by Hugh Ambrose
THE MONTHS SPENT AT NAVAL AIR STATION SANTA ROSA, JUST NORTH OF SAN Francisco, had been very much like the months of training at NAS Quonset Point, Rhode Island. The naval aviators of Bombing Two gained confidence faster than competency. They referred to their Dauntlesses in disparaging terms. They expressed their concern that they were missing the war. The arrival of another award for Lieutenant Vernon Micheel could have only convinced them they were right. Mike received notice from the navy that he was entitled to wear the Presidential Unit Citation for his service aboard Enterprise, which had "participated in nearly every major carrier engagement in the first year of the war."
It escaped no one's attention that none of the U.S. carriers had merited that kind of award for their actions in 1943. There had not been any major carrier engagements and the end of the year was fast approaching. A look at the map showed the United States in control of the Gilberts and the Solomon Islands. A vast ocean dotted with hundreds of islands separated them from Tokyo. One afternoon the wolves found out they were going to do their share to get there. In mid-December they packed their Dauntlesses hurriedly and flew down to Alameda. Instead of an immediate departure, they found themselves in a barracks near the wharf. Being so close to San Francisco, and not being ones to sit idle, most of the wolves raised such a drunken ruckus that the whole squadron was put on report. The warning made little impression on the ringleaders. They knew Uncle Sam had a job waiting for them. A few days before Christmas a crane began to load their airplanes on a small aircraft carrier, known as a "jeep" carrier. The pilots of Bombing Two walked aboard. "Marines stood on the dock with sub-machine guns," the ensigns noted sarcastically,
"as if to prevent dangerous criminals from a last minute escape."176 After sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, Bombing Two would spend Christmas 1943 cramped in a small space on the way to Pearl Harbor.
SHOFNER AND HIS FRIENDS MADE GOOD TIME FLYING ACROSS THE PACIFIC ON A class-three priority. They landed at Pearl Harbor on December 14. On their way to Washington, they changed planes in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Shofner walked into the airport. "Behind the Pennsylvania Central Airline counter Shofner saw . . . Kathleen King, his sweetheart."177 They had begun dating while attending the University of Tennessee. He got in line. Jack Hawkins watched as he walked up to her. She caught sight of him and fainted. The man she knew had lost some of his strength, with lines etched into deeply tanned skin. He had lost some teeth. The last word from him had come a year ago, a postcard letting his family know he was a prisoner. Here he was out of the blue and he had a plane to catch. He had been ordered not to reveal his ordeal. Shofner was allowed to share good news: after he and the others reported in to the chief of naval operations, they would receive furloughs. He would see her soon.
A car met their plane when it landed in D.C. and took them to the Willard Hotel. In the main dining room of the hotel, Major Shofner felt out of place "with a complexion more brown than that normally allowed a guest of the Willard." At least some of the guests, however, must have recognized him--if not by the DSC, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, and rows of campaign ribbons, then by his uniform and rank--as a veteran returned from the Pacific. The three marines were allowed a few days of rest. After completing some paperwork, Shofner got paid and decided to treat himself to a new pair of shoes. He had to admit to the shoe salesman that he had never heard of ration cards. He could not purchase shoes without them. It was one of those little things that made him think his transition would not be entirely easy.
The big meeting came on December 22, when the three friends went to see General Archer Vandegrift, the incoming commandant of the Marine Corps. The officers of his staff welcomed them, as did the general, until at length each escapee had a moment alone with Vandegrift. Along with the words of praise, the general offered the idea of Major Shofner working with a Hollywood studio on a film about the great story. It certainly had all the elements for a great movie. Austin came clean. One morning in Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp Number One, Shifty replied, he had decided to consider the war against the Japanese as a football game. His desire "to get back into the game, and to win . . . had kept him going." He "did not want to be cheated out of his opportunity to bring the battle to the Japanese." The general granted his request. As the meeting concluded, Vandegrift and his staff informed all three men that they would receive a two-month furlough. Even as he spoke, Vandegrift said, their families were being notified of their return. When their furloughs ended in late February, Major Shofner and Captain Dobervich would report to the Senior School of the Command Staff College of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. Captain Jack Hawkins would go out to Hollywood, California, and develop a movie about their experiences with the legendary film producer Darryl F. Zanuck.178
For the time being, however, they would have to continue to keep the secret of Cabanatuan, of the March of Death on Bataan, of their escape. The burning desire to tell their countrymen had helped sustain them. Now that they were home, they were ordered not to speak of it. Shofner was not told why, exactly, he had to keep his mouth shut. Everyone of prominence in Washington knew about it. He guessed that it had to do with President Roosevelt's decision to beat Germany first. Roosevelt wanted Americans to continue to focus on Germany, rather than on Japan. Whatever the reason, Austin Shofner's year did not end on a high note, but with frustration.
