The Pacific (36 page)

Every day he liked being in the marines more than the day before, marching through close order drills, attending the morning and evening flag ceremonies. At night he studied his
Marine's Handbook
and longed for the day when he'd get his hands on a rifle. He had no interest in smoking, drinking, or carousing. Every Sunday found him attending the North Avenue Presbyterian Church. The cakes his mother sent him allowed him to gain the weight he needed. With his thanks he sent her a USMC service pin for her lapel. He wore the corps' eagle, globe, and anchor with pride.

His uniform eliminated the embarrassment he had felt about being in civilian clothes. While walking in downtown Atlanta, though, he happened to meet a marine. By the way the man dressed, Sledge could tell this marine was a real "salt," or someone who had had lots of overseas duty. When the salt asked Sledge about his own duty, Sledge grew embarrassed as he explained the V-12 program. He figured "the only reason he doesn't laugh is because I am a Marine, and he knows I don't like my duty, any more than he likes hearing about it." When Sledge got back to the dorm, he read a letter from his mother, who was sick at the thought of his brother Edward being sent overseas and into combat. Her concern for Edward's fate irked him. She also expressed concern about her youngest son's attitude toward school.

Eugene understood his battle was with his parents. He loved them, respected them, and enjoyed their company. He appreciated all that they did for him. He treasured the picture he had of his parents and himself on the porch. Eugene had promised them he would complete the V-12 program, and keeping it was important to him. He earned a 100 percent on his first biology quiz.

The promise, however, frustrated him. His enormous drive, intellect, and commitment to his beliefs warred with his filial duty. Gene's mind was fixed on a specific goal: serving in a line company in combat. By August, his anxiety was running at a fever pitch and he began lashing out at easy targets. When a friend from Mobile joined the Seabees, Eugene opined, " The Marines consider them as a bunch of laborers and I've been told they are a pretty crummy lot."
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He criticized the press coverage of marines' contributions to the war effort. "It is a known fact that MacArthur left the 4th Marines as a rearguard in the Philippines. All but 70 were killed," he asserted, and the survivors had become prisoners. He assailed both the United States Congress and the Roosevelt administration for forcing his beloved USMC to accept draftees. " The politicians, and Army, and Navy are still striving, as they have for 169 years, to pull us under & lower our standards."

SID PHILLIPS HAD DRAWN GUARD DUTY IN LATE AUGUST. HE AND SOME OTHERS from the mortar platoon found themselves guarding the Fourth General Hospital in Melbourne. They lived indoors on real beds with clean sheets. Middle- aged Australian ladies cooked them wonderful meals and set the dishes out on platters of china. Pitchers of whole milk dotted the long table. The ladies took such good care of them, "we called them all mother and they loved it."

The mortar platoon rotated among a number of duties, including guarding criminally dangerous military prisoners who were in shackles on the hospital's fourth floor. The main entrance to the hospital was the busiest place for a marine on guard, since every doctor and every nurse wore an officer's insignia and therefore compelled the guard to snap from "parade rest" to "present arms." Sid found he could do his shift of four hours of robotic movements without difficulty. Guarding the hospital was good duty.

One morning while guarding the front door, Sid watched six khaki-colored staff cars pull up at the curb.
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Army generals and navy admirals began climbing out. Something big was happening. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt stepped onto the curb wearing the uniform of an army WAC.
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Sid snapped to attention, presenting arms, and "popping the leather as loud as I could." His drill instructor from Parris Island would have been proud. Roosevelt approached. Sid thought of the comedy routine on the Canal, "My wife Eleanor hates war," as she stopped in front of him. Her eyes came even with his. "Young man, are you a marine?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Were you on Guadalcanal?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you being well fed?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you being well cared for?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What state are you from?"

"Alabama," came the reply, ringing with pride. The First Lady smiled and said, "I should have known." An officer held the door open and the official party swept inside. Private First Class Phillips "remained stone faced and at present arms until all the brass had passed by. I came back to order arms and parade rest. Then I noticed I was actually slightly quivering."

