by Hugh Ambrose
The task facing them was to cross the airfield. It looked like a long way. Burgin guessed it was over three hundred yards. At the signal, the skirmish lines of marines ran out into the open field and across the hard white coral runway. The Japanese unleashed a barrage upon them as expected. Large shells, mortars, and machine- gun bullets cut the air around them as the marines ran east for all they were worth. Much of the enemy's fire came from its positions on the northern end of the airfield, to King's left. Most of their regiment and all of the First Marines, therefore, stood between King and the guns. Love Company ran on their immediate left. Every step felt like their last. As he ran, Gene "was reciting the 23 Psalm and Snafu was right next to me and I couldn't hear what he was saying, but most of it was cussing."247 Burgin watched the white tracers flash past him until he found cover on the far side. "I don't know how we didn't all get killed--I really don't."248 No one else did either.
The thick scrub they entered slowed their progress toward the ocean, but resistance was light. They came to a wild thicket of mangrove swamp that marked the shoreline. King tied in with the Seventh Marines on their right. The Seventh had its hands full with securing the southern tip of the island. To their left, farther north along the eastern shore, Love Company tied in with them. Item Company, the other component of the 3/5, marched still farther north. King Company dug in as ordered, out of sight and away from the battle.249
With time to catch his breath and reflect, Sledge realized the last thirty-six hours had been "the defining moment in my life."250 Much of what he thought he knew--from the Civil War books he had read to the "Barrack-Room Ballads" he had memorized--had had nothing to do with the carnage, the chaos, the electric fear threatening to engulf him. Gene had watched a wounded marine die and was aghast at the waste and inhumanity. He had watched two marines pluck souvenirs from two dead Japanese and wondered whether the war would "dehumanize me." He needed to process these experiences. He felt a duty to document his battle for his family, so they would know what the future books about Peleliu left out. Eugene B. Sledge decided to write himself notes in his pocket Bible so that he would not forget the horrors he witnessed.251 "The attack across Peleliu's airfield," E. B. Sledge later wrote from those notes, "was the worst combat experience I had during the entire war."252
He had seen marines fall during his run across the airfield, even though he had tried to look straight ahead as he ran. The number of wounded went uncounted because the invasion day's tally and the fierce battle the First Marines were having up north had overwhelmed the system.ac One marine had been killed for sure, though. Private First Class Robert Oswalt, Gene's friend, had been hit in the head by a bullet or a fragment from a shell.
The big guns found King's position before dark. Burgin lay on his stomach, hugging the earth and listening to the quick swishing noises and feeling the concussions. He thought those shells were so big he could see them. Chunks of coral, mud, and mangrove splattered down upon the men of #2 gun. The size of the explosions left them sick with fear. A line of communication wire had been tied to a phone in Burgin's foxhole. It connected him to the other platoons, Haldane's company CP, and from there further back to battalion. Burgin got on the phone, heard someone answer (he wasn't sure who), and reported that his position was taking friendly fire. He heard the man reply, "No, that's not ours--that's jap."
"No, that's ours," Burgin replied, and began cursing. "I know where we just came from, and that artillery is coming where we've already been, so I know it's ours. So get it ceased." The other marine remained unconvinced. Burgin could tell the shells were 155s and yelled, "If you're going to fire . . . go out a little further than that because you're going to kill my whole damn bunch."253 The barrage increased and worsened. Shells burst about twenty or thirty feet above the ground, sending searing shards of metal down upon them. King had had almost no cover. They could only hold on and wait till it ended.
As the shelling, both U.S. and Japanese, slackened, the marines tried to get water. Some found a grayish liquid in the bottom of some of the deeper shell holes--the water table was very high on Peleliu. The men who drank it became sick, even the ones who strained out the big particles by keeping their teeth closed. In the mortar squads, Stepnowski, a big guy from Georgia they called Ski, dropped out. The heat and the dehydration were too much. He was turned over to the medics, who took him back. Lack of water caused one-third of the casualties.254 Sledge noted that the big men tended to give in to heat exhaustion more often than those of slighter build. The day ended with stringing barbed wire in preparation for a banzai attack.
