CHAPTER TWO
INFANTRY TRAINING
Most of the buildings at Camp Elliott were neat wooden barracks painted cream with dark roofs. The typical two-story barracks was shaped like an H, with the squad bays in the upright parts of the letter. The many-windowed squad bays held about twenty-five double-decker metal bunks. The room was big, roomy, and well lighted. The ensuing two months were the only period during my entire service in World War II that I lived in a barracks. The remaining time I slept under canvas or the open sky.
No one yelled at us or screamed orders to hurry up. The NCOs seemed relaxed to the point of being lethargic. We had the free run of the camp except for certain restricted areas. Taps and lights-out were at 2200. We were like birds out of a cage after the confinement and harassment of boot camp. With several boys who bunked near me, I sampled the draft beer at the slop chute (enlisted men's club), bought candy and ice cream at the PX (post exchange), and explored the area. Our newly found freedom was heady stuff.
We spent the first few days at Camp Elliott at lectures and demonstrations dealing with the various weapons in a Marine infantry regiment. We received an introduction to the 37mm antitank gun, 81mm mortar, 60mm mortar, .50 caliber machine gun, .30 caliber heavy and light machine guns, and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). We also ran through combat tactics for the rifle squad. Most of our conversation around the barracks concerned the various weapons and whether or not it would be “good duty” to be on a 37mm gun crew, light machine gun or 81mm mortar. There was always one man, frequently—in fact, usually—a New Englander who knew it all and claimed to have the latest hot dope on everything.
“I talked to a guy over at the PX who had been through 81mm mortar school, and he said them damn mortars are so heavy he wished to hell he had gotten into 37mm guns so he could ride in a jeep while it pulled the gun.”
“I talked to a guy over at Camp Pendleton, and he said a mortar shell blew up over there just as it was fired and killed the instructor and all the crew. I'm getting into light machine guns; they say that's a good deal.”
“Like hell. My uncle was in France in World War I, and he said the average life of a machine gunner was about two minutes. I'm gonna be a rifleman, so I won't have to tote all that weight around.”
So it went. None of us had the slightest idea what he was talking about.
One day we fell in and were told to separate into groups according to which weapon we wanted to train with. If our first choice was filled, we made a second selection. The mere fact that we had a choice amazed me. Apparently the idea was that a man would be more effective on a weapon he had picked rather than one to which he had been assigned. I chose 60mm mortars.
The first morning, those in 60mm mortars marched behind a warehouse where several light tanks were parked. Our mortar instructor, a sergeant, told us to sit down and listen to what he had to say. He was a clean-cut, handsome blond man wearing neat khakis faded to just that right shade that indicated a “salty” uniform. His bearing oozed calm self-confidence. There was no arrogance or bluster about him, yet he was obviously a man who knew himself and his job and would put up with no nonsense from anybody. He had an intangible air of subdued, quiet detachment, a quality possessed by so many of the combat veterans of the Pacific campaigns whom I met at that time. Sometimes his mind seemed a million miles away, as though lost in some sort of melancholy reverie. It was a genuine attribute, unrehearsed and sponta-neous. In short, it couldn't be imitated consciously. I noted this carefully in my early days in the Marine Corps but never understood it until I observed the same thing in my buddies after Peleliu.
One man raised his hand, and the sergeant said, “OK, what's your question?”
The man began with, “Sir.” The sergeant laughed and said, “Address me as sergeant, not sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look, you guys are U.S. Marines now. You are not in boot camp anymore. Just relax, work hard, and do your job right, and you won't have any trouble. You'll have a better chance of getting through the war.” He won our respect and admiration instantly.
“My job is to train you people to be 60mm mortarmen. The 60mm mortar is an effective and important infantry weapon. You can break up enemy attacks on your company's front with this weapon, and you can soften enemy defenses with it. You will be firing over the heads of your own buddies at the enemy a short distance away, so you've got to know exactly what you're doing. Otherwise there'll be short rounds and you'll kill and wound your own men. I was a 60mm mortar-man on Guadalcanal and saw how effective this weapon was against the Japs there. Any questions?”
On the chilly January morning of our first lesson in mortars, we sat on the deck under a bright sky and listened attentively to our instructor.
“The 60mm mortar is a smoothbore, muzzle-loaded, high-angle-fire weapon. The assembled gun weighs approximately forty-five pounds and consists of the tube—or barrel—bipod, and base plate. Two or sometimes three 60mm mortars are in each rifle company. Mortars have a high angle of fire and are particularly effective against enemy troops taking cover in defilades or behind ridges where they are protected from our artillery. The Japs have mortars and know how to use 'em, too. They will be particularly anxious to knock out our mortars and machine guns because of the damage these weapons can inflict on their troops.”
The sergeant then went over the nomenclature of the gun.He demonstrated the movements of gun drill, during which the bipod was unstrapped and unfolded from carrying position, the base plate set firmly on the deck, the bipod leg spikes pressed into the deck, and the sight snapped into place on the gun. We were divided into five-man squads and practiced these evolutions until each man could perform them smoothly. During subsequent lessons he instructed us in the intricacies of the sight with its cross-level and longitudinal-level bubbles and on how to lay the gun and sight it on an aiming stake lined up with a target. We spent hours learning how to take a compass reading on a target area, then place a stake in front of the gun to correspond to that reading.
Each squad competed fiercely to be the fastest and most precise in gun drill. When my turn came to act as number one gunner, I would race to the position, unsling the mortar from my right shoulder, set it up, sight in on the base stake, remove my hands from it and yell, “Ready.” The sergeant would check his stopwatch and give the time. Many shouts of encouragement came from a gunner's squad urging each man on. Each of us rotated as number one gunner, as number two gunner (who dropped the shells into the tube at number one's command), and as ammo carriers.
We were drilled thoroughly but were quite nervous about handling live ammunition for the first time. We fired at empty oil drums set on a dry hillside. There were no mishaps. When I saw the first shell burst with a dull bang about two hundred yards out on the range, I suddenly realized what a deadly weapon we were dealing with. A cloud of black smoke appeared at the point of impact. Flying steel fragments kicked up little puffs of dust all around an area about nine by eighteen yards. When three shells were fired from one weapon, the bursts covered an area about thirty-five by thirty-five yards with flying fragments.
“Boy, I'd pity any Jap that had all that shrapnel flying around him,” murmured one of my more thoughtful buddies.
“Yeah, it'll tear their asses up all right. But don't forget they're gonna be throwing stuff at you just as fast as they can,” said the mortar sergeant.
This, I realized, was the difference between war and hunting. When I survived the former, I gave up the latter.
