by E. B. Sledge
Harsh questions raced through my mind. Would I ever see my family again? Would I do my duty or be a coward? Could I kill? Fantasy captivated me in the brief period. Maybe I'd be put into a rear-echelon outfit and never see a Japanese. Maybe I'd be an infantryman and disgrace my outfit by running away from the enemy. Or, maybe I'd kill dozens of Japanese and win a Navy Cross or Silver Star and be a national hero.
The tension finally broke as we watched the sailors rushing about casting off hawsers and lines, preparing the ship for the open sea.
The President Polk moved on a zigzag course toward a destination unknown to those of us sweltering in her bowels. Our daily routine was dull, even for those like myself who rather enjoyed being aboard a ship. We rolled out of our racks each morning about sunrise. Brushing my teeth and shaving with nonlathering shaving cream was my morning toilet. Each day an officer or NCO led us through an exercise period of calisthenics. And we could always count on a rifle inspection. Other than that, we had practically no duties.
Every few days we had abandon-ship drills, which helped offset the boredom. And the ship's crew conducted gun drills frequently. The first time they held target practice with live ammunition was exciting to watch. Yellow balloons were released from the bridge. As they were caught by the wind, the gunners opened fire upon order from the fire control officer. The rapid-fire 20mm and 40mm antiaircraft guns seemed to do an effective job. But to some of us Marines, the 3-inch and 5-inch cannons didn't accomplish much other than hurt our ears. Considering the number of balloons that escaped, we felt the gun crews should have practiced more. This was probably because none of us had ever had any experience with antiaircraft guns and didn't realize what a difficult type of gunnery was involved.
Beyond some letter writing and a lot of conversation— so-called bull sessions—we spent much of our time waiting in chow lines strung along gangways and passages leading to the ship's galley. Chow was an unforgettable experience. After the inevitable wait in line, I entered the hatch leading to the galley and was met with a blast of hot air laden with a new set of odors differing only slightly from the typical troop compartment aroma. To the same basic ingredients (paint, grease, tobacco, and sweat) were added the smells of rancid cooking and something of a bakery. It was enough to turn a civilian's stomach inside out, but we rapidly and necessarily adjusted.
We moved along the cafeteria-style line and indicated to sweating navy messmen what foods we wanted served onto shining compartmentalized steel trays. The messmen wore Skivvy shirts and were tattooed profusely on their arms. They all mopped the sweat from their faces constantly. Amid the roar of ventilators, we ate standing at long folding tables. Everything was hot to the touch but quite clean. A sailor told me that the tables had been used as operating tables for Marine casualties that the ship took on during one of the earlier Pacific campaigns. That gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I went to chow on the President Polk.
The heat was intense—at least 100 degrees—but I gulped down a cup of hot “joe” (black coffee), the stuff that replaced bread as the staff of life for Marines and sailors. I grimaced as the dehydrated potatoes battered my taste buds with an unsavory aftertaste characteristic of all World War II-vintage dehydrated foods. The bread was a shock—heavy, and with a flavor that was a combination of bitterness, sweetness, and uncooked flour. No wonder hot joe had replaced it as the staff of life!
After chow in the steaming galley, we went topside to cool off. Everyone was soaked with sweat. It would have been a relief to eat on deck, but we were forbidden to take chow out of the galley.
One day, as we moved along some nameless companion-way in a chow line, I passed a porthole that gave me a view into the officers’ mess. There I saw Navy and Marine officers clad neatly in starched khakis sitting at tables in a well-ventilated room. White-coated waiters served them pie and ice cream. As we inched along the hot companionway to our steaming joe and dehydrated fare, I wondered if my haste to leave the V-12 college life hadn't been a mistake. After all, it would have been nice to have been declared a gentleman by Congress and to have lived like a human being aboard ship. To my immense satisfaction, however, I discovered later that such niceties and privileges of rank were few on the front lines.
