CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We pushed past Shuri over some muddy hills in the army's zone of action and came across a group of about twenty Japanese prisoners. Each man was stripped except for a G-string. They stood barefooted in the mud alongside a trail winding along the slope of a barren hill. Several dirty and battle-weary army infantrymen guarded them. The captured enemy had been ordered by an interpreter (army lieutenant) to stand off the trail so Company K's column could pass.
We slipped and slid wearily toward the sound of firing up ahead. A grizzled rifleman in front of me and I had been cursing the mud and exchanging remarks about how glad we were to be past Shuri. Suddenly a Japanese prisoner stepped in front of my friend, blocking his way.
“Get outa the way, you crazy bastard,” growled the Marine.
The soldier folded his arms calmly, raised his chin, and displayed a picture of arrogance. My buddy and I heated up fast. He pushed the Japanese backward and sent him sprawling into the mud. The enemy soldier sprang up quickly and assumed his former position.
“What's that crazy bastard doin’?” I yelled as I dropped my mortar ammo bag and reached for my .45 pistol.
My buddy unslung his rifle, grasped it by the stock with his left hand and by the pistol grip with his right hand. He planted his muddy feet firmly on the trail, flexed his knees, and growled, “Git outa my way, you bastard.”
Other Marines behind us had halted when we did. Seeing what was happening, they started cursing the Japanese.
“What's the hold up? Move out,” someone behind us yelled.
The army first lieutenant (he was actually wearing his silver bars on his collars), clean-shaven and spotless except for muddy combat boots, came along the column to ascertain the problem. Seeing my buddy's stance and realizing he might soon have one less prisoner, he said, “You can't mistreat these men. They are prisoners of war. According to the Geneva Code, POWs must be treated humanely.” He looked desperate; the whole column of muddy, raggedy-ass Marines glared at and cursed the prisoners strung out alongside us on the trail.
“Screw the Geneva Code. If that slant-eyed sonofabitch don't move outa my way, I'll give him a vertical butt stroke in his big mouth and knock out every one of them goddamn buck teeth.” My buddy slowly moved his rifle back and forth, and the enemy soldier's arrogant expression began to fade. The army lieutenant knew he had a bad problem on his hands, and he obviously didn't know how to solve it. (It was commonly said that Marines rarely took prisoners.) A couple of GI riflemen of the prisoner-guard detail stood by relaxed and grinned their endorsement of our sentiments. They obviously had been in the “meat grinder” long enough to have no more love for the Japanese than we did. The lieutenant obviously wasn't one of their officers but from some rear-echelon outfit.
Just then, one of our officers hurried up from the rear of the column. The army lieutenant was mighty relieved to see him and explained the situation. Our officers went over and quietly told my buddy to get back into ranks. He then told the army language officer that if he didn't get his prisoners out of the way, he (our officer) couldn't guarantee that some of them wouldn't get hurt. The army officer spoke kindly in Japanese to the POWs, and they all stepped farther back away from the trail, giving us plenty of room. The language officer acted and sounded more like an elementary school teacher giving little children directions than an officer giving orders to a bunch of tough Japanese soldiers.
During the whole episode, most of the Japanese never appeared afraid, merely chagrined or ashamed because they had acted disgracefully by surrendering. Perhaps the one who acted so arrogantly thought that one last act of defiance would soothe his conscience somewhat. Most Americans at the time couldn't comprehend the Japanese determination to win or fight to the death. To the Japanese, surrender was the ultimate disgrace.
We didn't feel that POWs should be mistreated or handled roughly, but neither did we feel that one should be allowed to block our path and get away with the act. My view that some language officers were often overly solicitous about the comfort of prisoners and unduly courteous to them was shared by other infantrymen in the “meat grinder.” We were too familiar with the sight of helpless wounded Americans lying flat on their backs on stretchers getting shot by Japanese snipers while we struggled to evacuate them.
After the breakthrough, we moved rapidly through areas where the opposition was light or absent. Our supply lines, communications, and casualty evacuation had a difficult time keeping up with us because the mud was still such a serious problem. Although the rain fell less frequently, it hadn't ceased.
As our column moved along the base of a road embankment on one occasion, a Marine walking along the road above us carrying a field telephone and a small roll of wire shouted down and asked for the identity of our unit. His buddy followed him along the road at a little distance carrying a roll of wire. These men were clean-shaven and neat. They looked suspiciously like rear-echelon people to us.
“Hey, what outfit you guys in?” shouted the first man up on the road.
“K/⅗,” I yelled.
His buddy behind him asked him, “What outfit did he say?”
“K/⅗, whatever the hell that means.”
The effect on us was instant and dramatic. Men who had paid little attention to what seemed a routine inquiry looked angrily up at the man. I flushed with anger. My unit and I had been insulted. The mortarman next to me threw down his ammo bag and started up the embankment. “I'll show you what the hell it means, you rear-echelon sonofabitch! I'm gonna whip your ass.”
I wasn't given to brawling. The Japanese provided me with all the excitement and fighting I wanted. But I lost my head completely. I threw down my ammo bag and started up the embankment. Other mortarmen started up, too.
“What's the dope?” I heard a man back along the column shout.
“That rear-echelon bastard up there cussed K Company,” someone answered.
