With the Old Breed

by E. B. Sledge

  Every time I looked over the edge of that foxhole down into that crater, that half-gone face leered up at me with a sardonic grin. It was as though he was mocking our pitiful efforts to hang on to life in the face of the constant violent death that had cut him down. Or maybe he was mocking the folly of the war itself: “I am the harvest of man's stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.”

  During the day I sometimes watched big raindrops splashing into the crater around that corpse and remembered how as a child I had been fascinated by raindrops splashing around a large green frog as he sat in a ditch near home. My grandmother had told me that elves made little splashes like that, and they were called water babies. So I sat in my foxhole and watched the water babies splashing around the green-dungaree-clad corpse. What an unlikely combination. The war had turned the water babies into little ghouls that danced around the dead instead of little elves dancing around a peaceful bullfrog. A man had little to occupy his mind at Shuri—just sit in muddy misery and fear, tremble through the shellings, and let his imagination go where it would.

  One of the very few humorous incidents I saw during those terrible days before Shuri occurred toward the end of the awful stalemate. Two Marines from the other mortar squad were dug in to the left of my gun pit. One morning at the first pale light of dawn I heard a commotion in their foxhole. I could hear a poncho being flung aside as someone began thrashing around. There were grunts and swearing. I strained my eyes through the steaming rain and brought the Tommy gun up to my shoulder. From all indications, one or more Japanese had slipped up on the weary occupants of the foxhole, and they were locked in a life-and-death struggle. But I could do nothing but wait and alert other men around us.

  The commotion grew louder, and I could barely make out two dark figures struggling in the foxhole. I was utterly helpless to aid a buddy in distress, because I couldn't identify who was Marine and who was Japanese. None of us dared leave his own foxhole and approach the two. The enemy soldier must have already knifed one of the Marines and was grappling with the other, I thought.

  The dark figures rose up. Standing toe to toe, they leaned into each other and exchanged blows with their fists. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the struggling figures but could see little in the semidarkness and pouring rain. The mumblings and swearing became louder and understandable, and we heard, “You dumb jerk; gimme that range card. It's mine.” I recognized the voice of a man who had come into Company K before Okinawa.

  “No it's not; it's mine. You betta gimme it. I don't take no crap from nobody.” The latter was the familiar voice of Santos, a Peleliu veteran. We all started in surprise.

  “Hey, you guys, what the hell's goin’ on over there?” growled an NCO.

  The two struggling figures recognized his voice and immediately stopped hitting each other.

  “You two eightballs,” the NCO said as he went over to them. “It woulda served ya right if we hada shot you both. We figured a Nip had got in your foxhole.”

  Each of the two battlers protested that the other was the cause of all the trouble. The light was good by then, and some of us went over to their foxhole to investigate.

  “What's all the row about?” I asked.

  “This, by God; nothin’ but this!” snarled the NCO as he glared at the two sheepish occupants of the foxhole and handed me a range card.

  I was puzzled why two Marines would squabble over a range card.* But when I looked at the card, I saw it was special and unique. Impressed on it in lipstick was the ruby red imprint of a woman's lips. The men had found the unique card in a canister while breaking out ammo for the guns the previous afternoon and had argued all night about who would keep it. Toward dawn they came to blows over it.

  The NCO continued to chew them out, as I handed the card back to him and returned to my foxhole. We all got a good laugh out of the episode. I often wondered what that woman back in that ammunition factory in the States would have thought about the results of her efforts to add a little morale booster for us in a canister of mortar ammo.

  During the last few days of May we received several small but vicious counterattacks from the Japanese soldiers who had been occupying the caves in the reverse slope of Half Moon's left-hand arm. One morning we got a message that a large number of enemy was massing behind the crescent. I was ordered to leave the OP and return to the gun pit in preparation for a big fire mission. I moved down the ridge and across the reeking, shell-pocked wasteland to the gun pits without mishap. Once there, we squared away the three 60mm mortars to fire on the reverse slope of the left crescent arm.

  The firing pattern of the mortars was arranged to box in the Japanese and prevent their escape while our three guns shelled the area heavily in an attempt to wipe them out. Consequently, we had to fire rapid-fire, searching and traversing the target area. The ammo carriers were kept busy breaking out more HE shells, but I was so busy on my mortar I didn't have time to notice them. The tube (barrel) became intensely hot. We wrapped a dungaree jacket around the lower half of it, and one of the ammo carriers poured helmets full of water taken from a shell crater over the cloth to cool the steaming barrel, while we continued rapid-fire.*

  We fired I don't know how many hundreds of shells before the order came to cease firing. My ears rang. I was exhausted, and had a roaring headache. Beside each of the three gun pits was a huge stack of empty HE canisters and ammo crates from the large number of shells we had fired. We were anxious to know the results of our firing. But our observers couldn't see the target area, because it was on the reverse slope of the ridge.