We also received training in hand-to-hand combat. This consisted mostly of judo and knife fighting. To impress us with the effectiveness of his subject, the judo instructor methodically slammed each of us to the ground as we tried to rush him.
“What good is this kind of fighting gonna do us if the Japs can pick us off with machine guns and artillery at five hundred yards?” someone asked.
“When dark comes in the Pacific,” the instructor replied, “the Japs always send men into our positions to try to infiltrate the lines or just to see how many American throats they can slit. They are tough and they like close-in fighting. You can handle them, but you've got to know how.” Needless to say, we paid close attention from then on.
“Don't hesitate to fight the Japs dirty. Most Americans, from the time they are kids, are taught not to hit below the belt. It's not sportsmanlike. Well, nobody has taught the Japs that, and war ain't sport. Kick him in the balls before he kicks you in yours,” growled our instructor.
We were introduced to the Marine's foxhole companion, the Ka-Bar knife. This deadly piece of cutlery was manufactured by the company bearing its name. The knife was a foot long with a seven-inch-long by one-and-a-half-inch-wide blade. The five-inch handle was made of leather washers packed together and had “USMC” stamped on the blade side of the upper hand guard. Light for its size, the knife was beautifully balanced.
“Everybody has heard a lot about all those kinds of fancy fighting knives that are, or should be, carried by infantry troops: throwing knives, stilettos, daggers, and all that stuff. Most of it is nothing but bull. Sure, you'll probably open more cans of C rations than Japs with this knife, but if a Jap ever jumps in your hole, you're better off with a Ka-Bar than any other knife. It's the very best and it's rugged, too. If you guys were gonna fight Germans, I'd guess you'd never need a fighting knife, but with the Japs it's different. I guarantee that you or the man in the next foxhole will use a Ka-Bar on a Jap infiltrator before the war is over.” He was right.*
All of our instructors at Camp Elliott did a professional job. They presented us with the material and made it clear that our chances of surviving the war depended to a great extent on how well we learned. As teachers they had no problem with student motivation.
But I don't recall that anyone really comprehended what was happening outside our own training routine. Maybe it was the naive optimism of youth, but the awesome reality that we were training to be cannon fodder in a global war that had already snuffed out millions of lives never seemed to occur to us. The fact that our lives might end violently or that we might be crippled while we were still boys didn't seem to register. The only thing that we seemed to be truly concerned about was that we might be too afraid to do our jobs under fire. An apprehension nagged at each of us that he might appear to be “yellow” if he were afraid.
One afternoon two veterans of the Bougainville campaign dropped into my barracks to chat with some of us. They had been members of the Marine raider battalion that had fought so well along with the 3d Marine Division on Bougainville. They were the first veterans we had met other than our instructors. We swamped them with questions.
“Were you scared?” asked one of my buddies.
“Scared! Are you kiddin’? I was so goddamn scared the first time I heard slugs coming at me I could hardly hold on to my rifle,” came the reply.
The other veteran said, “Listen, mate, everybody gets scared, and anybody says he don't is a damn liar.” We felt better.
The mortar school continued during my entire stay at Camp Elliott. Swimming tests were the last phase of special training we received before embarking for the Pacific. Mercifully, in January 1944 we couldn't foresee the events of autumn. We trained with enthusiasm and the faith that the battles we were destined to fight would be necessary to win the war.
Earlier, on 20-23 November 1943, the 2d Marine Division carried out its memorable assault on the coral atoll of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. Many military historians and others consider the battle for Tarawa as the first modern head-on amphibious assault.
A coral reef extended out about five hundred yards and surrounded the atoll. Tarawa was subject to unpredictable dodging tides that sometimes lowered water levels and caused Higgins boats (LCVP: Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel) to strand on the reef
Plans called for the use of amphibian tractors (LVTs: Landing Vehicles, Tracked; now called assault amphibians) to carry the troops across the reef But only enough amtracs existed to take in the first three waves. After the first three assault waves got ashore in amtracs, the supporting waves had to wade across the reef through murderous Japanese fire, because their Higgins boats hung up at the reef's edge.
The 2d Division suffered terrible losses—3,381 dead and wounded. Its Marines killed all but seventeen of the 4,836 Japanese defenders of the tiny atoll.
There was loud and severe criticism of the Marine Corps by the American public and some military leaders because of the number of casualties. Tarawa became a household word in the United States. It took its rightful place with Valley Forge, the Alamo, Belleau Wood, and Guadalcanal as a symbol of American courage and sacrifice.
The young Marines at Camp Elliott didn't have the remotest idea that in about nine months they would participate as part of the 1st Marine Division in the assault on Peleliu. That battle would prove to be so vicious and costly that the division's losses would just about double those of the 2d Marine Division at Tarawa. To add tragedy to its horror, hindsight would show that the seizure of Peleliu was of questionable necessity. As more than one Marine historian has said, it's unfortunate to the memory of the men who fought and died onPeleliu that it remains one of the lesser known and poorly understood battles of World War II.
OVERSEAS AT LAST
Early on the morning of 28 February 1944, the men of the 46th Replacement Battalion got off trucks at dockside in San Diego Harbor and lined up to board a troopship that would take us to the Pacific. The President Polk had been a luxury liner of the President Line during peacetime. Painted battleship gray, the ship now looked gloomy and ominous with its antiaircraft guns and life rafts. I had the uneasy feeling that this was going to be a one-way trip for some of us.
Loaded down with full transport pack, bed roll (mattress with canvas cover), M1 carbine, and helmet, I struggled up a steep gangplank. Once on deck we went into our troop compartment one deck below. A blast of hot, foul air hit me as I entered the hatch and started down the ladder. About halfway down, the man in front of me slipped and clattered to the bottom. We were all concerned about his fall and helped him up and into his gear again. Later such an incident would elicit almost nothing but a casual glance and a quick helping hand.
We stood crowded in the compartment and waited for what seemed like hours for an officer to check the muster roll and assign each of us to a sack or rack (bunk). Each sack consisted of canvas laced onto a pipe frame hinged to metal uprights, head and foot, extending from deck to the overhead. Chains held each rack onto the ones above and below.
When I crawled onto mine, I realized the rack above was only about two feet away. With mattress unrolled and gear laid out, a man barely had room to stretch out. I had to climb up about four racks to get to mine, which was almost at the highest level.
Dim electric bulbs overhead gave us barely enough light to see. As soon as I could, I went topside searching for relief from the foul, crowded compartment. The deck was jammed, too, but the air was fresh.