Immediately other Company K men started up the bank. The two men up on the road looked utterly bewildered as they saw bearded, muddy Marine infantrymen cursing, grounding their weapons, dropping their loads, and surging angrily up the embankment. One of our officers and a couple of NCOs saw what had happened and rushed up ahead of us.
The officer turned and yelled, “You people get back in ranks on the double! Move! Move!”
We stopped, each of us knowing that to disobey orders invited severe disciplinary action. The two men on the road had become frightened, and we saw them hustling along the road to the rear. They looked back anxiously several times to see whether they were being followed. We must have been an angry, menacing-looking bunch from their viewpoint. I suspect those two Marines knew the real meaning and essence of esprit de corps after that experience.
We picked up our weapons and gear and moved out again below the road only to halt shortly. The officers consulted their maps, held a critique, and decided that place was as good as any for the company to leave the muddy low ground, go up the bank, and take advantage of the coral-surfaced road (probably the east-west Naha-Yonabaru highway, a segment of which our regiment captured about then). We moved up onto the road, took off our gear, and settled onto the side of a large ridge with a wide grass- and tree-covered crest. Oki-nawan burial vaults and emplacements lay all along the slope of the ridge, but the Japanese hadn't left many men to defend it. However, they gave a good account of themselves before being wiped out.
Toward dusk, I was examining a Japanese 75mm dual-purpose gun which they had abandoned in perfect condition.Several of us had a lot of fun turning its cranks and wheels, which we didn't understand but which moved the big barrel up and down, right and left. Our play was interrupted by the shriek of several enemy artillery shells that exploded up on the ridge crest near a group of Company K men.
“Corpsman!”
We raced up onto the ridge, hoping no more shells came in but wondering who was hit and knowing we might be needed to help with the casualties. We could see the smoke from the shells and the Marines scurrying around to aid the casualties and to disperse.
In the gathering twilight, I ran up to a little knot of Marines bending over a casualty. To my dismay, the wounded Marine was good-natured, cigar-chewing Joe Lambert, a demolitions expert I had known so long. I knelt beside him and was distressed to see that he had multiple wounds from shell fragments in his body.
The men had eased a poncho under Lambert and were preparing to carry him down the ridge for evacuation. I wished him luck, made the usual jokes about not being too romantic with the nurses on the hospital ship, and asked him to drink a beer and think of me when he got Stateside—the usual comments one made to a badly wounded friend who had little chance.
Lambert looked up at me in the gathering darkness. With the stump of an unlighted cigar clenched in his teeth, he said with irony in his voice, “Sledgehammer, ain't this a helluva’ thing—a man been in the company as long as me, and hafta get carried out on a poncho?”
I made some feeble attempts to comfort him. I knew he was going to die, and I wanted to cry.
“Wish I could light that cigar for you, Cobber, but the smokin’ lamp is out.”
“That's OK, Sledgehammer.”
“One of those good-lookin’ nurses'll light it for you,” I said as they picked up the poncho and started off down the slope of the ridge with him.
I stood up and looked at a nearby group of beautiful pines silhouetted against the darkening sky. The wind blew their fresh scent into my face, and I thought how much like Southern pine it smelled. But poor, brave Lambert would never get back home again. I was thankful that when his luck finally ran out and he was fatally wounded, it happened on a high, clear, grassy ridge crest near a clump of fragrant pines and not back in the stinking muck of the quagmire around Shuri.
Corporal Lambert was a great favorite in Company K. Any of us who had fought on Peleliu's Bloody Nose Ridge had seen him numerous times standing above some Japanese cave, swinging a satchel charge of explosives on a rope until he got it just right, then releasing the rope and yelling, “Fire in the hole”—just before the muffled explosion. He would grin, then climb down and rejoin us wringing wet with sweat from his face to his boondockers. He would relight his cigar (which served in turn as a lighter for his satchel-charge fuses) and discuss the damage done to the cave. He was big, round-faced, and jovial. Rumor said that he had been scheduled to return to the States after Peleliu but refused because he wanted to remain with Company K. Not long after he was carried out, we learned that Lambert had died. It's one of the war's many personal tragedies that he was killed after having served so long and so bravely.
Next day we moved out into a wide valley below the ridge. We saw Japanese equipment and dead on several roads destroyed by the big U.S. bombardment the last week of May when the enemy had evacuated Shuri. We also encountered numerous Japanese supply dumps. Most of the food and rations didn't suit our tastes. The Japanese iron rations, which I had seen first in gauze sacs on Peleliu, tasted like dog biscuits. But I found several cans of preserved Japanese deep-sea scallops which were delicious. Several cans of these stored in my pack were a welcome change from C and K rations.
We made one rapid advance across a wide grassy valley only to be halted by snipers in some rocks on the crest of the opposite ridge. We set up the guns, registered in on the areas where snipers were, and began firing. Stretcher teams came and went up and down the slope of the open ridge. Four of us were ordered off for a stretcher team to pick up a corpsman who had been hit by sniper fire.
