlist “next Friday.” That became my standard answer.

I stayed with the stationery company until September 1942, when the draft board got to pushing me. I wanted to make my move first and enlist before I was drafted. Enlisting wasn’t the easiest decision I ever made. I knew I had to do my duty, but I also knew that war is hell. My uncle had told me stories of WWI, and I had seen short films of war. So all along I had a mind-set that eventually I was going into battle, but I didn’t rush headlong into it like some guys did.

My draft notice said I was to be drafted into the Army on November 13, 1942. But I did not want to be a dogface in the Army. I didn’t like the Army’s uniforms, and I didn’t like the sloppiness you sometimes heard about in the Army. So on November 10 I went to Houston, thinking I’d join the Air Force or Navy or Marines. The Air Force had a long waiting list, same as the Coast Guard. The Navy recruiter was a smart aleck. That left the Marines. I officially joined the Marine Corps. I was twenty years old.

Boot camp was normally twelve weeks, but we were rushed through it in six. Everything was sped up because they needed troops overseas as soon as possible. I got to Australia on March 31, 1943, and was put in the mortar section of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines or “K-3-5.” When I got to K Company, it was right after the Guadalcanal campaign, so they merged us raw recruits in with the old-timers. We were welcomed, but a Marine still needs to prove himself.

At the rifle range I shot “Expert” designation on my M1 rifle. The commander commended me, and shortly after I was promoted to private first class. Then we had a recreation day where a competition was held between companies. We broke down machine guns, field-stripped weapons and put them back together again—things like that—to see who could do the task the quickest. From out of the whole battalion, I was the fastest in setting up a 60mm mortar and getting on target with it. That was the first time anybody recognized me as being anything more than a new recruit. After that competition it was like I became one of the family—the United States Marine family—and there’s no greater feeling in the world.

After the veterans of Guadalcanal rebuilt their health, the Marine Corps kept them busy. The Corps had a habit of keeping a Marine fighting fit by keeping him discontent.

SID PHILLIPS

In the Marine Corps you were always being put on guard duty or “brig duty.” Brig duty was the duty we hated more than any other. You were armed with a weapon and live ammunition. You were told to kill these damned prisoners if they didn’t do what you told them to do. The Corps didn’t like them any more than we did. Our thinking was If these goofball Marines would have just obeyed orders, I wouldn’t be guarding them on brig duty! So you really had no compassion towards the prisoners.

These people made it hard for the rest of us. We were guarding them instead of out on the town. You really had no good feelings for them at all. Our thinking was I wish the son of a bitch would try to make a break for it because I’ll shoot him (laughs).

One time I was put on brig duty at the Fourth General Hospital, the same hospital where I had recovered from my hepatitis A. About fifteen of us pulled this duty—W. O. Brown was one of them, and we were all stationed in beautiful quarters there, stucco one-story buildings with wide wooden bunks with clean sheets. Beautiful meals were served by Australian middle-aged women. We called them all “Mother.” Our job was to guard Marine inmates in a restricted area on the hospital’s top floor. They were real bad hombres and were shackled to their beds, being held for trial while they recovered from malaria.

I was guarding the hospital’s main entrance one morning. That was better than guarding the prisoners on the top floor. All you did was stand there at parade rest. You came to present arms, to salute an officer when he or she went in or out of the hospital. All of the nurses were officers, so there were no boring waits. Every few minutes a nurse would come in or go out, and all you’d do is come to present arms, and they’d return the salute if they wanted to.

About five American staff cars pulled up to the curb. There was very little traffic in Melbourne. Most of the people didn’t have any gasoline, so the streets were practically empty. All these American Army generals and Navy admirals began to get out of these cars. I thought, What in the hell is this? And then the President’s wife, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, climbed out of the first car in line. Then I realized what it was all about.

She walked straight to the hospital door and saw me standing there. I came to present arms. The thing that startled me was how tall she was. She was the same height as me, and she had on low heels. She walked right up to me and said, “Young man, are you a Marine?” I thought that was a strange question because here I was in uniform with the insignia on it, but I said, “Yes, ma’am.” You’re really not supposed to talk to anybody when you’re on sentry duty, but of course if the First Lady came up to you like that, it would be proper to answer. She said, “Were you on Guadalcanal?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Are you being well fed?” I said, “Yes, ma’am,” because by then we were. She said, “Are you being well cared for?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “What state are you from?” I said, “Alabama, ma’am.” She said, “I should have known that.” She smiled and walked on into the hospital.

That was my encounter with Mrs. Roosevelt.

ROY GERLACH

After I got out of the hospital from my yellow jaundice, I was walking up the street and something hit my eye. It just felt like a cinder. I tried rubbing it out, but it got worse. Pretty soon my eye swelled shut. So I went back to the hospital. The eye doctor didn’t know what it was. The doctor called in different doctors for a consult. They kept putting drops in it. They started getting concerned that I was going to lose my eye. Finally they concluded it was a strained nerve. They got it straightened out, but I ended up in the hospital for another thirty days.

