The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  He found the headquarters of the Twenty-seventh Regiment housed in a wooden-frame two-story building about ten miles from the front gate.10 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.11 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.12 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.13 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.14 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."15

  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 1942.16 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."17

  The long wooden barracks, a few hundred yards from another just like it, had been painted a dull cream color. In the center of the long side were two large double doors. Inside, a stairwell divided the two-storied building into four large sections. Each platoon had one quarter. After opening the door to one of these, John went through a short hallway. The left-hand side had small rooms for the platoon's NCOs; they got some privacy. The heads and showers took up the right side. Farther along, the hallway entered a large open room with metal double-decker bunks running down each side. Each bunk had two wooden footlockers, one in front and one in the back aisle by the wall. A row of lightbulbs ran down the center aisle. Most of the light came through the windows. The room held enough bunks for an entire platoon, but John found just two men there, sleeping. One marine jumped to attention, obviously freshly minted. The other moved more slowly, evidently hungover.

  "I'm John Basilone." The announcement had no effect on the drunk, but the young one looked like he might faint. "I'm going to be in B Company and I'm going to be in machine guns. I'm going to be the machine- gun instructor." His manner was calm and easy, even friendly. He asked for their names and ranks.18 With obvious glee the young private said, "I'm in B Company, too."19 It was clear that neither of his charges had received any orders or knew what was going on.

  "How long have you been here?"

  "Three days."

  "Don't worry. Other Marines will be arriving in a few days. We're forming the 5th Marine Division, best one in the Corps."20 John went off to find a rack in the sergeants' area. The next morning, he marched his two-man company down to the mess hall, had chow, and marched them back. At the door of the barracks, he said, "I want this whole place squared away when I get back." His two marines went to work, mopping the wooden deck with pine oil and washing cobwebs from the windows. There was plenty for them to do. As for himself, John set about getting his skipper to approve a loan from the USMC. He was broke.

  John wrote his parents. He was waiting to be assigned to an outfit, but "I know I will be in a machine gun co. again which I want to be." His brother George, with the 4th Division, had shipped out two days before he arrived. He liked being out in the country." The days here is hot, but the nights are cold."21 The nights grew quiet, so "one thing you can get plenty of sleep." He included a request as a postscript. "Mom you know some of those letters I got home will you look through them and see if you can find some that girls had writen me from Calif and send them to me. Love and kisses to all. Love always, Johnny."22

  THE SECOND DAY OF HIKING THE TRAIL AROUND CAPE GLOUCESTER TOOK LESS time because the 2/1 only had three miles to hike. The commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, General Rupertus, passed the column, accompanied by General Kreuger, a top army general. The brass elicited about as much comment by the marines slogging through the mud as the 2/1 itself received when it arrived at the division's perimeter. Sid's How Company set up camp in a muddy open area pockmarked with shell craters. The jagged stumps of the forest that had once stood there littered the land. Their personal gear, including their hammocks, had been brought around by ship. As men began to remove theirs from the pile, it turned out that about a quarter of them were missing. The main news from the marines around them concerned the Seventh Marines. Several of them had been found beheaded earlier that day.

  The next morning the 2/1 received supplies from the PX: cigarettes, candy, and toilet articles, along with the news they were headed for the fighting up at Hill 660. They heard the company they would soon relieve, K Company, "has only 61 men left, no officers, but they killed over 200 Japs." As they thought about what awaited them, Hill 660 received a violent storm of artillery shells. The walk up to the hill the next day found them floundering through knee-deep mud. It got worse. How Company waded into the aftermath of the violent battle for a portion of Hill 660. "We are at the don't care position now, the very air is putrid from rotting human flesh. It is theirs and ours, several foxholes are filled with dead, equipment lying everywhere." They found places amid the silent misery to set up their guns and their bivouac.

  The silence did not last. As usual, the Japanese waited until the middle of the night to attack. The U.S. artillery exploded so much ordnance on the crest in three and one-half hours that men in How Company wondered if "the elevation of 660 was knocked down 100 feet." Sid's mortar platoon waited it out, swatting mosquitoes. The rain and the shelling continued steadily for the next two days. The enemy counterattacks seemed like proof of his desperation. The IJA units had been cut off. The constant thunder of the Marine Corps' big guns assured the men on Hill 660 that nothing was going to be alive on the other side.

  Without an active role in the battle, though, the men got bored. Sid and W.O. sloshed their way five hundred yards down a trail and found the remains of "a Jap hospital tent about 10 by 20, abandoned, dead Jap soldiers in uniform on canvas stretchers in line on the deck . . . all reduced to skeletons, no odor except for the strange odor like Colgate tooth powder." A folding table held medical equipment of all types and Sid examined glass syringes, ampoules, and a "beautiful binocular microscope." He looked back at the ground. "All of the dead Japs still had on wrapped leggings and uniforms." The hunt for souvenirs gathered speed in the following days. Some marines began digging up graves after they found out the cadavers held some of the best trophies. It took longer--the stench made them stop and puke before they could dig some more, then puke again, then dig deeper.

