Hero of the Pacific (19 page)

From Newark airport, Navy bombers flew the tour group to New Haven, Connecticut for a parade. There were five thousand marchers, plus jeeps, tanks, and scout cars, two bands—one from the Army Air Corps and the other from the Coast Artillery—and the State Guard. Then came time for a freshening-up at a hotel and a big rally that evening at the Arena, a fanfare of trumpets, a parade of flags of the Allied nations, Governor Baldwin, yet another mayor Murphy, the “Hollywood singing star” Miss Edith Fellows handling the national anthem, more speeches, and an honor guard of air cadets training at Yale University. This may well have been Manila John's first brush against the Ivy League. “Later we were introduced by the Hollywood stars in our group and each of us had a little piece to say, after which we were given a standing ovation.” This was Basilone's first such speaking date outside of his own state, and apparently it went very well since he mentions “being sorry to leave this pleasant city.”

The PR people were apparently doing their work. At one stop they arranged to have a general release carrier pigeons in a park. In Rochester in upstate New York, a stop Basilone had his own personal reasons to anticipate, there was a rally at Red Wings Stadium, after which he managed to slip away to visit with the family of his machine-gun buddy on the 'Canal, Bob Powell, meeting his mom at 98 Garfield Street: “Bob's sister Peggy answered the door and in seconds I was meeting Bob's mother and sister Vicky. Vicky was 22 and a looker, in fact she was beautiful. Bob had certainly held out on me [where was Miss Grey?]. Peggy, just eight, was cute and a little darling. I had quite a talk with Mrs. Powell, telling her all I could about Bob. She hung on every word. I know she was proud and thrilled when I told her if it weren't for guys like Bob covering up for me on the right and left flanks, I'd never have lived to get my medal. I told her how Bob and I had become close personal friends, training together at Parris Island, New River, and Cuba.”

In Albany John looked up the mother of Jackie Schoenecker, another Guadalcanal Marine, assuring her Jackie wasn't holding back when he told her he hadn't been wounded but was simply suffering from malaria. “I explained that it was a common ailment in the tropics and as a matter of fact, I was walking around with it. I know I eased her fears.”

The tour was well organized, Basilone noting that the “publicity and fanfare” whipped up before every stop ensured a big crowd and local enthusiasm before the traveling road show of heroes and Hollywood stars even came to town. Some of it was fun, some moving and emotional, some quite frankly a pain in the ass. As Basilone put it, “No matter where I went, there was always some guy who would ask a million questions about the Japs and outside of the job I was now assigned to. I didn't feel like talking about them. Too many of my buddies were still dying in the stinking jungles, which when I looked around, seemed around a million miles away. Still, they were there, fighting, praying, and dying.” He asked himself, “How much longer could I continue feeling like I did?” and got no answers.

Finally, this leg of the bond tour (there were others to come), the Northeast swing, was over, and it was time to go home to Raritan, the little town where Basilone grew up. “I looked forward to spending a few days with my family.” But there was still “Basilone Day” to get through.

His hometown's celebrations began the morning of September 19, 1943, at Somerset Street and Route 31, “welcomed by the honorary chairman and mayor Peter Mencaroni, together with chairman William Slattery of the Township Committee. At the welcoming ceremonies I should have expected what was to come. There had already gathered so early in the morning a large crowd, affectionate, wonderful folks all calling my name and crushing in on our car. As I waved back, I spotted some old friends. With my family and buddy, Private 1st Class Steve Helstowski by my side, we entered St. Ann's Church for a high mass, which I had asked to be said for all my buddies still fighting in the South Pacific. All during mass I prayed for my buddies and for God to give me the strength and wisdom to uphold the high honors that were bestowed on me.

“A long time ago, it seemed ages, I had knelt in this very church and prayed the good Lord to help and guide me. Now, I was back again, feeling very small and humble as I realized that God in His wondrous ways had heard my prayers. Not only did I fulfill my promise to Pop to keep his name high, but that God had seen fit to touch me with His magic, lifting me up for the whole world to see.”

