The Pacific (45 page)

New Year's Day marked his first liberty since boot camp. He considered traveling into Los Angeles. Every man he spoke to, though, planned to go there "after women and whisky." He chose to visit the base library and write his parents to tell them he "was lucky to get in the best branch of the Corps. That is 60mm mortars. It is about the safest thing next to a desk job." That last observation was surely intended to assuage the concerns of his mother, to whom he also promised to be safe and to try to make corporal. He asked her to please send him his dress blue uniform, including for her benefit a detailed list of the items and packing instructions.

After ten days of training to be light artillery support for the infantry, E Company got up at five thirty a.m. and prepared to join the battalion for its first amphibious training exercise. Carrying the full complement of personal gear--pack, helmet, canteen, and M1--they boarded trucks for the twenty- mile ride to the shore of San Diego Bay. To give their training more authenticity, the wharves had been draped with cargo nets. The marines put on their life belts and climbed down the nets into Higgins boats.

Eugene's boat circled out in the bay for half an hour. He recognized several species of birds. At last the flotilla of small amphibious craft motored west through the dozens of large ships at anchor. Gene counted four enormous aircraft carriers as his boat went around North Island and out into the Pacific Ocean. The flotilla continued west for about a mile, where the powerful ocean swells took hold of the same landing craft, before turning back toward the coast. Another delay, inexplicable as always, began. Sledge noted a number of marines looking decidedly green around the gills.

The command boat flashed the signal, and the waves of boats roared toward North Island. Sledge's lieutenant ordered his three squads of eleven men to get below the gunwales. At the breakers, they hit a sandbar. The coxswain waited for the next wave to lift his boat; then he gunned the engine and got them close to the beach. Racing down the ramp, Eugene almost tripped on the man in front of him, who had sprawled into the knee-deep surf. He caught himself, however, and raced onto shore.

The marines of Easy Company threw themselves on the ground and awaited orders. After a few minutes, an officer came up and congratulated them. He pointed down the road and said, "Go get your chow." Leaving their rifles stacked, they walked over and formed a line for sandwiches and coffee. Hours passed. Sledge dried his dungarees as best he could, then went to examine a Japanese landing craft. It had several bullet holes in it. Compared to the Higgins boat, the enemy's landing craft appeared clumsy. An LCM (a larger version of the Higgins boat made for carrying a tank) arrived and E Company climbed aboard for the ride home. In describing it to his parents, he wrote, "We really learned a lot & feel pretty 'salty' now. Next time we will probably take our mortars with us."

The training satisfied Private First Class Sledge. He liked the 60mm mortar, although when another chance came up to become a tanker, he ran to sign up. His blues arrived, carefully tailored, just in time to wear them to a concert by the philharmonic orchestra.

The arrival of a battalion of paratroopers caught his interest. The paratroops had fought on Bougainville and were only too happy to tell the new marines all about jungle fighting. They were tough, hardened veterans who spoke of banzai charges in disparaging terms. Sledge found their opinion of MacArthur's soldiers not much higher. In the course of a story, one trooper remarked that "army discipline was pretty much a joke." The paratroopers also happily parted with their specialized knives and jump boots in exchange for pairs of nice leather shoes and other civilian accoutrement--the veterans had a month's furlough coming to them. Eugene traded for the jump boots. As he came to know Camp Elliott he also sought out other men from Mobile. One of them told him tales of flying in a Dauntless as the tail gunner in the Solomon Islands. Each bit of news about his new profession he carefully gathered, weighed, and remembered. Excelling in the Marine Corps meant learning from the "old salts," and Gene strove to excel.

BOMBING TWO'S SHIP HAD DOCKED AT PEARL HARBOR, THE NEXUS OF THE CARRIER war. Cranes unloaded their planes and mechanics prepared them for flight. As soon as was possible, they flew east to NAS Hilo, a naval air station recently carved out of the dense tropical rain forest and the hard black volcanic rock lining the coast of Hawaii. A brass band tried mightily to play "Aloha" as a welcome, on behalf of the citizens of the small town of the same name. From the windows of their quarters, they could see the ocean in one direction and two great volcanic mountains (Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea) in the other. Micheel liked the small town, although it was quiet. Many of Hilo's citizens were of Japanese descent and not all of them spoke English. The pilots in his squadron would have preferred to be closer to the bright lights of Honolulu than on "the big island" of Hawaii. Their New Year's Eve party had not been worthy of note. Still, they admitted they had moved to paradise.