When the night passed without an attack, King Company had so far gotten off easier than others and some of them knew it--not E. B. Sledge, however. The dead and wounded men he had seen and the punishing concussions of high explosives left him terrified. He hung on gamely, lugging mortar shells and preparing to fire the #2 gun. During the next day, they watched as the ridge to the north took a horrendous pounding from the ships' guns, from navy planes, and from the howitzers of the Eleventh Marines. King marched toward the ridge that morning, behind the rest of the 3/5. Along the east side of the airfield, they saw millions of jagged shards of metal-- shrapnel--covering it.255 The wreckage of airplanes included more than two dozen medium bombers and dozens of fighters.256 King arrived at the junction of the cross runway. Item Company dug in there, inexplicably, while Love and King closed with the village that draped around the north end of the airfield. The volume of small-arms fire picked up precipitously. They were not on the front line yet, though. The 2/5 was ahead of them and, beyond them, units of the First Marines.257
King soon moved along the eastern edge of a mad jumble of craters, airstrip, and demolished buildings. Most buildings were farther west, on their left. Love Company was over there, tied in with units of the First Marines, in the thick of the fighting by the sounds of it. Item Company remained behind them. By the end of the day, #2 gun had advanced through the small collection of buildings to a point where they could see the northern ridges. King tied in with elements of the 2/5.258 To their left, west, were the ridges; to the north and to the east, roads led into terra incognita. They watched the other units attempt to move north. "Anytime anybody got up, the Japanese started throwing not just machine- gun or rifle fire, but shell fire."259 Watching it happen, Gene could not see the enemy positions, only a riot of confusion, fear, and pain. The Japanese fired so many weapons, the coral ridges were so impregnable, he thought, "we had absolutely hit a stone wall." The soft malice of the incoming mortar rounds sounded to him like "some goulish witch telling you that 'Well, I may not get you this time, but I'll get you next time.' " The sound of combat never ceased that night, although the enemy again failed to mount a banzai charge. Burgin began to think "there was something up. They were fighting with different tactics altogether."
The next day, the third day of the "three-day campaign," as someone surely noted, King moved east. The roads and buildings gave way to swamp. A small road crossed the marsh on a natural causeway of earth about a hundred yards in length. It widened into a clearing where the riflemen met some resistance. The #2 gun, along with marines from Item Company, ran across the narrow causeway and supported the assault on a small group of buildings in the larger clearing on the far side.260 The Japanese had abandoned most of their bivouac sites there, but there was a blockhouse with large antenna above it.261 King, supported by Item and elements of the 2/5, worked through the small-arms and mortar fire of the garrison and wiped out all resistance. King lost thirteen men wounded in action, its first day of double-digit loss.262 Nearly surrounded by thick mangrove swamp, King and Item dug in facing the only avenue toward solid ground and the enemy: south.
THREE DAYS HAD PASSED BEFORE LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHOFNER STEPPED back ashore on Peleliu. He did not know why they had held him for so long. A small neat bandage covered the wound on his arm.263 He set off to find the regimental headquarters of the Fifth Marines and report to Colonel "Bucky" Harris. No one would have b
een in a good mood at regimental HQ, and Shofner's first impression would have been that the battle was not going well at all. Losses were high and progress slow. Harris had been wounded in the knee by a shell that had burst in his CP, killing a man near him; he had refused evacuation and now walked with a painful limp. Bucky informed Shofner that he would not be returning to command 3rd Battalion. A major had been given the job and so far he was doing well. The colonel designated Lieutenant Colonel Shofner his regimental liaison officer with division HQ.
Shofner considered the liaison appointment a make-work job. As a colonel with access both to the regiment and the division, though, he was in a position to learn a lot about what was happening on the battlefield. There was a lot of bad news. The jungle canopy had obscured the terrain beneath it. The aerial reconnaissance photographs had shown a ridge north of the airfield; combat had revealed a much bigger problem.264 The bomb blasts and the engulfing flames of napalm had exposed an expanse of roughly five ugly, wartlike coral ridges, twisted and cut into a maze of peaks and gullies. The enemy had turned each of these myriad facets into a fortress, the coral escarpments riddled with pillboxes, caves, and nasty little spider holes.