This was a Basilone we had not seen before, spiritual, meditative, even pious. How much of this was genuine, how much simply a reaction to all of the adulation and love on every hand, the solemnity of mass at St. Ann's, his recalling the Marines still out there in the Pacific, is impossible to say. Phyllis records what are supposed to be her brother's thoughts on his return home after the cauldron of Guadalcanal and the celebrity of the unexpected medal. “I had become a national hero, kids worshipped me, my buddies would give up their lives for me and actually did. I was featured in magazines and comic books. Newspapers had endless articles about my exploits, and the bright light of publicity shone on me day and night. To cap the whole incredible drama, the President of these great United States of America had seen fit to bestow on me the greatest honor this country could give.” Does this really sound like Manila John? To me it smacks of press agentry, prepared sound bites provided the young hero by his handlers and dutifully recorded later by Phyllis Basilone Cutter in her newspaper series about her brother John.

Bruce Doorly has his turn at summarizing the war bond tour to date, echoing much of what Phyllis had written, before getting to his own detailed account of the return to Raritan, and including a fascinating insight not previously recorded: even during that first leg of the speaking tour, Basilone was drinking heavily. “The publicity and fanfare did not let up at any of the bond rallies. While Basilone himself said, ‘The constant fuss is starting to get on my nerves.' He was not cut out to be a public speaker. He was a soldier, and was starting to wish that he was back in action. On the tour there were constant questions about the battle with the Japanese, which he answered over and over. The pressure of the attention got so bad that John had started drinking. One veteran [presumably another serviceman on the bond tour] said, ‘He knocked off a fifth the way you knock off a beer. Whisky, gin, it made no difference.'”

Basilone's last surviving sibling, Donald, who lives in Florida, told me that when he and John shared a bedroom during his brief Raritan respite from the war bond tour, and later when he was on leave, his brother didn't tell him much. But he remembered one thing clearly: “He always had a bottle of liquor on the dresser.” Donald was impressed by that.

Manila John had long enjoyed a drink. Was he simply getting back into a normal peacetime routine of social drinking? Or did he now “need” a drink? Were his tour handlers supplying the stuff to keep him relaxed, keep him performing?

Phyllis says a priest named Graham said the mass at St. Ann's; Doorly says it was Basilone's old pastor and guidance counselor, Father Amadeo Russo, which sounds more likely unless somehow a very young Reverend Dr. Billy Graham had shoehorned himself into the moment. Father Russo, in his sermon, said, “God had spared [John] for some important work,” a remark that inspired Basilone later to write his sister, “The importance of bringing me back finally sank in; and I resigned myself to the role that had suddenly been thrust on me.”

Here is Doorly on that September 19 in Raritan from local accounts by people like Peter Vitelli (also one of my sources), who was then a six-year-old schoolboy: “At 11:30 there was a lunch in Basilone's honor headed by the reception committee at The Raritan Valley Farms Inn, a popular restaurant . . . on the Somerville Circle where the Super 8 Motel is today. Then, at 1 p.m. the parade started. Total attendance was estimated at 30,000 . . . the groups marching included The American Legion, VFW, state and local police, service men on leave, French Navy Soldiers [their Marines, it can be assumed], Coast Guard, drum & bugle corps, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Red Cross units, Air Raid Wardens, The Italian American Society, Raritan First Aid Squad, soldiers from Camp Kilmer, and various marching bands.”

The whole catalog shouts quintessential Americana on parade, the local hero, whether Medal of Honor winner or captain of the high school's winning football eleven, passing the home folks in review. In a nice nostalgic touch, one marcher was John Reilly, who had four decades earlier been awarded the Medal of Honor during the Spanish-American War. “John Basilone rode in an open car with his parents Sal and Dora, who beamed with pride throughout the parade,” Doorly reported. “Also in his car was Private Stephen Helstowski of Pittsfield, Mass. [who had] fought with John on Guadalcanal and had been injured in the battle.”

There's a photo from that parade showing Basilone sitting happily, high atop the backseat of the convertible behind his parents, with Helstowski in the front passenger seat alongside a capped and uniformed chauffeur, Basilone waving at the crowd and the sun-drenched crowd gawking and some waving back, little kids and a few uniformed servicemen and women visible, several people walking behind or beside the slowly moving auto, so slowly that Basilone was able to shake hands with pedestrians even as the open car rolled along without having to stop, some of the handshakers aging vets from World War I.