Many of us were too excited to sleep, so we explored the ship for hours, talked to the crewmen, or watched the completion of loading. Finally, around midnight, I went below and climbed into my rack. Several hours later I awoke to the vibration of the ship's engine. I pulled on my boondockers and dungaree pants and jacket and raced topside, filled with apprehension and excitement. It was about 0500. The deck was crowded with other Marines subdued by the realization that each turn of the ship's screws would take us farther from home and closer to the unknown.
Harsh questions raced through my mind. Would I ever see my family again? Would I do my duty or be a coward? Could I kill? Fantasy captivated me in the brief period. Maybe I'd be put into a rear-echelon outfit and never see a Japanese. Maybe I'd be an infantryman and disgrace my outfit by running away from the enemy. Or, maybe I'd kill dozens of Japanese and win a Navy Cross or Silver Star and be a national hero.
The tension finally broke as we watched the sailors rushing about casting off hawsers and lines, preparing the ship for the open sea.
The President Polk moved on a zigzag course toward a destination unknown to those of us sweltering in her bowels. Our daily routine was dull, even for those like myself who rather enjoyed being aboard a ship. We rolled out of our racks each morning about sunrise. Brushing my teeth and shaving with nonlathering shaving cream was my morning toilet. Each day an officer or NCO led us through an exercise period of calisthenics. And we could always count on a rifle inspection. Other than that, we had practically no duties.
Every few days we had abandon-ship drills, which helped offset the boredom. And the ship's crew conducted gun drills frequently. The first time they held target practice with live ammunition was exciting to watch. Yellow balloons were released from the bridge. As they were caught by the wind, the gunners opened fire upon order from the fire control officer. The rapid-fire 20mm and 40mm antiaircraft guns seemed to do an effective job. But to some of us Marines, the 3-inch and 5-inch cannons didn't accomplish much other than hurt our ears. Considering the number of balloons that escaped, we felt the gun crews should have practiced more. This was probably because none of us had ever had any experience with antiaircraft guns and didn't realize what a difficult type of gunnery was involved.
Beyond some letter writing and a lot of conversation— so-called bull sessions—we spent much of our time waiting in chow lines strung along gangways and passages leading to the ship's galley. Chow was an unforgettable experience. After the inevitable wait in line, I entered the hatch leading to the galley and was met with a blast of hot air laden with a new set of odors differing only slightly from the typical troop compartment aroma. To the same basic ingredients (paint, grease, tobacco, and sweat) were added the smells of rancid cooking and something of a bakery. It was enough to turn a civilian's stomach inside out, but we rapidly and necessarily adjusted.
We moved along the cafeteria-style line and indicated to sweating navy messmen what foods we wanted served onto shining compartmentalized steel trays. The messmen wore Skivvy shirts and were tattooed profusely on their arms. They all mopped the sweat from their faces constantly. Amid the roar of ventilators, we ate standing at long folding tables. Everything was hot to the touch but quite clean. A sailor told me that the tables had been used as operating tables for Marine casualties that the ship took on during one of the earlier Pacific campaigns. That gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I went to chow on the President Polk.
The heat was intense—at least 100 degrees—but I gulped down a cup of hot “joe” (black coffee), the stuff that replaced bread as the staff of life for Marines and sailors. I grimaced as the dehydrated potatoes battered my taste buds with an unsavory aftertaste characteristic of all World War II-vintage dehydrated foods. The bread was a shock—heavy, and with a flavor that was a combination of bitterness, sweetness, and uncooked flour. No wonder hot joe had replaced it as the staff of life!
After chow in the steaming galley, we went topside to cool off. Everyone was soaked with sweat. It would have been a relief to eat on deck, but we were forbidden to take chow out of the galley.
One day, as we moved along some nameless companion-way in a chow line, I passed a porthole that gave me a view into the officers’ mess. There I saw Navy and Marine officers clad neatly in starched khakis sitting at tables in a well-ventilated room. White-coated waiters served them pie and ice cream. As we inched along the hot companionway to our steaming joe and dehydrated fare, I wondered if my haste to leave the V-12 college life hadn't been a mistake. After all, it would have been nice to have been declared a gentleman by Congress and to have lived like a human being aboard ship. To my immense satisfaction, however, I discovered later that such niceties and privileges of rank were few on the front lines.
During the morning of 17 March we looked out across the bow and saw a line of white breakers on the horizon. The Great Barrier Reef extends for thousands of miles, and we were to pass through it to New Caledonia. As we neared the reef, we saw several hulks of wooden ships stranded high and dry, apparently blown there years ago by some storm.
As we closed on the harbor of Noumea, we saw a small motor launch head our way. The Polk signaled with flags and blinker lights to this pilot boat, which soon pulled alongside. The pilot climbed a ladder and boarded the ship. All sorts of nautical protocol and mutual greetings between him and the ship's officers ensued as he went to the bridge to guide us in. This man was a middle-aged, pleasant-looking civilian dressed in a neat white Panama suit, straw hat, and black tie. Surrounded by sailors in blue denim and ship's officers in khaki, he looked like a fictional character out of some long-forgotten era.
The blue water of the Pacific turned to green as we passed into the channel leading into the harbor of Noumea. There was a pretty white lighthouse near the harbor. White houses with tile roofs nestled around it and up the base of slopes of high mountains. The scene reminded me of a photo of some picturesque little Mediterranean seaport.
The President Polk moved slowly through the harbor as the speaker system ordered a special sea detail to stand by. We tied up to a dock with long warehouses where United States military personnel were moving crates and equipment. Most of the shipping I saw was U.S. Navy, but there also were some American and foreign merchant freighters along with a few quaint-looking civilian fishing boats.
The first Pacific native I saw wasn't dressed in a hula skirt or waving a spear but nonchalantly driving a freight-moving tractor on the dock. He was a short muscular man—black as ink—clad only in a loin cloth with a bone in his nose and a bushy head of kinky hair like a Fuzzy Wuzzy out of a Kipling story. The incredible thing about this hair was its color, beautiful amber. A sailor explained that the natives were fond of bleaching their hair with blueing they got from Americans in exchange for seashells. Bone in the nose notwithstanding, the man was an admirable tractor driver.
NEW CALEDONIA
After weeks at sea, cramped into a troopship, we were relieved to move onto land again. We piled into Marine Corps trucks and drove through the main section of Noumea. I was delighted to see the old French architecture, which reminded me of the older sections of Mobile and New Orleans.
The trucks sped along a winding road with mountains on each side. We saw small farms and a large nickel mine in the valley. Some of the land was cleared, but thick jungle covered much of the low areas. Although the weather was pleasant and cool, the palms and other growth attested to the tropical climate. After several miles we turned into Camp Saint Louis, where we would undergo further training before being sent “up north” to the combat zone as replacements.
