CHAPTER SIX
“OK, you people, stand by to draw rations and ammo. The battalion is going to reinforce the 7th Marines in the ridges.”
We received the unwelcome but inevitable news with fatalistic resignation as we squared away our weapons and gear. Our information had the casualty figure of the 7th Marines rapidly approaching that of the 1st Marines. And our own regimental strength wasn't much better than that of the 7th. All of Peleliu except the central ridges was now in our hands. The enemy held out in the Umurbrogol Pocket, an area about 400 yards by 1,200 yards in the ruggedest, worst part of the ridges.*
The terrain was so unbelievably rugged, jumbled, and confusing, that I rarely knew where we were located. Only the officers had maps, so locations meant nothing in my mind. One ridge looked about like another, was about as rugged, and was defended as heavily as any other. We were usually told the name of this or that coral height or ridge when we attacked. To me it meant only that we were attacking the same objective where other Marine battalions had been shot up previously.
We were resigned to the dismal conclusion that our battalion wasn't going to leave the island until all the Japanese were killed, or we had all been hit. We merely existed from hour to hour, from day to day. Numbed by fear and fatigue, our minds thought only of personal survival. The only glimmer of hope was a million-dollar wound or for the battle to end soon. As it dragged on and on and casualties mounted, a sense of despair pervaded us. It seemed that the only escape was to be killed or wounded. The will for self-preservation weakened. Many men I knew became intensely fatalistic. Somehow, though, one never could quite visualize his own death. It was always the next man. But getting wounded did seem inevitable. In a rifle company it just seemed to be a matter of time. One couldn't hope to continue to escape the law of averages forever.
On 3 October our battalion made an attack on the Five Sisters, a rugged coral hill mass with five sheer-walled peaks. Before the attack the 11th Marines covered the area with artillery fire. We fired a heavy mortar barrage on the company front, and the machine guns laid down covering fire.
As we ceased firing briefly, we watched the riflemen of ⅗ move forward onto the slopes before Japanese fire stopped them. We fired the mortars rapidly to give our men cover as they pulled back. The same fruitless attack was repeated the next day with the same dismal results.* Each time we got orders to secure the guns after the riflemen stopped advancing, the mortar section stood by to go up as stretcher bearers. (We always left a couple of men on each gun in case mortar fire was needed.) We usually threw phosphorous and smoke grenades as a screen, and the riflemen covered us, but enemy snipers fired as rapidly as possible at stretcher bearers. The Japanese were merciless in this, as in everything else in combat.
Because of the rugged, rock-strewn terrain and intense heat on Peleliu, four men were needed to carry one casualty on a stretcher. Everyone in the company took his turn as a stretcher bearer nearly every day. All hands agreed it was backbreaking, perilous work.
My heart pounded from fear and fatigue each time we lifted a wounded man onto a stretcher, raised it, then stumbled and struggled across the rough ground and up and down steep inclines while enemy bullets snapped through the air and ricochets whined and pinged off the rocks. The snipers hit a stretcher bearer on more than one occasion. But luckily, we always managed to drag everybody behind rocks until help came. Frequently enemy mortars added their shells in an effort to stop us.
Each time I panted and struggled with a stretcher under fire, I marveled at the attitude of the casualty. When conscious, the wounded Marine seemed at ease and supremely confident we would get him out alive. With bullets and shells coming in thick and fast, I sometimes doubted any of us could make it. Even discounting the effects of shock and the morphine administered by the corpsmen, the attitude of the wounded Marine seemed serene. When we reached a place out of the line of fire, the man usually would encourage us to put him down so we could rest. If he wasn't wounded severely, we stopped and all had a smoke. We would cheer him up by asking him to think of us when he got on board the hospital ship.
Invariably the not-so-seriously hurt were in high spirits and relieved. They were on their way out of hell, and they expressed pity for those of us left behind. With the more seriously wounded and the dying, we carried the stretcher as fast as possible to an amtrac or ambulance jeep, which then rushed them to the battalion aid station. After getting them into a vehicle, we would throw ourselves down and pant for breath.
When acting as a stretcher bearer—struggling, running, crawling over terrain so rugged that sometimes the carriers on one end held the stretcher handles above their heads while those on the other end held their handles almost on the rocks to keep the stretcher level—I was terrified that the helpless casualty might fall off onto the hard, sharp coral. I never saw this happen, but we all dreaded it.
The apparent calmness of our wounded under fire stemmed in part from the confidence we shared in each other. None of us could bear the thought of leaving wounded behind. We never did, because the Japanese certainly would have tortured them to death.
During the period between attacks by our battalion on the Five Sisters, our front line was formed on fairly level ground. The mortars were dug in some yards behind the line. The entire company was out in the open, and we knew the Japanese were watching us at all times from their lairs in the Five Sisters. We came under sniper and mortar fire only when the Japanese were sure of inflicting maximum casualties. Their fire discipline was superb. When they shot, someone usually got hit.
When night came it was like another world. Then the enemy came out of their caves, infiltrating or creeping up on our lines to raid all night, every night. Raids by individual enemy soldiers or small groups began as soon as darkness fell. Typically, one or more raiders slipped up close to Marine positions by moving during dark periods between mortar flares or star shells. They wore tabi, and their ability to creep in silently over rough rocks strewn with pulverized vegetation was incredible. They knew the terrain perfectly. Suddenly they rushed in jabbering or babbling incoherent sounds, sometimes throwing a grenade, but always swinging a saber, bayonet, or knife.
Their skill and daring were amazing, matched only by the coolheaded, disciplined manner in which Marines met their attacks. Strict fire discipline on our part was required to avoid shooting friends if the enemy got into a position before he was shot. All we could do was listen in the dark to the desperate animalistic sounds and the thrashing around when a hand-to-hand fight occurred.
No one was allowed out of his position after dark. Each Marine maintained a keen watch while his buddy tried to sleep. Mutual trust was essential. Frequently our men were killed or wounded in these nightly fights, but we invariably killed the foe.
One night so many Japanese crept around in front of the company and slipped in among the rocks and ground litter between some of the forward positions that much of the following morning was occupied with trying to kill them all. This was difficult, because in any direction one fired one might hit a Marine. The excellent discipline and control exhibited by the Marines finally got all the Japanese without any Company K casualties.
The only “injury” that occurred was to my friend Jay's dungaree trousers. Jay walked past my foxhole with a deliberate, stiff-kneed gait and wearing a wry expression on his face.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Aw hell, I'll tell you later.” He grinned sheepishly.
“Go on, tell him, Jay,” another man near him yelled teasingly.
Several men laughed. Jay grinned and told them to shut up. He waddled on back to battalion like a tiny child who had soiled his pants, which was just what he had done. We all had severe cases of diarrhea by this time, and it had gotten the best of Jay. Considering what had happened, the incident really wasn't funny, but it was understandable.
