The Pacific (74 page)

"I HAVE A LOT OF SYMPATHY FOR THE BOYS ON IWO," EUGENE WROTE HIS PARENTS on February 24, "for I have a pretty clear idea of what they are facing." He did not elaborate. Gene as always did his best to avoid writing anything that might add to their concern, without pretending that he was entirely safe. His difficulty was that the battle of Peleliu had changed him in ways that he was only beginning to understand. The expectation of going into another battle before too long, and the laws of censorship, prevented him from exploring the dominating aspect of his consciousness with the two people he trusted most. On bits of paper that he kept with his pocket Bible, he set down the basic facts of his experience--small markers to help define the wild demons of horror loose within him.

He had seen on Peleliu the bodies of marines carved into grotesque figures by enemy knives. The sight had engendered within him a consuming hatred. He became a marine with pity only for his own kind. "My comrades would fieldstrip their packs . . . and take their gold teeth," E.B. wrote, "but I never saw a Marine commit the kind of barbaric mutilation the Japanese committed if they had access to our dead."
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For now, though, his attempts to define morality in combat had to stay inside him.

Sledge's parents, careful readers, would have discerned some of their son's turmoil. A mention of having finally gained back the weight he had lost must have made them wonder what had caused him to drop it. When he wrote of the fun he had playing volleyball, which was all the rage on Pavuvu, he added, "It certainly was fun to get out and play like a bunch of kids again." When his mother told him one of his chums at home was preparing to enlist, Gene cautioned: "Tell Billy, I always thought a lot of him and that he had plenty of sense and if he has [good sense], not to join this outfit." Although some marines got easy jobs stateside, Gene predicted that "it would be just Billy's luck to get into some bulldog outfit like this." His mother must have wondered at his reply, which came even as he requested her to have seven copies printed of a photo of him with Snafu, Burgin, and the other men of the #2 gun squad.

By the middle of February 1945, the signs of an imminent departure for another battle were all there. The new men had had a few months with which to train. Gene found peace in worship. He found meaning in poetry, particularly the wrenching nihilism of the English poets who had survived the trenches of World War I. He found joy in classical music, although there was very little of it on Pavuvu and for good reason. Professional musicians had come to Pavuvu a few weeks after the division's return from Peleliu and attempted to put on a concert down at the steel pier. The marines had booed the musicians off the stage.
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A USO show came to Pavuvu soon after and wowed a packed house with pop songs and bawdy humor. Eugene Sledge knew he was different from the average "Leatherneck." When he needed to get away, he read his
Muzzleloader
magazines and admired the photos of his family, his home, and his pets.

A letter from Sid Phillips could always cheer Eugene up. In late February, Sid wrote to share good news. He had gotten through the first part of the course, at Lejeune. Eugene let his parents know that Sid "is going to get a furlough and then going to the U. of North Carolina. I sure hope he makes out alright. He will be out to the house when he gets his furlough. I really appreciate the swell way you and pop treated him on his other furlough." Gene's conversation with his parents about his future plans led him to write the polytechnic institute in northern Alabama, for a list of its course offerings, and to ask his parents what they thought of a major in forestry as a start to his career.

WITH ORDERS TO REPORT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL Hill in his pocket, Sid Phillips went home to Mobile for ten days feeling like he was the king of the world. He borrowed Dr. Sledge's extra car again and drove directly to the Merchant's Bank, downtown, "to see if that gorgeous teller was still there and not married. She was there with no ring on her finger," so he came up with a pretense to go speak with her. He introduced himself. "Oh yes," she said, "I remember." They spoke for a bit and made a date. Sid came back to the bank a few minutes before closing "and spent the time talking to the old bank guard in his fancy uniform at the door telling him war stories, some of which might have been true. Then out the door came Mary Victoria Houston, dressed in a navy blue polka dot dress and high heels with her brown curly hair bouncing." The sight of her made his head spin. They walked across the street and up the block before he realized he had no idea where he had parked the car. Panic set in. Sid mumbled his way through a fib about having moved it so many times that day and needing to look for it. Mary "cooed not to worry, that she knew where I would park and we went to the parking lot by the old jail and there the car was. When I asked her how she knew, she replied that her family always parked there when they came to town." The rest of his furlough passed quickly.