Camp Saint Louis was a tent camp comprised of rows of tents and dirt streets. We were assigned to tents, stowed our gear, and fell in for chow. The galley rested on a hill just past the camp's brig. In full view were two wire cages about the size of phone booths. We were told that those who caused trouble were locked in there, and a high-pressure fire hose was turned on them periodically. The strictness of discipline at Camp Saint Louis caused me to assume the explanation of the cages was true. In any event, I resolved to stay out of trouble.
Our training consisted of lectures and field exercises. Combat veteran officers and NCOs lectured on Japanese weapons, tactics, and combat methods. Most of the training was thorough and emphasized individual attention. We worked in groups of ten or twelve.
I usually was placed in a squad instructed by a big redheaded corporal who had been in a Marine raider battalion during the fighting in the Solomon Islands. Big Red was good-natured but tough as nails. He worked us hard. One day he took us to a small rifle range and taught us how to fire a Japanese pistol, rifle, and heavy and light machine guns. After firing a few rounds from each, Red put about five of us into a pit about five feet deep with a one-foot embankment in front and the steep slope of a ridge behind as a backstop.
“One important thing you must learn fast to survive is exactly what enemy fire sounds like coming at you and what kind of weapon it is. Now when I blow this whistle, get down and stay down until you hear the whistle again. If you get up before the signal, you'll get your head blowed off, and the folks back home will get your insurance.”
Red blew the whistle and we got down. He announced each type of Japanese weapon and fired several rounds from it over our hole into the bank. Then he and his assistants fired them all together for about fifteen seconds. It seemed a lot longer. The bullets popped and snapped as they went over. Several machine-gun tracers didn't embed in the bank but bounced off and rolled—white-hot, sizzling, and sputtering—into the hole. We cringed and shifted about, but no one got burned.
This was one of the most valuable training exercises we underwent. There were instances later on Peleliu and Okinawa which it prepared me to come through unscathed.
A salty sergeant conducted bayonet training. He had been written about in a national magazine because he was so outstanding. On the cinder-covered street of an old raider camp, I witnessed some amazing feats by him. He instructed us in how to defend ourselves barehanded against an opponent's bayonet thrust.
“Here's how it's done,” he said.
He picked me out of the squad and told me to charge him and thrust the point of my bayonet at his chest when I thought I could stick him. I got a mental image of myself behind bars at Mare Island Naval Prison for bayoneting an instructor, so I veered off just before making my thrust.
“What the hell's the matter with you? Don't you know how to use a bayonet?”
“But, Sarge, if I stick you, they'll put me in Mare Island.”
“There's less chance of you bayoneting me than of me whipping your ass for not following my orders.”
“OK,” I thought to myself, “if that's the way you feel about it, we have witnesses.”
So I headed for him on the double and thrust at his chest. He sidestepped neatly, grabbed my rifle behind the front sight, and jerked it in the direction I was running. I held on to the rifle and tumbled onto the cinders. The squad roared with laughter. Someone yelled, “Did you bayonet him, Sledgehammer?” I got up looking sheepish.
“Knock it off, wise guy,” said the instructor. “You step up here, and let's see what you can do, big mouth.”
My buddy lifted his rifle confidently, charged, and ended up on the cinders, too. The instructor made each man charge him in turn. He threw them all.
He then took up a Japanese Arisaka rifle with fixed bayonet and showed us how the Japanese soldiers used the hooked hand guard to lock on to the U.S. blade. Then, with a slight twist of his wrist, he could wrench the M1 rifle out of the opponent's hands and disarm him. He coached us carefully to hold the M1 on its side with the left side of the blade toward the deck instead of the cutting edge, as we had been taught in the States. This way, as we parried a Japanese's blade, he couldn't lock ours.
We went on long hikes and forced marches through the jungles, swamps, and over endless steep hills. We made countless practice landings from Higgins boats on small islets off the coast. Each morning after chow we marched out of camp equipped with rifles, cartridge belts, two canteens of water, combat pack, helmet, and K rations. Our usual pace was a rapid route step for fifty minutes with a ten-minute rest. But the officers and NCOs always hurried us and frequently deleted the ten-minute rest.
When trucks drove along the road, we moved onto the sides, as columns of infantry have done since early times. The trucks frequently carried army troops, and we barked and yapped like dogs and kidded them about being dogfaces. During one of these encounters, a soldier hanging out of a truck just ahead of me shouted, “Hey, soldier. You look tired and hot, soldier. Why don't you make the army issue you a truck like me?”
I grinned and yelled, “Go to hell.”
His buddy grabbed him by the shoulder and yelled, “Stop calling that guy soldier. He's a Marine. Can't you see his emblem? He's not in the army. Don't insult him.”
“Thanks,” I yelled. That was my first encounter with men who had no esprit. We might grumble to each other about our officers or the chow or the Marine Corps in general, but it was rather like grumbling about one's own family—always with another member. If an outsider tried to get into the discussion, a fight resulted.
One night during exercises in defense against enemy infiltration, some of the boys located the bivouac of Big Red and the other instructors who were supposed to be the infiltrators and stole their boondockers. When the time came for their offense to commence, they threw a few concussion grenades around and yelled like Japanese but didn't slip out and capture any of us. When the officers realized what had happened, they reamed out the instructors for being too sure of themselves. The instructors had a big fire built in a ravine. We sat around it, drank coffee, ate K rations, and sang some songs. It didn't seem like such a bad war so far.
All of our training was in rifle tactics. We spent no time on heavy weapons (mortars and machine guns), because when we went “up north” our unit commander would assign us where needed. That might not be in our specialties. As a result of the field exercises and obstacle course work, we reached a high level of physical fitness and endurance.
During the last week of May we learned that the 46th Replacement Battalion would go north in a few days. We packed our gear and boarded the USS General Howze on 28 May 1944. This ship was quite different from the President Polk. It was much newer and apparently had been constructed as a troopship. It was freshly painted throughout and spic and span. With only about a dozen other men, I was assigned to a small, well-ventilated compartment on the main deck, a far cry from the cavernous, stinking hole I bunked in on the Polk. The General Howze had a library from which troop passengers could get books and magazines. We also received our first atabrine tablets. These small, bitter, bright yellow pills prevented malaria. We took one a day.
On 2 June the General Howze approached the Russell Islands and moved into an inlet bordered by large groves of coconut palms. The symmetrical groves and clear water were beautiful. From the ship we could see coral-covered roadways and groups of pyramidal tents among the coconut palms. This was Pavuvu, home of the 1st Marine Division.