On December 23 he said good-bye to his two comrades, with whom he had endured so much, and boarded a flight for Nashville. His parents met him and drove him to Shelbyville. The thin line of blacktop made for a four-hour drive, so he had plenty of time to tell them "what he dared." Sharing the story of his war was a moment steeped in generations of family tradition. The land upon which their home stood had been granted to a Shofner for his service in the Revolutionary War. Austin's grandfather had served in the cavalry led by Nathan Bedford Forrest during the Civil War. As the car neared their home, it passed an oil truck driven by one of Austin's teammates from his high school football team. They exchanged a wave. The car pulled into the drive. Austin was home. His mother began preparing dinner. In the driveway came the oil truck, followed by the cars of more friends. The homecoming lasted late into the evening and continued the next day as aunts, uncles, cousins, and more came for a visit.
The party proved too much too soon. All that he had suffered at the hands of his captors could not be washed away by a few weeks of hot showers, nor bound up by a clean dress uniform, nor healed by his parents' warm embrace. Months as a guerrilla had helped him, but sometime that day, Christmas Eve of 1943, Austin's family watched as he "collapsed into a state of near total mental and physical exhaustion."
EVENTUALLY EUGENE SLEDGE'S PARENTS STATED THAT THEY BELIEVED HIM: HE had been kicked out of the V-12 program against his will. Now all he had to worry about was the weather, since the daily rains were hindering his platoon's rifle instruction and the final test was approaching. Then a camp doctor determined that one of the members of Platoon 984 had spinal meningitis and quarantined the lot of them for three days. Eugene passed the time reading the Mobile newspaper and writing his friends and family. "From what the papers say," he joked, "I am safer out here than in Mobile with all the ship workers. When all of us come home I really hope all those people have left town for good." The newspapers had also carried stories about the marine invasion of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. The marines had suffered more casualties in three days there than in six months on Guadalcanal, a disturbing fact that no one at the Recruit Depot could explain to him, except to say "something went radically wrong."
When the quarantine ended, Platoon 984 shot for record, meaning their scores would be entered into their personnel files and affect their respective futures. Eugene shot 300 out of a possible 340, just shy of Expert. Although disappointed to rank only Sharpshooter, he had been around long enough to know that in this category, the one prized by the Marine Corps above all others, his score placed him above the average. The platoon left the rifle range and returned to its huts
for the final week of training. The NCOs gave a lecture on the Japanese use of sabers. Sledge "thought that's absolutely got to be the most ridiculous thing. That was in the Civil War when people were running around a saber at people." The boots eased through the last few days. Sledge was allowed to take communion for the first time since his arrival and spent every last dollar he had ordering Christmas presents for his family.
A number of Christmas presents for him, carefully selected and beautifully wrapped, began to arrive as Christmas approached. Boot camp officially ended for Platoon 984 on December 24. Along with being recognized as a Sharpshooter, Eugene had scored a perfect 5 in "obedience" and "sobriety," and 4s in the other categories, like "Military Efficiency" and "Intelligence." Although he already had worn the eagle, globe, and anchor emblem, Sledge attached it to his collar not as a student but as a United States Marine. He had been promoted to Private First Class. He would depart for Camp Elliott, a training base nearby, on Christmas Day.