At daylight Jay had slung his carbine over his shoulder and walked a short distance from his foxhole to relieve himself. As he stepped over a log, his foot came down squarely on the back of a Japanese lying in hiding. Jay reacted instantaneously and so did the enemy soldier. Jay brought his carbine to bear on the Japanese's chest as the latter sprang to his feet. Jay pulled the trigger. “Click.” The firing pin was broken, and the carbine didn't fire. As the enemy soldier pulled the pin from a hand grenade, Jay threw the carbine at him. It was more an act of desperation than anything else.
As Jay spun around and ran back toward us yelling, “shoot him,” the Japanese threw his grenade, striking my friend in the middle of the back. It fell to the deck and lay there, a dud. The Japanese then drew his bayonet. Waving it like a sword, he took off after Jay at a dead run.
Jay had spotted a BARman and fled in his direction, yelling for him to shoot the enemy. The BARman stood up but didn't fire. The Japanese came on. Jay was running and yelling as hard as he could. After agonizing moments, the BARman took deliberate aim at the enemy soldier's belt buckle and fired most of a twenty-round magazine into him. The soldier collapsed in a heap. The blast of automatic rifle fire had cut his body nearly in two.
Terrified and winded, Jay had had a close call. When he asked the BARman why in the hell he had waited so long to fire, that character grinned. I heard him reply something to the effect that he thought he'd just let the Japanese get a little closer to see if he could cut him into two pieces with his BAR.
Jay obviously didn't appreciate his close call being used as the subject of an experiment. As all the men laughed, Jay received permission to go back to battalion headquarters to draw a clean pair of trousers. The men kidded him a great deal about the episode, and he took it all with his usual good nature.
During the entire period among the Umurbrogol ridges, a nuisance Marine infantrymen had to contend with was the rear-echelon souvenir hunters. These characters came up to the rifle companies during lulls in the fighting and poked around for any Japanese equipment they could carry off They were easy to spot because of the striking difference between their appearance and that of the infantry.
During the latter phase of the campaign the typical infantryman wore a worried, haggard expression on his filthy, unshaven face. His bloodshot eyes were hollow and vacant from too much horror and too little sleep. His camouflaged helmet cover (if it hadn't been torn off against the rocks) was gray with coral dust and had a tear or two in it. His cotton dungaree jacket (originally green) was discolored with coral dust, filthy, greasy with rifle oil, and as stiff as canvas from being soaked alternately with rain and sweat and then drying. His elbows might be out, and his knees frequently were, from much “hitting the deck” on the coral rock. His boon-dockers were coated with gray coral dust, and his heels were worn off completely by the sharp coral.
The infantryman s calloused hands were nearly blackened by weeks of accumulation of rifle oil, mosquito repellant (an oily liquid called Skat), dirt, dust, and general filth. Overall he was stooped and bent by general fatigue and excessivephysical exertion. If approached closely enough for conversation, he smelled bad.
The front-line infantry bitterly resented the souvenir hunters. One major in the 7th Marines made it a practice of putting them into the line if they came into his area. His infantrymen saw to it that the “visitors” stayed put until released to return to their respective units in the rear areas.
During a lull in our attacks on the Five Sisters, I was on an ammo-carrying detail and talking with a rifleman friend after handing him some bandoliers. It was quiet, and we were sitting on the sides of his shallow foxhole as his buddy was bringing up K rations. (By quiet I mean we weren't being fired on. But there was always the sound of firing somewhere on the island.) Two neat, clean, fresh-looking souvenir hunters wearing green cloth fatigue caps instead of helmets and carrying no weapons walked past us headed in the direction of the Five Sisters, several hundred yards away. When they got a few paces in front of us, one of them stopped and turned around, just as I was on the verge of calling to them to be careful where they went.
The man called back to us asking, “Hey, you guys, where's the front line?”
“You just passed through it,” I answered serenely. The second souvenir hunter spun around. They looked at each other and then at us in astonishment. Then, grabbing the bills of their caps, they took off on the double back past us toward the rear. They kicked up dust and never looked back.
“Hell, Sledgehammer, you should'a let 'em go on so they'd get a good scare,” chided my friend. I told him we couldn't just let them walk up on a sniper. “Serve them rear-echelon bastards right. And they call them guys Marines,” he grumbled. (In fairness, I must add that some of the rear-area service troops volunteered and served as stretcher bearers.)
In our myopic view we respected and admired only those who got shot at, and to hell with everyone else. This was unfair to noncombatants who performed essential tasks, but we were so brutalized by war that we were incapable of making fair evaluations.
A LEADER DIES
By 5 October (D + 20) the 7th Marines had lost about as many men as the 1st Marines had lost earlier in the battle. The regiment was now finished as an assault force on the regimental level. The 5th Marines, the last of the 1st Marine Division's infantry regiments, began to relieve the 7th Marines that day. Some of the men of the battered regiment would be killed or wounded in subsequent actions in the draws and valleys among the ridges of Peleliu, but the 7th Marines were through as a fighting force for the campaign.
On 7 October ⅗ made an assault up a large draw called Horseshoe Valley, known commonly as “the Horseshoe.” There were numerous enemy heavy guns in caves and emplacements in the ridges bordering the Horseshoe to the west, north, and east. Our battalion was supposed to knock out as many of them as possible. We were supported by six army tanks, because the Marine 1st Tank Battalion had been relieved on 1 October to be sent back to Pavuvu. Somebody erroneously assumed there would be no further need for tanks on Peleliu.
My guess is that the 1st Tank Battalion was relieved not because the men were “badly depleted and debilitated”—the official reason given—but because the machines were. Machines wore out or needed overhauling and maintenance, but men were expected to keep going. Tanks, amtracs, trucks, aircraft, and ships were considered valuable and difficult to replace way out in the Pacific. They were maintained carefully and not exposed needlessly to wear or destruction. Men, infantrymen in particular, were simply expected to keep going beyond the limits of human endurance until they got killed or wounded or dropped from exhaustion.
Our attack on the Horseshoe was preceded by terrific artillery fire from our big guns. The shells swished and whined toward the ridges for two and a half hours. The mortars added their bit, too. The attack was surprisingly successful. The Horseshoe wasn't secured, but many Japanese were killed. We also knocked out many caves containing heavy guns, but only after several of the tanks took hits from them.
In the estimation of the Marines, the army tankers did a good job. Here the tanks operated with our riflemen attached. It was a case of mutual support. The tanks pulled up to the caves and fired into them point-blank with their 75mm cannon—wham bam. Their machine guns never seemed to stop. A tank unattended by riflemen was doomed to certain destruction from enemy suicide crews carrying mines. And the riflemen got a lot of protection from the tanks.
About the only instance I know of where tanks tried to operate without riflemen in the Pacific was a case of army tanks on Okinawa. Predictably, the Japanese knocked out most of those tanks. Marine tanks always operated with riflemen, like a dog with his fleas. But with tanks and riflemen, it was mutually beneficial.
After the attack of 7 October on the Horseshoe, ⅗ pulled back some distance from the ridges. Shortly thereafter we again went up toward the northern part of the island.
