As the Lurline neared the dock, Matthews smelled the stink of the place: diesel fuel, rotting bananas, dead fish. It assaulted his nose and stuck in the back of his throat. He would have retched had it not been for the timely humor of one of his fellow Marines. Perhaps it was Wasserman or LaPoint who broke out in a parody of Dorothy Lamour’s song “I’d Like to See Samoa of Samoa.” Whoever it was sang the new lyrics to what could have been the 2nd Brigade’s theme song, “I’d Like to See Nomoa of Samoa.”
Pago Pago was certainly not the idyllic South Seas spot of the men’s imaginations—many had expected that they would be listening to Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” while marveling at the rainbow colors of a tropical twilight—or an exciting port with bars, tattoo parlors, and a busy red-light district. In fact, Pago Pago had few if any temptations. It was a tiny, abject speck of a town, consisting of boarded-up shops, the dingy houses of the island’s administrators, and a grassy oval three hundred yards long. Dressed in white T-shirts and khaki lavalavas (sarongs), and shoeless, the men of the 1st Samoan Marine Corps Reserve Battalion used the green for close-order drill.
Just days after reaching Pago Pago, Matthews did not care if he never saw another hatch cover or boom again. At the crumbling harbor dock, amid the stink and the cloying humidity, he and the rest of his platoon fell into a mind-numbing routine. Stripped to the waist, and clutching the slippery rails, they climbed into the Jupiter’s suffocating hold, where even the harbor’s dismal breeze could not find them. Looking up, they watched as the crane operators lowered cargo nets or wood pallets. Then they went to work, lugging mortar and artillery shells, machine guns in packing grease, and 116-pound crates of .30-caliber ammunition. Matthews learned to stay away from the hatch when the nets and pallets were being raised. A free-falling load could crush a man like a cockroach. If a shell blew, everyone would be blown to bits. Matthews tried to put the possibility out of his mind, consoling himself with the thought that it would be over fast and his G.I. insurance would pay his family $10,000.
Working at a whirlwind pace, the Marines unloaded the Jupiter and the Lassen, and the two transports left Pago Pago Harbor for a return trip to the United States. They had no sooner left than American Samoa came under alert: on January 23, 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army took the Australian-held port of Rabaul on the island of New Britain, off the east coast of New Guinea. The loss of Rabaul caused great consternation in Washington. Admiral King knew that Japanese carriers, battleships, cruisers, and troopships could use Rabaul as a jumping-off point for strikes against Australia and the Allied supply line. The most likely scenario was that Japan would disable the supply route first and then turn its attention to Australia. King called for a show of force, and ordered Admiral Halsey’s Enterprise to sail from Samoa and exercise retaliatory strikes in the Marshalls, and Admiral Fletcher’s Yorktown to do the same in the Gilberts. If the Japanese were worried about protecting their possessions in the north, they would be less likely to make military forays into the south.
When the Enterprise and the Yorktown left, Matthews wondered about his ability to defend an essential military outpost. In reality he had had very little training. His tentmates did not inspire confidence, either. They were hardly the valiant men depicted on the Marine recruiting posters. One was a likable, clean-cut fella out of Indianapolis; another a Jewish kid from Wisconsin named Schlessinger who was more poet than warrior; the third, Corporal Walter Ernest George Godinius, Matthews’s squad leader, was a friendly guy from Duluth, Minnesota, who gave Matthews his first introduction to what everyone called “jungle juice,” an island concoction that the men made from fermented coconut juice, sugar, and yeast; the fourth was a towheaded ranch hand from Montana who had an affection for dirty songs and liked to sleep in the buff. His favorite tune, to which he could sing eight verses, was one about a randy Indian maid. In the heat of the night, he would lie naked under his mosquito netting and croon, “There was an Indian maid, who said she wasn’t afraid, she lay on her back in a tumbledown shack …”
Throughout the first half of 1942, American Samoa braced itself for an attack. Meanwhile the day-to-day life of the Marines remained unchanged. For Matthews, mail from his mother was all he had to remind him that a world still existed beyond the mud and heat of Samoa. Otherwise, movies and a few cupfuls of jungle hooch were his only diversions from the strenuous work of fortifying the islands. His platoon became part of a team whose job it was to lug ammunition, mostly boxes of .30-caliber shells, and food to the mountain storage shelters. It was an undertaking that often left him and his fellow platoon members lying by the side of the trail in the oil-colored mud, gulping at the air and grunting like pack animals, while tiny leeches slithered up their pant legs, and clouds of mosquitoes searched for any bare skin they could find.