We learned we would debark the next morning, so we spent our time hanging over the rail, talking to a few Marines on the pier. Their friendliness and unassuming manner struck me. Although clad neatly in khakis or dungarees, they appeared hollow-eyed and tired. They made no attempt to impress us green replacements, yet they were members of an elite division known to nearly everybody back home because of its conquest of Guadalcanal and more recent campaign at Cape Gloucester on New Britain. They had left Gloucester about 1 May. Thus, they had been on Pavuvu about a month.
Many of us slept little during the night. We checked and rechecked our gear, making sure everything was squared away. The weather was hot, much more so than at New Caledonia. I went out on deck and slept in the open air. With a mandolin and an old violin, two of our Marines struck up some of the finest mountain music I'd ever heard. They played and sang folk songs and ballads most of the night. We thought it was mighty wonderful music.
WITH THE OLD BREED
About 0900 the morning of 3 June 1944, carrying the usual mountain of gear, I trudged down the gangplank of the General Howze. As we moved to waiting trucks, we passed a line of veterans waiting to go aboard for the voyage home. They carried only packs and personal gear, no weapons. Some said they were glad to see us, because we were their replacements. They looked tanned and tired but relieved to be headed home. For them the war was over. For us, it was just beginning.
In a large parking area paved with crushed coral, a lieutenant called out our names and counted us off into groups. To my group of a hundred or more he said, “Third Battalion, Fifth Marines.”
If I had had an option—and there was none, of course—as to which of the five Marine divisions I served with, it would have been the 1st Marine Division. Ultimately, the Marine Corps had six divisions that fought with distinction in the Pacific. But the 1st Marine Division was, in many ways, unique. It had participated in the opening American offensive against the Japanese at Guadalcanal and already had fought a second major battle at Cape Gloucester, north of the Solomon Islands. Now its troops were resting, preparing for a third campaign in the Palau Islands.
Of regiments, I would have chosen the 5th Marines. I knew about its impressive history as a part of the 1st Marine Division, but I also knew that its record went back to France in World War I. Other Marines I knew in other divisions were proud of their units and of being Marines, as well they should have been. But the 5th Marines and the 1st Marine Division carried not only the traditions of the Corps but had traditions and a heritage of their own, a link through time with the “Old Corps.”
The fact that I was assigned to the very regiment and division I would have chosen was a matter of pure chance. I felt as though I had rolled the dice and won.*
No Marine division fought in World War I. [The 5th and 6th Marine Regiments fought in France as part of the 2d Division (Regular) American Expeditionary Force (AEF), a mixed unit of Marine and Army brigades.] But the 1st Marine Division was the only Marine division to fight in Korea. Along with the 3d Marine Division, it also fought in Vietnam. It is, therefore, the sole Marine division to have fought in all of our major wars during the past sixty years.
Today the 5th Marines still forms a part of the 1st Marine Division. Stationed on the west coast, the division can deploy units for duty in the western Pacific.
The trucks drove along winding coral roads by the bay and through coconut groves. We stopped and unloaded our gear near a sign that said “3rd Bn., 5th Marines.” An NCO assigned me to Company K. Soon a lieutenant came along and took aside the fifteen or so men who had received crew-served weapons training (mortars and machine guns) in the States. He asked each of us which weapon he wanted to be assigned to in the company. I asked for 60mm mortars and tried to look too small to carry a seventy-pound flamethrower. He assigned me to mortars, and I moved my gear into a tent that housed the second squad of the 60mm mortar section.
For the next several weeks I spent most of my time during the day on work parties building up the camp. The top sergeant of Company K, 1st Sergeant Malone, would come down the company street shouting, “All new men outside for a work party, on the double.” Most of the time the company's veterans weren't included. Pavuvu was supposed to be a rest camp for them after the long, wet, debilitating jungle campaign on Cape Gloucester. When Malone needed a large work party he would call out, “I need every available man.” So we referred to him as “Available” Malone.
None of us, old hands or replacements, could fathom why the division command chose Pavuvu. Only after the war did I find out that the leaders were trying to avoid the kind of situation the 3d Marine Division endured when it went into camp on Guadalcanal after its campaign on Bougainville. Facilities on Guadalcanal, by then a large rear-area base, were reasonably good, but the high command ordered the 3d Division to furnish about a thousand men each day for working parties all over the island. Not only did the Bougainville veterans get little or no rest, but when replacements came, the division had difficulty carrying out its training schedule in preparation for the next campaign, Guam.
If Pavuvu seemed something less than a tropical paradise to us replacements fresh from the States and New Caledonia, it was a bitter shock to the Gloucester veterans.* When ships entered Macquitti Bay, as the General Howze had, Pavuvu looked picturesque. But once ashore, one found the extensive coconut groves choked with rotting coconuts. The apparently solid ground was soft and turned quickly to mud when subjected to foot or vehicular traffic.
Pavuvu was the classical embodiment of the Marine term “boondocks.” It was impossible to explain after the war what life on Pavuvu was like. Most of the griping about being “rock happy” and bored in the Pacific came from men stationed at the big rear-echelon bases like Hawaii or New Caledonia. Among their main complaints were that the ice cream wasn't good, the beer not cold enough, or the USO shows too infrequent. But on Pavuvu, simply living was difficult.
For example, most of the work parties I went on in June and July were pick-and-shovel details to improve drainage or pave walkways with crushed coral, just to get us out of the water. Regulations called for wooden decks in all tents, but I never saw one on Pavuvu.
Of all the work parties, the one we hated most was collecting rotten coconuts. We loaded them onto trucks to be dumped into a swamp. If we were lucky, the coconut sprout served as a handle. But more often, the thing fell apart, spilling stinking coconut milk over us.
We made sardonic, absurd jokes about the vital, essential, classified work we were doing for the war effort and about the profundity and wisdom of the orders we received. In short, we were becoming “Asiatic,” a Marine Corps term denoting a singular type of eccentric behavior characteristic of men who had served too long in the Far East. I had done a good deal of complaining about Pavuvu's chow and general conditions during my first week there; one of the veterans in our company, who later became a close friend, told me in a restrained but matter-of-fact way that, until I had been in combat, there was really nothing to complain about. Things could be a good deal worse, he said, and advised me to shut up and quit whining. He shamed me thoroughly. But for the first weeks on Pavuvu, the stench of rotting coconuts permeated the air. We could even taste it in the drinking water. I'm still repulsed even today by the smell of fresh coconut.