Between 8 and 11 October we emplaced our 60mm mortars between the West Road and the narrow beach. We were only a few yards from the water. Thus set up, we fired over the West Road, our front line beyond, and onto the ridges. We had an observer somewhere across the road who sent us orders by the sound-powered phone.
We kept up a brisk rate of fire because Japanese had infiltrated into positions on the ridge next to the road and were sniping at vehicles and troops with deadly effect. Our mortar fire helped pin them down and clean them out. We had good gun emplacements among some rocks and were screened by a narrow strip of thick foliage between us and the road and, therefore, from the enemy in the ridge beyond.
I was extremely confused as to where we had left our company. An NCO told me our mortars were detached temporarily from Company K and were supporting another unit hard-pressed by snipers. The enemy were firing from positions that were almost impossible to locate and they shot any and everybody they could—even casualties being evacuated by amtracs. More than one desperate amtrac driver, as he raced down the West Road toward the Regimental Aid Station, arrived only to find his helpless cargo slaughtered where they lay.
While we were in this position we were particularly vulnerable to infiltrators who might slip in along the beach as well as from the water to our rear. We kept watch in all directions at night; in this place, there were no friendly troops to our rear, just the water's edge about ten feet away and then the ocean-covered reef. The water was only about knee deep for quite a distance out. The Japanese would wade out, slip along the reef, and come in behind us.
One night while I was firing flare shells, James T. (Jim) Burke, a Marine we called the Fatalist, was manning Number One gun. Between firing missions, I could see him sitting on his helmet next to his gun, keeping watch to our left and rear.
“Hey, Sledgehammer, let me see your carbine a minute,” he whispered nonchalantly in his usual laconic manner. He had a .45 pistol which was of little use at much distance. I handed him my carbine. I didn't know what he saw, so I followed his gaze as he pointed my carbine toward the sea. In the pale light a shadowy figure was moving slowly and silently along the reef parallel to the shoreline in the shallow water. The man couldn't have been more than thirty yards away or we couldn't have seen him in the dim moonlight. There was no doubt that he was a Japanese trying to get farther along to where he could slip ashore and creep up on our mortars.
No challenge or demand for password was even considered in a situation like that. No Marine would be creeping along the reef at night. The Fatalist rested his elbows on his knees and took careful aim as the figure moved slowly through the glassy-smooth water. Two quick shots; the figure disappeared.
The Fatalist flipped the safety back on, handed me my carbine, and said, “Thanks, Sledgehammer.” He appeared as unconcerned as ever.
During the morning of 12 October, an NCO brought word that we were to take up our guns. The mortar section was to rejoin Company K. We gathered our gear and mortar. Snafu, George Sarrett, and I got into a jeep parked along a sheltered part of the road. We had to hang on because the driver took off with a lurch in a cloud of dust and drove like hell down the West Road bordered by the sniper-infested ridge. It was my first—and only—jeep ride during my entire enlistment. It was an eventful day because of that.
Shortly the driver stopped and let us off in a supply area where we waited for an NCO who was to guide us up into the ridges. Directly the rest of the Company K mortarmen arrived with directions to reach the company. We hoisted our mortar and other weapons and gear and headed across the road. We picked our way around the end of the ridge, then headed up a narrow valley filled with skeletons of shattered trees jutting up here and there on the slopes amid crazy-angled coral masses.
Johnny Marmet came striding down the incline of the valley to meet us as we started up. Even before I could see his face clearly, I knew from the way he was walking that something was dreadfully amiss. He lurched up to us, nervously clutching the web strap of the submachine gun slung over his shoulder. I had never seen Johnny nervous before, even under the thickest fire, which he seemed to regard as a nuisance that interfered with his carrying out his job.
His tired face was contorted with emotion, his brow was knitted tightly, and his bloodshot eyes appeared moist. It was obvious he had something fearful to tell us. We shuffled to a halt.
My first thought was that the Japanese had slipped in thousands of troops from the northern Palaus and that we would never get off the island. No, maybe the enemy had bombed some American city or chased off the navy as they had done at Guadalcanal. My imagination went wild, but none of us was prepared for what we were about to hear.
“Howdy, Johnny,” someone said as he came up to us.
“All right, you guys, let's get squared away here,” he said looking in every direction but at us. (This was strange, because Johnny wasn't the least reluctant to make eye contact with death, destiny, or the general himself.) “OK, you guys, OK, you guys,” he repeated, obviously flustered. A couple of men exchanged quizzical glances. “The skipper is dead. Ack Ack has been killed,” Johnny finally blurted out, then looked quickly away from us.
I was stunned and sickened. Throwing my ammo bag down, I turned away from the others, sat on my helmet, and sobbed quietly.
“Those goddamn slant-eyed sonsabitches,” someone behind me groaned.
Never in my wildest imagination had I contemplated Captain Haldane's death. We had a steady stream of killed and wounded leaving us, but somehow I assumed Ack Ack was immortal. Our company commander represented stability and direction in a world of violence, death, and destruction. Now his life had been snuffed out. We felt forlorn and lost. It was the worst grief I endured during the entire war. The intervening years have not lessened it any.
Capt. Andy Haldane wasn't an idol. He was human. But he commanded our individual destinies under the most trying conditions with the utmost compassion. We knew he could never be replaced. He was the finest Marine officer I ever knew. The loss of many close friends grieved me deeply on Peleliu and Okinawa. But to all of us the loss of our company commander at Peleliu was like losing a parent we depended upon for security—not our physical security, because we knew that was a commodity beyond our reach in combat, but our mental security.
Some of the men threw their gear violently to the deck. Everybody was cursing and rubbing his eyes.
Finally Johnny pulled himself together and said, “OK, you guys, let's move out.” We picked up mortars and ammo bags. Feeling as though our crazy world had fallen apart completely, we trudged slowly and silently in single file up the rubble-strewn valley to rejoin Company K.*
So ended the outstanding combat career of a fine officer who had distinguished himself at Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu. We had lost our leader and our friend. Our lives would never be the same. But we turned back to the ugly business at hand.
THE STENCH OF BATTLE
Johnny led us on up through a jumble of rocks on Hill 140. Company K's line was emplaced along a rock rim, and we set up the mortars in a shallow depression about twenty yards behind it. The riflemen and machine gunners in front of us were in among rocks along the rim of Hill 140 facing east toward Walt Ridge and the northern end of the infamous Horseshoe. We had previously attacked that valley from its southern end. From the rim of Hill 140 the rock contours dropped away in a sheer cliff to a canyon below. No one could raise his head above the rim rock without immediately drawing heavy rifle and machine-gun fire.
The fighting around the pocket was as deadly as ever, but of a different type from the early days of the campaign. The Japanese fired few artillery or mortar barrages, just a few rounds at a time when assured of inflicting maximum casualties. That they usually did, and then secured the guns to escape detection. Sometimes there was an eerie quiet. We knew they were everywhere in the caves and pillboxes. But there was no firing in our area, only the sound of firing elsewhere. The silence added an element of unreality to the valleys.
