With the Old Breed

by E. B. Sledge

  I talked to a 60mm mortarman who was carrying almost an entire cloverleaf of HE shells on a backpack rig. Asking why he was so overloaded, I was told his battalion commander wanted the mortarmen to try the arrangement because they could carry more ammo than in a regular ammo bag. I hoped fervently that none of our officers saw that rig.

  I also saw a machine-gun squad with “Nip Nemesis” stenciled neatly on the water jacket of their .30-caliber heavy machine gun. They were a sharp-looking crew.

  We passed a large muddy area in the road cut. In it lay the body of a dead Japanese soldier in full uniform and equipment. It was a bizarre sight. He had been mashed down into the mud by tank treads and looked like a giant squashed insect.

  Our column moved down into a valley at five-pace intervals, one file on each side of the road. An amtrac came clattering slowly along, headed toward the front farther south. It passed me as I was daydreaming about the delightful possibility that we might not get shelled or shot at anymore. But my reverie was terminated rudely and abruptly by whiz… bang! whiz… bang!

  “Disperse!” someone yelled. We scattered like a covey of quail. About ten of us jumped into a shallow ditch. The first enemy antitank shell had passed over the top of the amtrac and exploded in a field beyond. But the second shell scored a direct hit on the left side of the amtrac. The machine jolted to a stop and began smoking. We peeped out of the ditch as the driver tried to start the engine. His crewman peered back into the cargo compartment to assess the damage. Two more shells slammed into the side of the disabled amtrac. The two Marines in the cab jumped out, ran over, and flopped down, panting, into the ditch near us.

  “What kinda cargo is in there?” I asked.

  “We got a full unit of fire for a rifle company—‘thirty’ ball, grenades, mortar ammo—the works. Boy, she is gonna blow like hell when that fire gets to that ammo. The gas tanks are hit so bad there's no way to put it out.” The driver crawled off along the ditch to find a radioman to report that his load of ammo couldn't get through to the front.

  Just then a man crawled over next to me and stood upright. I looked up at him in surprise. Every Marine in the area was hugging the deck waiting for the inevitable explosion from the amtrac. The man was clad in clean dungarees with the new sheen still on the cloth, and he displayed the relaxed appearance of a person who could wash up and drink hot coffee at a CP whenever he was in the mood to do so. He carried a portable movie camera with which he began avidly filming the pillow of thick black smoke boiling up from the amtrac. Rifle cartridges began popping in the amtrac as the heat got to them.

  “Hey, mate,” I said. “You'd better get down! That thing is gonna blow sky high any minute. It's loaded with ammo!”

  The man held his camera steady but stopped filming. He turned and looked down at me with a contemptuous stare of utter disdain and disgust. He didn't demean himself to speak to me as I cringed in the ditch, but turned back to his camera eyepiece and continued filming.

  At that moment came a flash accompanied by a loud explosion and terrific concussion as the amtrac blew up. The concussion knocked the cameraman completely off his feet. He was uninjured but badly shaken and terribly frightened. He peered wide-eyed and cautious over the ditch bank at the twisted amtrac burning on the road.

  I leaned over to him and said pleasantly, “I told you so.”

  He turned his no longer arrogant face toward me. I grinned at him with the broadest smile I could conjure, “like a mule eatin’ briars through a barbed-wire fence,” as the Texans would say. Speechless, the cameraman turned quickly and crawled off along the ditch toward the rear.

  Four or five Marine tanks were parked close together in the valley downhill from us about one hundred yards away. Their heavily armored fronts faced up the valley to our left. The crewmen had been alerted by the first enemy round fired at the amtrac; we saw them swinging their 75s toward our left and closing their turret hatches. Not a moment too soon. The entire Japanese 47mm gun battery opened rapid fire on the tanks. Too bad the movie cameraman had felt the call of duty summon him to the rear after the amtrac exploded, because he missed a dramatic scene. The enemy guns fired with admirable accuracy. Several of their tracerlike armor-piercing shells hit the turrets of the tanks and ricocheted into the air. The tanks returned fire. In a few minutes, the Japanese guns were knocked out or ceased firing, and everything got quiet. The tanks sustained only minor damage. We went back onto the road and moved on south without further incident.

