The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  Part of the discrepancy in ground troops would be made up by the Fifth Fleet. The navy's carrier-based aircraft had struck Peleliu hard already and would soon return. Days before the invasion, the fleet's great battlewagons would circle the tiny island. Salvos from dozens of five-inch, twelve-inch, and sixteen-inch guns--the latter far larger and more destructive than land-based artillery--would unleash a firestorm of unheard-of proportions. Nothing would survive. The Japanese empire had no navy with which to impede, much less threaten, the U.S. fleet, although the admirals certainly looked forward to the next sortie by the remaining Japanese carriers so as to complete the job left unfinished near Saipan. Men had taken to calling the carrier battle near Saipan "the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" because scores of Japanese pilots had been killed. Peleliu, well south of the Marianas, was not expected to become the setting for the final carrier battle. The Japanese, however, had to stand and fight sometime, somewhere.

  The Japanese on Peleliu who survived the Fifth Fleet's shellacking would be overwhelmed by speed. At 4.5 mph, the waterborne speed of an amtrac did not seem like much. The staff estimated the trip from the reef to the beach would take fifteen minutes. Enough LVTs had been promised, though, to create a giant conveyor belt. At H hour, amtracs with the 37mm antitank guns would crawl ashore and drive inland to blow up bunkers. One minute later the first wave of marine riflemen would land, with more waves landing every five minutes. In twenty minutes, five battalions of forty- five hundred men would be on their assigned beaches. Immediate fire support would come from the division's tanks, whose flotation devices enabled them to make the trip from the reef to shore, as well as from the 75mm pack howitzers loaded in some of the amtracs. The regimental weapons companies would begin landing five minutes later, their larger 105mm howitzers brought in by "ducks" (floating trucks officially designated DUKWs) fitted with a mechanical hoist. In the meantime, the empty amtracs would drive back out to the reef, pick up more troops, and return. Eighty-five minutes after H hour, three more infantry battalions would be ashore. Eight thousand combat marines would sweep across Peleliu as the first of the division's seventeen thousand support troops landed to provide the supplies and logistics to sustain the drive.

  Colonel Shofner, who had fought the enemy with a few rusty World War I Enfield rifles as a guerrilla on Mindanao, must have been amazed by the sophistication of the technologies and organizations that made such offensive might possible. Even better, he could control some of it himself. Shofner would come ashore with his own team from JASCO ( Joint Assault Signal Company). It consisted of a naval gunfire officer, an aviation liaison officer, and a shore party officer, as well as their assistants and communications equipment. "Once ashore," the assault plan stated, "the Battalion Commander had only to turn to an officer at his side and heavy guns firing shells up to 16 inch or planes capable bombing, strafing, or launching rockets were at his disposal."176 Now that was fire support.

  Harris picked Shofner's 3/5 to land at H hour, next to the 1/5. The 2/5 would land behind them. The Fifth would drive across the great flat plain of Peleliu, some of it jungle and some of it the airfield. By reaching the far shore, the Fifth Marines would cut the defenders in half and be in possession of most of the airfield. On Shofner's right, battalions of the Seventh Marines would assault the rocky little southern tip of the island. Once they secured the tip, the Seventh would turn north, cross through the Fifth's area, and help Chesty Puller's First Marines. The First Regiment, because it would come across Peleliu's northern beaches, faced the challenge of seizing the high ground north of the airfield as well as the enemy's main troop concentration. The invasion barrage by the navy's battlewagons would engage the enemy bunkers on the ridge while the marines stormed ashore. Four hours after landing, the 155mm artillery of the Eleventh Marine Regiment would have come ashore behind the Fifth and stood ready to mass fire on any hard points in front of the First or the Fifth.

  Shifty's battalion's landing on Orange Beach Two would be led by Item and King companies, with Love Company following. His company commanders received maps of their specific areas with scales of 1 to 5,000 and 1 to 10,000. The rifle companies trained for their specific missions as best they could on a tiny island with too few LVTs and too few tanks. When the assault LVTs arrived, they mounted a snub-nosed 75mm howitzer, not a 37mm antitank gun as shown in the operator manuals distributed to the men who were learning to drive them.