If we moved past a certain point, the Japanese opened up suddenly with rifle, machine-gun, mortar, and artillery fire. It was like a sudden storm breaking. More often than not we had to pull back, and not a man in the company had seen a live enemy anywhere.
They couldn't hope to drive us off by then or to be reinforced themselves. From that point onward, they killed solely for the sake of killing, without hope and without higher purpose. We were fighting in Peleliu's ridges and valleys, in terrain the likes of which most Americans could not even visualize, against an enemy unlike anything most Americans could imagine.
The sun bore down on us like a giant heat lamp. Once I saw a misplaced phosphorous grenade explode on the coral from the sun's intense heat. We always shaded our stacked mortar shells with a piece of ammo box to prevent this.
Occasional rains that fell on the hot coral merely evaporated like steam off hot pavement. The air hung heavy and muggy. Everywhere we went on the ridges the hot humid air reeked with the stench of death. A strong wind was no relief; it simply brought the horrid odor from an adjacent area. Japanese corpses lay where they fell among the rocks and on the slopes. It was impossible to cover them. Usually there was no soil that could be spaded over them, just the hard, jagged coral. The enemy dead simply rotted where they had fallen. They lay all over the place in grotesque positions with puffy faces and grinning buck-toothed expressions.
It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not experienced it the ghastly horror of having your sense of smell saturated constantly with the putrid odor of rotting human flesh day after day, night after night. This was something the men of an infantry battalion got a horrifying dose of during a long, protracted battle such as Peleliu. In the tropics the dead became bloated and gave off a terrific stench within a few hours after death.
Whenever possible we removed Marine dead to the rear of the company's position. There they were usually laid on stretchers and covered with ponchos which stretched over the head of the corpse down to the ankles. I rarely saw a dead Marine left uncovered with his face exposed to sun, rain, and flies. Somehow it seemed indecent not to cover our dead. Often, though, the dead might lie on the stretchers for some time and decompose badly before the busy graves registration crews could take them for burial in the division cemetery near the airfield.
During the fighting around the Umurbrogol Pocket, there was a constant movement of one weary, depleted Marine company being relieved by another slightly less weary, depleted company. We seemed to rotate from one particularly dangerous part of the line to one slightly less so and back again continuously.
There were certain areas we moved into and out of several times as the campaign dragged along its weary, bloody course. In many such areas I became quite familiar with the sight of some particular enemy corpse, as if it were a landmark. It was gruesome to see the stages of decay proceed from just killed, to bloated, to maggot-infested rotting, to partially exposed bones—like some biological clock marking the inexorable passage of time. On each occasion my company passed such a landmark we were fewer in number.
Each time we moved into a different position I could determine the areas occupied by each rifle company as we went into that sector of the line. Behind each company position lay a pile of ammo and supplies and the inevitable rows of dead under their ponchos. We could determine how bad that sector of the line was by the number of dead. To see them so always filled me with anger at the war and the realization of the senseless waste. It depressed me far more than my own fear.
Added to the awful stench of the dead of both sides was the repulsive odor of human excrement everywhere. It was all but impossible to practice simple, elemental field sanitation on most areas of Peleliu because of the rocky surface. Field sanitation during maneuvers and combat was the responsibility of each man. In short, under normal conditions, he covered his own waste with a scoop of soil. At night when he didn't dare venture out of his foxhole, he simply used an empty grenade canister or ration can, threw it out of his hole, and scooped dirt over it next day if he wasn't under heavy enemy fire.
But on Peleliu, except along the beach areas and in the swamps, digging into the coral rock was nearly impossible. Consequently, thousands of men—most of them around the Umurbrogol Pocket in the ridges, many suffering with severe diarrhea, fighting for weeks on an island two miles by six miles—couldn't practice basic field sanitation. This fundamental neglect caused an already putrid tropical atmosphere to become inconceivably vile.
Added to this was the odor of thousands of rotting, discarded Japanese and American rations. At every breath one inhaled hot, humid air heavy with countless repulsive odors. I felt as though my lungs would never be cleansed of all those foul vapors. It may not have been that way down on the airfield and in other areas where the service troops were encamped, but around the infantry in the Umurbrogol Pocket, the stench varied only from foul to unbearable.
In this garbage-filled environment the flies, always numerous in the tropics anyway, underwent a population explosion. This species was not the unimposing common housefly (the presence of one of which in a restaurant is enough to cause most Americans today to declare the place unfit to serve food to the public). Peleliu's most common fly was the huge blowfly or bluebottle fly. This creature has a plump, metallic, greenish-blue body, and its wings often make a humming sound during flight.
The then new insecticide DDT was sprayed over the combat areas on Peleliu for the first time anywhere. It supposedly reduced the adult fly population while Marines were still fighting on the ridges, but I never noticed that the flies became fewer in number.
With human corpses, human excrement, and rotting rations scattered across Peleliu's ridges, those nasty insects were so large, so glutted, and so lazy that some could scarcely fly. They could not be waved away or frightened off a can of rations or a chocolate bar. Frequently they tumbled off the side of my canteen cup into my coffee. We actually had to shake the food to dislodge the flies, and even then they sometimes refused to move. I usually had to balance my can of stew on my knee, spooning it up with my right hand while I picked the sluggish creatures off the stew with my left. They refused to move or to be intimidated. It was revolting, to say the least, to watch big fat blowflies leave a corpse and swarm into our C rations.
Even though none of us had much appetite, we still had to eat. A way to solve the fly problem was to eat after sunset or before sunrise when the insects were inactive. Chow had to be unheated then, because no sterno tablets or other form of light could be used after dark. It was sure to draw enemy sniper fire.
Each morning just before sunrise, when things were fairly quiet, I could hear a steady humming sound like bees in a hive as the flies became active with the onset of daylight. They rose up off the corpses, refuse, rocks, brush, and wherever else they had settled for the night like a swarm of bees. Their numbers were incredible.
Large land crabs crawled all over the ridges at night, attracted by corpses. Their rustling through dry debris often was indistinguishable from prowling enemy soldiers. We responded by tossing a grenade at the sound.
In addition to rotting corpses and organic waste, the litter of smashed and worn out equipment of every type became more abundant as the battle dragged on and the size of the Umurbrogol Pocket shrank slowly. The ridges and ravines were littered with the flotsam of fierce combat. Debris of battle was everywhere and became more noticeable as the weeks dragged on.
I still see clearly the landscape around one particular position we occupied for several days. It was a scene of destruction and desolation that no fiction could invent. The area was along the southwestern border of the pocket where ferocious fighting had gone on since the second day of battle (16 September). The 1st Marines, the 7th Marines, and now the 5th Marines, all in their turn, had fought against this same section of ridges. Our exhausted battalion, ⅗, moved into the line to relieve another slightly more exhausted battalion. It was the same old weary shuffling of one tired, depleted outfit into the line to relieve another whose sweating men trudged out of their positions, hollow-eyed, stooped, grimy, bearded zombies.
The Company K riflemen and machine gunners climbed up the steep ridge and into the crevices and holes of the company we relieved. Orders were given that no one must look over the crest of the ridge, because enemy rifle and machine-gun fire would kill instantly anyone who did.