  Until the island was secured on 21 June, we made a series of rapid moves southward, stopping only to fight groups of die-hard Japanese in caves, pillboxes, and ruined villages. The fresh 8th Marines pushed south rapidly. “The Eighth Marines goin’ like a bat outa hell,” a man said as news drifted back to us.

  We were fortunate in not suffering many casualties in the company. The Japanese were beaten, and the hope uppermost in every weary veteran's mind was that his luck would hold out a little longer, until the end of the battle.

  We used loudspeakers, captured Japanese soldiers, and Okinawan civilians to persuade the remaining enemy to surrender. One sergeant and a Japanese lieutenant who had graduated from an Ivy League college and spoke perfect English gave themselves up in a road cut. Just after they came out and surrendered, a sniper opened fire on us. We eight or ten Marines took cover next to the embankment, but the Japanese officer and NCO stood in the middle of the road with the bullets kicking up dirt all around them. The sniper obviously was trying to kill them because they had surrendered.

  We looked at the two Japanese standing calmly, and one of our NCOs said, “Get over here under cover, you dumb bastards.”

  The enemy officer grinned affably and spoke to his NCO. They walked calmly over and got down as ordered.

  Some Company K men shot the gun crew of a 150mm howitzer emplaced in the mouth of a well-camouflaged cave. The Japanese defended their big artillery piece with their rifles and died to the last man. Farther on we tried to get a group of enemy in a burial vault to surrender, but they refused. Our lieutenant, Mac, jumped in front of the door and shouted in Japanese, “Do not be afraid. Come out. I will not harm you.” Then he fired a complete twenty-round magazine from his submachine gun into the door. We all just shook our heads and moved on. About a half hour later, the five or six Japanese rushed out fighting. Some of our Marines behind us killed them.

  Our battalion was one of the first American units to reach the end of the island. It was a beautiful sight even though there were still snipers around. We stood on a high hill overlooking the sea. Below to our left we saw army infantry advancing toward us, flushing out and shooting down enemy soldiers singly and in small groups. Army 81mm mortar fire kept pace ahead of the troops, and some of our weapons joined in coordination. We got a bit edgy when the army mortar fire kept getting closer and closer to our positions even after the unit had been apprised of our location. One of our battalion officers became furious as the big shells came dangerously close. He ordered a radioman to tell the army officer in charge that if they didn't cease fire immediately, our 81s would open fire on his troops. The army mortars stopped shooting.

  The night of 20 June we made a defensive line on the high ground overlooking the sea. My mortar was dug in near a coral road and was to illuminate or fire HE on the area. Other guns of the section covered the seaward part of the company's sector.

  Earlier we had seen and heard some sort of strange-looking rocket fired by the Japanese from over in our army's sector. The projectiles were clearly visible as they went up with a terrible screaming sound. Most of them exploded in the 8th Marines area. The things sounded like bombs exploding. A call came for every available corpsman to help with casualties resulting from those explosions.

  The Japanese on Okinawa had a 320mm-spigot-mortar unit equipped to fire a 675-pound shell. Americans first encountered this awesome weapon on Iwo Jima. I don't know whether what we saw fired several times during the last day or two on Okinawa was a spigot mortar, but what
ever it was, it was a frightful-sounding weapon that caused great damage.

  The night turned into a long series of shooting scrapes with Japanese who prowled all over the place. We heard someone coming along the road, the coral crunching beneath his feet. In the pitch dark, a new replacement fired his carbine twice in that direction and yelled for the password. Somebody laughed, and several enemy started firing in our direction as they ran past us along the road. A bullet zipped by me and hit the hydrogen cylinder of a flamethrower placed on the side of the adjacent foxhole. The punctured cylinder emitted a sharp hissing sound.

  “Is that thing gonna blow up?” I asked anxiously.

  “Naw, just hit the hydrogen tank. It won't ignite,” the flamethrower gunner said.

  We could hear the enemy soldiers’ hobnailed shoes pounding on the road until a fatal burst of fire from some other Company K Marines sent them sprawling. As we field-stripped them the next morning, I noted that each carried cooked rice in his double-boiler mess gear—all bullet-riddled then.