Against this fortress Chesty Puller had driven his First Marine Regiment. The First Marines had always known that their mission was the toughest. Every day since D-day, Chesty had lashed his men, exhorting them to attack, to breach the defenses. His battalions had sustained horrendous casualties. The delay in cracking open the bastion just north of the airfield had angered Chesty's boss, General Rupertus. Rupertus's dour disposition had become nearly insufferable.265 He hobbled around division headquarters, pained by an ankle injury sustained a few weeks earlier, demanding results.266 The plan was for the Seventh Marines, who were finishing up their conquest of the southern tip of Peleliu, to support the First Marines' attack on the ridges. The Fifth Marines would continue to receive the easiest of the three assignments.
AFTER A QUIET NIGHT, KING COMPANY SPENT SEPTEMBER 19 MOVING SOUTH across another strip of land and onto another islet on the east side of Peleliu.267 A road ran through the open area bordered by mangrove swamps and dotted with a few buildings. On their left flank, Item got into a short firefight at a blockhouse. King faced almost no resistance.268 Behind them, the enemy's heavy artillery fire began to slacken. It also became harassing fire because it was obviously not targeted.269
The job of patrolling this confusing checkerboard of soil and swamp was not completed by the end of the day. The temperature relented, though, dropping into the high eighties.270 The next morning most of King Company walked out to still another islet, this one with a coastline on the Pacific, and set up camp on Purple Beach. Captain Haldane ordered a reinforced patrol; he joined Burgin's #2 gun, the war dog and his handler, and a machine- gunner squad to the riflemen of the First Platoon, their mission to search the southern tip of the larger islet behind Purple Beach.271 They moved out. Eugene eyed the war dog curiously because he loved dogs, but he had learned back on Pavuvu never to attempt to pet one.
The patrol went well during the day. They dug in near a lagoon in the late afternoon, the dense mangrove trees cutting visibility to a few feet. Another peninsula could be glimpsed on the far side of the cove. No one knew exactly how all of these pieces of land fit together. The word was there were fifteen hundred enemy troops over there. "We were there," as the #2 gun squad understood it, "to see that they didn't cross that lagoon while the tide was out." When someone reported hearing voices over there, the men began to wonder just when the tide went out. The vegetation rendered the 60mm mortar all but useless. Burgin took one last look before dark and concluded, "If the japs came across in mass swarms, they'd have killed every one of us."272 He had been with King Company during the Battle of Cape Gloucester, when it had held off a series of banzai attacks, but it had taken a lot more men and a lot more firepower to do it. They sat in the darkness waiting for the shit to hit the fan.
"It wasn't too long after dark this guy began to scream and holler." It horrified everyone. Even in the pitch-black darkness Burgin could tell the yelling came from the war dog handler because he was "within arm's reach." Orders to shut his mouth failed to stop his growing insanity. A medic found his way over and administered morphine. One shot made no effect. Burgin watched as "he gave him enough morphine to kill a horse. And it didn't affect him any more than if it had been water in the needle that he was using. And he went completely berserk, and he was hollering and screaming and he was giving our position away and, you know, that couldn't happen. And, uh, so he was killed with an entrenching tool that night, to shut him up." From the sound of it the crazed marine did not die immediately.
In the light of the next morning, it had to be faced. "One of their own" had been killed by one of their own. Most men concluded that it had had to happen. Burgin was grateful that he had not had to do it himself. Sergeant Hank Boyes called it "a terrifying night."273 No one spoke the name of the man who had wielded the entrenching tool. The lieutenant, a rifle platoon leader nicknamed Hillbilly, called Captain Haldane and "told him that he was bringing the troops in--he wasn't staying another night there." His small force could not hold off a force of that size."And so the company commander told him, 'Okay, bring them back.' So we come back and joined the company."274
King Company had set itself up on the northern tip of the islet called Purple Beach because it fronted the ocean, far from the battle but not far from infiltrating Japanese. Gunshots could be heard on an islet across the canebrake from them. The shots came from marines in Item Company, who cleared it out and came over to say they had killed "about 25 japs."275 That day, September 21, ended without any casualties in King. Its men had survived six days on Peleliu. Their thoughts might have been with their friends in Love Company, still attacking the ridges near the airfield, and also with the thirty-four wounded and four marines killed thus far.276 These figures did not include the war dog handler, since he had not been on King's muster roll, but they represented a hefty toll on the 240 men who were.