As usual the troops pulling out gave our men “the dope” on the local conditions: what type fire to expect, particular danger spots and possible infiltration routes at night.
My mortar went into a gun pit occupied by one of the 60mm mortars of the company we were relieving. The gun pit was among coral rocks about twenty yards from the foot of the ridge. An extremely youthful Marine was just buckling the leather strap around the bipod and tube of his 60mm mortar as I walked up near the position and put down my heavy ammo bag. I sat on my helmet and started talking to him as the rest of our squad moved into their positions. As the young man looked up, I was struck by the agonized expression on his face. He didn't seem happy, the way he should have, about being relieved.
“You guys watch out for the Japs at night. Two of the bastards got into this gun pit last night and cut up our gunner and assistant gunner,” he said.
He told me in a strained voice that the crew was so occupied firing the mortar during the previous night that two Japanese who slipped through the line on the ridge managed to creep up close to the pit without detection. They jumped in and cut up the two men working the mortar before nearby mortar ammo carriers killed them. The wounded Marines had been evacuated, but one of them had died, and the other was in poor condition. The bodies of the Japanese had been thrown into some nearby bushes.
The man telling me of the tragedy and another crouching beside the gun pit had been ammo carriers but had now assumed new duties as gunner and assistant. I noticed that as the new gunner folded and strapped his gun to leave, he seemed reluctant to touch the bottom or sides of the emplacement. When he left and we came closer to the gun pit to set up our mortar, I saw why. The white coral sides and bottom were spattered and smeared with the dark red blood of his two comrades.
After we got our gun emplaced, I collected up some large scraps of cardboard from ration and ammo boxes and used them to cover the bottom of the pit as well as I could. Fat, lazy blowflies were reluctant to leave the blood-smeared rock.
I had long since become used to the sight of blood, but the idea of sitting in that bloodstained gun pit was a bit too much for me. It seemed almost like leaving our dead unburied to sit on the blood of a fellow Marine spilled out on the coral. I noticed that my buddy looked approvingly at my efforts as he came back from getting orders for our gun. Although we never discussed the subject, he apparently felt as I did. As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how “gallant” it is for a man to “shed his blood for his country,” and “to give his life's blood as a sacrifice,” and so on. The words seemed so ridiculous. Only the flies benefited.
The wind blew hard. A drizzling rain fell out of a leaden sky that seemed to hang just above the ridge crest. Shattered trees and jagged rocks along the crest looked like stubble on a dirty chin. Most green trees and bushes had long since been shattered and pulverized by shell fire. Only the grotesque stumps and branches remained. A film of fine coral dust covered everything. It had been dust before the rain, but afterward it was a grimy coating of thin plaster.
The overwhelming grayness of everything in sight caused sky, ridge, rocks, stumps, men, and equipment to blend into a grimy oneness. Weird, jagged contours of Peleliu's ridges and canyons gave the area an unearthly alien appearance. The shattered vegetation and the dirty-white splotches peppering the rocks where countless bullets and shell fragments had struck off the weathered gray surfaces contributed to the unreality of the harsh landscape.
Rain added the final touch. On a battlefield rain made the living more miserable and forlorn and the dead more pathetic. To my left lay a couple of bloated Japanese corpses teaming with maggots and inactive flies who seemed to object to the rain as much as I did. Each dead man still wore the two leather cartridge boxes, one on either side of his belt buckle, neat wrap leggings, tabi shoes, helmets, and packs. Beside each corpse lay a shattered and rusting Arisaka rifle, smashed against a rock by some Marine to be certain it wasn't used again.
Cans of C rations and K ration boxes, opened and unopened, lay around our gun pit along with discarded grenade and mortar shell canisters. Scattered about the area were discarded U.S. helmets, packs, ponchos, dungaree jackets, web cartridge belts, leggings, boondockers, ammo boxes of every type, and crates. The discarded articles of clothing and the inevitable bottle of blood plasma bore mute testimony that a Marine had been hit there.
Many tree stumps had a machine-gun ammo belt draped over them. Some of these belts were partially filled with live cartridges. Amid all this evidence of violent combat, past and continuing, I was interested in the fact that spent, or partially so, machine-gun ammo belts so often seemed to be draped across a shattered stump or bush rather than lying on the ground. In combat, I often experienced fascination over such trivia, particularly when exhausted physically and strained emotionally. Many combat veterans told me they also were affected the same way.
All around us lay the destruction and waste of violent combat. Later, on the muddy clay fields and ridges of Okinawa, I would witness similar scenes on an even vaster scale. There the battlefield would bear some resemblance to others described in World War II. During the muddy stalemate before Shuri, the area would resemble descriptions I had read of the ghastly corpse-strewn morass of Flanders during World War I.
Those, though, were typical modern battlefields. They were nothing like the crazy-contoured coral ridges and rubble-filled canyons of the Umurbrogol Pocket on Peleliu. Particularly at night by the light of flares or on a cloudy day, it was like no other battlefield described on earth. It was an alien, unearthly, surrealistic nightmare like the surface of another planet.
I have already mentioned several times the exhaustion of the Marines as the campaign wore on. Our extreme fatigue was no secret to the Japanese either. As early as 6 October, nine days before we were relieved, a captured document reported that we appeared worn out and were fighting less aggressively.
The grinding stress of prolonged heavy combat, the loss of sleep because of nightly infiltration and raids, the vigorous physical demands forced on us by the rugged terrain, and the unrelenting, suffocating heat were enough to make us drop in our tracks. How we kept going and continued fighting I'll never know. I was so indescribably weary physically and emotionally that I became fatalistic, praying only for my fate to be painless. The million-dollar wound seemed more of a blessing with every weary hour that dragged by. It seemed the only escape other than death or maiming.
In addition to the terror and hardships of combat, each day brought some new dimension of dread for me: I witnessed some new, ghastly, macabre facet in the kaleidoscope of the unreal, as though designed by some fiendish ghoul to cause even the most hardened and calloused observer among us to recoil in horror and disbelief.
Late one afternoon a buddy and I returned to the gun pit in the fading light. We passed a shallow defilade we hadn't noticed previously. In it were three Marine dead. They were lying on stretchers where they had died before their comrades had been forced to withdraw sometime earlier. (I usually avoided confronting such pitiful remains. I never could bear the sight of American dead neglected on the battlefield. In contrast, the sight of Japanese corpses bothered me little aside from the stench and the flies they nourished.)
As we moved past the defilade, my buddy groaned, “Jesus!” I took a quick glance into the depression and recoiled in revulsion and pity at what I saw. The bodies were badly decomposed and nearly blackened by exposure. This was to be expected of the dead in the tropics, but these Marines had been mutilated hideously by the enemy. One man had been decapitated. His head lay on his chest; his hands had been severed from his wrists and also lay on his chest near his chin. In disbelief I stared at the face as I realized that the Japanese had cut off the dead Marine's penis and stuffed it into his mouth. The corpse next to him had been treated similarly. The third had been butchered, chopped up like a carcass torn by some predatory animal.