THE TRAINING SCHEDULE FOR BOMBING TWO OUT ON THE JERSEY COAST WAS rigorous but not intense in the late summer of 1943. Micheel's division of Dauntlesses might fly two or three times on any given day, but there were plenty of days when they did not fly at all. Even including the hours spent in ground school, the schedule left some time for fun.

A lot of the young men came to enjoy living life at high velocity. Hal Buell, by virtue of his seniority and his natural inclinations, became a leader of the wild bunch. He and some of the men in his squadron rented a house off base they dubbed the Snake Ranch. When not scheduled for duty, Hal's division held parties at the ranch, inviting every eligible young woman they could find. Having a bit of fun with naval lingo, one of the snake ranchers described their parties as "a kind of ground school" where "the student mingled shoulder to shoulder with the instructor."
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Not every ensign got invited to "sit in on the seminars and even to work in the lab," so some pilots made sure that "every night . . . the wolves of Bombing Two sent their howls echoing through the streets and by-ways of Wildwood."
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The pun, intended, played on the squadron's logo, a wolf named Vertigo.

The owner of the nice hotel in Wildwood often threw parties or dances for the young officers of the NAS Wildwood. The daughter of the owner of the hotel, Mary Jane, began to date one of the pilots of Bombing Two. Mary Jane asked her boyfriend to bring along some of his friends to meet some of hers, and before long a number of Bombing Two pilots hung out at the hotel bar. Mike went a few times. That's where he met a pretty girl named Jean Miller.

Jean worked for the Quartermaster Corps as an accountant in the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. She came to Wildwood on the weekends. She had trouble getting Mike out on the dance floor from the very beginning, but they began to see one another on the weekends. Her train would get in late on Friday, so they usually met at eight p.m. They usually went to see their friends at the hotel bar; then Mike would take her home on the trolley. "We'd sit on the front porch in the swing," until Mike looked at his watch and noticed that he had to run to catch the last trolley. By the end of August the two spent their Saturdays and Sundays together. Jean's grandmother's house was about a block and a half from the beach. Jean's mother and her uncle and aunt were also often there, along with her grandmother. Mike enjoyed being with them. Wildwood had a boardwalk like Atlantic City's famous boardwalk, offering all sorts of entertainment and food stands, because the area was a premier vacation destination. It was easy to have fun.

Jean asked her boyfriend to take her up in an airplane. All her girlfriends had been up. Mike was not enthusiastic about the idea. It was against regulations. He tried to argue that he was not qualified to fly the type of aircraft her friends had ridden in. This got him nowhere. "She pestered me." He told her he did not want to do it. Eventually, though, he relented. One Sunday afternoon he took her out to the flight line and said, " There's your airplane." It was an SNJ. She had expected a plane with a door in the fuselage, as her friends had described. Mike said he had not been checked out in the plane she described, the twin-engine SMB. " The crewman gave her a parachute to put on her and she said, 'What do I do?' "

"Climb on the wing." She looked up at the wing and then shot him a peeved look. She could not get up there herself. The crewman gave her a boost up and onto the wing. "What do I do now?"

"The seat's back there," he said. The wing, however, did not extend quite as far back as the rear cockpit. She could not step into it. To get into the rear seat of the SNJ required the use of footholds and handholds. The parachute hanging off her made it tricky. The crewman gave her a hand and Jean made it into the backseat. When Mike at last came over to explain to her how to buckle herself in and what to do in case of--She cut him off. "Forget it. If you go down, I'll go down . . . don't bother telling me what to do." After they took off Jean found she could not close her canopy, which made it rather windy. All of her friends had ridden in a nice plane with a door. It was the last time Jean asked Mike for a plane ride.

THE ARRIVAL OF ONE HUNDRED VETERANS OF THE BATTLE OF GUADALCANAL INTO Los Angeles on August 25 caught the attention of a reporter for the
Seahorse
, a publication of the navy's Small Craft Training Center. Interviewing the marines brought the reporter to Manila John. "To
Seahorse
interviewers, Sergeant Basilone was courteous, although a trifle flustered at all the attention. He is the sort one finds in thousands of high schools across the country--husky, friendly, good company."
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The reporter asked to see his citation for the Medal of Honor, which Manila produced. During the interview, John realized he had not read the citation, so he did so for the first time.
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When asked about "the Jap as a fighting man," he replied, "they're stocky, wiry fighters and they fight for keeps."