JUST AFTER FIVE A.M. ON SEPTEMBER 21 THE PHONES RANG IN THE STATEROOMS OF the wolves aboard the flattop USS Hornet. They assembled in the ready room to get their preflight briefing on their target: the city known as the Pearl of the Orient, Manila. The wolves were here to start the process by which the Filipinos and the American POWs would be liberated. With the city of Manila bearing 250 degrees and 142 miles away, the skipper led the first deckload of SB2Cs off the deck at seven fifty-nine a.m.277 Mike walked out to the flight deck at about eight thirty. The clouds and squalls of rain surrounding Hornet would add another challenge to the day's mission. No rear seat gunner met him. The Hellcat, clad in a dark navy blue with white roundels, had clean, angular lines, which contrasted sharply with the rounded forms of the Helldivers spotted on the stern. For the carrier's second strike of the day, twelve fighters took off first, then Lieutenant Micheel's six fighter-bombers, followed by twelve SB2Cs.
The sky cleared of mist as they arrived over Manila Bay. Campbell's earlier strike had left a fleet oiler of the IJN smoking badly and listing hard. It was just one of about fifteen ships out in the center of the vast natural harbor. Mike could see another ten ships inside the breakwater of Manila's port.ad Most of them looked small enough to qualify as interisland steamers, sampans, or boats. He focused on the most important ship, the destroyer. His fighter-bombers went first, the echelon rolling over into steep dives to avoid the canopy of flak with which the destroyer covered itself. The F6F could handle a steep dive. The destroyer turned too fast, though, and all six five-hundred-pound bombs missed. The SB2Cs made the second pass and also missed the "tin can." After their runs, the Helldivers joined up to return home, their gas tanks reading half empty.
Unlike the Beasts, though, the F6Fs had plenty of gasoline. They also had rockets under their wings. Mike set his men free to hunt for "targets of opportunity." Downtown Manila was off-limits and they ignored the island of Corregidor. Some of them went looking for airfields. Mo
st followed Mike, racing along the shore of Manila. Japan's three- inch and five-inch AA guns emplaced along Dewey Boulevard threw up lots of flak, but they failed to so much as dent the fighter- bombers. With their rockets, Mike's wing of Hellcats set the small ships at the piers on fire. At the outskirts of the city, he triggered the six .50-caliber machine guns on "anything that looked like Army vehicles running down the road." He noted with satisfaction, as the others joined up on his wing, that "there wasn't much left."
Micheel landed back aboard in time for lunch. Two more strikes on Manila and its environs were launched off his flattop later that day. His friend Hal Buell took a turn.
The next morning began with bogeys flying toward their task group. Two raiders appeared on the radar screens just after five a.m. These faded from the screens after the CAP was routed out to meet them, and the first strikes against Manila took off. The bogeys kept coming, though, dancing in and out of the radar's range. Hornet began to lead her group in a series of course and speed changes as more enemy aircraft popped onto her radar screens. The Hellcats of the CAP reported "splashing" a few bogeys, but just before seven a.m. "two bomb explosions in the water on port bow, 225deg, 2700 yards," made everyone jumpy. Had the two bombs been jettisoned by a U.S. plane? No one could say for sure. Mike's flattop continued her evasive maneuvers, signaling its task group "to form cruising disposition 5V." Changing direction away from one bogey, though, sent it toward another, and she came about again. Fifteen minutes later, a bogey attacked Monterey, off Hornet's starboard quarter, dropping two bombs that landed a few hundred yards from her port- side bow.