During the morning of 17 March we looked out across the bow and saw a line of white breakers on the horizon. The Great Barrier Reef extends for thousands of miles, and we were to pass through it to New Caledonia. As we neared the reef, we saw several hulks of wooden ships stranded high and dry, apparently blown there years ago by some storm.
As we closed on the harbor of Noumea, we saw a small motor launch head our way. The Polk signaled with flags and blinker lights to this pilot boat, which soon pulled alongside. The pilot climbed a ladder and boarded the ship. All sorts of nautical protocol and mutual greetings between him and the ship's officers ensued as he went to the bridge to guide us in. This man was a middle-aged, pleasant-looking civilian dressed in a neat white Panama suit, straw hat, and black tie. Surrounded by sailors in blue denim and ship's officers in khaki, he looked like a fictional character out of some long-forgotten era.
The blue water of the Pacific turned to green as we passed into the channel leading into the harbor of Noumea. There was a pretty white lighthouse near the harbor. White houses with tile roofs nestled around it and up the base of slopes of high mountains. The scene reminded me of a photo of some picturesque little Mediterranean seaport.
The President Polk moved slowly through the harbor as the speaker system ordered a special sea detail to stand by. We tied up to a dock with long warehouses where United States military personnel were moving crates and equipment. Most of the shipping I saw was U.S. Navy, but there also were some American and foreign merchant freighters along with a few quaint-looking civilian fishing boats.
The first Pacific native I saw wasn't dressed in a hula skirt or waving a spear but nonchalantly driving a freight-moving tractor on the dock. He was a short muscular man—black as ink—clad only in a loin cloth with a bone in his nose and a bushy head of kinky hair like a Fuzzy Wuzzy out of a Kipling story. The incredible thing about this hair was its color, beautiful amber. A sailor explained that the natives were fond of bleaching their hair with blueing they got from Americans in exchange for seashells. Bone in the nose notwithstanding, the man was an admirable tractor driver.
NEW CALEDONIA
After weeks at sea, cramped into a troopship, we were relieved to move onto land again. We piled into Marine Corps trucks and drove through the main section of Noumea. I was delighted to see the old French architecture, which reminded me of the older sections of Mobile and New Orleans.
The trucks sped along a winding road with mountains on each side. We saw small farms and a large nickel mine in the valley. Some of the land was cleared, but thick jungle covered much of the low areas. Although the weather was pleasant and cool, the palms and other growth attested to the tropical climate. After several miles we turned into Camp Saint Louis, where we would undergo further training before being sent “up north” to the combat zone as replacements.
Camp Saint Louis was a tent camp comprised of rows of tents and dirt streets. We were assigned to tents, stowed our gear, and fell in for chow. The galley rested on a hill just past the camp's brig. In full view were two wire cages about the size of phone booths. We were told that those who caused trouble were locked in there, and a high-pressure fire hose was turned on them periodically. The strictness of discipline at Camp Saint Louis caused me to assume the explanation of the cages was true. In any event, I resolved to stay out of trouble.
Our training consisted of lectures and field exercises. Combat veteran officers and NCOs lectured on Japanese weapons, tactics, and combat methods. Most of the training was thorough and emphasized individual attention. We worked in groups of ten or twelve.
I usually was placed in a squad instructed by a big redheaded corporal who had been in a Marine raider battalion during the fighting in the Solom
on Islands. Big Red was good-natured but tough as nails. He worked us hard. One day he took us to a small rifle range and taught us how to fire a Japanese pistol, rifle, and heavy and light machine guns. After firing a few rounds from each, Red put about five of us into a pit about five feet deep with a one-foot embankment in front and the steep slope of a ridge behind as a backstop.
“One important thing you must learn fast to survive is exactly what enemy fire sounds like coming at you and what kind of weapon it is. Now when I blow this whistle, get down and stay down until you hear the whistle again. If you get up before the signal, you'll get your head blowed off, and the folks back home will get your insurance.”