The most loathsome vermin on Pavuvu were the land crabs. Their blue-black bodies were about the size of the palm of a man's hand, and bristles and spines covered their legs. These ugly creatures hid by day and roamed at night. Before putting on his boondockers each morning, every man in the 1st Marine Division shook his shoes to roust the land crabs. Many mornings I had one in each shoe and sometimes two. Periodically we reached the point of rage over these filthy things and chased them out from under boxes, seabags, and cots. We killed them with sticks, bayonets, and entrenching tools. After the action was over, we had to shovel them up and bury them, or a nauseating stench developed rapidly in the hot, humid air.
Each battalion had its own galley, but chow on Pavuvu consisted mainly of heated C rations: dehydrated eggs, dehydrated potatoes, and that detestable canned meat called Spam. The synthetic lemonade, so-called battery acid, that remained after chow was poured on the concrete slab deck of the galley to clean and bleach it. It did a nice job. As if hot C rations didn't get tedious week in and week out, we experienced a period of about four days when we were served oatmeal morning, noon, and night. Scuttlebutt was that the ship carrying our supplies had been sunk. Whatever the cause, our only relief from monotonous chow was tidbits in packages from home. The bread made by our bakers was so heavy that when you held a slice by one side, the rest of the slice broke away of its own weight. The flour was so massively infested with weevils that each slice of bread had more of the little beetles than there are seeds in a slice of rye bread. We became so inured to this sort of thing, however, that we ate the bread anyway; the wits said, “It's a good deal. Them beetles give you more meat in your diet.”
We had no bathing facilities at first. Shaving each morning with a helmet full of water was simple enough, but a bath was another matter. Each afternoon when the inevitable tropical downpour commenced, we stripped and dashed into the company street, soap in hand. The trick was to lather, scrub, and rinse before the rain stopped. The weather was so capricious that the duration of a shower was impossible to estimate. Each downpour ended as abruptly as it had begun and never failed to leave at least one or more fully lathered, cursing Marines with no rinse water.
Morning sick call was another bizarre sight during the early days on Pavuvu. The Gloucester veterans were in poor physical condition after the wettest campaign in World War II, during which men endured soakings for weeks on end. When I first joined the company, I was appalled at their condition: most were thin, some emaciated, with jungle rot in their armpits and on their ankles and wrists. At sick call they paired off with a bottle of gentian violet and cotton swabs, stood naked in the grove, and painted each other's sores. So many of them needed attention that they had to treat each other under a doctor's supervision. Some had to cut their boondockers into sandals, because their feet were so infected with rot they could hardly walk. Needless to say, Pavuvu's hot, humid climate prolonged the healing process.
“I think the Marine Corps has forgotten where Pavuvu is,” one man said.
“I think God has forgotten where Pavuvu is,” came a reply.
“God couldn't forget because he made everything.”
“Then I bet he wishes he could forget he made Pavuvu.”
This exchange indicates the feeling of remoteness and desolation we felt on Pavuvu. On the big island bases, men had the feeling of activity around their units and contact through air and sea traffic with other bases and with the States. On Pavuvu we felt as though we were a million miles from not only home but from anything else that bespoke of civilization.
I believe we took in stride all of Pavuvu's discomforts and frustrations for two reasons. First, the division was an elite combat unit. Discipline was stern. Our esprit de corps ran high. Each man knew what to do and what was expected of him. All did their duty well, even while grumbling.
NCOs answered our complaining with, “Beat your gums. It's healthy.” Or, “Whatta ya griping for? You volunteered for the Marine Corps, didn't ya? You're just gettin’ what ya asked for.”
No matter how irritating or uncomfortable things were on Pavuvu, things could always be worse. After all, there were no Japanese, no bursting shells, no snapping and whining bullets. And we slept on cots. Second, makeup of the division was young: about 80 percent were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five; about half were under twenty-one when they came overseas. Well-disciplined young men can put up with a lot even though they don't like it; and we were a bunch of high-spirited boys proud of our unit.
But we had another motivating factor, as well: a passionate hatred for the Japanese burned through all Marines I knew. The fate of the Goettge patrol was the sort of thing that spawned such hatred.* One day as we piled stinking coconuts, a veteran Marine walked past and exchanged greetings with a couple of our “old men.” One of our group asked us if we knew who he was.
“No, I never saw him,” someone said.
“He's one of the three guys who escaped when the Goettge patrol got wiped out on Guadalcanal. He was lucky as hell.”
“Why did the Japs ambush that patrol?” I asked naively.
A veteran looked at me with unbelief and said slowly and emphatically, “Because they're the meanest sonsabitches that ever lived.”
The Goettge patrol incident plus such Japanese tactics as playing dead and then throwing a grenade—or playing wounded, calling for a corpsman, and then knifing the medic when he came—plus the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, caused Marines to hate the Japanese intensely and to be reluctant to take prisoners.
The attitudes held toward the Japanese by noncombatants or even sailors or airmen often did not reflect the deep personal resentment felt by Marine infantrymen. Official histories and memoirs of Marine infantrymen written after the war rarely reflect that hatred. But at the time of battle, Marines felt it deeply, bitterly, and as certainly as danger itself. To deny this hatred or make light of it would be as much a lie as to deny or make light of the esprit de corps or the intense patriotism felt by the Marines with whom I served in the Pacific.
My experiences on Peleliu and Okinawa made me believe that the Japanese held mutual feelings for us. They were a fanatical enemy; that is to say, they believed in their cause with an intensity little understood by many postwar Americans— and possibly many Japanese, as well.
This collective attitude, Marine and Japanese, resulted in savage, ferocious fighting with no holds barred. This was not the dispassionate killing seen on other fronts or in other wars. This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands. To comprehend what the troops endured then and there, one must take into full account this aspect of the nature of the Marines'war
Probably the biggest boost to our morale about this time on Pavuvu was the announcement that Bob Hope would come over from Banika and put on a show for us. Most of the men in the division crowded a big open area and cheered as a Piper Cub circled over us. The pilot switched off the engine briefly, while Jerry Colonna poked his head out of the plane and gave his famous yell, “Ye ow ow ow ow ow.” We went wild with applause.
Bob Hope, Colonna, Frances Langford, and Patti Thomas put on a show on a little stage by the pier. Bob asked Jerry how he liked the trip over from Banika, and Jerry answered that it was “tough sledding.” When asked why, he replied, “No snow.” We thought it was the funniest thing we had ever heard. Patti gave several boys from the audience dancing lessons amid much grinning, cheering, and applause. Bob told many jokes and really boosted our spirits. It was the finest entertainment I ever saw overseas.*
Bob Hope's show remained the main topic of conversation as we got down to training in earnest for the coming campaign. Pavuvu was so small that most of our field exercises were of company size rather than battalion or regimental. Even so, we frequently got in the way of other units involved in their training exercises. It was funny to see a company move forward in combat formation through the groves and become intermingled with the rigid ranks of another company standing weapons inspection, the officers shouting orders to straighten things out.