Their training regimen resumed in January. No one knew how long it would last. When their air group's fighter squadron arrived at Hilo, they saw that as a good sign. Given the navy's emphasis on the air group as a team, instead of a collection of squadrons, the assembly of Air Group Two meant that someday soon an empty aircraft carrier would show up. The skipper, aided by veterans like Mike and Buell, strove to make this training pay off. The bombing skills of their squadron had not become so sharp that they could avoid the occasional miss. During one exercise on the far side of the island, they practiced supporting ground troops near the marine base called Camp Tarawa. One of their practice bombs, which emitted only smoke, "was noticed fumigating the friendly marine camp."
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Navigation exercises required a long flight to be effective because the two volcanoes near Hilo stood nearly fourteen thousand feet and were visible for fifty miles.

Along with stressing the mathematics of navigation, Lieutenant Micheel emphasized fuel conservation to the pilots in his wing. Their survival would depend upon their ability to do more than simply select the "auto-lean" setting on their fuel mixture. A good pilot experimented with his machine, sliding the control to a dash near "idle cut-off."
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Leaning out the fuel mixture saved gasoline, but it also increased the cylinder head temperature. The RPMs would drop off as well. The pilot had to compensate for these, had to make wise choices about speed and altitude, had to dial in the proper trim. Knowing how far to push it and when, and why--these questions required the judgment that experience alone could produce. Bombing Two had had ample time to gain that experience, unlike Scouting Six's Ensign John Lough and so many others who had flown at Midway.

Lieutenant Micheel never mentioned Lough in his instruction. It was not his style. Perhaps he knew better. The pilots of Bombing Two had the prerequisite for success, confidence, in abundance. The wolves loved to fly and they loved being pilots. Their big joke was about life in their boring little town. "Culture raised its shiny dome in Hilo; it had to." On their off days they acted like tourists, visiting sites of Hawaiian culture or taking scenic drives in rented cars. They scouted many locations like the trained navigators they were. It took a few weeks, but the wolves finally threw themselves a "Squadron Party" at the Hilo Country Club. " The orchestra was small but," one wolf reported, "the drinks were heavy."
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Many desirable young ladies attended, new friendships were made, and "culture passed away just as quickly as it had unexpectedly arrived."
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PATROLS FROM MASTERS'S BASTARDS CONTINUED TO ENCOUNTER SMALL ENEMY forces out in the jungle of Cape Gloucester. They found enemy troops sitting on logs and eating coconuts, found them sleeping with no one standing sentry. One patrol killed a column of IJA soldiers who had been marching on the trail without a man on point. Another found equipment stashes that included USMC items taken from the Philippines. Although Washing Machine Charlie often threatened harm at night, rarely did the air raid alert end with bombs being dropped. The marines on Cape Gloucester began to win handily in early January. The rough seas made resupply by ship difficult, though. On the morning of January 3, Colonel Masters had B-17s air-drop crates of mortar ammunition and some other critical supplies inside the perimeter.

One Japanese officer had come to their lines carrying a "flag of truce" and surrendered.
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Every veteran of the Canal, though, knew this was an isolated occurrence and remained on the alert for the next onslaught. Enemy artillery ranged in on LT-21's perimeter on a few occasions. Much of it landed in the surf behind them. The OP called the 81mm mortar platoon to provide "counter-battery fire," to destroy the enemy artillery. They set the azimuth and range and fired a few white phosphorus rounds. The OP called in a correction and the whole battery of 81mms cut loose with a concentration of forty rounds from each of the #4 guns. The enemy battery fell silent only for a short time. At least when it resumed, the aim was still lousy. A rumor went around that the Japanese officer who had surrendered had offered to bring in five hundred more men and Colonel Masters had turned him down.

On the fifth, a Wednesday, word came to stand by: enemy troops had snuck inside the perimeter. "No shooting tonight," ordered Colonel Masters. "Get a knife or a bayonet and slit the yellow bastard's throat, draw blood." Nothing more came of the alarm, though, except a lot of lost sleep.