  Other Japanese swam or walked along in the sea just offshore. We saw them in the flarelight. A line of Marines behind a stone wall on the beach fired at them. One of our men ran up from the wall to get more carbine ammo.

  “Come on, Sledgehammer. It's just like Lexington and Concord.”

  “No thanks. I'm too comfortable in my hole.”

  He went back down to the wall, and they continued firing throughout the night.

  Just before daylight, we heard a couple of enemy grenades explode. Japanese yelled and shouted wildly where one of our 37mm guns was dug in across the road, covering the valley out front. Shots rang out, then desperate shouts and cursing.

  “Corspman!”

  Then silence. A new corpsman who had joined us recently started toward the call for help, but I said, “Hold it, Doc. I'll go with you.”

  I wasn't being heroic. I was quite afraid. But knowing the enemy's propensity for treachery, I thought somebody should accompany him.

  “As you were, Sledgehammer. Ya might be needed on the gun. Take off, Doc, and be careful,” an NCO said. A few minutes later he said, “OK, Sledgehammer, take off if ya wanta.”

  I grabbed the Tommy and followed the corpsman. He was just finishing bandaging one of the wounded Marines of the 37mm gun crew when I got there. Other Marines were coming over to see if they could help. Several men had been wounded by the firing when two enemy officers crept up the steep slope, threw grenades into the gun emplacement, and jumped in swinging their samurai sabers. One Marine had parried a saber blow with his carbine. His buddy then had shot the Japanese officer, who fell backwards a short distance down the slope. The saber blow had severed a finger and sliced through the mahogany carbine forestock to the metal barrel.

  The second Japanese officer lay dead on his back next to the wheel of the 37mm gun. He was in full-dress uniform with white gloves, shiny leather leggings, Sam Browne belt,and campaign ribbons on his chest. Nothing remained of his head from the nose up—just a mass of crushed skull, brains, and bloody pulp. A grimy Marine with a dazed expression stood over the Japanese. With a foot planted firmly on the ground on each side of the enemy officer's body, the Marine held his rifle by the forestock with both hands and slowly and mechanically moved it up and down like a plunger. I winced each time it came down with a sickening sound into the gory mass. Brains and blood were splattered all over the Marine's rifle, boondockers, and canvas leggings, as well as the wheel of the 37mm gun.

  The Marine was obviously in a complete state of shock. We gently took him by the arms. One of his uninjured buddies set aside the gore-smeared rifle. “Let's get you outa here, Cobber.”

  The poor guy responded like a sleepwalker as he was led off with the wounded, who were by then on stretchers. The man who had lost the finger clutched the Japanese saber in his other hand. “I'm gonna keep this bastard for a souvenir.”

  We dragged the battered enemy officer to the edge of the gun emplacement and rolled him down the hill. Replete with violence, shock, blood, gore, and suffering, this was the type of incident that should be witnessed by anyone who has any delusions about the glory of war. It was as savage and as brutal as though the enemy and we were primitive barbarians rather than civilized men.

  Later in the day of 21 June 1945, we learned the high command had declared the island secured. We each received two fresh oranges with the compliments of Admiral Nimitz. So I ate mine, smoked my pipe, and looked out over the beautiful blue sea. The sun danced on the water. After eighty-two days and nights, I couldn't believe Okinawa had finally ended. I was tempted to relax and think that we would board ship immediately for rest and rehabilitation in Hawaii.

  “That's what the scuttlebutt is, you guys. Straight dope. We're headed for Waikiki,” a grinning buddy said. But long conditioning by the hardships that were our everyday diet in a rifle company made me skeptical. My intuition was borne out shortly.

  “Get your gear on; check your weapons. We're moving back north in skirmish line. You people will mop up the area for any Nips still holding out. You will bury all enemy dead. You will salvage U.S. and enemy equipment. All brass above .50 caliber in size will be collected and placed in neat piles. Stand by to move out.”

  A FINAL CHORE

  If this were a novel about war, or if I were a dramatic storyteller, I would find a romantic way to end this account while looking at that fine sunset off the cliffs at the southern end of Okinawa. But that wasn't the reality of what we faced. Company K had one more nasty job to do.