THE SMELL OF A NAVAL AIR STATION--THAT DISTINCTIVE BLEND OF SEA SPRAY and high-octane gasoline--bathed NAS Melbourne, Florida, just as it had NAS Wildwood, NAS North Island, and all the other stations where Lieutenant Vernon Micheel had lived and worked for months at a time, perfecting his craft. Late February 1945 found him pleased to be the operational instructor for fighter pilots at NAS Melbourne. The missions of a naval aviator had continued to evolve. Micheel taught classes in the use of rockets for ground support and the technique of glide bombing of targets, as well as "Advanced Combat."

Mike enjoyed his job. He flew about thirty hours a month in a Hellcat and gave some classroom instruction. The small town of Melbourne, which faced the Atlantic Ocean, was a short drive. His girlfriend, Jean Miller, continued to write him twice a week and he answered her as he could. He would not think about getting serious until the war ended. Part of this stemmed from a desire to protect Jean and himself. Part of it had to do with the navy's continued preference for "unmarried pilots" in its assignments. At twenty-seven years old, Mike wanted to advance. His prospects looked good. His commanding officer gave him an outstanding fitness report, lauding Lieutenant Micheel's leadership, abilities, and "quiet, agreeable personality." Asked for his preference, Mike requested carrier duty in the Pacific. There was still a job to do. He had heard "that the marines moved a foot at a time" when they landed on Iwo Jima and thought "we didn't knock out very many of the guns we were aiming at."

ON MARCH 7, LENA BASILONE CELEBRATED HER THIRTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY IN her bed at the base hospital. She was recovering from the bad burn on her leg suffered on February 19. Her birthday found her ready for discharge.
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Her lieutenant came up to her ward carrying a slip of paper and spoke to the doctor. The doctor walked over to her bed and told her that he wanted her to move to a private room. "You told me I could go back to the barracks today," Lena said.

"Well, just for now because I need this room." They wheeled her into another room and her lieutenant handed her the telegram. It informed her of Johnny's death and asked her not to divulge any information to the press. She screamed. The doctor gave her a shot that knocked her out. When she awoke, she had been given a ten-day furlough. The news of her husband's death, though, seemed inescapable.

THE 1ST DIVISION SAILED TO GUADALCANAL FOR FULL-SCALE PRACTICE MANEUVERS at the end of February. Practicing on the Canal felt like the start of Peleliu all over again, although this time Lieutenant Colonel Shofner commanded a company of military police instead of an assault battalion.
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His division's next target, the island of Okinawa, required it to coordinate with other divisions for the first time in the war. The Tenth Army, including several army divisions as well as two other marine divisions, would wrest from Japan's grip a large island not far from Tokyo. The several hundred thousand Okinawans living there presented new problems. These people needed to be separated--the harmless from the dangerous--and housed in safe areas and fed. For this large mission, Shofner's small MP unit was attached to the military government unit of the Tenth Army.

The military government unit (MG), as he quickly became aware, was a conglomeration of units like his from all of the participating divisions, with a small nucleus of staff trained in international law. When he met with them on Pavuvu, it became clear the MG staff had been given a mission and that they knew a lot about the "obligation of the occupying forces under international law."
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The military government specialists had not been informed where their equipment and supplies were, or how this cargo would be delivered to Okinawa. The MG unit had received supplies of placards covered in Japanese writing. The creators of these posters had cleverly left empty spaces to be filled in as needed, but for weeks the MG staff had no idea what the posters said, much less how they should be used. When the division began its practice assaults on Guadalcanal in late February, the MG staff at last found the six Japanese- language speakers it had been promised. These Nisei (Nee-say) translators were Americans whose parents had been born in Japan. The Nisei had been raised to speak Japanese. Their ability to speak to the Okinawans made the mission of governing the civilians, as opposed to simply incarcerating them, possible.
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A few of these translators, who looked Japanese but spoke like Americans, were assigned to help Shofner. Shofner also received a company of MPs from the army, which he quickly absorbed into his company. His MP unit, designed as an "A Detachment," would stay with his division as it moved across the island, establishing civilian collection points as well as collecting and interning POWs (enemy combatants). The plan called for him to turn both captured groups over to "B Detachments," for long- term care as his 1st Division displaced forward. The military government men gave the MPs a series of lectures "covering principles of military government, public safety, the law of belligerent occupation, treatment of the enemy property, and the practical problems they were likely to face."
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Any experienced officer could see, however, that the lack of a clear logistics plan jeopardized the whole military government strategy. Each U.S. infantry division had been ordered to supply the MG units with thousands of tents and hundreds of thousands of rations, while simultaneously defeating the Imperial Japanese Army.