We went up the gently sloping, grass-covered ridge and came to the “doc.” Another stretcher team passed us carrying the Marine whom the doc had been tending when he himself was wounded. The Marine had been shot by a sniper, and the corpsman had come to administer medical aid. While he was working over the wounded Marine, a Japanese shot him in the thigh. Although wounded painfully, he continued to work on his patient. Then the sniper had shot Doc in the other thigh. As we arrived, he cautioned us to be careful or we would get hit, too.
We quickly got him on a stretcher and took off as fast as possible. Doc was a fairly tall, well-built man, larger than any of us. We carried him a long distance: down the ridge and across the wide valley to a steep-sided ditch spanned by a footbridge. An ambulance jeep was waiting on the other side of the footbridge. We were all nearly exhausted from the exertions and lack of sleep of the past two weeks, and it was quite a struggle. Twice wounded though he was, he kept insisting we stop and rest for a while. But we four felt obligated to get him to the jeep and evacuated as soon as possible.
Finally, we agreed to stop for a breather. Setting the stretcher down, we fell out flat on the grass, panting for breath. Doc talked to us calmly, admonishing us to take it easy and not to overexert ourselves. I felt ashamed. That unselfish, dedicated corpsman was more concerned because we were so tired from carrying him out than he was with his own wounds.
We picked up the stretcher and got to the ditch. There on the bank I saw a bush with several small red tomatoes. I managed to grab three or four tomatoes and put them on the stretcher as we got Doc across the narrow footbridge. I told him to eat them, that they'd make him feel better. He thanked me, but said we should eat them, because he would get good chow in the hospital.
Who should walk around the jeep just as we were loading our corpsman but Doc Arrogant, notorious for painful shots on Pavuvu. “I'll take those,” he said, reaching for the tomatoes.
“The hell you say!” I exclaimed, snatching them out of his hand.
One of my buddies went up to him and said, “You bastard, you'd take candy from a baby, wouldn't ya?”
Arrogant looked surly, turned around, and went back around the jeep. Our Doc handed me the tomatoes and insisted we eat them. We said we would and wished him luck as the jeep bumped off to the rear.
We recrossed the footbridge and fell exhausted onto the grass. We had a smoke, divided up the juicy little tomatoes, cussed Doc Arrogant, and voiced our admiration for all other corpsmen.
On 4 June we moved rapidly southward through open country in a torrential rain. Although the opposition was sporadic, we still had to check out all houses, huts, and former Japanese emplacements. While searching a small hut, I came across an old Okinawan woman seated on the floor just inside the doorway. Taking no chances, I held my Thompson ready and motioned to her to get up and come out. She remained on the floor but bowed her old gray head and held her gnarled hands toward me, palms down, to show the tattoos on the backs of her hands indicating she was Okinawan.
“No Nippon,” she said slowly, shaking her head as she looked up at me with a weary expression that bespoke of much physical pain. She then opened her ragged blue kimono and pointed to a wound in the lower left side of her abdomen. It was an old wound, probably caused by shell or bomb fragments. It was an awful sight. A large area around the scabbed-over gash was discolored and terribly infected with gangrene. I gasped in dismay. I guessed that such a severe infection in the abdominal region was surely fatal.
The old woman closed her kimono. She reached up gently, took the muzzle of my Tommy, and slowly moved it so as to direct it between her eyes. She then released the weapon's barrel and motioned vigorously for me to pull the trigger. Oh no, I thought, this old soul is in such agony she actually wants me to put her out of her misery. I lifted my Tommy, slung it over my shoulder, shook my head, and said “no” to her. Then I stepped back and yelled for a corpsman.
“What's up, Sledgehammer?”
“There's an old gook woman in there that's been hit in the side real bad.”
“I'll see what I can do for her,” he said as we met about fifty yards from the hut.
At that moment, a shot rang out from the hut. I spun around. The corpsman and I went down into a crouching position.
“That was an M1,” I said.
“Sure was. What the hell?” he said.
Just then a Marine emerged nonchalantly from the hut, checking the safety on his rifle. I knew the man well. He was attached at that time to company headquarters. I called to him by name and said, “Was there a Nip in that hut? I just checked it out.”
“No,” he said as we approached him, “just an old gook woman who wanted me to put her out of her misery; so I obliged her!”
The doc and I stared at each other, and then at the Marine. That quiet, neat, mild-mannered young man just wasn't the type to kill a civilian in cold blood.
When I saw the crumpled form under the faded blue kimono in the hut door, I blew up. “You dumb bastard! She tried to get me to shoot her, and I called Doc to come help her.”
The executioner looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“You sonofabitch,” I yelled. “If you want to shoot at somebody so damn bad, why don't you trade places with a BAR-man or a machine gunner and get outa that damn CP and shoot at Nips? They shoot back!”
He stammered apologies, and Doc cursed him.
I said, “We're supposed to kill Nips, not old women!”
The executioner's face flushed. An NCO came up and asked what happened. Doc and I told him. The NCO glared and said, “You dirty bastard.”
Somebody yelled, “Let's go Sledgehammer, we're movin’ out.”“You guys shove off, I'll take care of this,” said the NCO to Doc and me. We ran off to catch up with the mortar section while the NCO continued to chew out the executioner. I never knew whether or not he was disciplined for his cold-blooded act.