The occasional skirmishes with small bands of the enemy did not warrant the continued presence of Masters's Bastards astride the trail near Tauali. A combat force went north along the trail to the village of Sag Sag, said to be an enemy stronghold. The captain leading it decided the natives there were cooperating with the Japanese and he ordered the village burned. Pushing north, his patrol met another coming south, sent from its regiment. The trail between them was clear. LT-21 had completed its mission and would rejoin the 1st Division. Amphibious craft of various types began arriving offshore. The high seas delayed their beaching; eventually they came in and working parties began to load the gear. Although enemy planes from Rabaul still caused air raids occasionally, the word was that the U.S. fleet had "pulled into Rabaul Harbor in plain daylight and shelled them. That place must be deserted by now."

While their equipment went by ship, the men of LT-21 were ordered to march to the division's perimeter, where they would lose their support units and become the 2/1 again. Hiking along the thin trail leading north through the inferno proved a two-day ordeal. "Slipping and cursing" his way along "in single file carrying a full pack and a 46 pound mortar bipod," Sid came face-to-face with Colonel Masters. The colonel recognized Private First Class Sidney Phillips from the flashlight incident. "Phillips, are you tired?"

"No, sir."

"You look tired to me." Masters called a ten- minute break and stunned Sid. "He calls a ten-minute break because one of his privates looks tired?" Sid had no sooner dropped his gear and sat down than someone called out, "Come look." He walked less than twenty yards to a camouflaged seaplane hangar. Approaching it "gave me the creeps and I slipped a round in the chamber of my carbine." Others followed suit. Inside, they found a dock, drums of gasoline, a propeller, and other equipment. Even without the floatplane at the dock, "we knew we had found one of Washing Machine Charlie's home ports." It proved one of the few moments of relief from the hard slog north.

THE TRANSFER CAME THROUGH ON JANUARY 13. JOHN DEPARTED D.C. WITH JUST $7 left in his account as he took a train west to join his new outfit, the Twenty-seventh Infantry Regiment of the 5th Marine Division. He stepped off in Oceanside, a small town just north of San Diego. Accustomed to making his way around, he caught a ride to Camp Pendleton. No central reception area crowded the main gate. It was a few miles before he saw any buildings at all. The road wound through the arid countryside, passing tent cities, regimental and battalion headquarters, and row after row of war machinery. The units of the division were housed in a number of camps spread out over the two hundred square miles.
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He found the headquarters of the Twenty-seventh Regiment housed in a wooden-frame two-story building about ten miles from the front gate.
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The regimental staff was consumed with organizing itself and its new division, the 5th. Few of the officers and men had arrived. Those who had arrived had their hands full building a division from the top down.
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The 5th Marine Division was just days away from becoming officially activated. The 4th Marine Division had departed a few days ago for its first overseas deployment. Sergeant Basilone reported in to the assistant to the adjutant.

With a division being built from scratch as quickly as possible, a sergeant with experience could have found any number of billets for himself. John made sure to ask to be assigned to a machine-gun platoon.
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The assistant went to check with the adjutant, who came out of his office to say hello. He readily assented to John's request, and pretty soon John was headed down the road to the 1st Battalion. The battalion staff officers weren't quite sure what to make of John. The CO, Lieutenant Colonel Justin Duryea, saw a marine walking around with "only half a uniform on" and asked his sergeant, "Who is he?" When told his name and the medal he held, Duryea cracked that they all go over and bow to their hero.
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John again made it clear that he had not come all this way to do paperwork, and he was assigned to Baker Company's machine-gun platoon for the time being.
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Sometime soon after his arrival, John caught sight of "the long line of machine guns parked in the aisle" and was thrilled to be home. "I felt like kissing the heavies on their water jackets."
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Baker Company's skipper, Captain Wilfred S. Le Francois, had a lot of paperwork and few men. He had earned his bars, though, serving with the 2nd Raider Battalion on the Makin Island Raid back in 1942.
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Directing John to Baker Company's quarters, he would have added that the Twenty-seventh Regiment was lucky to be quartered in wooden barracks. The Twenty-eighth Marines, also in the 5th Division, had been assigned tents in an area called Las Pulgas, which was Spanish for "the Fleas."
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