Islands of the Damned

by R. V. Burgin

  This idyllic life didn’t last long for the mortar section. We were sent out to the east road and told to set up our guns facing the sea, just in case the Japs tried a landing. (It was not such a far-fetched idea. We heard later the Japs sent a small force over from Babelthuap in mid-January. It was intercepted and all but two of the eighty or so invaders were killed.) A few miles to the south we could hear the Army’s guns pounding away at the Pocket.

  Finally they sent us down to Purple Beach to await transport back to Pavuvu. We were issued fresh uniforms, new boondockers, and that wonder of wonders, clean white socks. We burned the rags of our old uniforms and slept in hammocks, our sleep occasionally disturbed by tracers from the distant fighting. I dreamed of Florence, of the little bungalow we’d set up someday, of children running around the house.

  A new cemetery appeared alongside the main runway at the airfield. Somewhere among the crosses Hillbilly Jones and Andrew Haldane were at rest. Altogether, the First Marine Division had lost more than 1,250 Marines on Peleliu. More than 5,400 had been wounded. There was no way to count the Japs, but we had killed more than ten thousand for certain. I read somewhere afterward that we had fired almost 16 million rounds of ammunition of all kinds during our time on Peleliu. That works out to more than 1,500 rounds per Jap. That seems about right.

  The Fifth Marines had been the only regiment to achieve all its combat objectives. We had established our beachhead, crossed the airfield, occupied Ngesebus, secured northern Peleliu and whittled hundreds of yards off the Pocket. Of course none of us was thinking about any of this while we were at Purple Beach. We were just waiting for our ship to come in.

  Transports arrived and one by one the other battalions departed, until we were the last Marine unit on the island. Finally, on October 26, the USS Sea Runner, a Navy troopship, appeared offshore.

  The next morning Higgins boats took us out through heavy seas. The Sea Runner had thrown cargo nets over the side, and the little boats bucked on the waves while we tried to grab the nets and pull ourselves to. There wasn’t much talk, no grab-ass going on. We hung on to the nets and started up, hand over foot. I had to stop and rest. We had full packs and the climb seemed to go up and up forever. At the top, sailors reached over and hauled some of us aboard who couldn’t make it. We lay on the deck gasping. No doubt about it, we were a bunch of beat-up raggedy-ass Marines.

  The day before we left Peleliu for the Sea Runner, K Company assembled on Purple Beach for a photographer. I have a framed print of the photo hanging in my living room right next to my KA-BAR, some plaques, a flag and some other Marine memorabilia. I look at it every so often. We’re standing there in the strong morning light, on coral sand under swaying palm trees. There are about eighty-five of us, out of the 235 who landed on Peleliu. All of us are skinny. I weighed 138 pounds, down from 165 pounds when I joined the Marines. About half of us are shirtless. None are smiling. I’m the tall one standing right in the middle of the front row.

  And you know what? I have absolutely no memory of having that picture taken.

  CHAPTER 7

  Second Battle of Pavuvu

  We were a pretty quiet bunch for the six days it took us to sail from Peleliu to Pavuvu. A destroyer escort tailed us most of the way, a reminder that enemy submarines were lurking. Hillbilly Jones wasn’t there with his guitar, so we didn’t have our sing-alongs on the deck of the Sea Runner. There wasn’t any point in polishing and repairing weapons. We were worn down and sobered. What we’d been through hadn’t sunk in, and whatever it was we were heading to wasn’t yet a reality.

  Pavuvu looked about the same as we pulled into Macquitti Bay. We were returning to the same rows of tents, the same streets, the same palm trees, the same rats and land crabs, but they’d made a few changes. The Higgins boats took us in to a new steel pier, so we knew the Seabees had been at work. The first thing we saw on the beach was half a dozen Red Cross girls, standing behind decorated tables. They offered us paper cups of grapefruit juice. I suppose it was somebody’s idea of a welcome, but after what we’d been through it just hit me as the strangest thing on earth. What were they doing out here in the middle of the war? I walked on by, along with a few of the others. But Snafu and Santos headed straight for the girls.