  A major in battalion HQ put a stop to the forays to the enemy's former bivouacs, storage sites, and hospital. No one could leave the area without the major's permission. The boredom increased. Scuttlebutt from a well-placed source said they would return to Melbourne, but did not say when. The mess served real pot roast for dinner the night before the sun came out--not just a glint, but strong and clear--for the first time in a month. On January 21, the men rushed to set their clothing and blankets out to dry in the hot sun. The beautiful and welcome day ended with an air raid at eight p.m. The AA guns of the Eleventh Marines sent up cons
tellations of red bursts in the dark sky and Washing Machine Charlie departed.

  Around midnight, Sid took his turn at the guard with his friend Les. They sat in the darkness next to the phone for their platoon "and fed the mosquitoes." The telephone rang. Battalion HQ informed them that "we have night fighters in the air, and if there was a condition red (air raid alert) they would call and let us know." After a time, Les and Sid heard the "drone of aircraft overhead" and they both observed "that it really did sound like Washing Machine Charlie." They waited for the phone to ring. Charlie flew right at them and dropped three bombs "almost in our pocket." The thunder of the AA guns followed quickly. Unfazed, Charlie and his friends motored over the area and scattered more shells around the marines' area. The men of How Company cursed as they ran from their hammocks to their holes.

  At the mortar platoon's roll call the next morning, Lieutenant Benson informed Sid and Les that they "were on permanent mess duty for ever and ever." Attempts to explain gained them nothing. Benny refused to hear them. Everyone knew Benny was going to punish them because of the damage to his precious hammock caused by him ripping it open when the bombs went off. They also knew that the severity of the punishment came from the desire of Benson and his boss, Lieutenant Gaze Sotak, to pay Sid back for an incident that had occurred months ago. Back in Australia, Lieutenant Sotak had wanted to use Sid as a witness in a court-martial of Sid's friend Whitfield. In a small town outside Melbourne, Sotak had given Whitfield a "mean and stupid order" and Whitfield had told Sotak where he could shove it. The lieutenant took one look at Whitfield's massive frame and decided to get him for insubordination. When pressed to bear witness, Private First Class Sidney Phillips had said his "hearing was bad but if Whitfield would repeat it I would listen closely this time."

  Officers almost always win. Lieutenant Gaze Sotak had the last laugh as Sid and Les grabbed their gear and set off for the bivouac of the battalion mess men about two hundred yards away. The mess men gave them the lowliest job, that of "pot walloping." They stood in the creek near the kitchen and scrubbed the large pots with rags and sand and small stones. "It really wasn't hard work," Sid observed. "Japs were no longer a problem." In the chow line they might hear the latest dope: how the Fifth Marines had met resistance up the coast; that the Seventh Marines "has a promise to be home by Father's Day"; or that the "japs landed a reinforced regiment last night" and were massing along the 2/1's line. None of that seemed to matter too much to a pot walloper.

  At the end of January, the 2/1 moved up to the top of Hill 660, where the Fifth Marines and the Seventh Marines had fought great battles. While the rest of How Company surveyed the devastation, Sid and Les found themselves setting up camp near another creek. The two Cinderellas realized too late that all the best trees for swinging their hammocks had been taken. They had to tie their hammocks to trees farther up the ridge. The next night a storm blew in and grew in intensity until the rain poured like a waterfall. The flowing water washed the earth from the roots of the trees and the wind pushed them over.

  Sid lay nude in his hammock, wrapped in his wool blanket, hoping for the best. In the morning, he unzipped and put on his sopping clothes. He and Les Clark looked down to the battalion mess and "dissolved into fits of laughter." The cooks' "hammocks were shreds, their clothes were gone, and their weapons were gone. The mess tent, stoves, pits and cases of food were gone, but Clark and I were high and safe and crying in delight." The creek, swollen into a powerful river by the torrent, had swept it all away. When the water had risen to the level of the cooks' hammocks, they had had to abandon their warm, dry beds and climb naked into the trees, waiting for morning and help. Sid and Les would help but, being marines, first they would enjoy a good laugh at the expense of the naked men in the trees. A lighter, normal rain began later that morning.

