The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  Hornet signaled "for emergency speed 25, turn right to 300deg." The carrier came out of its left-hand turn and swung right (starboard) as she sped up. The port battery of AA opened up on a Zeke, or an enemy fighter, "diving from clouds 190deg relative, approximate range 4500'." The aft battery also fired as the bogey made a strafing run on the aft flight deck, the pilot matching his plane's 7.7 machine guns and 20mm cannon against Hornet's five-inch, 40mm, and 20mm guns. "The plane then made a sharp left turn and pulled up and away on port quarter." Its bullets had hit one of the carrier's gun tubes and left the wooden planking of the flight deck smoldering. The screening vessels continued to fire at the Zeke and the CAP vectored out after it. With her guns blazing at a second bogey, Mike's carrier continued her sharp turn until she almost collided with Wasp. As the captains evaded one another, Hornet's gunners opened fire "on Zeke on [the] port quarter bow outside of screen."278 Firing at an enemy plane off the far side of their destroyer screen meant they were jumpy. The bogey got away again. In the break, a lot of talk between the ships of the task group concerned AA guns firing too close to other ships of the group. The sky cleared enough for strike waves to be launched and recovered. Another wave of bogeys arrived around eleven a.m., though, and the flattop remained on high alert for the rest of the day, as the ship's gunners and her combat air patrol protected their carrier.

  The task group steamed south that evening, away from the hive of bogeys it had encountered. The reaction to this retreat by Jocko Clark, who was on board as an advisor to the new task group commander but not empowered to make decisions, was to tell the new admiral he needed a better fighter director. The morning of the twenty-third began with preparations for more incoming bogeys. When the air remained clear, Hornet held funeral services for two crew members who had been killed by the strafing attack. The task group steamed south along the Philippine Islands. Micheel and the wolves flew a few more missions, and the fighter- bombers got credit for one clear hit and several near misses on a troop transport before the task group set course for the fleet anchorage. The anchorage had moved to a new harbor in the Admiralty Islands.

  FOR FOUR DAYS, KING COMPANY LIVED ON PURPLE BEACH, SENDING OUT PATROLS to look for snipers and awaiting orders. It sustained no casualties. The division HQ, knowing how important mail call was to morale, began sending forward bags of mail to the line companies.279 The marines ate both C and K rations, supplemented by issues of canned fruit and fruit juice. The weather remained cool. The notes Gene kept about his experiences in battle included none of these facts. His mind was still reeling with all he had seen. The keen observer, he knew already that the battle for Peleliu was far worse than anything the 1st Marine Division had yet encountered.

  From his pack he took his copy of Rudyard Kipling's poems. The sprawling, bawdy antics of "Gunga Din" no longer captivated him though. A different Kipling verse, entitled "Prelude," grabbed him.280 In it, the poet admitted that the verses he had written about war were a bad joke to anybody who knew better. Until September 15, 1944, Sledge had been one of the "sheltered people" who had laughed at the antics of "Gunga Din" because the ballad danced past the truth he now knew. Many of the men Gene had come to love were going to die in extreme pain. His mind recoiled at the thought. Gene had sacrificed a lot to become a United States Marine. He was so fiercely proud of having bonded with the men of King Company. Kipling's question to the "dear hearts across the seas," he now apprehended, put into words the grief and bitterness in the soul of any veteran whose friends lay buried on some foreign battlefield. Private First Class Eugene Sledge was not at all sure that the death of Robert Oswalt could ever be justified. It felt like a colossal waste.

  Beyond the prospect of death (his own or that of his friends), Gene saw plainly that this battle might cost him his soul. Combat reduced men to savages. Sledge respected order. He prided himself on his cleanliness of habits and mind. He did not doubt that the marines would win through to victory. In his heart he knew the stains created by what his marines were being forced to do--to kill a brother with an entrenching tool--were permanent and, perhaps, overwhelming. They had been forced to kill the war dog handler because of Japanese fanaticism and it made him hate the enemy all the more.

  Gene sought solace from these thoughts by wading along the shore. He found some tiny shells he thought beautiful and decided to take a few for his mother, so she would know he had always been thinking of her.