On the right of the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Marines extended its lines to the west coast and sealed off the Oroku Peninsula. Then the 6th Marine Division came in and fought a ten-day battle of attrition to annihilate the Japanese defenders there. The division killed nearly 5,000 Japanese, taking only 200 prisoners, at a loss of 1,608 Marines killed and wounded.
On 4 June, the 1st Marines relieved the 5th Marines as the assault regiment for the 1st Marine Division's drive to the south. The 5th Marines went into reserve for III Marine Amphibious Force, a stance that still involved much danger for its weary Marines because of a mission to aggressively patrol and mop up behind the forward elements.
We dug in as a secondary line along a low ridge with some ruins of Okinawan houses behind us and a broad open valley stretching south to our front as far as we could see. The rain ended the night of 5-6 June. I'll never forget the sensation of profound physical relief when I removed my soaked, muddy boondockers for the first time in approximately two weeks. As I pulled off my slimy, stinking socks, bits and shreds of dead flesh sloughed off the soles of my feet. A buddy, Myron Tesreau, commented on the overpowering odor, only to discover that his feet were just as bad. My socks, a pair of khaki-colored, woolen army socks (thicker and heavier than our white Marine Corps issue) were so slimy and putrid I couldn't bear to wash them in my helmet. I had traded a candy bar to a soldier for them back in April. They were my prized possession because of their comfort when wet. With regret, I threw my prize socks aside and spaded dirt over them as though covering up a foul corpse.
It was great to wash my feet, holding them up on an ammo box to let the sun shine on them while I wiggled my toes.Everybody got his feet clean and dry as soon as possible. Mine were extremely sore and red over the entire soles, almost to the point of bleeding. All of the normal friction ridges of the skin had sloughed off, and the soles were furrowed with deep, reddish grooves. But after drying them in the sun and putting on dry socks and boondockers, they soon felt better. Months passed, however, before the soles appeared normal again.
We had our mortars set up in pits at the base of the low ridge along which the Company K line was dug in. George Sarrett and I had a regular two-man foxhole on the ridge next to a road cut that came through at right angles to the ridge. During the nights we were there, we mortarmen took turns on the guns and fired flares periodically over our company area.
Between patrols and nightly vigils we began to get rested and dried out. We had air drops of supplies, food, water, and ammo. During the day we could build campfires and heat rations, which all enjoyed. We had ten-in-one rations there, always a welcome change from C and K rations. The method of air drop used to supply water had not been perfected then. The water was contained in long plastic bags, four of which were stored in a metal cylinder attached to the parachute. Quite often the impact of the cylinder hitting the deck caused one or more of the bags to break, and some or all of the water in it was lost.
We always had a lot of fun when supplies were air-dropped to us, even though it was hard work running through the mud collecting up the ammo, rations, and other supplies attached to the brightly colored chutes. Most of the time Marine torpedo bombers made the drops while flying low over us. Their accuracy was remarkable. During the periods when deep mud covered much of the battlefield we always welcomed a clear day, not only because we hated the rain, but because it meant our planes could be up and supply us with air drops. Otherwise supplies had to be manhandled miles through the mud.
While we were in reserve, another mortarman and I were sent on a routine mission to carry a message to the west coast regarding supplies. It was the kind of ordinary thing every infantryman was called on to do many times. Typically, it was good duty, because we were temporarily out from under the eagle eye of the company gunny sergeant, could move at our own pace, and do a little sightseeing along the way through areas already fought over and secured. It wasn't considered hazardous.
Our instructions were straightforward. Our company gunny, Hank Boyes, told us to keep on the main east-west road all the way to the beach and back. He told us who to contact and what to ask for. Then he warned us against screwing around souvenir hunting and cautioned us about the possibility of bypassed enemy.
We started off in high spirits for what we thought would be an interesting jaunt into the area south of the Oroku Peninsula. We had gotten cleaned up by then. Our dungarees had been washed, and our leggings and boondockers were dry and scraped clean of mud. We carried the usual two canteens of water. We also had ration chocolate bars because we would be gone several hours and could eat those on the move. My buddy was armed with a carbine. I carried the Tommy and my .45 pistol. The weather had dried out, and it was an ideal day for a little harmless diversion from the patrols we had been making.
After we moved out of our battalion area and onto the road, we saw almost no one. As we walked along the silent road, the only sounds in our immediate surroundings were our own voices, the crunching of our boondockers on the road, the muffled sloshing of the water in our canteens, and the occasional thump of our weapons’ stocks against our canteens or kabar scabbards. We moved in that silent world that characterized the backwash of battle.
The area was replete with the flotsam of war. The storm front had passed, but its wreckage was left behind. Our experienced eyes read the silent signs and reconstructed the drama and pathos of various life-and-death struggles that had occurred. We encountered numerous enemy corpses, which we always passed on the windward side. We saw no Marine dead. But a bloody dungaree jacket here, a torn boondocker there, a helmet with the camouflage cloth cover and steel beneath ripped by bullets, discarded plasma bottles, and bloody battle dressings gave mute testimony of the fate of their former owners.