  They had started construction on a USO canteen near the beach. I never did visit it much, but it was there for those who wanted it.

  We sat around until trucks drove us up to Third Battalion’s bivouac area. They’d surfaced the grid of streets with crushed coral since we’d left, and the last of the rotting coconuts had been cleared away. The tents were new, with plywood decks. Seabags with our personal stuff had been piled in the center of each tent. As soon as we started unpacking, the land crabs came skittering out in every direction.

  We had showers and a laundry and electric lights. The screened-in battalion mess hall had a concrete floor and rows of tables where we could play cards or just sit around in the evening. But most of us old-timers just went back to our tents, or wandered from tent to tent, looking for old buddies who were in different outfits. We found that many of them had not come back.

  Some of the guys complained about the chow not being all that great. But if a Marine isn’t complaining, he isn’t happy. No, it wasn’t Mom’s home cooking. But it was good enough. And there was plenty of it. We weren’t short. We had fresh meat, Coca-Cola and two cans of watery beer a week.

  For those just off Peleliu who had spent so much time bitching about everything the first time around, Pavuvu looked pretty good by now. At least nobody was shooting at us.

  We didn’t do much of anything for the first ten days or so. They just let us alone to rest and regain our strength, and to mourn for those we’d lost. Then they started us to work, and that helped. Not to forget, but to put everything behind you, to move on. Gradually they picked up the pace and the training got harder. Our platoon now had three mortars and new guns were issued to replace those that had worn out.

  While we had been at sea, the First Division was assigned a new commander. Major General Pedro del Valle replaced General Rupertus. General del Valle was a spit-and-polish man, and soon he was putting us through inspections and reviews and close-order drill on the resurfaced parade ground. Like I said, the Marines always knew which buttons to push.

  We found our replacements from the States lounging around the tents. The First Division had about forty-five hundred new men to absorb, and we set to work immediately teaching them what we knew. We had now become the division’s “old men.” The Guadalcanal vets got ready for rotation back home. One night late in November Johnny Marmet came into my tent and sat on the cot.

  “You know your promotion to sergeant is in the works,” he said.

  “Yeah, I knew that,” I said. “Thanks for recommending me.”

  That’s when he told me that Captain Haldane had been about to write me up for a Silver Star.

  We said our good-byes, and he left. I would miss Johnny. He was one of the best.

  Since it looked like I would be replacing him, I set about reorganizing the mortars. I needed a couple ammo carriers. I’d met some of the new replacements and found out that two of them were from Texas—T. L. Hudson and Clyde Cummings. I went down to the end of the company street to the sergeant in charge and told him I wanted both men for my platoon.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” he said. “Just why in the hell do you want those particular two?”

  “Well, in the first place they’re Texans,” I said. “In the second place, both are good, strong young men. I need two good ammunition carriers and they can do the job. And I want them in my platoon.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, go on and take them.”

  They were good men, and I put them to good use.

  Florence’s letters caught up with me, and I was writing her whenever I got time, two or three times a week. I couldn’t say much. Our mail was censored. We couldn’t write anything about where we were or where we’d been or what we were doing. Just, Hello, I
miss you terribly, I love you, I hope to see you soon, Good-bye.

  I wrote Florence that if I had my pick of babies, I would like a little girl. She said she told her mother that she planned to have a dozen boys. I kept having dreams that we were married already, living in a little house back in Texas. I longed to wake up and find her in my arms. My letters were short, two or three pages. I could never think of anything to say. Hers were long, six pages and more, and full of news from Australia. She sent me newspapers. One day a fruitcake arrived. I took a piece down to Jim Burke, and when I got back to my tent the rest of the guys had cleaned out every crumb. I told them the next time Florence sent a cake they wouldn’t even know about it.