My emotions solidified into rage and a hatred for the Japanese beyond anything I ever had experienced. From that moment on I never felt the least pity or compassion for them no matter what the circumstances. My comrades would field-strip their packs and pockets for souvenirs and take gold teeth, but I never saw a Marine commit the kind of barbaric mutilation the Japanese committed if they had access to our dead.
When we got back to the gun pit, my buddy said, “Sledgehammer, did you see what the Nips did to them bodies? Did you see what them poor guys had in their mouths?” I nodded as he continued, “Christ, I hate them slant-eyed bastards!”
“Me too. They're mean as hell,” was all I could say.
VICTORY AT HIGH COST
Twelve October continued to be an eventful day for us on Hill 140. Following Captain Haldane's death in the morning, we set up our mortars below and behind a 75mm pack howitzer tied down within Company K's lines. We were to fire our usual support for the company, but we also were to provide covering fire for the artillery piece.
Johnny Marmet was observing for us through a crack in the coral rock up near the howitzer when he suddenly called down to us that he saw some Japanese officers just outside the mouth of a cave. Apparently confident they were sheltered from American fire, they were just sitting down to eat at a table on a ledge beneath a thatched canopy.
Johnny called the range to us and the order to fire five rounds. Snafu sighted in on the proper aiming stake, repeated Johnny's range, and yelled, “Fire one.” I grabbed a shell, repeated the range and charge, pulled off the proper number of powder increments from between the tail fins, put my right thumb over the safety pin, pulled the safety wire, and dropped the shell into the muzzle. Snafu realigned the sight after the recoil, grabbed the bipod feet, and yelled, “Fire two.” I prepared the second shell and dropped it into the tube. It went smoothly and we got all the rounds off in short order. We listened tensely for them to explode on target. My heart pounded away the seconds. It was a rare occasion to get Japanese officers bunched up and rarer indeed on Peleliu for them to expose themselves.
After seemingly endless seconds of suspense we heard the dull boom as each shell exploded over the ridge and across the valley. Something was wrong though. I heard one less explosion than the number of shells we had fired. We looked anxiously up at Johnny who had his eyes glued to the target. Suddenly he spun around, snapped his finger, and stamped his foot. Scowling down at us he yelled, “Right on target, zeroed in! But the first damned round was a dud! What the hell happened?” We groaned and cursed with frustration. The first shell had gone right through the thatched roof and the Japanese officers dove for the cave. But the shell didn't explode. Our remaining shells were right on target, too, smashing up and blowing apart the thatched canopy and the table. But the enemy officers were safe inside the cave. Our pinpoint accuracy had been remarkable for a 60mm mortar that normally functioned to neutralize an area with fragments from its bursting shells. Our golden opportunity had vanished because of a dud shell. We set about trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
Everybody in the mortar section was cursing and groaning. Suddenly Snafu accused me of forgetting to pull the safety wire to arm that first shell. I was confident that I had pulled the pin. Some defense worker in an ammunition plant back in the States had made a mistake in the manufacture of the shell, I contended. Snafu wouldn't accept that, and we got into a hot argument. I was angry and frustrated enough myself. We had missed our one chance in a million to avenge the death of our CO. But Snafu was in a rage. It was a matter of pride with him, because he was the gunner and, therefore, in command of our mortar crew.
Snafu was a good Marine and an expert mortarman. His performance of his duties bore absolutely no resemblance to his nickname, “Situation Normal All Fouled Up.” He felt it was a reflection on him that a chance to clobber several Japanese officers had failed because his assistant gunner hadn't pulled the safety wire on a shell. He was proud of a newspaper clipping from his hometown paper in Louisiana describing the effective fire his “mortar gun” had poured on the Japs during the bloody fighting for Hill 660 on Cape Gloucester. Snafu was a unique character known and respected by everybody. The guys loved to kid him about his intrepid “mortar gun” on Hill 660, and he thrived on it. But this foul-up and escape of those enemy officers because of a dud shell was another matter.
As we argued, I knew that unless I could prove the dud wasn't my fault, I'd never hear the end of it from Snafu and the other Company K survivors of Peleliu. Fortunately, luck was on my side. We had fired only a couple of shells to register the gun before Johnny called on us to fire on the Japanese. Consequently I had an accurate count of the number of rounds we had fired from this position. While Snafu ranted and raved I crawled around on all fours a few feet in front of the gun. With incredible good luck I found what I was seeking amid the coral gravel and pulverized plant material. I retrieved the safety wire from each shell we had fired.
I held them out to Snafu and said, “OK, count them and then tell me I didn't pull the wires on all those rounds.”
He counted them. We knew that no other 60mm mortar had occupied this newly captured position, so all the wires were ours. I was angry the shell had been a dud and the Japanese had escaped, but I was delighted that it wasn't due to my carelessness. I heard no more about the dud. We all wanted to forget it.
Word also came that day that the high command had declared the “assault phase” of the Palau Islands operation at an end. Many profane and irreverent remarks were made by my buddies to the effect that our leaders were as crazy as hell if they thought that held true on Peleliu. “Somebody from the division CP needs to come up here and tell them damned Nips the ‘assault phase’ is over,” grumbled one man.
After dark the Japanese reinfiltrated some of the positions they had been driven out of around Hill 140. It was the usual hellish night in the ridges, exhausted Marines trying to fight off incredibly aggressive Japanese slipping all around. It was mortar flares, HE shells, grenades, and small-arms fire. I was so tired I held one eye open with the fingers of one hand to stay awake while clutching a grenade or other weapon with the other hand.
The next day, 13 October, ⅗ was ordered to renew the offensive and to straighten our lines, forming a salient on Hill 140. Our battalion was the only unit of the 5th Marines still on the lines and ordered to attack. Snipers raised hell all over the place. It seemed to me the fighting would never end, as we fired covering fire for our weary riflemen. Our artillery fired heavy support. The next morning, 14 October, Corsairs made a napalm strike against the Japanese on our right. Company I made a probing attack after a mortar barrage was halted by heavy sniper fire. Companies K and L improved their positions and put out more sandbags and concertina wire.
The battalion's efforts at attacking seemed like the gasping of a tired steam engine struggling to pull its string of cars up a steep grade. We were barely making it. Rumors flew that army troops would relieve us the next day, but my cynicism kept me from believing them.
We found some Japanese rifles and ammunition in our area. Hidden under pieces of corrugated iron, I discovered two boxes containing about a dozen Japanese grenades. I suggested to an NCO that we take them in case we needed them during the coming night, but he said we could get them later if necessary. We got busy on firing missions with our mortar, and the first time I glanced back toward the boxes, the souvenir hunters had moved in and were emptying them. Another mortarman and I yelled at the scavenging pests. They left, but all the Japanese grenades were gone.
A wave of hope and excitement spread through the ranks that evening when we got solid information that we would be relieved by the army the next morning. I got less sleep that night than ever. With the end in sight, I didn't want to get my throat slit at the last moment before escaping from the meat grinder.