IN MID-DECEMBER, SID PHILLIPS'S COMPANY HAD THE CHANCE TO REVIEW THEIR next assignment while studying a physical, three- dimensional map of the island of New Britain. The big enemy base of Rabaul sat on one end of the long thin scythe of an island. Reports of the slow devastation of Rabaul by U.S. planes had been reaching them for two months. The 1st Marine Division would storm ashore on the other end of New Britain, on Cape Gloucester, near New Guinea. The advance had already begun. In the course of the past two weeks, his division had leapfrogged up the northern coast of New Guinea. Each stop had involved unloading the ship, making camp, breaking camp, and reloading. As they neared the point of New Guinea that almost touched Cape Gloucester, the air raid alerts were no longer false alarms. Enemy bombers appeared overhead on occasion.
As December came to a close, Sid's 2nd Battalion, First Marines, learned that not all of the division would go ashore at Cape Gloucester. Their battalion, reinforced with some supporting units to form a landing team (LT- 21), would seize a beachhead near the village of Tauali, eight miles from the main invasion site. The 2/1 would block one of the island's main trails and thereby prevent the enemy from either resupplying its forces at the main beachhead or withdrawing from that position. 179 One last leapfrog brought them and the rest of the First Marines to Finschhafen; the next one would take them into combat. Not so long ago, Finschhafen had been in the enemy's hands. The site of the battle interested Sid and Deacon because it was still littered with weapons, ordnance, and equipment. Through the port came battered ships and wounded men on their way to rear areas.
On December 23, the NCOs ordered the #4 gun squad to turn in all of their khaki uniforms, all excess clothes, and all personal effects they wished to save. Amid the equipment they were authorized to take with them were their new jungle hammocks. Sid liked his hammock. A waterproof tarp and a mosquito net covered the hammock's sleeping area. At last the U.S. military had figured out how to provide its troops with a convenient means of escaping the wet and muddy ground. Before Christmas service that evening, they learned that Cape Gloucester had been bombed by one hundred Liberators, the four-engine bombers of the army air corps.
Christmas Eve found the 2/1 in a flurry of action as they made final preparations. Each man received ammunition, salt pills, Halazone tablets (for water purification), Atabrine, and some of the army's good K rations. Christmas packages from the Red Cross were also distributed. "Headquarters Company," Deacon observed of the distribution, "got the best as usual." In the evening, Lieutenant Colonel James Masters, Sr., gave his battalion landing team a talk. Masters had just come over from the States, so he was green. The word was he had lost a brother at Wake Island. Masters ordered his men to "kill the bastards whenever we could." He reminded Sidney Phillips of his father. "I liked the man immediately; he hated the Japanese just like the rest of us." One of Sid's friends took to calling their battalion "Masters's Bastards."
The air raid alert went off a few times that night. It sounded again at four a.m., a half hour before reveille sounded on Christmas Day. After chow, they set about policing up their camp. The NCOs inspected their packs. How Company walked up the gangways of LCI 30 at two twenty p.m. Unlike the LCT with which they had trained, the LCI looked like a regular ship, although on either side of its bow a set of stairs could be lowered to water level. Sid's ship steamed out of port at three p.m. bound for New Britain, accompanied by the four other LCIs, twelve LCTs, and fourteen LCMs carrying the marines and equipment of LT- 21. Two destroyers escorted the convoy, which used the cover of darkness to cross the Dampier Straits.
THE PRESSURE HAD BEEN BUILDING INSIDE OF JOHN BASILONE FOR SOME TIME. AS the date approached for his return to duty, December 26, the discussion became pointed. His family and friends could see his discomfort with the situation as it existed. They had heard he had turned down an offer to be promoted to second lieutenant. None of them understood his unease. His future looked so bright. The $5,000 war bond meant that he could afford to set himself up properly with a fine home and a car. As for the war, he had done his part. It was "somebody else's turn."180 John should accept a cushy job, enjoy his hard-won success, and be near his family.