  Our battalion had organized a volleyball team and a basketball team, and I wanted to play on both, but they usually had games at the same time. So volleyball won out. We also played baseball and we had boxing matches. The evening before Thanksgiving they showed a movie. Afterward I just sat there for half an hour listening to records, and then I went back to my tent. Some nights on Pavuvu were just beautiful, with a huge moon hanging over the sea. I would have enjoyed them if only I had Florence there to share them.

  President Roosevelt had proclaimed November 23, 1944, a day of national thanksgiving. I gave thanks I was still alive to think about my loved ones even if I couldn’t be with them. “I am a very happy yet a lonesome boy,” I wrote to Florence. We had six boxing matches during the day, then turkey with all the trimmings. Afterward there was an amateur talent show, another movie, and cold drinks.

  We didn’t know it yet, but the week before Thanksgiving the Army’s Eighty-first Division Wildcats had wrapped things up on Peleliu. Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, the Japanese commander, radioed his headquarters on Babelthuap that it was “all over.” All he had left in the Pocket was 120 men and most of them were wounded. He and his aide burned the ceremonial colors and, as we knew they’d do all along, committed ritual suicide.

  So we could take pride in a job well done.

  * * *

  I guess I had something else to be thankful for. Legs, the lieutenant who had given me so much trouble for so long, had been transferred. Our new mortar section leader was Lieutenant Robert Mackenzie, a blond New England college kid fresh out of Officer Candidates School. We called him Scotty.

  In With the Old Breed, Gene Sledge was pretty hard on Scotty, but I didn’t share his hard feelings. Scotty and I were good friends then and we stayed good friends right up until he died in 2003.

  Sledge was right about one thing, though. Scotty certainly came to Pavuvu with a gung ho attitude. Right away he made it plain that he was one tough Marine. The first time the Japs hit, he assured us, he’d charge them with a KA-BAR clenched in his teeth and a .45 clutched in his hand. He was going to do this and he was going to do that. It was comical to us—some of us had already faced the Japs. We knew better.

  I think in the beginning Scotty actually believed it himself. We tried to set him straight, but he wasn’t listening. Guys like him grew up in a hurry. He’d come right out of OCS into the combat area. He hadn’t been around veterans. The only thing in his mind was what he had seen in the movies. It was just the rookie in him talking. I thought he was green as a gourd.

  Still, I liked him. Later on I’d get so mad at him sometimes I’d want to kill him. Then thirty minutes later he’d have me laughing about something so hard I’d forgotten all about it. But he did pull some dumb things.

  Late in December after my sergeant’s commission came through, they started calling some of us up to interview us for field commissions. Those chosen would be made second lieutenants. I’d been interviewed for Officer Candidates School on New Britain, but I had not attended college and that was the end of that. Now my chance for promotion came again.

  After lunch I put on fresh khakis and went down to headquarters, where they were holding interviews. There were four of us, myself, Hank Boyes and Ted Hendricks from K Company, and a guy I didn’t know from L Company.

  A first lieutenant met me and ushered me inside. There was a long table with three or four officers from captain on up sitting along either side. I wasn’t nervous. If they wanted to make me an officer, that was fine. But I wasn’t seeking it. They made me feel at ease and asked me to sit at the head of the table.

  There were a lot of questions. How did I like the Marines? I said I liked the Marines just fine. They asked about my combat experience, and what did I feel about ordering men into action, where they might be killed? I said I was okay with that. I had done it before when I’d sent men out to be stretcher bearers.

  One of them asked if I planned to make the Marine Corps my career.

  I said, “No, sir, I’m not making the Marine Corps a career.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, sir, I joined the Marine Corps to fight the Japs. And whenever we whup their butts, I’m going home.”

  Another officer was looking over some papers. “Have you been saving any money since you joined the Marine Corps?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  “And you’ve been sending money home?”

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  He repeated the question. “And you’re sending money home?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “How much money have you sent home?”

  I knew the exact figure. “Over two thousand dollars, sir.”