  A few days later when our regiment went forward in the attack, we didn't move through the target area, so we still didn't see the effects of the fire mission. But one Company K NCO who did see the area told us that he had counted more than two hundred enemy dead who apparently had been trapped and killed by our fire. I assume he was right, because after our barrage, the Japanese ceased activity along the ridge.

  SHURI

  The rain began to slacken, and rumors spread that we would attack soon. We also heard that the main enemy force had withdrawn from the Shuri line. But the Japanese had left a strong rear guard to fight to the death. So we could expect no signs of weakness. The Japanese had been spotted retreating from Shuri under cover of the bad weather. Our naval guns, artillery, heavy mortars, and even a few airplanes had thrown a terrific bombardment into them. But withdrawal or not, Shuri wasn't going to fall easily. We anticipated a hard fight once the weather cleared.

  On a quiet day or two before the 5th Marines moved out for the big push against Shuri, several Marines from the graves registration section came into our area to collect the dead. Those dead already on stretchers presented no problem, but the corpses rotting in shell craters and in the mud were another matter.

  We sat on our helmets and gloomily watched the graves registration people trying to do their macabre duty. They each were equipped with large rubber gloves and a long pole with a stiff flap attached to the end (like some huge spatula). They would lay a poncho next to a corpse, then place the poles under the body, and roll it over onto the poncho. It sometimes took several tries, and we winced when a corpse fell apart. The limbs or head had to be shoved onto the poncho like bits of garbage. We felt sympathy for the graves registration men. With the corpses being moved, the stench of rotting flesh became worse (if possible) than ever before.

  Apparently the enemy had withdrawn guns and troops from Shuri to the extent that their shelling of our area had all but stopped. A miserable drizzling rain commenced again. Almost out on my feet with fatigue, I decided to take advantage of the quiet. I unfolded an unused stretcher, set it on some boards, lay down on my back, and covered my head and body with my poncho. It was the first time in two months— since leaving my canvas rack aboard ship on 1 April (D day)—that I
had been able to lie down on anything but hard ground or mud. The canvas stretcher felt like a deluxe bed, and my poncho shielded all but my mud-caked boondockers and ankles from the rain. For the first time in about ten days I fell into a deep sleep.

  How long I slept I don't know, but after a while I became aware of being lifted upward. At first I thought I was dreaming, but then I awoke fully and realized someone had picked up the stretcher. Throwing the poncho away from me, I sprang off the stretcher, spun around, and saw two clean, neatly shaven Marines looking at me in utter astonishment.

  Several of my grimy buddies squatting on their muddy helmets nearby began to laugh. The two strangers were graves registration men. They had picked up the stretcher thinking I was just another poncho-covered corpse. It never occurred to them that, instead, I was just a weary Marine trying to catch a nap on a comfortable stretcher who had covered himself to keep off the rain. They grinned when they realized what had happened. I accused my buddies of telling the two men to pick up my stretcher, but they only laughed and asked why my nap had ended so abruptly. I was left with an eerie feeling from the incident, but my buddies enjoyed the joke thoroughly.

  Dawn broke clearly without rain on 28 May, and we prepared to attack later in the morning. About 1015 we attacked southward against long-range mortar and machine-gun fire. We were elated that the opposition was so light and that the sun was shining. We actually advanced several hundred yards that day, quite an accomplishment in that sector.

  Moving through the mud was still difficult, but we were all glad to get out of the stinking, half-flooded garbage pit around the Half Moon. That night we learned that we would continue the attack the next day by moving directly against the Shuri Ridge.

  About midmorning on 29 May, ⅗ attacked the Shuri with Company L in the lead and Companies K and I following closely. Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the rains of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn't know what to do. Later we learned that the Stars and Stripes that had flown over Guadalcanal were raised over Shuri Castle, a fitting tribute to the men of the 1st Marine Division who had the honor of being first into the Japanese citadel.*

  We all were filled with a sense of accomplishment that night as we dug in somewhere around Shuri Castle. We in the ranks were well aware of its strategic importance to the progress of the campaign.

  Although the whole place was in ruins, we could still see that the area around Shuri Castle had been impressive and picturesque before its destruction by the incessant U.S. bombardment. Shuri Castle itself was a mess, and I couldn't tell much about its former appearance. It had been an ancient stone building surrounded by a moat and what appeared to have been terraces and gardens. As we picked our way through the rubble, I looked at the terraced stonework and shattered blackened tree stumps. I thought it must have been a pretty place once.

  We dug in that night with the knowledge that even though we were at last in Shuri Castle, there were strongly entrenched Japanese still north of us in Wana Draw, east of us, and south of us. The lines were terribly confused to many of us in the ranks, and we assumed that the enemy could come at us from almost any direction. But they remained quiet during the night, except for the usual raiders.

  We attacked again the next day, and got shelled badly. I was totally confused as to where we were for several days and can't clarify it now in my mind even after careful study of the notes and references at my disposal.