Red blew the whistle and we got down. He announced each type of Japanese weapon and fired several rounds from it over our hole into the bank. Then he and his assistants fired them all together for about fifteen seconds. It seemed a lot longer. The bullets popped and snapped as they went over. Several machine-gun tracers didn't embed in the bank but bounced off and rolled—white-hot, sizzling, and sputtering—into the hole. We cringed and shifted about, but no one got burned.
This was one of the most valuable training exercises we underwent. There were instances later on Peleliu and Okinawa which it prepared me to come through unscathed.
A salty sergeant conducted bayonet training. He had been written about in a national magazine because he was so outstanding. On the cinder-covered street of an old raider camp, I witnessed some amazing feats by him. He instructed us in how to defend ourselves barehanded against an opponent's bayonet thrust.
“Here's how it's done,” he said.
He picked me out of the squad and told me to charge him and thrust the point of my bayonet at his chest when I thought I could stick him. I got a mental image of myself behind bars at Mare Island Naval Prison for bayoneting an instructor, so I veered off just before making my thrust.
“What the hell's the matter with you? Don't you know how to use a bayonet?”
“But, Sarge, if I stick you, they'll put me in Mare Island.”
“There's less chance of you bayoneting me than of me whipping your ass for not following my orders.”
“OK,” I thought to myself, “if that's the way you feel about it, we have witnesses.”
So I headed for him on the double and thrust at his chest. He sidestepped neatly, grabbed my rifle behind the front sight, and jerked it in the direction I was running. I held on to the rifle and tumbled onto the cinders. The squad roared with laughter. Someone yelled, “Did you bayonet him, Sledgehammer?” I got up looking sheepish.
“Knock it off, wise guy,” said the instructor. “You step up here, and let's see what you can do, big mouth.”
My buddy lifted his rifle confidently, charged, and ended up on the cinders, too. The instructor made each man charge him in turn. He threw them all.
He then took up a Japanese Arisaka rifle with fixed bayonet and showed us how the Japanese soldiers used the hooked hand guard to lock on to the U.S. blade. Then, with a slight twist of his wrist, he could wrench the M1 rifle out of the opponent's hands and disarm him. He coached us carefully to hold the M1 on its side with the left side of the blade toward the deck instead of the cutting edge, as we had been taught in the States. This way, as we parried a Japanese's blade, he couldn't lock ours.
We went on long hikes and forced marches through the jungles, swamps, and over endless steep hills. We made countless practice landings from Higgins boats on small islets off the coast. Each morning after chow we marched out of camp equipped with rifles, cartridge belts, two canteens of water, combat pack, helmet, and K rations. Our usual pace was a rapid route step for fifty minutes with a ten-minute rest. But the officers and NCOs always hurried us and frequently deleted the ten-minute rest.
When trucks drove along the road, we moved onto the sides, as columns of infantry have done since early times. The trucks frequently carried army troops, and we barked and yapped like dogs and kidded them about being dogfaces. During one of these encounters, a soldier hanging out of a truck just ahead of me shouted, “Hey, soldier. You look tired and hot, soldier. Why don't you make the army issue you a truck like me?”
I grinned and yelled, “Go to hell.”
His buddy grabbed him by the shoulder and yelled, “Stop calling that guy soldier. He's a Marine. Can't you see his emblem? He's not in the army. Don't insult him.”
“Thanks,” I yelled. That was my first encounter with men who had no esprit. We might grumble to each other about our officers or the chow or the Marine Corps in general, but it was rather like grumbling about one's own family—always with another member. If an outsider tried to get into the discussion, a fight resulted.
One night during exercises in defense against enemy infiltration, some of the boys located the bivouac of Big Red and the other instructors who were supposed to be the infiltrators and stole their boondockers. When the time came for their offense to commence, they threw a few concussion grenades around and yelled like Japanese but didn't slip out and capture any of us. When the officers realized what had happened, they reamed out the instructors for being too sure of themselves. The instructors had a big fire built in a ravine. We sat around it, drank coffee, ate K rations, and sang some songs. It didn't seem like such a bad war so far.