RICHARD GREER

Basilone and I went on our last liberty together around the 4th of July 1943. He came up to the first sergeant’s tent and said, “You know some nice gals, don’t you?” I said, “Of course.” He said, “Well, let’s get a couple of nice girls to go into the mountains.”

Morgan didn’t want to come along. He didn’t make as many liberties as we did. I don’t know what old Mo did instead. When we would go to some country motel, Mo was always up for that. But taking some gals to the mountains, he wasn’t too interested. He was married; we weren’t. When we went on liberty, we thought, Hell, forget about tomorrow. We knew we were going back in combat.

We picked up two girls. Those poor young Australian gals were really suffering. Their men had all been in the war since 1939, and a lot had never had a date. They were good gals, just like back home. I can still remember both of their names—Hazel and Jeanne. I got a hell of a mind.

We went to Melbourne and caught the train up to Warburton in the Australian Alps. It was snowing up there, with two feet of snow. That was the first time those gals had seen snow. We played around in the snow all afternoon and took a bunch of pictures.

During that weekend John said, “I’m going to the States. They want me to go back and sell war bonds.” He had been ordered home. He didn’t think the plan was worth a dang, but he always obeyed his orders, whatever they were.

That was the last liberty we made together. Pretty shortly after that he went to the States. John hated to leave D Company but was a good Marine and went where the Corps needed him.

R. V. BURGIN

I don’t remember ever being kept in camp on a weekend. We showered, got dressed, and headed for downtown Melbourne. We had to be back by midnight Sunday night. All the first couple months, my buddy Jim Burke and I always went on liberty together. He and I had met on the ship coming over and got to be real good friends.

We’d often get into Melbourne on the train about ten o’clock in the morning when the pubs first opened up. Jim would head straight into the Young & Jackson Hotel, right across from the train station, and start drinking right away. On the wall of the bar they had a huge pink painting of a naked lady named Chloe. That painting was famous all over town, at least as far as the GIs were concerned, and every Marine in Melbourne that I ever knew walked into that bar at least once to pay his respects to Chloe. Jim could really hold his liquor. I never did see him drunk. He’d still be there at six o’clock at night when the bar closed. But he could come out of the bar after being there all day and still walk a straight line. Me? I’d get out and go see a movie, or go walk the gardens. They had some of the most beautiful gardens in Melbourne I’d ever seen. In those days you could buy a beer for about twelve cents. A good meal would set you back fifty cents. That was really living.

After about two months of being stationed in Australia, Jim and I spotted two very pretty young ladies walking down the street, a blonde and a brunette. They turned into a candy shop. I turned to Jim and said, “I’ll take the brunette.” He said, “Okay, I’ll take the blonde.” We followed them in and talked to them. Their names were Florence and Doris. They said they were both eighteen. They offered to show us the Melbourne Museum, a few blocks down. So we went. The main exhibit featured this famous racehorse named Phar Lap, which had died while in the States. Doris said, “You Yanks poisoned him.” I guess that was the big joke—that the Americans had done in their famous racehorse. Everything in the museum was stuffed and mounted, and we walked around a bit until Jim finally said, “Let’s get the hell out of here, everything smells dead.”

We went to the train station where Florence’s mother was coming into the city along with Florence’s four-year-old brother. Jim and I met them then took turns running laps up and down the train platform, making train noises, with Florence’s little brother on our shoulders. When Florence’s mother and brother left, the girls and Jim and I took a boat ride on the river. We agreed to meet under the clock at the train station the next Saturday. We did. After that Jim and I double-dated with the girls every weekend.

I liked Florence a lot. She was tall, about five-nine, with dark hair. She was witty and beautiful and very intelligent. We just kinda gelled. I discovered she was only sixteen at the time, even though she’d told me she was eighteen. I guess she needed to lie about her age to go to work at the biscuit factory. She was already supervisor in her department. Her father operated a steam shovel at a coal mine, but he was a disabled veteran—he had been gassed by the Germans in WWI. We saw movies and shows and took carriage rides around the city and often just found a park bench and talked all afternoon.

JIM YOUNG

Most of the division soon got back in shape, and we started training for battle again. A bunch of generals and senators arrived to check us out. We did a live fire demonstration, and the bigwigs were out in front of us in a big bunker. My number one gun was the first to fire using the range data that was phoned to me. I let the mortar round go and lo and behold the shell landed on top of the bunker. Well, all hell broke loose.

The bigwigs came running out of the bunker, coughing and wheezing, covered with dust. I knew I was going to get hell because Lieutenant Benson was also in the bunker and had given me the range distance. He was all dirty and raving like mad. The first thing he did was kick me right in the ass. I guess he really knew that he was the one who made the error, because I’d repeated his order back to him twice to make sure he knew what he was doing. I guess he didn’t realize that the distance he gave me was from the bunker to the target and not from the gun to the target. He had me removed as gun corporal, but later on he realized his mistake and put me back in charge.