  On the morning of September 25 the remains of the First Marine Regiment began to arrive on Purple Beach.281 Puller's marines had sustained 54 percent casualties, a rate seldom reached in warfare. As the First Marines took over Item and King's positions, Sledge heard plenty about what had happened on "Bloody Nose Ridge." All of the navy's ordnance had not destroyed the enemy's positions. To assault one pillbox meant putting the squad under fire from a myriad of other positions. The riflemen could not see the openings from which all the bullets had come. Colonel Puller had kept the pressure up, had kept ordering his marines to race into the enemy's interlocking streams of machine-gun bullets, even after his battalions had broken, his companies had shattered, his squads had disintegrated. One man said Puller "was trying to get us all killed."282 Looking at the few exhausted, dirty men who survived, Sledge found Chesty's conduct of the battle "inexcusable."283

  In the few hours the men of King Company had with the First, the veterans of the battle for the ridge would have tried to communicate other, more specific truths. Men from the 2/1 reported that the Japanese had tried to use the 2/1's passwords and countersigns to approach their line. The 1/1 reported that "the bodies of jap officers"--the ones carrying the coveted Samurai swords--had been booby-trapped. 284 They also had determined that the rifle grenades were all defective and should be thrown away.285 Wishing the First well, King Company walked across the narrow causeway of solid ground that led to the larger islet. The Fifth Marines' regimental HQ had been set up there.286 Field kitchens, equipment, and the staffs of both the regiment and of the 3/5 had taken up residence there. Item Company joined them. Love Company was still in combat near the ridges.

  The word was the Fifth Marines had been ordered to secure the northern end of Peleliu. Marines in combat were running short on ammunition, officers said, "so take everything you had with you."287 At one p.m., trucks began hauling away the 1st Battalion, followed by Eugene's 3rd, with the 2nd Battalion coming later.288 They drove back across the causeway to Peleliu, swinging southwest through the ruins of the buildings around the airfield. The division artillery was shelling the ridges to their right. The Seventh Marines were fighting into that high, broken country. To his left, service troops had set up supply depots. Gene noticed some of the Seabees looking at him. "They wore neat caps and dungarees, were clean-shaven, and seemed relaxed. They eyed us curiously, as though we were wild animals in a circus parade."289 E. B. Sledge described himself as "unshaven, filthy, tired, and haggard." The grizzled veteran of three days in combat and four days on Purple Beach found "the sight of clean comfortable noncombatants [the Seabees] . . . depressing."

  IN LATE SEPTEMBER GUNNERY SERGEANT JOHN BASILONE AND THE OTHER senior NCOs in Hawaii heard that their 5th Division had been placed on "alert status." It had to be prepared to reinforce the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu quickly, if the call came.290 The officers of John's division held daily briefings on the Peleliu operation. Not a lot of details would have trickled out of those meetings, but the alert clearly signaled that the battle, code-named "Operation Stalemate," was not going well.

  In light of the Battle of Peleliu, the focus of the men's training in the 5th Division changed.291 Instruction in jungle warfare disappeared. The fire teams of each rifle squad hereafter honed the application of their different weapons (M1 rifles, grenades, and Browning automatic rifles), and their smooth coordination with supporting weapons (flamethrowers, bazookas, and machine guns), in the assault on hardened enemy positions. It had become clear the demolition men completed the process by hurling a satchel of C-2 explosives
into it and collapsing the pillbox's firing port. Peleliu and other recent battles had also seen a high number of casualties among the junior officers (lieutenants and captains) and NCOs. The revised training schedule emphasized the need for every man to assume any role of the fire team or use any of its weapons.292 Enlisted men in the 1/27 took a turn firing a .30-caliber machine gun and watched as someone demonstrated the flamethrower.

  DESPITE THE CASUALTIES, BUCKY HARRIS REFUSED TO GIVE SHOFNER ANOTHER command. Perhaps Shifty had already guessed that his new position had to do with his performance on September 15. The companies in his battalion had been confused throughout D-day; nightfall had found two of them dangerously isolated. Shofner, when he confronted this talk, would have pointed out that some of the confusion resulted from having two 3rd Battalions (his and the Seventh's) land next to one another. When the landing craft dumped them in the wrong spot, as they often did, chaos had ensued because there were two King Companies, two Love Companies, and so on. More important, the destruction of his CP and communications equipment had severely hampered his efforts. The radios were not reliable. Such arguments, however, did not explain why Shofner had not, once he understood the situation, hiked out to King and Item companies and set it straight.