During the morning of 15 October soldiers of the 2d Battalion, 321st Infantry Regiment, 81st Infantry Division (Wildcats) began moving single file into our area. I couldn't believe it! We were being relieved at last!
As the soldiers filed by us into position, a grizzled buddy squatting on his battered helmet eyed them critically and remarked, “Sledgehammer, I don't know about them dogfaces.Look how many of 'em wearin’ glasses, and they look old enough to be my daddy. Besides, them pockets on their dungaree pants sure do look baggy.”
“They look fine to me. They're our replacements,” I answered.
“I guess you're right. Thank God they're here,” he said reflectively.
His observations were correct though, because most of our fellow Marines hadn't reached the age of twenty-one yet, and army dungarees did have large side pockets.
“We sure are glad to see you guys,” I said to one of the soldiers.
He just grinned and said, “Thanks.” I knew he wasn't happy to be there.*
The relief, which had gone smoothly, was completed by 1100, and we were on our way to the northern defense zone of Peleliu. Our battalion deployed along the East Road facing seaward, where we were to stop any counterlanding the Japanese might try.
My mortar was emplaced near the road so we could fire on the strip of mangrove swamp between the narrow beach and the sea as well as up the road toward the Umurbrogol Pocket if necessary. There was a sloping ridge to our rear along which the rest of the company dug in defensively. We stayed there from the time we came off the line until the last week of the month.
The area was quiet. We relaxed as much as we could with the nagging fear that we might get thrown into the line again if an emergency developed.
We learned that our battalion would leave Peleliu as soon as a ship was available to transport us back to Pavuvu. By day we rested and swapped souvenirs, but we had to be on the alert at night for possible Japanese movement. To the south we could hear the constant rattle of machine guns and the thud of mortars and artillery as the 81st Infantry Division kept up the pressure around the Umurbrogol Pocket.
“Have you gone Asiatic?” I gasped. “You know you can't keep that thing. Some officer'll put you on report sure as hell,” I remonstrated as I stared in horror at the shriveled human hand he had unwrapped.
“Aw, Sledgehammer, nobody'll say anything. I've got to dry it in the sun a little more so it won't stink,” he said as he carefully laid it out on the rock in the hot sun. He explained that he thought a dried Japanese hand would be a more interesting souvenir than gold teeth. So when he found a corpse that was drying in the sun and not rotting, he simply took out his kabar and severed the hand from the corpse, and here it was, and what did I think?
“I think you're nuts,” I said. “You know the CO will raise hell if he sees that.”
“Hell no, Sledgehammer, nobody says anything about the guys collecting gold teeth, do they?” he argued.
“Maybe so,” I said, “but it's just the idea of a human hand. Bury it.”
He looked grimly at me, which was totally out of character for his amiable good nature. “How many Marines you reckon that hand pulled the trigger on?” he asked in an icy voice.
I stared at the blackened, shriveled hand and wondered about what he said. I thought how I valued my own hands and what a miracle to do good or evil the human hand is. Although I didn't collect gold teeth, I had gotten used to the idea, but somehow a hand seemed to be going too far. The war had gotten to my friend; he had lost (briefly, I hoped) all his sensitivity. He was a twentieth-century savage now, mild mannered though he still was. I shuddered to think that I might do the same thing if the war went on and on.
Several of our Marines came over to see what my buddy had. “You dumb jerk, throw that thing away before it begins to stink,” growled an NCO.
“Hell yes,” added another man, “I don't want you going aboard ship with me if you got that thing. It gives me the creeps,” he said as he looked disgustedly at the souvenir.
After several other men chimed in with their disapproval, my friend reluctantly flung his unique souvenir among the rocks.
We had good rations and began to eat heartily and enjoy being out of the line as we relaxed more each day. Good water came up by jeep with the rations, and I never brushed my teeth so many times a day. It was a luxury. Rumors began to spread that we would soon board ship and leave Peleliu.
Toward the end of October, we moved to another part of the island. Our spirits soared. We bivouacked in a sandy, flat area near the beach. Jeeps brought in our jungle hammocks and our knapsacks.* We received orders to shave and to put on the clean dungarees we all carried in our knapsacks.
Some men complained that it would be easier to clean up aboard ship. But one NCO laughed and said that if our scroungy, stinking bunch of Marines climbed a cargo net aboard ship, the sailors would jump over the other side as soon as they saw us.
My hair, though it had been short on D day, had grown into a thick matted mass plastered together with rifle oil and coral dust. Long ago I had thrown away my pocket comb, because most of the teeth had broken out when I tried to comb my hair. I managed now to clean up my head with soap and water, and it took both edges of two razor blades and a complete tube of shaving soap to shave off the itching, greasy tangle of coral-encrusted beard. I felt like a man freed of a hair shirt.
My dungaree jacket wasn't torn, and I felt I must keep it as a souvenir of good luck. I rinsed it in the ocean, dried it in the sun, and put it into my pack.†
My filthy dungaree trousers were ragged and torn in the knees so I threw them into a campfire along with my stinking socks. The jagged coral had worn away the tough, inch-thick cord soles of my new boondockers of 15 September to the thin innersoles. I had to keep these until we returned to Pavuvu, because my replacement shoes were back there in my seabag.
That afternoon, 29 October, we learned that we would board ship the next day. With a feeling of intense relief, I climbed into my hammock at dusk and zipped up the mosquito netting along the side. I was delighted at how comfortable it was to lie on something other than hard, rocky ground. I lay back, sighed, and thought of the good sleep I should get until my turn for sentry duty came around. I could look inland and see the ragged crest of those terrible ridges against the skyline. Thank goodness that section was in U.S. hands, I thought.
Suddenly, zip, zip, zip, zip, a burst of Japanese machine-gun fire (blue-white tracers) slashed through the air under my hammock! The bullets kicked up sand on the other side of a crater beneath me. I jerked open the hammock zipper. Carbine in hand, I tumbled out into the crater. After all I had been through, I wasn't taking any chances on getting my rear end shot off in a hammock.
Judging from the sound made by the bullets, the machine gun was a long way off. The gunner was probably firing a burst toward the army lines over on some ridge between him and me. But a man could get killed just as dead by a stray bullet as an aimed one. So after my brief moments of comfort in the hammock, I slept the rest of the night in the crater.
Next morning, 30 October, we squared away our packs, picked up our gear, and moved out to board ship. Even though we were leaving bloody Peleliu at last, my mind was distracted by an oppressive feeling that Bloody Nose Ridge was pulling us back like some giant, inexorable magnet. It had soaked up the blood of our division like a great sponge. I believed that it would get us yet. Even if we boarded ship, we would get jerked off and thrown into the line to help stop a counterattack or some threat to the airfield. I suppose I had become completely fatalistic; our casualties had been so heavy that it was impossible for me to believe we were actually leaving Peleliu. The sea was quite rough, and I looked back at the island with great relief as we put out for the ship.