We passed through an embankment for a railroad track and entered the outskirts of a town. All buildings were badly damaged, but some were still standing. We stopped briefly to explore a quaint little store. Displayed in its window were various cosmetics. In the street in front of the store lay a corpse clad in a blue kimono. Someone had placed a broken door over the pathetic body. We speculated he had been the proprietor of the little shop. We passed a burned-out bus station with the ticket booth still standing in front. To our right and distant the battle rumbled and rattled as the 6th Marine Division fought the enemy on the Oroku Peninsula.
Without incident we continued through the ruins toward the beach when an amtrac came rattling toward us. The driver was the first living soul we had seen. We hailed him, and it turned out he was expecting us at the beach but had started along the road hoping to locate us. After receiving the information about our unit, he spun his amtrac around and headed back toward the beach. With our mission completed, my buddy and I started back along the road through the ruins.
We passed the little cosmetic shop and the dead Okinawan covered by the door and approached the bus station on our left. A gentle breeze was blowing. Only the clanking of a piece of loose tin on the ruined bus station roof broke the silence. If I blotted out the distant rumble of battle, our surroundings reminded me of walking past some deserted farm building on a peaceful spring afternoon back home. It seemed like an interesting place to take ten, explore the bus station, and eat our ration bars. We had saved time by meeting the amtrac, so we could stop for a while.
The harsh snapping and cracking of a long burst of Japanese machine-gun bullets zipping chest high in front of us sent my buddy and me scrambling for cover. We dove behind the concrete ticket booth and lay on the rubble-strewn concrete, breathing hard.
“God, that was close, Sledgehammer!”
“Too damned close!”
The enemy gunner had been zeroed in perfectly on his elevation, but he had led us too much. The bullets ricocheted and whined around inside the burned-out bus station. We heard the tinkle of glass as the slugs broke windows among the burned-out buses.
“Where the hell is that bastard?” asked my buddy.
“I don't know, but he's probably a couple of hundred yards away from the sound of the gun.”
We lay motionless for a moment, the silence interrupted only by the peaceful, lazy clanking of the tin in the breeze. Cautiously I peered out from behind the base of the ticket booth. Another burst of slugs narrowly missed my head and went clattering through the building after striking the concrete alongside us.
“That bastard's zeroed in on us for sure,” groaned my buddy.
The ticket booth in front of the building was surrounded by an open expanse of concrete in all directions. The gunner had us pinned down tightly. My buddy peeped around his side of the narrow booth and got the same reception as I had. The enemy machine gunner then fired a burst across the top of the concrete portion of the booth, shattering what was left of the windows in the upper part of the booth. We were sure that the Nambu gunner was up on the south side of the railroad embankment.
“Maybe we can get back among them buses and out of sight and then slip out of the rear of the building,” my buddy said. He moved slightly to one side to look behind us, but another burst of fire proved his plan faulty.
“I guess we'll hafta wait it out till dark and then slip out of here,” I said.
“Guess you're right. We sure as hell ain't gonna get outa here during the daylight without gettin’ hit. He's got us pinned down tight. Sledgehammer, after all the crap we've been through, damned if we ain't between a rock and the hard place. Goddamit to hell!”
The minutes grew into lonely hours as time dragged by. We kept a sharp lookout in all directions in case other Japanese might slip in behind us while we were occupied by the machine gun.
Toward late afternoon we heard a burst of M1 rifle fire over in the direction where the enemy gunner was located. After a few minutes we peeped out. To our delight we saw a group of four or five Company K Marines striding along the road from the direction of the road cut.
“Look out for that Nambu!” we yelled, pointing back toward where the fire had been coming from.
A grinning Marine held up the machine gun and yelled, “Rack 'em up. You guys OK? The gunny figured you'd run into trouble when you didn't come back and sent us out to look for you.”
By mid-June familiar faces were scarce in Company K and in all the infantry units of the 1st Marine Division. On 1 June the company lost thirty-six men to enemy action. Ten days later, twenty-two men left with immersion foot and other severe illnesses. Despite midmonth replacements, Company K moved toward its final major fight with about one hundred men and two or three officers—only half of whom had landed at Hagushi two and a half months earlier.
CARNAGE ON KUNISHI RIDGE
Toward the middle of June we began to hear disturbing rumors about a place south of us called Kunishi Ridge. Rumors circulated that our division's other infantry regiments, the 7th Marines and later the 1st Marines, were involved in bitter fighting there and would need our help. Our hopes began to fade that the 5th Marines wouldn't be committed to the front lines again.
We continued our patrols. I enjoyed my canned Japanese scallops and hoped there was no such place as Kunishi Ridge. But, the inevitable day came with the order, “Square away your gear; we're movin’ out again.”
The weather turned dry and warm as we moved south. The farther we proceeded, the louder the sound of firing became: the bumping of artillery, the thudding of mortars, the incessant rattle of machine guns, the popping of rifles. It was a familiar combination of noise that engendered the old feelings of dread about one's own chances as well as the horrible images of the wounded, the shocked, and the dead—the inevitable harvest.
Following the retreat from Shuri, the Japanese defenders of Okinawa withdrew into their final defensive lines along a string of ridges near the southern end of the island. The western anchor was Kunishi Ridge. In the middle was Yuza-Dake. Farther east was Yaeju-Dake.*
Kunishi Ridge was about 1,500 yards long, a sheer coral escarpment. The Japanese dug into caves and emplacements on its forward and reverse slopes. The northern frontal approaches to Kunishi lay wide open: flat grasslands and rice paddies across which the Japanese had perfect fields of fire.