  Whispers around the HQ questioned why Shofner had located his CP in an antitank trench. Everyone knew the enemy had these trenches preregistered with artillery. Poor judgment, the gossip went, had helped that mortar shell hit him. Worst of all, though, was the story that when he was hit, Lieutenant Colonel Shofner had tried to turn over his command to the battalion doctor. Word had it that, at a critical moment, Shifty had "gone bananas."293 Had he heard the whispers, Shifty Shofner would have demanded to know how a man could be held responsible for what he said after being hit by the blast of a mortar shell. His bell had been rung. More likely, though, he knew only that before he again fought the Japanese, he would have to fight for the job.

  AFTER PASSING BLOODY NOSE RIDGE ON SLEDGE'S RIGHT, HIS TRUCK TOOK A right turn and drove north, on a flat coral road running between the ridge and the ocean on their left. The 3/5 passed through an abandoned Japanese bivouac site on the shoreline, now held by the U.S. Army as it waited in reserve. A "Zippo" accompanied King's trucks farther north.294 Named for a popular brand of cigarette lighter, the Zippo LVT had a big tank of napalm and a pump powerful enough to blow its sticky flame 150 yards. Farther along, the ridge on their right began to drop in height and back away from the road until the trucks stopped near a dense forest. They had gotten as close to the front line as a truck would take them. A few men had already been hit by sniper fire. The Fifth Marines' 1st Battalion had the task of continuing north along the road to secure a radio station area. While the 2/5 remained in reserve, the 3/5 struck off to the east to secure a conical-shaped hill that dominated the terrain. Item and King, rejoined by Love Company, broke into their skirmish lines and moved warily eastward, into the jungle. Love stayed in contact with the 1/5 to the north, where the enemy concentrated his artillery fire. King took the center and Item the right flank. They encountered a thick jungle and sporadic mortar fire.295

  It was growing dark as the rifle squads approached the sharp coral hill. In the sky above them, giant star shells opened. The navy ships were hanging five-inchers up there and all of a sudden the way ahead was visible. The enemy shrank from the light, contesting the marines' drive to the top of the hill with occasional streams of their distinctive whitish blue tracers. Another half hour of star shells allowed the men to get their barbed wire strung, because they knew a counterattack would come.296 Creating a defensible line on the jagged landscape took time. The light made the mission so much easier; the officers who had called the navy for this help decided to call the conical hill Starlight Hill.297 Star shells, while helpful, also created the problem of "flare blindness." As soon as the light died, the men's eyes had to refocus. Smart NCOs, therefore, learned to order one of every two men in a foxhole to shut his eyes, and thus be unaffected and ready to fire.298

  Just as expected, the Japanese attacked the front line that night. Back near the road, the 60mm mortar squads either did not have mass clearance to fire or lacked an FO, or forward observer, to aim their rounds. Artillery shells from the big howitzers in the rear began exploding in front of the 3/5's lines, effectively pulverizing the enemy. The attack broke, although one never knew for how long. Infiltrators came at the mortar section dug in near the road. Sledge saw two dark figures.299 Burgin saw three men dive into the foxholes near him.300 A few shots were fired and there were sounds of a struggle. When one of the figures emerged from the foxhole, he was killed. Everyone else sat tight, ready to fire.

  In the morning, one marine lay dead. Sledge spoke to a number of men and arrived at a definite conclusion as to what had happened. Burgin and others disagreed, but while Sledge noted every grisly aspect of it, they knew they had to pass it off.301 Burgin had seen the same thing on Cape Gloucester. The word came to move out. King and Love companies secured the craggy mass of Starlight Hill that morning. That night proved to be quieter and easier.

  On the morning of September 27, King Company left Love and Item to hold Starlight Hill. Sledge's company marched north to support the 1/5's attack on a hill mass up there.302 On the way up, the whole company was laughing at a story making the rounds. The previous night a scout in one of the rifle platoons, Bill Leyden, had eaten a can of Japanese food he had found in a cave on Starlight Hill. The tin of food had created an "intestinal fury" inside Bill that had led quickly to "the runs like I was going to explode."303 On the front line and unable to move from his foxhole, Bill had had to relieve himself in empty C ration containers. He then dropped the full containers off the side of the hill. The way the story went, shouts of disgust and protest could be heard coming from the enemy below; other marines thought the voices signaled an attack, and everybody started shooting. Leyden himself enjoyed mimicking the unintelligible outrage he had heard after he bestowed his gifts before he concluded: ". . . and you know, my God, you can only imagine what he was saying. He was definitely cursing in Japanese." Everyone could relate to the story because by this time everyone had had to relieve themselves in a C ration can.