Once he got through the
Seahorse
interview and the Marine Corps processing system, John immediately sent his mother a telegram. It was one sentence: "Please wire 50 dollars immediately."
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The money helped him visit Hollywood the next night. As he walked into the Jade, he saw a girl with flowers in her hair walking out and talked her into staying a while longer. Dorothy worked in Long Beach and they had a fun night.
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The next morning, he left for a marine base outside of San Diego called Camp Elliott.
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The officer he met when he reached Camp Elliott may have mentioned that most every day for the past week the Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C., had telegrammed, asking for information about his arrival.
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In a lucky coincidence, he found his younger brother George stationed at Elliott as well. George served with the 4th Marine Division. The two brothers spent two days palling around together.
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George knew a lot more about what awaited John and could give his older brother, "Bass," the scoop. Reporters had interviewed all the members of his family, his friends, and his former employers and written articles about him. The leaders of Raritan had gotten together to hold Basilone Day. The county judge, head of the organizing committee, promised a $5,000 bond for John and "a roaring welcome--loud enough to echo in Tokyo."
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According to George, "the town is too small to hold the welcome for you, so they are planning to have it in Duke's Park."
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Duke's Park meant the grounds of the vast estate of the heiress Doris Duke. All of Raritan, Somerville, and the surrounding area wanted to celebrate their hometown hero, whose Medal of Honor "rated a salute from all officers, including General MacArthur."
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On the thirtieth Basilone received his orders. He was to be transferred "immediately by air" to the Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, for "temporary duty" with the USMC's Public Relations Division.
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The Marine Corps prohibited him "from making any statements to the Press or Radio" and directed him "to maintain proper decorum." He was given a generous per diem of $6 a day. He placed a phone call to Dorothy over in Long Beach but missed her.
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He had a plane to catch. It left that afternoon and he landed in Washington, D.C., the next morning at ten thirty a.m. A car raced him to the Navy Yard by eleven a.m. on August 31.

IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, THE WOLVES OF BOMBING TWO FLEW THEMSELVES UP THE East Coast to their next duty station, NAS Quonset Point, in Rhode Island. Located on a peninsula in Narragansett Bay near the small town of North Kingstown, Quonset Point would host Bombing Two as well as the squadrons of fighters and torpedo planes that comprised Air Group Two. Having honed their skills at the individual and squadron levels, the pilots now practiced working with the whole team even as they began to practice for their first carrier landings. The necessity of creating an air group that functioned as a team had been one of the lessons learned by the
Enterprise
staff on August 24, 1942, in the carrier battle near Guadalcanal. The first occasion for Bombing Two to fly with the other squadrons proved fun for Mike. As directed, the squadron flew in a stepped-up formation. The other squadrons did not. The air group commander, a veteran of carrier battles, came to see them after they landed. "What are you guys doing?!" he asked. Bombing Two flew stepped down from then on. Lieutenant Commander Campbell had to eat a little crow, but he did not hold it against Mike.

AFTER A MONTH OF BEING THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF OF A GUERRILLA FORCE, Shifty Shofner wanted to do more. He wanted weapons and equipment sent from Australia so that he could lead the guerrillas in attacks against the Japanese. These attacks would not defeat the enemy troops, he knew. Shofner believed the Tenth Army Group on Mindanao, however, could force the Japanese to station two divisions there to protect its hold. The Japanese would have fewer troops available elsewhere; the Filipinos would be inspired and remain allies of America. The man standing in Shifty's way was not Colonel Wendell Fertig but General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur believed that a large guerrilla raid would only provoke the Japanese into harming thousands of Filipinos, most of whom were farmers armed with machetes. MacArthur wanted them to be spies. He also wanted Fertig's men to give the Filipinos hope of eventual freedom, so MacArthur sent them lots of match-books emblazoned with his likeness and the words "I Shall Return." Austin Shofner believed that MacArthur refused to use the guerrillas because he, the general, found these men to be reminders of his cowardice. MacArthur had fled.