We held numerous landing exercises—several times a week, it seemed—on the beaches and inlets around the island away from camp. We usually practiced from amtracs. The newest model had a tailgate that dropped as soon as the tractor was on the beach, allowing us to run out and deploy.
“Get off the beach fast. Get off the damned beach as fast as you can and move inland. The Nips are going to plaster it with everything they've got, so your chances are better the sooner you move inland,” shouted our officers and NCOs. We heard this over and over day after day. During each landing exercise, we would scramble out of our tractors, move inland about twenty-five yards, and then await orders to deploy and push forward.
The first wave of tractors landed rifle squads. The second wave landed more riflemen, machine gunners, bazooka gunners, flamethrowers, and 60mm mortar squads. Our second wave typically trailed about twenty-five yards behind the first as the machines churned through the water toward the beach. As soon as the first wave unloaded, its amtracs backed off, turned around, and headed past us out to sea to pick up supporting waves of infantry from Higgins boats circling offshore. It all worked nicely on Pavuvu. But there were no Japanese there.
In addition to landing exercises and field problems before Peleliu, we received refresher instructions and practice firing all small arms assigned to the company: M1 rifle, BAR, carbine, .45 caliber pistol, and Thompson submachine gun. We also learned how to operate a flamethrower.
During instruction with the flamethrower, we used a palm stump for a target. When my turn came, I shouldered the heavy tanks, held the nozzle in both hands, pointed at the stump about twenty-five yards away, and pressed the trigger. With a whoosh, a stream of red flame squirted out, and the nozzle bucked. The napalm hit the stump with a loud splattering noise. I felt the heat on my face. A cloud of black smoke rushed upward. The thought of turning loose hellfire from a hose nozzle as easily as I'd water a lawn back home sobered me. To shoot the enemy with bullets or kill him with shrapnel was one of the grim necessities of war, but to fry him to death was too gruesome to contemplate. I was to learn soon, however, that the Japanese couldn't be routed from their island defenses without it.
About this time I began to feel a deeper appreciation for the influence of the old breed on us newer Marines. Gunnery Sergeant Haney* provided a vivid example of their impact.
I had seen Haney around the company area but first noticed him in the shower one day because of the way he bathed. About a dozen naked, soapy replacements, including myself, stared in wide-eyed amazement and shuddered as Haney held his genitals in his left hand while scrubbing them with a GI brush the way one buffs a shoe. When you consider that the GI brush had stiff, tough, split-fiber bristles embedded in a stout wooden handle and was designed to scrub heavy canvas 782 (web) gear, dungarees, and even floors, Haney's method of bathing becomes truly impressive.
I first saw him exert his authority one day on a pistol range where he was in charge of safety. A new second lieutenant, a replacement like myself, was firing from the position I was to assume. As he fired his last round, another new officer behind me called to him. The lieutenant turned to answer with his pistol in his hand. Haney was sitting next to me on a coconut-log bench and hadn't uttered a word except for the usual firing range commands. When the lieutenant turned the pistol's muzzle away from the target, Haney reacted like a cat leaping on its prey. He scooped up a large handful of coral gravel and flung it squarely into the lieutenant's face. He shook his fist at the bewildered officer and gave him the worst bawling out I ever heard. Everyone along the firing line froze, officers as well as enlisted men. The offending officer, with his gold bars shining brightly on his collar, cleared his weapon, holstered it, and took off rubbing his eyes and blushing visibly. Haney returned to his seat as though nothing had happened. Along the firing line, we thawed. Thereafter we were much more conscious of safety regulations.
Haney was about my size, at 135 pounds, with sandy crew-cut hair and a deep tan. He was lean, hard, and muscular. Although not broad-shouldered or well-proportioned, his torso reminded me of some anatomy sketch by Michelangelo: every muscle stood out in stark definition. He was slightly barrel-chested with muscles heaped up on the back of his shoulders so that he almost had a hump. Neither his arms nor his legs were large, but the muscles in them reminded me of steel bands. His face was small-featured with squinting eyes and looked as though it was covered with deeply tanned, wrinkled leather.
Haney was the only man I ever knew in the outfit who didn't seem to have a buddy. He wasn't a loner in the sense that he was sullen or unfriendly. He simply lived in a world all his own. I often felt that he didn't even see his surroundings; all he seemed to be aware of was his rifle, his bayonet, and his leggings. He was absolutely obsessed with wanting to bayonet the enemy.
We all cleaned our weapons daily, but Haney cleaned his M1 before muster, at noon chow, and after dismissal in the afternoon. It was a ritual. He would sit by himself, light a cigarette, fieldstrip his rifle, and meticulously clean every inch of it. Then he cleaned his bayonet. All the while he talked to himself quietly, grinned frequently, and puffed his cigarette down to a stump. When his rifle was cleaned he reassembled it, fixed his bayonet, and went through a few minutes of thrust, parry, and butt-stroke movements at thin air. Then Haney would light up another cigarette and sit quietly, talking to himself and grinning while awaiting orders. He carried out these proceedings as though totally unaware of the presence of the other 235 men of the company. He was like Robinson Crusoe on an island by himself.
To say that he was “Asiatic” would be to miss the point entirely. Haney transcended that condition. The company had many rugged individualists, characters, old salts, and men who were “Asiatic,” but Haney was in a category by himself. I felt that he was not a man born of woman, but that God had issued him to the Marine Corps.
Despite his personal idiosyncracies, Haney inspired us youngsters in Company K. He provided us with a direct link to the “Old Corps.” To us he was the old breed. We admired him—and we loved him.
Then there was Company K's commanding officer, Capt. “Ack Ack” Haldane.* Bowdoin College annually honors the memory of Captain Haldane by presenting the Haldane Cup to the graduating senior who has displayed outstanding qualities of leadership and character. The cup was a gift from officers who had served with Captain Haldane in the Pacific. Among them was the late senator from Illinois, Paul Douglas, himself a member of the 5th Marines on Peleliu and Okinawa.
I grinned at Haldane and said, “Not exactly, sir.” He recognized me as a replacement and asked how I liked the company. I told him I thought it was a fine outfit.
“You're a Southerner, aren't you?” he asked. I told him I was from Alabama. He wanted to know all about my family, home, and education. As we talked the gloom seemed to disappear, and I felt warm inside. Finally he told me it wouldn't rain forever, and we could get dry soon. He moved along the column talking to other men as he had to me. His sincere interest in each of us as a human being helped to dispel the feeling that we were just animals training to fight.