  “Two thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hmmm.” He tapped his finger on the table. “You’ve been a private, a private first class, a corporal and a sergeant. You were making fifty-five dollars and you’re now drawing sixty-five dollars a month. And you’ve sent two thousand dollars home?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He said, “Sergeant Burgin, do you shoot crap?”

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  “You have that kind of money going home. You sure you don’t shoot crap?”

  I said, “No, sir.”

  He didn’t ask if I played poker.

  The truth of it was, I was sending ten dollars a month home, plus whatever money I won in poker. I was far from a skillful poker player compared to some of them in the company. We had about five or six guys that were the real poker players. And they didn’t even start until about a week or ten days after we got our paychecks. They’d hold back and let these little games like I was in run their course, letting the money gather. Then they’d play poker. Big fish eating the little fish.

  Maurice Darsey, our first sergeant, and Snafu were our regulars, the real players. For a time I was company clerk. Mo would give me $1,000 and tell me to go to the post office and buy money orders. I had to buy ten because you couldn’t get a money order for more than $100 at the time. So I’d buy ten money orders and bring them back and Mo would put them in an envelope and mail it home. He’d say, “Ah, that’s another mule on the farm.”

  We played poker mostly evenings in the tents. And it was a rare tent that didn’t have a coffee can of jungle juice brewing somewhere out in back. We’d take any kind of dried fruit we could get our hands on, usually raisins, prunes or apricots. Put a little sugar and water in, partly seal it and let it ferment. Some of the guys would hang their can in a palm tree. In a week or so it would be ready.

  Jungle juice was pretty bad stuff, but it would do the job. I remember the first time T. L. Hudson, a private and ammo carrier, got drunk on that stuff, maybe the first time he got drunk in his life. Some Marines had a can of jungle juice they’d made with dried peaches. They’d already drunk all the juice, and there was nothing left in the can except the fruit at the bottom. Hudson kept sticking his hand in there, pulling out those alcohol-soaked peaches and eating them. We called him “Peaches” for a long time after that.

  Four times a year, the Marine Corps would lay out a feast for the men—Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and November 10, the anniversary of the creation of the Corps. We had refrigeration units on Pavuvu now, so we had fresh meat a couple times a
week, plus a kind of mutton stew we called “corn-willie.”

  For Christmas they brought over turkeys from Banika and roasted them, with dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pea soup, cranberry sauce, apple pie and coffee. While we ate, the loudspeakers played Bing Crosby Christmas carols and big-band music by Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

  Tommy Dorsey brought up old memories. Back at Camp Elliott near San Diego, whenever we got weekend liberty a buddy and I would hitchhike up to Los Angeles. In those days anybody would pick you up if you were in uniform. On Saturday nights we would go to the Hollywood Palladium. They had all the big-name bands there. I remember Tommy Dorsey played two nights, and one of the nights Betty Grable was in the club. I was just another lowly Marine, rubbing shoulders with all that Hollywood glamour.

  For New Year’s Eve, the Corps repeated the turkey feast. Someone decided we were going to get at least one of those turkeys, maybe two, and bring them back to K Company. I don’t remember everyone who was in on that scheme, but I know Peter Fouts and Howard Nease were involved, both corporals. Fouts had been wounded in the arm by a machine gun on the beach at Peleliu, but he had recovered and was back with us. Nease would soon be killed by shrapnel on Okinawa.

  We finished dinner and were back in our tents when we heard cries of “Fire! Fire!” We looked out and saw a bunch of people running around the battalion mess hall. A pretty good fire was going in a brush pile near the entrance.

  Later that night somebody shook my shoulder, waking me up. “Psst, Burgin! You want some turkey?”

  I said, “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Well, come on!” I hopped off my cot and followed him to a nearby tent, where everybody was sitting around eating turkey and drinking beer. Nease carved off a couple slices with his KA-BAR and handed them to me while they told and retold the whole story.