Flags flew, the weather was perfect, and little Peter Vitelli remembered how orderly the big crowd was as he sat on the curb in front of St. Ann's Church watching the parade pass by and eventually halt and morph into a “rally.” At some point, the lovely actress Louise Allbritton was kissing Basilone. There is no mention of Virginia Grey. The disgraced though still popular former New York City mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker somehow showed up, ubiquitous, beaming and shaking hands, “working the room,” so to speak. This had become commonplace, people wanting to be seen with the hero, wanting to be associated with him. To a fallen idol like Walker, this was the sort of event he needed and could use. The crowd, as anticipated, was so great that “local rich girl made good” Doris Duke Cromwell had generously invited the committee to move everyone onto her vast estate, where they'd erected a grandstand, and to continue the festivities, holding the culminating rally right there, which is just what they did. Father Russo gave an invocation. A local girl, Catherine Mastice, who would later sing in the 1949 Radio City Music Hall Christmas show, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Anthony Hudek, then wide-eyed and thirteen years old, recalls, “It was as if the world came to Raritan.”

A five-thousand-dollar war bond was presented to Basilone, and he responded gracefully, accepting it “for all my buddies overseas on the front lines—they really appreciate everything you wonderful people are doing by ‘backing the attack' [he had the advertising agency selling line down pat by now] and buying these war bonds. Today is like a dream to me. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.” Former state senator Joseph Frelinghuysen (from a local family of considerable wealth and distinction and himself a very appealing figure whose own son was a POW in enemy hands) spoke, and Basilone responded again, noting that his medal belonged in part to many others, “the boys who fought by my side.”

During the Frelinghuysen remarks, Basilone's small niece, five-year-old Janice, sneaked up onstage to sit with him, drawing a roar in response, and remaining with her heroic uncle throughout. That was the press photo everyone ran the next day, the war hero and the little girl in her party dress on his lap. Fox Movietone News got it all, and the newsreel ran coast to coast the following week, including a recording of Basilone delivering a short speech about the country and its good people and promoting the sale of war bonds. His delivery is a bit stilted, but his voice is deep, almost rich. Catherine Mastice returned to sing a new song entitled “Manila John,” composed by the organist of St. Ann's, Joseph Memoli with words by W. A. Jack.

Basilone at times seemed overwhelmed by what organizers called “the biggest day in the history of Raritan.” But for some stupid reason, pure military bureaucracy at work, I suppose, Basilone wasn't to be permitted to enjoy the night at home. On orders, and pointlessly, he was hustled back to New York and a Manhattan hotel for the night. Maybe they feared that this close to home and family, he might go AWOL and they'd have difficulty getting their boy back to the tour. By Monday the call of the war plants was heard, and Basilone was back in New Jersey at the Johns Manville factory in Manville, just north of Raritan, meeting war production workers, shaking hands, and talking up war bonds.

The next day Basilone was at Calco Chemical, where he'd worked as a laborer. The Somerset County Bar Association beckoned that same day. One can only imagine what Basilone managed to say to the Bar Association: citing torts and precedents? Then it was off to Pittsburgh for a bond rally at a big steel plant. Within hours he was back in New Jersey, speaking to the Rotary Club at Somerville. It is not clear any of this coming and going so close to Raritan included a trip home to his mother and father's house for a meal or a night with the family. Or what Gene Lockhart and Eddie Bracken and the actresses thought of small-town and industrial New Jersey as they were trotted around.

Doorly reports that someone, somewhere, finally decided to give the poor guy a break. A thirty-day leave came down from the top. Thirty days of no speeches, no war plants, no bond rallies. And by now Basilone badly needed a rest. He spent the time at home in Raritan, where he played with the local kids and slept late, bunking in with little brother Don, nights where he and his Raritan pals all did a little drinking and admired the local girls. But there was a letdown, a long-delayed reaction. Doorly details it. He quotes Basilone as telling friends in Raritan that as much as he appreciated the admiration and attention, he was a soldier and wanted to get back to the war. This is the first mention of Basilone's yearning for the Pacific.