Acclaimed by superiors and subordinates alike for his leadership abilities, Captain Haldane was the finest and most popular officer I ever knew. All of the Marines in Company K shared my feelings. Called the “skipper,” he had a strong face full of character, a large, prominent jaw, and the kindest eyes I ever saw. No matter how often he shaved or how hard he tried, he always had a five o'clock shadow. He was so large that the combat pack on his back reminded me of the bulge of his wallet, while mine covered me from neck to waist.
Although he insisted on strict discipline, the captain was a quiet man who gave orders without shouting. He had a rare combination of intelligence, courage, self-confidence, and compassion that commanded our respect and admiration. We were thankful that Ack Ack was our skipper, felt more secure in it, and felt sorry for other companies not so fortunate. While some officers on Pavuvu thought it necessary to strut or order us around to impress us with their status, Haldane quietly told us what to do. We loved him for it and did the best job we knew how.
Our level of training rose in August and so did the intensity of “chicken” discipline. We suffered through an increasing number of weapons and equipment inspections, work parties, and petty cleanup details around the camp. The step-up in harassment, coupled with the constant discomforts and harsh living conditions of Pavuvu, drove us all into a state of intense exasperation and disgust with our existence before we embarked for Peleliu.
“I used to think the lieutenant was a pretty good joe, but damned if I ain't about decided he ain't nothin’ but a hoss's ass,” grumbled one Marine.
“You said that right, ole buddy,” came back another.
“Hell, he ain't the only one that's gone crazy over insisting that everything be just so, and then bawlin’ us out if it ain't. The gunny's mean as hell, and nothin’ suits him anymore,” responded yet another man.
“Don't let it get you down, boys. It's just part of the USMC plan for keeping the troops in fighting shape,” calmly remarked a philosophical old salt of prewar service.
“What the hell you talking about?” snapped an irritated listener.
“Well, it's this way,” answered the philosopher. “If they get us mad enough, they figure we'll take it out on the Nips when we hit this beach coming up. I saw it happen before Guadalcanal and Gloucester. They don't pull this kind of stuff on rear-echelon boys. They want us to be mean, mad, and malicious. That's straight dope, I'm telling you. I've seen it happen every time before we go on a campaign.”
“Sounds logical. You may be right. But what's malicious?” someone said.
“Forget it, you nitwit,” the philosopher growled.
“Right or not, I'm sure tired of Pavuvu,” I said.
“That's the plan, Sledgehammer. Get you fed up with Pavuvu, or wherever the hell you happen to be, and you'll be hot to go anywhere else even if the Nips are there waiting for you,” the philosopher said.
We fell silent, thinking about that and finally concluded he was right. Many of the more thoughtful men I knew shared his view.
I griped as loudly as anyone about our living conditions and discipline. In retrospect, however, I doubt seriously whether I could have coped with the psychological and physical shock and stress encountered on Peleliu and Okinawa had it been otherwise. The Japanese fought to win. It was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting, and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not.*
* The U.S. Marine Corps still uses Ka-Bar's fine fighting knife. The manufacturer's name now has become to Marines a noun (kabar) meaning their fighting knife.
* The history of the 5th Marines continued after World War II. The regiment fought in the Korean War and again in Vietnam. Thus it is the only Marine regiment to have fought in all of the nation's major wars in this century.
* After Guadalcanal, the 1st Marine Division went to Melbourne, Australia, for rest and refitting for the New Britain campaign. When Cape Gloucester ended, the men assumed they were headed back to Australia. Instead they were dumped on a deserted island in the Russell Islands group, sixty miles from Guadalcanal.
* During the first week of the Guadalcanal campaign, the Marines captured a Japanese soldier who claimed some of his starving comrades west of the Matanikau River would surrender if the Marines would “liberate” them. With twenty-five picked men (scouts, intelligence specialists, a surgeon, and a linguist) from the division's headquarters and the 5th Marines, Col. Frank Goettge—the division's intelligence officer—went on a mission more humanitarian than military. The Japanese ambushed the patrol as it debarked from landing craft in the darkness. Only three Marines escaped.
* I renewed my acquaintance with Bob Hope last spring when he played in a charity golf tournament in Birmingham, Alabama. Earlier I had sent him copies of the Marine Corps Gazette (November and December 1979 and January 1980) that had serialized portions of my Peleliu story. He was enthusiastic about the account and remembered well the young Marines of the 1st Marine Division on Pavuvu. Despite a clamoring public on a hectic day in Birmingham, this most gracious man took the time to reminisce with me about the old breed.
* Gunnery Sgt. Elmo M. Haney served with Company K, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines in France during World War I. Between the two world wars, he taught school in Arkansas for about four years, then rejoined the Marine Corps where he was assigned to his old unit. He fought on Guadalcanal and at Cape Gloucester with Company K. In the latter action he won a Silver Star for heroism when he “took care of some Japs by himself with a few hand grenades,” as one Marine described the scene.
Haney was more than fifty years old when the 1st Marine Division assaulted Peleliu. Although a gunnery sergeant by rank, he held no official position in Company K's chain of command. In the field he seemed to be everywhere at once, correcting mistakes and helping out. He withdrew himself from the front lines on the second day of Peleliu, admitting sadly that he could no longer take the heat and the battle.
* Capt. Andrew Allison Haldane, USMCR, was born 22 August 1917 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1941.
Captain Haldane served with the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and was commanding officer of Company K at Cape Gloucester, where he won the Silver Star. During a five-day battle, he and his Marines repulsed five Japanese bayonet charges within one hour in the predawn darkness. He led Company K through most of the fight for Peleliu. On 12 October 1944, three days before the Marines came off the lines, he died in action. The Marines of Company K, and the rest of the division who knew him, suffered no greater loss during the entire war.
Late one afternoon as we left the rifle range, a heavy rain set in. As we plodded along Pavuvu's muddy roads, slipping and sliding under the downpour, we began to feel that whoever was leading the column had taken a wrong turn and that we were lost. At dusk in the heavy rain, every road looked alike: a flooded trail cut deeply with ruts, bordered by towering palms, winding aimlessly through the gloom. As I struggled along feeling chilled and forlorn and trying to keep my balance in the mud, a big man came striding from the rear of the column. He walked with the ease of a pedestrian on a city sidewalk. As he pulled abreast of me, the man looked at me and said, “Lovely weather, isn't it, son?”
* In the postwar years, the Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism, in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifled barrel, the machine gun, and high-explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking mentally and physically.