  EUGENE SLEDGE NOTED NO SPECIAL INTENSITY OF THE TRAINING LATE IN THE summer. He did notice an additional sergeant had joined K/3/5. Sergeant "Pop" Haney had a reputation for being more than a little loony, or "Asiatic," as the saying went. Burgin called him a "crazy jap killer," because Pop Haney had earned a Silver Star on Cape Gloucester. The word was Haney had served with King Company in World War I. He kept being rotated or transferred, but whenever the shooting was about to start, Pop came back to King. With only twenty- four veterans of the Canal in his 240-man company, Captain Haldane gave Haney permission to attach again.177 The old and grizzled vet joined the young marines on their marches, mostly keeping to himself.

  Eugene kept his mind off the drudgery and boredom of training by watching for birds. The habits and mannerisms of the blue kingfishers and white cockatoos delighted him. As on New Caledonia, the cockatoos seemed to look down from the coconut trees with resentment. "I think the birds are the only ones who want the groves. I know I don't." The red parakeets left red streaks as they flew through the jungle. A marine caught one and he let Gene put it on his shoulder. The bird "climbed on my arms and head and had a big-time scratching in my hair." In the evening, Gene might relax by watching the bats leave their nests high up in the palms to hunt. Sergeant Pop Haney, meanwhile, frequently decided that he had not performed well during the day and assigned himself extra guard duty or conducted a bayonet drill solo.178 The sight of Pop disciplining himself struck everyone as weird. Pop's vigorous use of a GI brush--with bristles so stiff they'd remove skin--to scrub his body clean was painful to watch. Sledge, who had memorized many of Rudyard Kipling's poems about fighting men with his friend Sid, must have seen the resemblance Pop Haney bore to Kipling's famous character Gunga Din.

  The arrival of Pop Haney and more LVTs brought lots of scuttlebutt about the upcoming mission. As Eugene anticipated his first taste of combat, he received a newspaper clipping announcing that Lieutenant Edward Sledge had been awarded the Silver Star. Gene read the citation aloud to the men in his tent and showed the clipping's photo of Ed accepting the award. Gene knew he should be and was proud of his older brother, but the hill he felt he had to climb had become steeper.

  SID PHILLIPS HAD GIVEN UP TRYING TO CALL HOME. LONG LINES OF MARINES stood in front of the few phones at the San Diego Recruit Depot. He sent a letter saying he "was back in the U.S.A. and would be home as soon as we are processed." In early August he departed on a troop train that wound its way through New Orleans. Sid stepped off in Meridian, saying good-bye to "Benny," Lieutenant Carl Benson, who had trained the #4 gun squad and had commanded the 81mm mortar platoon. The months of pot walloping to which Benny had condemned him left no hard feelings with Sid.

  A bus took Sidney home to Mobile. He called home from the station. His family arrived soon thereafter. All of his hopes for a joyous reunion came true. "My family treated me like I had returned from the grave, and we stayed up and talked until almost to dawn." Sid found it hard to speak at first. Years of service with the Raggedy-Assed Marines, where most every other word was a cussword, forced him to concentrate on his speech to prevent something dreadful from tumbling out of his mouth. At last everyone went off to bed and he lay in his bed, in the room in which he had grown up, unable to close his eyes. He had a whole month of furlough before his war began again.

  BOMBING TWO AND ITS TASK GROUP SPENT EARLY AUGUST BACK IN THE BONIN Islands. Lieutenant Micheel and his division made the third strike on a convoy of four troop transports and their escort destroyers in the port of Chichi Jima. The target brought out the reckless streak
in them. The wolves increased their dive angles somewhat to score hits. Clouds of AA flak boiled around them as the Helldivers dropped down into the steep-sided bowl that was Chichi Jima's harbor. They scored two hits and two near misses with their five-hundred-pound bombs. The sorties continued until all of the enemy ships had been sunk. All of the squadrons of Admiral Jocko Clark's Task Group 58.1 roamed at will around the Bonins, seeking out any resistance on Iwo Jima, Haha Jima, Ototo Jima--it turned out that the Japanese word for "island" was "jima."