  The laughter would have faded as they passed the junction of the West Road, which they were on, with the East Road, which led south on the other side of Bloody Nose Ridge.304 They halted with orders to stand by. Up ahead of them, the 1/5 massed the firepower of tanks and Zippos to savage a collection of hills that the Japanese engineers apparently had turned into hunks of Swiss cheese with their tunnels. The regimental CO, Bucky Harris, had added to his firepower by borrowing a huge 155mm gun from the army. Colonel Harris ordered the massive howitzer to fire point-blank into the caves.305 The shells created a painful double concussion as the ignition and the shells' explosions occurred within a second of one another. Waves of crushed coral slid off the face. The marines of the 1/5, however, still could not advance. The enemy's rifle and machine-gun fire coming out of those infinite holes was buttressed by mortar fire coming from behind the hill mass. Worse, the 1/5 was taking fire from the opposite direction.

  From their positions on a tiny island a hundred yards away called Ngesebus, the Japanese were essentially hitting the 1/5 and the 2/5 in the rear. Those battalions had a difficult day as the shit hit the fan. Late in the afternoon, nine tanks churned past King Company. They found a point from which to shell Ngesebus, close to where a small man-made bridge connected the two islands, and unleashed a barrage with their 75mms, every fourth shell a smoke shell. The tanks provided covering fire for four LVTs. These drove into the water and around the northern point of Peleliu, where they located the nexus of the Japanese defense of the high ground. The LVTs fired point-blank into a large blockhouse. The enemy resistance on the near side began to crumble without its heavy mortar support. Tank dozers drove up the north road and pushed coral and earth into the lower pillboxes.306

  Although the area to their north was far from secure, the 3/5 would not
be needed. Late in the day, army units relieved the 3/5 at the crossroads. King, Item, and Love moved south to an assembly point near the regimental HQ. To shield their movement, the artillery provided another screen with its smoke shells. A short round landed near the regimental HQ and, to everyone's horror, "squarely in the midst of the war dogs." The dogs had been brought up to help protect the marines from night infiltration. The white phosphorus used to produce "smoke" covered them and burned through their flesh. The dogs shrieked and yelped at the merciless pain. Bucky Harris saw no other way. He ordered the war dog handlers to shoot them, which they did, "all of them with eyes brimming with tears."307

  At dusk on September 27, word came that the 3/5 would invade the small island they could see a hundred yards away called Ngesebus.308 The Japanese over there had not only been firing at the marines on Peleliu, they had been sending over barges filled with reinforcements at night. Sledge's stomach churned at the thought of another amphibious assault. During the past few days, King had suffered only one or two casualties a day.309 An amphibious assault on another island would likely increase that ratio. Dug in near an army unit, Sledge had a chance to speak with them. The soldiers of the 321st Regimental Combat Team had already secured the small island of Angaur a few dozen miles away. They had come to Peleliu to reinforce the 1st Division, and E. B. Sledge welcomed them as comrades in arms and respected them as equals.310 The Eugene Sledge who once had laughed at the "damn doggies" for being sloppy and pathetic had disappeared.

  USS HORNETSAILED AWAY FROM THE PHILIPPINES TO THE RHYTHMS OF GENERAL quarters, flight ops, and gunnery practice for the AA batteries--all of the ceaseless preparations that had brought her to a high state of combat effectiveness--even though she had earned a break. On September 27, Rear Admiral Joseph "Jocko" Clark assembled the crew, both black shoe and brown shoe, on the flight deck to present decorations for jobs well done. The following day the carrier docked in Berth 16 of Seeadler Harbor, Manus Island, Admiralty Group. Air Group Two had completed its mission and began to disembark. Reporting aboard the following day would be its replacement, Air Group Eleven. Jocko Clark held a farewell dinner for his pilots. The host thanked his naval aviators for their efforts while the guests tucked into their steaks, potatoes, fruit and vegetables, topped off with a cigar. In a few days Lieutenant Vernon Micheel and the wolves would board a troopship for the ride home. In the six and a half months of their squadron's combat tour, thirteen of the forty-six pilots of Bombing Two had given their lives in the service of their country, as had fifteen rear seat gunners.311 Micheel hated to distinguish between the deaths classified as "operational" as opposed to "combat related."