  To the battle-weary troops, exhausted after an eighty-two-day campaign, mopping up was grim news. It was a nerve-wracking business at best. The enemy we encountered were the toughest of the diehards, selling their lives as expensively as possible. Fugitives from the law of averages, we were nervous and jittery. A man could survive Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa only to be shot by some fanatical, bypassed Japanese holed up in a cave. It was hard for us to accept the order. But we did—grimly. Burying enemy dead and salvaging brass and equipment on the battlefield, however, was the last straw to our sagging morale.

  “By lawd, why the hell we gotta bury them stinkin’ bastards after we killed 'em? Let them goddamn rear-echelon people git a whiff of 'em. They didn't hafta fight 'em.”

  “Jeez, picking up brass; that's the most stupid, dumb jerk of a order I ever did hear of.”

  Fighting was our duty, but burying enemy dead and cleaning up the battlefield wasn't for infantry troops as we saw it. We complained and griped bitterly. It was the ultimate indignity to men who had fought so hard and so long and had won. We were infuriated and frustrated. For the first time, I saw several of my veteran comrades flatly refuse to obey an order. If some of us hadn't prevailed on them to knock off arguing hotly with an NCO, they would have been severely punished for insubordination.

  I'll never forget cajoling, arguing with, and begging two veteran buddies to be quiet and follow orders as I unstrapped my entrenching shovel from my pack. We stood wearily in a trampled cane field beside a bloated Jap corpse. Both buddies were three-campaign men who were outstanding in combat but had reached the end of their ropes. They weren't about to bury any stinking Japanese, no sirree. I prevailed, however, just as Hank Boyes came over grim-faced and yelling at them to turn to.

  So we dragged ourselves back north in skirmish line. We cursed every dead enemy we had to bury. (We just spaded dirt over them with our entrenching shovels.) We cursed every cartridge case “above .50 caliber in size” we collected to “place in neat piles.” Never before were we more thankful to have the support of our tanks. The flame tanks were particularly effective in burning out troublesome Japanese in caves.* Fortunately, we had few casualties.

  In a few days we assembled in an open field and fell out to await further orders. The weather was hot, so we all took off our packs, sat on our helmets, drank some water, and had a smoke. We were to be there for several hours, an NCO said, so we got the order to chow down.

  A friend and
I went over to a little wooded area near the field to eat our K rations in the shade. We walked into a completely untouched scene that resembled a natural park in a botanical garden: low graceful pines cast dense shade, and ferns and moss grew on the rocks and banks. It was cool, and the odor of fresh pine filled the air. Miraculously, it bore not a single sign of war.

  “Boy, this is beautiful, isn't it, Sledgehammer?”

  “It looks unreal,” I said as I took off my pack and sat down on the soft green moss beside a clump of graceful ferns. We each started heating a canteen cup of water for our instant coffee. I took out the prized can of cured ham I had obtained by trade from a man in the company CP. (He had stolen it from an officer.) We settled back in the cool silence. The war, military discipline, and other unpleasant realities seemed a million miles away. For the first time in months, we began to relax.

  “OK, you guys. Move out. Move! Move! Outa here,” an NCO said with authority ringing out in every word.

  “Is the company moving out already?” my friend asked in surprise.

  “No, it isn't, but you guys are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is off-limits to enlisted men,” the NCO said, turning and pointing to a group of officers munching their rations as they strolled into our newfound sanctuary.

  “But we aren't in the way,” I said.

  “Move out and follow orders.”

  To his credit, the NCO appeared in sympathy with us and seemed to feel the burden of his distasteful task. We sullenly picked up our half-cooked rations and our gear, went back out into the hot sun, and flopped down in the dusty field.

  “Some crap, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “we weren't even near those officers. The fighting on this goddamn island is over. The officers have started getting chicken again and throwing the crap around. Yesterday while the shootin’ was still goin’ on, it was all buddy-buddy with the enlisted men.”

  Our grumblings were interrupted by the sound of a rifle shot. A Marine I knew very well reeled backward and fell to the ground. His buddy dropped his rifle and rushed to him, followed by several others. The boy was dead, shot in the head by his buddy. The other man had thought his rifle was unloaded when his young friend had stood over him and placed his thumb playfully over the muzzle.