On 12 June the 7th Marines made a predawn attack and captured a portion of Kunishi. The Marines were on the ridge, but the enemy was in it. For four days, the Marines of the 7th Regiment were isolated atop the ridge. Air drops and tanks supplied them, and tanks removed their dead and wounded.
On 14 June the 1st Marines attacked portions of Kunishi and suffered heavy losses for their efforts. On the same day, the 1st Battalion—led by Lt. Col. Austin Shofner (former CO of ⅗ on Peleliu)—attacked and captured Yuza-Dake but suffered terrible casualties from the Japanese defenders there and from intense fire sent over from Yaeju-Dake.
Into the hellish confusion we went on 14 June with the words still ringing in our ears, “The 5th Marines may not be committed again.” We plodded along the sides of a dusty road, next to tanks and amtracs moving forward and a steady stream of ambulance jeeps returning loaded with the youthful human wreckage of the battle for Kunishi Ridge.
That afternoon our company deployed along a row of trees and bushes on the south side of the road. We saw and heard heavy firing on Kunishi Ridge across the open ground ahead. My mortar section dug in near the road with our guns adjusted to fire flares over a picturesque bridge that remained intact over a high stream bank.
A couple of us went to look at the bridge before dark. We walked down to the stream on a trail leading from the road. The water was crystal clear and made a peaceful gurgling sound over a clean pebbly bottom. Ferns grew from the overhanging mossy banks and between rocks on both sides. I had the urge to look for salamanders and crayfish. It was a beautiful place, cool and peaceful, so out of context with the screaming hell close above it.
The next morning we relieved 1/1 on Yuza-Dake. As we moved up along a road, we passed a small tree with all the limbs blasted off. So many communication wires hung from it at all angles that it looked like a big inverted mop. A ricocheting bullet whined between me and the man in front of me. It raised a little dust cloud as it smashed into a pile of dry brush by the roadside. Back into the meat grinder again, I thought, as we moved up toward the sound of heavy firing.
Yuza-Dake looked terrible to me. It resembled one of the hellish coral ridges on Peleliu. We could see Kunishi Ridge on our right and the Yaeju-Dake escarpment on our left. Army tanks were moving against the latter while machine guns and 75mm cannons hammered away.
For the first time in combat I heard the wailing of sirens. We were told that the army had put sirens on their tanks for the psychological effect it might have on the Japanese. To me the sirens just made the whole bloody struggle more bizarre and unnerving. The Japanese rarely surrendered in the face of flamethrowers, artillery, bombs, or anything else, so I didn't understand how harmless sirens would bother them. We got mighty tired of hearing them wailing against the constant rattle of small arms and the crash of shell fire.
While we were on Yuza-Dake under sporadic enemy fire, ⅖ joined the 7th Marines in the bitter fighting to capture the rest of Kunishi Ridge. The Japanese emplacements and caves received terrific bombardment by mortars, artillery, heavy naval gunfire, and air strikes consisting of twenty-five to thirty planes. It reminded me more and more of Bloody Nose Ridge on Peleliu.
The 2d Battalion, 5th Marines gained some ground on Ku-nishi but needed help. Company K was attached to ⅖ and arrived just in time to help that battalion fight off a company-sized night counterattack on 17 June. Later that night we heard that our company would attack the next morning to seize the remainder of Kunishi Ridge in the 5th Marines’ zone of action. Once again we would enter the abyss of close combat.
We learned that we would move out well before daylight and deploy for the attack, because we had to move across a wide-open area to get to the ridge. An officer came along giving us what sounded like a pep talk about how the 5th Marines could finish the job on Kunishi Ridge. (We all knew that the 1st Marines and the 7th Marines had already been terribly shot up taking most of the ridge.)
Moving in the darkness was something the old salts of Gloucester and Peleliu didn't like at all. We were stubborn in our belief that nobody but the Japanese, or damned fools, moved around at night. The new replacements who had come into the company a few days before seemed so pitifully confused they didn't know the difference. But moving up under cover of darkness was the only sane way to approach Kunishi Ridge. The 1st Marines and the 7th Marines had already found it necessary to move that way to get across the open ground without being slaughtered.
We moved slowly and cautiously across dry rice paddies and cane fields. Up ahead we saw shells exploding on and around the ridge as our artillery swished overhead. We heard the familiar popping of rifles, rattle of machine guns, and banging of grenades. Enemy shells also exploded on the ridge. We all knew that this was probably the last big fight before the Japanese were wiped out and the campaign ended. While I plodded along through the darkness, my heart pounding, my throat dry and almost too tight to swallow, nearpanic seized me. Having made it that far in the war, I knew my luck would run out. I began to sweat and pray that when I got hit it wouldn't result in death or maiming. I wanted to turn and run away.
We came closer to the ridge silhouetted against the skyline. Its crest looked so much like Bloody Nose that my knees nearly buckled. I felt as though I were on Peleliu and had it all to go through over again.
The riflemen moved up onto the ridge. We mortarmen were positioned to watch out for Japanese infiltrating from the left rear. We didn't set up our weapons: the fighting was so close-in with the enemy on the reverse slope and in the ridge that we couldn't fire high explosives.