  WHILE RECOVERING AT HOME MAJOR SHOFNER RECEIVED A TELEGRAM ON JANUARY 27 from the Marine Corps. "Public release of your experience will be made shortly by Washington." The country would soon know of the atrocity that had killed so many men. It would have been great news had it not been for the accompanying orders. "You are not repeat not to grant press interviews without contacting your nearest Navy or Marine Corps public relations officer and care must be taken not to describe any experiences after your escape or any means whereby you escaped. . . ." Another telegram followed two days later "to include newsreels." Were these orders logical? A public release of the story should have rendered further secrecy unnecessary. Something was up.

  The telegrams would have stimulated another discussion in the Shofner household about the war in general and of U.S. POWs in particular. As the family of a POW, they had paid keen attention to the developments. Aside from Austin's letters, they had received two letters from the Marine Corps. One had advised them of his Silver Star; the other that he had been listed as Missing in Action. Aside from that, much of what they had learned about Japan's conquest of the Philippines had come from General MacArthur. His communiques of 1942 had described the heroic defense and burnished his national reputation as one of the country's outstanding generals. After the defeat, little in the way of hard news had arrived.

  Most commentators had agreed with Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, who explained that the defeat had not been the commander's fault. General MacArthur, Dewey stated, had "performed [a] miracle with inadequate supplies, inadequate air force, and inadequate ground forces."23 The editorialists could not explain what had happened in the Philippines since the surrender. In June 1943 the film studio MGM released a film entitled Bataan starring one of its leading men, Robert Taylor. This major studio release followed the shorter film Letter from Bataan, released in September 1942.24 These films had helped establish the public's perception of the loss of the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam. The U.S. military, particularly its army, had fought a gallant yet doomed fight. This understanding, produced by the filmmakers in Hollywood under the direction of the government, was intended to focus the public's energies on the war effort.

  Hollywood had not, however, been able to resolve two nagging questions: Why had there been a surrender? Were Americans less brave than the Japanese? These doubts had smoldered within the national consciousness, causing thousands of families like the Shofners no end of heartache.

  The concerns of the families of the POWs had received the full attention of their members of Congress.25 In the fall of 1943, just a month before Shofner and his friends escaped to Australia, a bill had been introduced into Congress "to provide for the promotion of certain prisoners of war."26 Since many of the soldiers in the POW camps served in the New Mexico National Guard, the senator from New Mexico had introduced the legislation to make sure any man "who is now a prisoner of war, shall be advanced one grade" in rank for every year of his captivity. The Honorable Dennis Chavez wanted justice for the men of his state and others who "through no fault of their own are now prisoners of war." Since everyone understood that "they didn't have the wherewithal with which to fight," then the POWs should be entitled to the same schedule of promotions that the "swivel chair officers" in Washington, D.C., were receiving.

  Senator Chavez's bill, watched with interest by all members of Congress, had been opposed by the War Department. In November 1943, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had sent a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs explaining that it could not provide for blanket promotions for men because it could not "distinguish between those men who, by virtue of having fought to the last, might be deserving of a reward in the form of a promotion and those who surrendered in circumstances under which they might reasonably have been expected to resist."27 Secretary Stimson was not prepared to absolve the POWs of responsibility for defeat.

  His letter had ignited controversy within the country, especially in the families of the POWs and in states like New Mexico, which had hundreds of men listed as missing in action. Armed with letters from lots of angry families, Chavez had led a growing number of congressmen willing to take on Stimson.<
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  The question about the surrender had naturally devolved into a debate over whether or not MacArthur's army had been supplied by their government with the tools to win. Chavez's group had the upper hand. No ships had been sent to aid MacArthur. Moreover, the troops had not surrendered; General Wainwright had ordered it. Stimson's War Department could not argue that its army in the Philippines had been well equipped because in hindsight it was not true. Moreover, such an argument implied American boys were cowards. Nor could Stimson blame General MacArthur. The Roosevelt administration, after extracting the general from Corregidor, had entrusted the defense of Australia and the leadership of the U.S. Army to him.

  Helping his family to appreciate MacArthur's role in the Philippines was something Austin Shofner would have undertaken with great passion. He looked forward to the moment when the nation learned the truth about Douglas MacArthur. For the Shofner family, that moment came when they received the February 7, 1944, issue of Life magazine. It carried a long story on page 25 under the headline "Prisoners of Japan: Ten Americans Who Escaped Recently from the Philippines Report on the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese in Their Prisoner of War Camps." Although it included photos of each of the ten escapees, only two of them contributed to the article. Commander Melvyn McCoy and Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Mellnik had "finally broken" the silence about the fate of America's army in the Philippines. Their story, dictated from their hospital beds, had been sent to the secretary of navy, who had forwarded it on to President Roosevelt. The publisher of Life magazine loved the scoop. "In the third year of war, censorship finally lifted the curtain on what happened at Corregidor and Bataan after the American surrender."