We pulled alongside a big merchant troopship, the Sea Runner, and prepared to climb a cargo net to get aboard. We had done this sort of thing countless times in our training but never when we were so terribly exhausted. We had a hard time even getting started up the net because we kept bobbing up and down in the heavy sea. Several men stopped to rest on the way, but no one fell. As I struggled upward with my load of equipment, I felt like a weary insect climbing a vine. But at last I was crawling up out of the abyss of Peleliu!
We were assigned to quarters in troop compartments be-lowdecks. I stowed my gear on my rack and went topside. The salt air was delicious to breathe. What a luxury to inhale long deep breaths of fresh clean air, air that wasn't heavy with the fetid stench of death.
The cost in casualties for a tiny island was terrible. The fine 1st Marine Division was shattered. It suffered a total loss of 6,526 men (1,252 dead and 5,274 wounded). The casualties in the division s infantry regiments were: 1st Marines, 1,749; 5th Marines, 1,378; 7th Marines, 1,497. These were severe losses considering that each infantry regiment started with about 3,000 men. The army's 81st Infantry Division would lose another 3,278 men (542 dead and 2,736 wounded) before it secured the island.
Most of the enemy garrison on Peleliu died. Only a few were captured. Estimates as to the exact losses by the Japanese vary somewhat, but conservatively, 10,900 Japanese soldiers died and 302 became prisoners. Of the prisoners only 7 were soldiers and 12 sailors. The remainder were laborers of other oriental extractions.
Company K, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines went into Peleliu with approximately 235 men, the normal size of a World War II Marine rifle company. It left with only 85 unhurt. It suffered 64 percent casualties. Of its original seven officers, two remained for the return to Pavuvu.For its actions on Peleliu and Ngesebus, the 1st Marine Division received the Presidential Unit Citation.
Even at a distance Peleliu was ugly with the jagged ridges and shattered trees. Haney came up alongside me and leaned on the rail. He looked gloomily at the island and puffed a cigarette.
“Well, Haney, what did you think of Peleliu?” I asked. I really was curious what a veteran with a combat record that included some of the big battles of the Western Front during World War I thought of the first battle in which I had participated. I had nothing in my experience to make a comparison with Peleliu.
Instead of the usual old salt comment—something like, “You think that was bad, you oughta been in the old Corps,”—Haney answered with an unexpected, “Boy, that was terrible! I ain't never seen nothin’ like it. I'm ready to go back to the States. I've had enough after that.”
A common perception has it that the “worst battle” to any man is the one he had been in himself. In view of Haney's comments, I concluded that Peleliu must have been as bad as I thought it was even though it was my first battle. Haney's long Marine Corps career as a combat infantryman certainly qualified him as a good judge of how bad a battle had been. His simple words were enough to convince me about the severity of the fight we had just been through.
None of us would ever be the same after what we had endured. To some degree that is true, of course, of all human experience. But something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was a childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places who do not have to endure war's savagery will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.
But I also learned important things on Peleliu. A man's ability to depend on his comrades and immediate leadership is absolutely necessary. I'm convinced that our discipline, esprit de corps, and tough training were the ingredients that equipped me to survive the ordeal physically and mentally— given a lot of good luck, of course. I learned realism, too. To defeat an enemy as tough and dedicated as the Japanese, we had to be just as tough. We had to be just as dedicated to America as they were to their emperor. I think this was the essence of Marine Corps doctrine in World War II, and that history vindicates this doctrine.
To this private first class, Peleliu was also a vindication of Marine Corps training, particularly of boot camp. I speak only from a personal viewpoint and make no generalizations, but for me, in the final analysis, Peleliu was:
· thirty days of severe, unrelenting inhuman emotional and physical stress;
· proof that I could trust and depend completely on the Marine on each side of me and on our leadership;
· proof that I could use my weapons and equipment efficiently under severe stress; and
· proof that the critical factor in combat stress is duration of the combat rather than the severity.
Boot camp taught me that I was expected to excel, or try to, even under stress. My drill instructor was a small man. He didn't have a big mouth. He was neither cruel nor sadistic. He wasn't a bully. But he was a strict disciplinarian, a total realist about our future, and an absolute perfectionist dedicated to excellence. To him more than to my disciplined home life, a year of college ROTC before boot camp, and months of infantry training afterward I attribute my ability to have withstood the stress of Peleliu.
The Japanese were as dedicated to military excellence as U.S. Marines. Consequently, on Peleliu the opposing forces were like two scorpions in a bottle. One was annihilated, the other nearly so. Only Americans who excelled could have defeated them.
Okinawa would be the longest and largest battle of the Pacific war. There my division would suffer about as many casualties as it did on Peleliu. Again the enemy garrison would fight to the death. On Okinawa I would be shelled and shot at more, see more enemy soldiers, and fire at more of them with my mortar and with small arms than on Peleliu. But there was a ferocious, vicious nature to the fighting on Peleliu that made it unique for me. Many of my veteran comrades agreed. Perhaps we can say of Peleliu as the Englishman, Robert Graves, said of World War I, that it:
…gave us infantrymen so convenient a measuring-stick for discomfort, grief, pain, fear, and horror, that nothing since has greatly daunted us. But it also brought new meanings of courage, patience, loyalty, and greatness of spirit; incommunicable, we found to later times.*
As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen's poem “Insensibility” puts it so well, those who feel most for others suffer most in war.
* My memory of the remaining events of horror and death and violence amid the Peleliu ridges is as clear and distinct as a long nightmare where specific events are recalled vividly the next day. I remember clearly the details of certain episodes that occurred before or after certain others and can verify these with my notes and the historical references. But time and duration have absolutely no meaning in relation to those events from one date to the next. I was well aware of this sensation then.
*K/⅗ lost eight killed and twenty-two wounded at the Five Sisters.
* At the time of Captain Haldane's death, the bulk of Company K was operating with its parent battalion (⅗) on Hill 140 within the Umurbrogol Pocket. In an attempt to orient himself to the strange terrain his company was occupying, Haldane raised his head and looked over a ridge. A sniper's bullet killed him instantly. First Lt. Thomas J. (“Stumpy”) Stanley succeeded him as commander of K/⅗. Stanley led Company K through the remainder of the Peleliu campaign and on to Okinawa the following spring.
* By 15 October, the Marines had compressed the Umurbrogol Pocket to an area of about 400 to 500 yards. Yet the soldiers of the 81st Infantry Division faced six more weeks of fighting before the process of constant pressure and attrition wiped out the final vestiges of Japanese opposition. One day a buddy told me he had a unique souvenir to show me. We sat on a rock as he carefully removed a package from his combat pack. He unwrapped layers of waxed paper that had originally covered rations and proudly held out his prize for me to see.
* A knapsack was the lower half of the two-part World War II Marine combat pack. The upper part was called the haversack. The latter half was the part a Marine normally carried with him into a fight.
†I later wore this same lucky jacket through the long, muddy Okinawa campaign. Faded now, it hangs peacefully in my closet, one of my most prized possessions.
*Graves, Robert, “Introduction” in Old Soldiers Never Die by Frank Richards, Berkley Publishing Corp., N.Y. 1966