All of our training was in rifle tactics. We spent no time on heavy weapons (mortars and machine guns), because when we went “up north” our unit commander would assign us where needed. That might not be in our specialties. As a result of the field exercises and obstacle course work, we reached a high level of physical fitness and endurance.
During the last week of May we learned that the 46th Replacement Battalion would go north in a few days. We packed our gear and boarded the USS General Howze on 28 May 1944. This ship was quite different from the President Polk. It was much newer and apparently had been constructed as a troopship. It was freshly painted throughout and spic and span. With only about a dozen other men, I was assigned to a small, well-ventilated compartment on the main deck, a far cry from the cavernous, stinking hole I bunked in on the Polk. The General Howze had a library from which troop passengers could get books and magazines. We also received our first atabrine tablets. These small, bitter, bright yellow pills prevented malaria. We took one a day.
On 2 June the General Howze approached the Russell Islands and moved into an inlet bordered by large groves of coconut palms. The symmetrical groves and clear water were beautiful. From the ship we could see coral-covered roadways and groups of pyramidal tents among the coconut palms. This was Pavuvu, home of the 1st Marine Division.
We learned we would debark the next morning, so we spent our time hanging over the rail, talking to a few Marines on the pier. Their friendliness and unassuming manner struck me. Although clad neatly in khakis or dungarees, they appeared hollow-eyed and tired. They made no attempt to impress us green replacements, yet they were members of an elite division known to nearly everybody back home because of its conquest of Guadalcanal and more recent campaign at Cape Gloucester on New Britain. They had left Gloucester about 1 May. Thus, they had been on Pavuvu about a month.
Many of us slept little during the night. We checked and rechecked our gear, making sure everything was squared away. The weather was hot, much more so than at New Caledonia. I went out on deck and slept in the open air. With a mandolin and an old violin, two of our Marines struck up some of the finest mountain music I'd ever heard. They played and sang folk songs and ballads most of the night. We thought it was mighty wonderful music.
WITH THE OLD BREED
About 0900 the morning of 3 June 1944, carrying the usual mountain of gear, I trudged down the gangplank of the General Howze. As we moved to waiting trucks, we passed a line of veterans waiting to go aboard for the voyage home. They carried only packs and personal gear, no weapons. Some said they were glad to see us, because we were their replacements. They looked tanned and tired but relieved to be headed home. For them the war was over. For us, it was ju
st beginning.
In a large parking area paved with crushed coral, a lieutenant called out our names and counted us off into groups. To my group of a hundred or more he said, “Third Battalion, Fifth Marines.”
If I had had an option—and there was none, of course—as to which of the five Marine divisions I served with, it would have been the 1st Marine Division. Ultimately, the Marine Corps had six divisions that fought with distinction in the Pacific. But the 1st Marine Division was, in many ways, unique. It had participated in the opening American offensive against the Japanese at Guadalcanal and already had fought a second major battle at Cape Gloucester, north of the Solomon Islands. Now its troops were resting, preparing for a third campaign in the Palau Islands.
Of regiments, I would have chosen the 5th Marines. I knew about its impressive history as a part of the 1st Marine Division, but I also knew that its record went back to France in World War I. Other Marines I knew in other divisions were proud of their units and of being Marines, as well they should have been. But the 5th Marines and the 1st Marine Division carried not only the traditions of the Corps but had traditions and a heritage of their own, a link through time with the “Old Corps.”
The fact that I was assigned to the very regiment and division I would have chosen was a matter of pure chance. I felt as though I had rolled the dice and won.*
No Marine division fought in World War I. [The 5th and 6th Marine Regiments fought in France as part of the 2d Division (Regular) American Expeditionary Force (AEF), a mixed unit of Marine and Army brigades.] But the 1st Marine Division was the only Marine division to fight in Korea. Along with the 3d Marine Division, it also fought in Vietnam. It is, therefore, the sole Marine division to have fought in all of our major wars during the past sixty years.