  By early August 1944, Task Group 58.1 owned "the Jimas," just five hundred miles from Tokyo. The men of Air Group Two decided to create the "Jocko- Jima Development Corp." They printed certificates of their initial stock offering, one for each Hornet pilot, certifying the holder of one share in a company that offered "Choice Locations of All types in Iwo, Chichi, Haha & Muko Jima."179 The corporation's president, Jocko Clark, signed the certificates and sent stock share number one to his boss, Admiral Mitscher.

  Clark took his carrier group back to Saipan where, on August 9, Admiral Mitscher came aboard the Hornet. All hands gathered on the flight deck in their dress uniforms. Mitscher presented numerous awards to the men of TG 58.1, including Navy Crosses for Admiral Jocko Clark, Lieutenant Commander Campbell, and Hal Buell. Buell had earned his for firing a bomb into an Imperial Japanese Fleet carrier in the Philippine Sea.

  WHILE MR. AND MRS. BASILONE ENJOYED THEIR HONEYMOON IN OREGON, President Roosevelt had visited Camp Pendleton to watch the Twenty-sixth Marines practice a full-scale amphibious assault on the Pacific coast. Days later, the Twenty-sixth had loaded up and shipped out, to become the floating reserve for the Third Marines' invasion of Guam. The regiment's departure, as the Basilones learned upon their return, had not noticeably increased the number of available apartments to rent in the town of Oceanside. " The superintendents and landlords all said the same thing; we're all full up."180 Lena thought John should be a bit more assertive. " Tell 'em who you are, you'll get one."

  "No," he replied, "I ain't gonna use my name to get no apartment."181 So they continued to live in separate barracks on base. Lena began the process of changing her last name in her official USMC file. John used his last name to bail a few of his marines out of jail for drinking or fighting.182 The regiment's impending departure had encouraged the marines of Charlie Company to be a little overly energetic.

  On August 11, they got word they were leaving the next day on buses for the port of San Diego. Johnny found his wife on duty, cooking for the officers' mess. "We might be shipping out," said John, "so I wanted to be with you."183 Lena's friend, who had an apartment in Oceanside, said, "Why don't you take my key and use my room tonight?" Lena accepted. John hung around for her shift to end. The phone rang. It was for John. He had to go back immediately.184 They knew this was it. He was shipping out and it would be months before he saw her again. "I'll be back," he said.

  Just after three a.m., the buses carrying two regiments of the 5th Division began rolling out the gate of Camp Pendleton and down the coast highway. As the morning wore on, the word got out. Wives and kids and friends lined the road beyond the gate, waving and cheering as hard as they could as the buses passed.185 At the docks in San Diego, long lines of marines carried their rifles, packs, and machine guns up the gangways of the troopships. John's ship, USS Baxter, departed on August 12, making its way around North Island and into the open sea. With the ship safely under way, a number of dogs appeared on deck--all mascots smuggled aboard.186 The next day they learned over the ship's public address system that they were bound for the town of Hilo, on the big island of Hawaii.

  Baxter's Higgins boats took the 1/27 into shore at Hilo a week later. No beautiful native women in grass skirts danced for them.187 They were told to wait. Word came that a polio infection had broken out. The 1st Battalion was quarantined just off the beach in a public park. So they set up their pup tents, dug slit trenches, and waited. The stores across the street, some of which had signs in Japanese, were off-limits. The quarantine order had a hard time sticking, though, when the guys ran out of cigarettes and candy. There was too much time to kill. A rumor ran around that when the marines of the 2nd Division had unloaded here after Tarawa, some of them had seen Japanese faces in the crowd. The Japanese supposedly had cheered when they saw how badly mauled the marines had been. So the marines had fired into the crowd.188

  WEEKS OF STAFF WORK AND SOME BASIC MATHEMATICS PRODUCED A DETAILED plan of assault on Peleliu. The "Shofner Group" consisted of the 3rd Battalion, Fifth Marines, totaling 38 officers and 885 enlisted men. To the 3/5 had been attached a platoon of engineers, a platoon of artillery, some pioneers (who unloaded ships), and his JASCO team (who communicated with ships and aircraft). His group also included the amtrac crews driving them to shore and the DUKW crews supporting their assault, so the total reached 1,300 men and 60 officers.189 More than 250 of them, however, drove vehicles. Half of these men expected to serve on the front line in combat.