  At dusk on one of those last few days of May, we moved onto a muddy, slippery ridge and were told to dig in along the crest. One of the three 60mm mortar squads was to set up its gun down behind the ridge, but my squad and the remaining squad were ordered to dig in along the ridge crest and to function as riflemen during the night. The weather turned bad again, and it started raining.

  Mac, our mortar section leader, was nowhere to be seen. But Duke, who had been our section leader on Peleliu and who was by then leading the battalion's 81mm mortar platoon, came up to take charge. He ordered an NCO to have us dig two-man foxholes five yards apart along the crest of the ridge. My buddy went off down the ridge to draw ammo and chow while I prepared to dig.

  The ridge was about a hundred feet high, quite steep, and we were on a narrow crest. Several discarded Japanese packs, helmets, and other gear lay scattered along the crest. From the looks of the muddy soil, the place had been shelled heavily for a long time. The ridge was a putrid place. Our artillery must have killed Japanese there earlier, because the air was foul with the odor of rotting flesh. It was just like being back at Half Moon Hill. Off toward our front, to the south, I had only a dim view through the gathering gloom and curtain of rain of the muddy valley below.

  The men digging in on both sides of me cursed the stench and the mud. I began moving the heavy, sticky clay mud with my entrenching shovel to shape out the extent of the foxhole before digging deeper. Each shovelful had to be knocked off the spade, because it stuck like glue. I was thoroughly exhausted and thought my strength wouldn't last from one sticky shovelful to the next.

  Kneeling on the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse.There was nothing to do but continue to dig, so I closed my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed, and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into.

  “You heard him, he said put the holes five yards apart.”

  In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket buried in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shovel skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels.

  I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, “I can't dig in here! There's a dead Nip here!”

  The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, “You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.”

  “How the hell can I dig a foxhole through a dead Nip?” I protested.

  Just then Duke came along the ridge and said, “What's the matter, Sledgehammer?”

  I pointed to the partially exhumed corpse. Duke immediately told the NCO to have me dig in a little to the side away from the rotting remains. I thanked Duke and glared at the NCO. How I managed not to vomit during that vile experience I don't know. Perhaps my senses and nerves had been so dulled by constant foulness for so long that nothing could evoke any other response but to cry out and move back.

  I soon had a proper foxhole dug to one side of the site of my first attempt. (A few spades full of mud thrown back into that excavation did little to reduce the horrid odor.) My buddy returned, and we began to square away our gear for the coming light. There was some small-arms fire to our left, but all was quiet around us. Duke was down at the foot of the ridge behind us with a map in his hand. He called us to come down for a critique and a briefing on the next day's attack.

  Glad to leave the stinking foxhole, I got up and carefully started down the slippery ridge. My buddy rose, took one step down the ridge, slipped, and fell. He slid on his belly all the way to the bottom, like a turtle sliding off a log. I reached the bottom to see him stand erect with his arms partially extended and look down at his chest and belt with a mixed expression of horror, revulsion, and disbelief. He was, of course, muddy from the slide. But that was the le
ast of it. White, fat maggots tumbled and rolled off his cartridge belt, pockets, and folds of his dungaree jacket and trousers. I picked up a stick and handed him another. Together we scraped the vile insect larvae off his reeking dungarees.

  That Marine was a Gloucester veteran with whom I had often shared a hole on Peleliu and Okinawa. He was as tough and as hard as any man I ever knew. But that slide was almost too much for him. I thought he was going to scream or crack up. Having to wallow in war's putrefaction was almost more than the toughest of us could bear. He shook himself like a wet dog, however, cursed, and threw down the stick when we got him scraped free of maggots.

  Duke's group of eight to ten Marines showed their sympathy for my buddy and their appreciation of the vileness of his accident. Muddy, bearded, and red-eyed with fatigue, Duke called our attention to the map, and that helped us focus on other subjects. He showed us where we were and told us some of the plans for the next day's attack, which was supposed to break completely through the Shuri line.

  I was so revolted and sickened by what had just happened and so weary that I didn't remember much of what he told us. It is a pity in retrospect, because that briefing was the only time in my combat experience that an officer ever showed a group of privates a map of the battlefield and explained recent events and future attack plans. Usually an NCO simply relayed the word to us. We then followed orders as they were given, rarely knowing what was going on.

  We never knew why Duke held the little critique that night, whether he was ordered to do so or not. I suspect he did it on his own. He realized we wanted to know and understand our role in the overall plan.

  It was a historic time, and we were participating in events of key importance to the American effort on Okinawa. All eyes were on Shuri. My buddies and I were key participants at a critical juncture in one of the epic land battles of World War II, and we were having our tiny role in that battle explained. Duke asked if there were any questions. A few were asked, which he answered clearly. I maintained my condition of near stupefaction through it all. Then we slowly climbed back up the filthy ridge after he dismissed us.