The ships of the 1st Marine Division sailed in early March of 1945 out of the Solomon Islands. They sailed to Ulithi Atoll, the navy's new forward base, arriving on March 21. Colonel Shofner's view of the grand navy fleet changed hour by hour as hundreds of ships swung on their anchors. The most impressive sight, a line of Essex-class carriers like
Hornet
towering over the assemblage, appeared soon thereafter; it was nicknamed "Murderers Row." As Shofner contemplated his mission, he received some good news. Major General Pedro del Valle, commander of the 1st Marine Division, handed him his fitness report to sign. He had rated Shofner excellent in all categories except for "Loyalty," which was "outstanding." The general described him as "young, energetic, does a good job." Shifty was on his way back.

AT ULITHI, EUGENE SLEDGE AND HIS COMRADES WENT ASHORE TO ESCAPE THE confines of their troopship for a little bit and "enjoy some not so cold cokes and beer."
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On March 24, the carrier
Franklin
came to Ulithi. R. V. Burgin came "within thirty yards of the Franklin." It had been heavily damaged by enemy suicide planes a week earlier, when the carriers had steamed close to Japan and attacked its air bases. The condition reds that sounded most nights in the great bay of Ulithi warned the marines that enemy spy planes were keeping an eye on them.

The briefings on the battle of Okinawa were already in full swing with endless numbers of maps and photographs. King Company CO Stumpy Stanley told them about deadly snakes and warned all men not to "drink, wash or bathe in any water other than that issued by the purification outfits."
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Having had the hardest assignment on Peleliu, the First Marines would be in reserve; the Seventh and the Fifth would lead the assault. With all of the invasions taking place in the Pacific, the planning staffs had designated the invasion day as Love Day, instead of D-day, to avoid confusion. Everyone knew the beaches of Okinawa would be "heavily defended" on Love Day.
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Along with all of their talk of the preinvasion bombardment clearing their path, the briefers acknowledged that the Fifth Marines "were going to have to hit the beach here and go up ladders"; their landing zone "was supposed to be right at the base of the cliff at the base of the beach."
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Climbing a ladder meant extreme vulnerability. The job of being first up the ladder, though, fell to other companies. King Company would land in the fifth wave. It stayed aboard a troopship while those companies in the assault transferred to LSTs for the last leg of the trip.

In the several weeks since he had left Pavuvu, Eugene Sledge wrote a handful of letters. They sounded as though he had written them while lying on his bunk in a hot tent amid the coconut plantation. His insistence that war news not be sent to him from the States became rather strident. No matter what he or anyone he knew thought or said about the war, it "will end just as quickly." He requested his mother not to "ask me why they don't use certain weapons and tactics--I'm just one of the Americans fighting it & if I did know I couldn't tell you." Eugene Sledge's remarkable powers of observation had come, however, from his parents, so they might read his request for a "knitted cap" to be sent "via first class mail, if possible," as a signal of his departure from the heat of the tropics.

Mail call also found the #2 mortar squad aboard their troopship. Sergeant R. V. Burgin received "a letter from my dad, telling me that my brother . . . had been killed in France. He was killed in February, and here it was the latter part of March before I got word that he was killed." Burgin's family knew a little about Joseph's death because "the captain of the company wrote my mother and dad and told them that he was killed by artillery and died instantly." Burgin spoke to Sledge and his friends in the squad about his younger brother Joseph, just eighteen, and confessed, "I don't even know what company he was in--he had just got there, you know, he'd just been there a day or two when he got killed." It angered R.V. to think about his brother in combat as "a raw recruit" because Burgin knew that being the new guy meant Joseph "didn't have anybody."