  The combat marines of the 3/5 would come ashore in six waves. Thirteen of the amtracs with the 75mm cannon would land first. Eight LVTs carrying about 192 riflemen landed in wave two. Wave three had twelve amtracs carrying 288 fully equipped marines. Five more of the amtracs with the cannons landed on wave four, followed by twelve amtracs of wave five. The DUKWs carrying the artillery arrived as wave six. This left Shofner with two LVTs to carry ammo; one DUKW to carry the main radio; one LVT to carry part of the division staff; and one amtrac for himself and his battalion HQ. These were scheduled to arrive after the fourth wave. Shofner, under the guidance of his regimental team, also worked out the order of another six waves, by which the reserve company of his battalion (Love Company) and the other essential elements of the Fifth Regiment arrived.

  Loading all of these waves had not been worked out because the navy had not sent along detailed information about the number and type of ships. The seventeen troop transport ships for the division arrived August 10, so the staff of Transport Group Three came ashore to work with the marines. The Shofner Group would sail to Peleliu in LSTs, which also carried their LVTs. The flotilla of thirty LSTs for the division arrived on August 11. Assigning his assault teams was easy: King Company would go aboard LST 661, Item on 268, and Love and Headquarters on 271 and 276. The marine officers had come up with a creative way to bring more of their necessary cargo--ammo, spools of barbed wire, drums of drinking water--by loading them first, adding a protective layer, and driving the LVTs in on top. The navy captains rejected the idea of "under-stowing," which just added to the challenge of working out all of these details quickly.190

  Like all battalion commanders, Shofner had to fight to get what he needed aboard ship, had to find solutions to a hundred other problems, and had to keep his men on a training schedule. In late August his boss, Bucky Harris, began to worry about Shofner's agitated state.191 The stress seemed to be getting the better of Lieutenant Colonel Shofner, and the stress level only increased. The navy informed the 1st Division that, due to limited space, it could only carry thirty of the marines' forty-six tanks. Although each of his assault squads was entitled to a flamethrower, not enough of the improved M2-2 flamethrower had arrived. Once the marines at last embarked on their ships, someone discovered that the troopships had loaded improperly. The follow-up waves of the Fifth Marines and the Seventh Marines would--unless they changed--have to cross one another on the trip to shore, making it quite likely they would land on the wrong beaches. It had to be rectified. On nine ships, the marines unloaded off of one and loaded onto another. With all of the problems, though, the marines departed Pavuvu on schedule. Their ships lifted anchors on August 26 for the short trip to Guadalcanal.

  TASK FORCE 58, THE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS OF THE FIFTH FLEET, RETURNED TO anchorage in the Marshall Islands, specifically the atolls of Eniwetok and Majuro, in early August. All hands enjoyed some time off. A USO show, featuring "five real live girls," performed. Fresh food arrived and was served immediately. When the rest period ended
and Bombing Two started to prepare for the next mission, they learned that some big changes had occurred. The navy had decided to give Admirals Mitscher and Clark a rest. Their Task Force, 58, would become known as Task Force 38, as Admiral Bill Halsey took over the helm. Jocko Clark's Task Group 58.1 would become 38.1 under Admiral "Slew" McCain and his leadership team. Clark would remain aboard for a time while McCain and his staff learned the ropes. Another big change, instigated by Clark, arrived simultaneously.

  As the new version of the Helldiver, the SB2C-3, arrived at the atoll to replace the older and problematic "dash twos" of Micheel's squadron, fewer of them came aboard Hornet. Clark had had it with the Beast. If the Helldiver could only carry one five-hundred-pound bomb on the centerline rack because of technical malfunctions, the dive-bomber pilots might as well fly Hellcats, the navy's fighter aircraft. It could carry the five hundred pounds, although it lacked a bomb bay. In mid-August Bombing Two received fifteen fewer SB2C-3s and fifteen more F6F Hellcats. The latter would become a new group: the fighter- bombers.