SID PHILLIPS

We had a camp outside the city in a suburb called Dandenong. When we were there it looked like Dodge City in Gunsmoke. They took us out in the outback, gave us a little cloth bag of rice and a bag of raisins, and told us to walk back to town—one hundred miles in three days. If you made it, you got a seventy-two-hour pass into Melbourne. Everybody made it, nobody collapsed.

R. V. BURGIN

PFC Merriel Shelton and I were in the same mortar squad and became friends. He had this thick Louisiana Cajun accent and always talked through his teeth. When he got excited, you couldn’t understand him. He was a little man and a character all right but not as goofy as everyone thinks. He came to the company about two months before we left Australia. He was a bartender for the officer’s club for a long time; the company had loaned him out. That was his profession by trade when he came into the service.

We were getting ready to go on liberty and go into Melbourne on a Friday night after four o’clock. Shelton’s bunk was right next to my bunk. He had his money lying out on his bunk, and I said to Shelton, “How much money do you have there?” He picked up the bills and counted them and said, “Oh I gots ten or twelve pounds.” Then he picked up the change and rattled it and shook it around in his hand and said, “I mus’ have ten or twelve ounces here.” Here he thought the currency a weight thing when really Australian money was called “pounds,” “schillings,” or “pence.”

I said, “I’ll tell you what, Shelton, you’re just a SNAFU waiting to happen.”* Everybody else was getting ready, and they heard it and laughed. From then on he wasn’t “Shelton” he was “Snafu.”

ART PENDLETON

They issued us the little .30-caliber carbines. They’re neat little guns but have no range on them. They wouldn’t knock the man down like a .45 would. But they would stop you if they hit you in the right spot.

SID PHILLIPS

I liked the carbine. It had fifteen rounds, was semiautomatic, so we felt well armed with it. With a pistol you would be doing good to hit a telephone pole at ten feet. You didn’t feel well armed with a pistol. With a carbine you could hit a telephone pole at a hundred yards.

At the end of September 1943, the Marines prepared to depart Australia.

JIM YOUNG

After many months, surprise! We were called to formation and told to pack up our gear and prepare to move out in two hours. We were not to make any phone calls. This came as a shock to everyone. Two hours later we marched right through the main street of the city. The Australians were going crazy. People were running into the buildings yelling, “The Marines are leaving!” and before you knew it the streets were filled with screaming and crying girls.

R. V. BURGIN

I saw Florence for the last time on September 25, 1943. We spent enough time together in the short time we had for me to know she was the one. I wanted to marry her, then and there, but had the good sense not to. I knew what was ahead and didn’t want to leave her a widow. We agreed to correspond and pick things up again, someday.

SID PHILLIPS

Shirley and me, we just had a friendly warm good-bye. We knew we were not going to get married. We lived worlds apart. Back then to go to Australia was a one-month trip on a steamship, and you would spend every penny you could get to make the trip. I was a teenager at the time, so it just wasn’t very feasible. But we had an agreement that we would always be good friends and write to one another.

JIM YOUNG

All seventeen thousand of us Marines were marching five abreast like a green snake winding for several miles through the street. We were heading straight for the city waterfront. The girls were crying and screaming whenever they saw their boyfriends. They would run right through the ranks and try to drag their boyfriends out of the line. The sergeants would have to pry them loose from the guys.

One of our sergeants, Marty Grogan, had gotten married and his wife spotted him. When she did, she got hysterical. Lieutenant Benson came running back from the front of the line and allowed Sergeant Grogan to fall out of ranks until he got his wife calmed down. He was to catch up to us as soon as he could. We thought it was very nice of the lieutenant to allow that.

When we arrived at the docks, ships were waiting for us to load. The piers were crowded with people. We were marched onto the ships right away. Once we were on the ship, we saw that the women had come right down to the beach, to the waterline. Many of the guys were writing messages, putting them in blown-up condoms, and floating them in to the beach. We watched as the girls picked them up and yelled the guy’s name on it in an effort to locate the right receiver. It was quite a sight! Then we were on our way again with no idea of where we are going.

* Richard Greer would remember, “When I came home, I never took my patch off. No one had a problem with that, but if they did it would have taken a pretty big deal to get that patch off me. Back home you would go in a bar and people would recognize you were a Marine. Then they would see ‘Guadalcanal’ and everybody knew about Guadalcanal since it had been in the papers so damn long. That patch got us a lot of free drinks. I had people come up and thank me, over and over, but I can’t say whether it was the patch that did it or the Marine uniform. It happened.”

* Greer would remember, “I got John to sign my copy of his citation and it’s now in the World War II museum in New Orleans.”

* Richard Greer would remember, “Basilone, Morgan, and me, we was in a brawl back at New River a time or two. I was about six-three, two hundred pounds, and in absolutely wonderful shape. We did just fine.”

* SNAFU is the military acronym for “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.” (Other words are sometimes substituted for “fouled.”)

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