All of it made perfect sense to everyone except John. He was thinking of settling down with the right girl and even of starting a family eventually. However, he had had a glimpse of the life that awaited him at Marine Corps Headquarters. It involved sitting behind a desk and filing reports. John had dropped out of the eighth grade for a reason. Although the Marine Corps knew his weakness in administrative work, it seemed willing to ignore it.181 Providing ceremonial security details for high-ranking officers and special events meant observing protocols and strict military decorum. Neatness and military bearing had never been John's strong suits; in D.C. they were inescapable. Outside the buildings, officers saluted when they recognized him, as a mark of respect for the thin blue ribbon bar with white stars that hung above all the other medals on his Class A uniform. In Raritan, Manila John was a famous hero and a credit to the Italian community. The John Basilone Day Committee wanted to raise money to build the John Basilone Public Library. John, however, regarded himself as a "professional marine." He wanted to get back to the life that made sense to him.
He could not put all that into words. Just before Christmas, he told his mother he was going to ask to be reassigned. "I don't want to go to Washington, but I have to go for two days to tell them."182 He did not want a desk job. His older brothers, Carlo and Angelo, tried to talk him out of it. "Johnny, don't go back. You did enough. Why go back?" Angelo asked.183 John had been offered a job as a machine- gun instructor as well. He was good at that and it was safe. John obviously viewed the job of instructor as meaning more of the same: being on call whenever the Treasury Department or the Marine Corps needed a hero. He told his family he was "fed up with being an exhibition piece."184 For all of those who were so passionate about the Medal of Honor and what it meant, he offered to give it to the parade committee for display at the local library if they thought it would help.185 The idea would have seemed almost sacrilegious to his family.
The decision to return to a line company had come hard--not because he did not know what he wanted, but because of the expectations of others. Sergeant John Basilone left Raritan the day after Christmas, a Sunday. As soon as he could that next week, he went to Lieutenant General Vandegrift. Vandegrift, also a holder of the Medal of Honor for his service on Guadalcanal, always tried to make time for the men who had stood with him on the Canal. He was pleased to hear John say, "There is still a big job to be done over there and I want to be in at the finish."186 General Vandegrift promised him he "would be among the first Marines to land in Tokyo." 187
ACT IV
"HAZE GRAY AND UNDERWAY "
December 1943 - June 1945
MOST OF 1943 HAD PASSED IN A SLOW, GRINDING WARFARE CONDUCTED BY America and her allies along the periphery of the Japanese empire. Less noticeable, the enemy had struggled to make up its losses in weapons and men. As the Imperial Navy shrank, t
he U.S. Navy experienced an unprecedented expansion. The war entered a new phase in late 1943 because Americans in factories, laboratories, and training camps had spent the last two years producing a vast arsenal of military weapons and equipment, as well as men and women trained to use them. The arrival of this awesome power fueled two separate drives aimed at Tokyo: one led by General Douglas MacArthur through the South Pacific; the other by Admiral Chester Nimitz through the central Pacific. The onslaught reduced the Empire of Japan to one set of military tactics.
THE PASSWORD FOR DECEMBER 26, D-DAY ON CAPE GLOUCESTER, WAS "GUADALCANAL." Just after five a.m. the mortar platoon watched a long stream of bombers off to their left and assumed they were bombing the main invasion beaches. The two destroyers nearby began firing their five-inch guns at the beach at seven thirty. Sid heard a friend beg Uncle Sam "not to be too thrifty" and fire more rounds, damn the expense. The shelling, however, halted after fifteen minutes and a squadron of fifteen medium bombers bombed and strafed the beach.1 The bombers' fighter escort shot down eight enemy airplanes. The 2/1 landed at 8:05 a.m. against no opposition. Sid walked down the portside stairs and through knee- deep water to shore. The word was "the japs fled leaving everything." Abandoned packs, rifles, ammunition, and supplies indicated the enemy had occupied the area just prior to the morning's assault. The enemy's departure made more and more sense as the marines discovered the level of destruction wrought by the bombardment. All hands turned to the work of setting up the perimeter, unloading the ships, and getting their camp organized. Inexplicably, no chow had been unloaded for lunch.