Our 105mm artillery was firing over Kunishi Ridge while we moved into position in the dark. To our dismay, a shell exploded short in our company's line. The company CP alerted the artillery observers that we had received short rounds. Another 105 went off with a terrible flash and explosion.
“Corpsman!” someone yelled.
“Goddamit, we're getting casualties from short rounds!” an officer yelled into his walkie-talkie.
“What's the word on those short rounds?” the company executive officer asked.
“Says they'll check it out.”
Our artillery was firing across the ridge into and around the town of Kunishi to prevent the enemy from moving more troops onto the ridge. But each time they shot, it seemed that one gun fired its shells in a traversing pattern right along the ridge in Company K's lines. It was enough to drive anyone into a state of desperation.
The Japanese were throwing grenades all along the line, and there was some rifle and machine-gun fire. On the right we began to hear American grenades exploding well within our lines.
“Hey, you guys; Nips musta gotten hold of a box of our grenades. Listen to that, wouldja?”
“Yeah, them bastards'll use anything they can get their hands on.”
During the next flurry of grenades, we heard no more U.S. models explode within our area. Then the word came along in the dark to be sure all the new replacements knew exactly how to use grenades properly. One of our new men had been discovered removing each grenade canister from a box of grenades, pulling the sealing tape from the canister, and then throwing the unopened canister at the enemy. The Japanese opened each canister, took out the grenade, pulled the pin, and threw the deadly “pineapple” back at us. The veterans around me were amazed to find out what had happened. The incident, however, was just one of many examples of the poor state of combat readiness of the latest group of new replacements.
With daylight I got a good look at our surroundings. Only then could I appreciate fully what a desperate, bitter battle the fight for Kunishi Ridge had been—and was continuing to be. The ridge was coral rock, painfully similar to Peleliu's ridges. But Kunishi was not so high nor were the coral formations so jagged and angular as those on Peleliu. Our immediate area was littered with the usual debris of battle including about thirty poncho-covered dead Marines on stretchers.
Some of our riflemen moved eastward along the ridge, while others moved up the slopes. We still didn't set up our mortars: it was strictly a riflemen's fight. We mortarmen stood by to act as stretcher bearers or riflemen.
Snipers were all over the ridge and almost impossible to locate. Men began getting shot one right after another, and the stretcher teams kept on the run. We brought the casualties down to the base of the ridge, to a point where tanks could back in out of the view of snipers on the ridge crest. We tied the wounded onto the stretchers and then tied the stretchers onto the rear deck of the tanks. Walking wounded went inside. Then the tanks took off in a cloud of dust along a coral road to the aid station. As many men as possible fired along the ridge to pin down the snipers, so they couldn't shoot the wounded on the tanks.
Shortly before the company reached the east end of the ridge, we watched a stretcher team make its way up to bring down a casualty. Suddenly four or five mortar shells exploded in quick succession near the team, wounding slightly three of the four bearers. They helped each other back down the ridge, and another stretcher team, of which I was a member, started up to get the casualty. To avoid the enemy mortar observer, we moved up by a slightly different route. We got up the ridge and found the casualty lying above a sheer coral ledge about five feet high. The Marine, Leonard E. Vargo, told us he couldn't move much because he had been shot in both feet. Thus he couldn't lower himself down off the ledge. “You guys be careful. The Nip that shot me twice is still hiding right over there in those rocks.” He motioned toward a jumble of boulders not more than twenty yards away.
We reasoned that if the sniper had been able to shoot Vargo in both feet, immobilizing him, he was probably waiting to snipe at anyone who came to the rescue. That meant that anyone who climbed up to help Vargo down would get shot instantly. We stood against the coral rock with our heads about level with Vargo, but out of the line of fire of the sniper, and looked at each other. I found the silence embarrassing. Vargo lay patiently, confident of our aid.
“Somebody's got to get up there and hand him down,” I said. My three buddies nodded solemnly and made quiet comments in agreement. I thought to myself that if we fooled around much longer, the sniper might shoot and kill the already painfully wounded and helpless Marine. Then we heard the crash of another 105mm short round farther along the ridge—then another. I was seized with a grim fatalism—it was either be shot by the sniper or have all of us get blown to bits by our own artillery. Feeling ashamed for hesitating so long, I scrambled up beside Vargo.
“Watch out for that Nip,” he said again.
As I placed my hands under his shoulders, I glanced over and saw the entrance of the sniper's small cave. It was a black space about three feet in diameter. I expected to see a muzzle flash spurt forth. Strangely, I felt at peace with myself and, oddly, wasn't particularly afraid. But there was no sound or sight of the sniper.
My buddies had Vargo well in hand by then, so for a brief instant I stood up and looked south. I felt a sensation of wild exhilaration. Beyond the smoke of our artillery to the south lay the end of the island and the end of the agony.
“Come on, Sledgehammer. Let's move out!”
With another quick glance at the mouth of the small cave—puzzled over where the sniper was and why he hadn't fired at me—I scrambled back down the rock to the stretcher team. We carried Vargo down Kunishi Ridge without further incident.
After bringing down another casualty, I passed our company CP among some rocks at the foot of the ridge and overheard one of our officers talking confidentially to Hank Boyes. The officer said his nerves were almost shattered by the constant strain, and he didn't think he could carry on much longer. The veteran Boyes talked quietly, trying to calm the officer. The officer sat on his helmet, frantically running his hands through his hair. He was almost sobbing.
I felt compassion for the officer. I'd been in the same forlorn frame of mind more than once, when horror piled on horror seemed too much to bear. The officer also carried a heavy responsibility, which I didn't have.
As I walked past, the officer blurted out in desperation, “What's the matter with those guys up on the ridge? Why the hell don't they move out faster and get this thing over with?”
Compassion aside, my own emotional and physical state was far from good by then. Completely forgetting my lowly rank, I walked right into the CP and said to the officer, “I'll tell you what's the matter with those guys on the ridge. They're gettin’ shot right and left, and they can't move any faster!”
He looked up with a dazed expression. Boyes turned around, probably expecting to see the battalion or regimental commander. When he saw me instead, he looked surprised. Then he glared at me the way he did the time I had too much to say to Shadow back on Half Moon. Coming quickly to my senses and remembering that a private's advice to first lieutenants and gunny sergeants wasn't considered standard operating procedure in the Marine Corps, I backed away quietly and got out of there.
Toward afternoon, several of us were resting among some rocks near the crest of the ridge. We had been passing ammo and water up to some men just below the crest. A Japanese machine gun still covered the crest there, and no one dared raise his head. Bullets snapped over the crest and ricochets whined off into the air after striking rocks. The man next to me was a rifleman and a fine Peleliu veteran whom I knew well. He had become unusually quiet and moody during the past hour, but I just assumed he was as tired and as weary with fear and fatigue as I was. Suddenly he began babbling incoherently, grabbed his rifle, and shouted, “Those slant-eyed yellow bastards, they've killed enougha my buddies. I'm goin’ after 'em.” He jumped up and started for the crest of the ridge.
“Stop!” I yelled and grabbed at his trouser leg. He pulled away.
A sergeant next to him yelled, “Stop, you fool!” The sergeant also grabbed for the frantic man's legs, but his hands slipped. He managed to clutch the toe of one boondocker, however, and gave a jerk. That threw the man off balance, and he sprawled on his back, sobbing like a baby. The front of his trousers was darkened where he had urinated when he lost control of himself. The sergeant and I tried to calm him but also made sure he couldn't get back onto his feet. “Take it easy, Cobber. We'll get you outa here,” the NCO said.
We called a corpsman who took the sobbing, trembling man out of the meat grinder to an aid station.
“He's a damn good Marine, Sledgehammer. I'll lower the boom on anybody says he ain't. But he's just had all he can take. That's it. He's just had all he can take.”
The sergeant's voice trailed away sadly. We had just seen a brave man crack up completely and lose all control of himself, even to the point of losing his desire to live.
“If you hadn't grabbed his foot and jerked him down before he got to the crest, he'd be dead now, for sure,” I said.
“Yeah, the poor guy woulda gotten hit by that goddamn machine gun; no doubt about it,” the sergeant said.
By the end of the day, Company K reached the eastern end of Kunishi Ridge and established contact with army units that had gained the high ground on Yuza-Dake and Yaeju-Dake. Mail came up to us along with rations, water, and ammo. Among my letters was one from a Mobile acquaintance of many years. He had joined the Marine Corps and was a member of some rear-echelon unit of service troops stationed on northern Okinawa. He insisted that I write him immediately about the location of my unit. He wrote that when he found out where I was, he would visit me at once. I read his words to some of my buddies, and they got a good laugh out of it.
“Don't that guy know there's a war on? What the hell does he think the First Marine Division is doin’ down here anyway?”
Someone else suggested I insist not only that he come to see me at once, but that he stay and be my replacement if he wanted to be a true friend. I never answered the letter.
A small patrol from the 7th Marines came by, and we talked with an old buddy. He said his regiment had been in terrible fighting for the several days it had been on Kunishi Ridge. Then we sat silently, ruefully watching a group of Marines far over to the right get shelled by large-caliber Japanese artillery. Word came along the line about the death earlier in the day of the U.S. Tenth commander, General Buckner.*
Not long after we were relieved on Kunishi Ridge (in the afternoon of 18 June), I asked Gy. Sgt. Hank Boyes how many men we had lost fighting on Yuza-Dake and Kunishi. He told me Company K had lost forty-nine enlisted men and one officer, half of our number of the previous day. Almost all the newly arrived replacements were among the casualties. Now the company consisted of a mere remnant, twenty-one percent of its normal strength of two hundred and thirty-five men. We had been attached to ⅖ for only twenty-two hours and had been on Kunishi Ridge for less time than that.
*Dake means “hill” in Japanese.
*Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, USA, had come up to the front lines to watch the 8th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division, in its first combat action on Okinawa. He was observing from between two coral boulders when six Japanese 47mm artillery rounds struck the base of the rocks. Hit in the chest, he died shortly thereafter. Lt. Gen. Roy S. Geiger, USMC, III Amphibious Corps commander, took command of the Tenth Army and carried through to the end of the fighting a few days later. To this date in 1981, Geiger remains the only Marine officer to command a force of army size.