The men cursed their fate. What had brought them to this miserable place where nature ran rampant, and at dusk fruit bats floated like ghosts among the banyan trees, where everything from canvas tents to food supplies rotted, and ticks and mosquitoes carried diseases that could swell a man’s scrotum to the size of a medicine ball, make his body temperature soar, and haunt his sleep? Late at night, Matthews would lie in his cot exhausted, staring up at the dim canopy of the tent, listening to the moths and the flicker of their soft, powdery wings, and dream of home.
That spring, Matthews received news that he had been passed over for promotion. He was devastated. Returning to his tent, he lay on his bunk and imitated Schlessinger. Schlessinger was always composing poems or reciting stanzas from those he loved.
Matthews began:
You have read of the boy who didn’t pass,
And went to his room and cried,
I just failed to make PFC
And I had tried and tried.
He thought some more, and miraculously the lines seemed to flow:
I have gone on hikes and made patrols
And read all through the book,
I have braved the dangers of the South Seas Isle,
And still I’m just a rook.
I guess I’ll be a Buck Ass Boot
When I get back to the States,
But I know I’ll be as good as the rest,
Even though not in the rates.
So I’ll hit the line and go over the top
And then … back across the sea.
I’ll go marching home at last,
As a “Hashmark PFC.”
When Corporal Godinius heard the poem, he posted a copy of it on the company bulletin board. Word circulated quickly, and soon everyone had read it and was now referring to Private Matthews as “Hashmark.” When the poem came to Lieutenant Levitt’s attention, he sent it on to Hubbard, Texas, and penned a letter to Matthews’s mother.
Dear Mrs. Matthews,
I desire to congratulate you on having such a fine son. I thought his poem was so entertaining (if somewhat heartbreaking) that I have sent it to the papers. Incidentally, the only reason that “Tubby” did not make the PFC (Private First Class) was that several others had more time in the service than he. His intelligence, industry, and spirit are admirable.
CHAPTER 4
Semper Fi
Robert Graf boarded a bus from Parris Island, South Carolina, to New River, North Carolina, for his final three weeks of boot camp. Still just a recruit, Graf could never have imagined that just nine months later he would be swimming through a sea of fire while his best buddy waited aboard a burning ship for a rescue boat.
When Graf arrived at Camp New River, the base was nearly deserted. The 1st Marine Division, which had trained at this same camp, had been sent overseas. It was now defending the ground it had taken in the southern Solomons.
Graf took a measure of pride in the camp’s roughness, surrounded as it was by dreary Carolina swamp country of sluggish brown streams, broad estuaries, and primitive woods of scrub oak, tupelo, palmetto, cypress, and longleaf pine. The training further convinced the “boots” that rumors of deployment were true. M
ost of their day consisted of maneuvers in the fierce, steamy heat. When they were not in the field, they spent hours on the rifle range. Graf was not a natural with a rifle. Unlike many of the country boys, especially the Southern ones, he had not grown up hunting squirrels or rabbits in the woods. The various positions felt uncomfortable and awkward and left his cramped muscles trembling. He wasn’t squeezing his shots so much as jerking them. But unlike the guys who had grown up shooting, he was raw material and did not have to unlearn a host of bad habits in order to learn the Marine Corps way.
“Squeeze it like your girl back home,” his instructor advised. “Slow and soft.”
On the day he fired for record, Graf shot well enough at 100, 300, and 500 yards to get by. He was certainly not a marksman, but he had achieved his dream and now he had three bronze Marine Corps globe-and-anchor emblems to prove it. He was then transferred from Recruit Training Command to a heavy-weapons group—H Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines, 3rd Marine Division.
His new status must have filled him with a keen sense of accomplishment and expectation, but also uncertainty. Graf, like everyone else, was curious—what was next? Barely out of boot camp, would he and the others be sent to Guadalcanal? They had all heard the reports of the savage battles in the island’s tangled jungles.
Soon enough, Graf and the ex-boots got their answer. They were going nowhere fast. New River would be their home for many months to come. They continued their training, learning basic judo moves, hand-to-hand combat skills, how to use dynamite, and how to stab and slash with knives and bayonets. They studied concealment and practiced digging camouflaged spider holes that a tank could roll over. When they were not learning specific skills, they spent their time in the field on maneuvers amid the mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, and poisonous water moccasins, or at the beach learning the art of shore landings.
Finally, furlough came. When his train reached the depot in Ballston Spa, Graf exited and began his slow, self-conscious walk home, enjoying the feel of the two dogtags hanging from a blackened string around his neck. Secretly he hoped that people would be out, braving the cold, doing their shopping and errands. Attired in dress blues, he wanted to be noticed.
To cover the few blocks from the train depot to his parents’ house, Graf did not so much walk as parade. He stopped at the park to admire his name on the billboard, and at Allen’s Restaurant to make sure that his photo in full combat gear from boot camp was on the wall. Walking with a swagger, he passed by his high school as young men and women with whom he had gone to school looked on.
Graf’s week-long leave went quickly, and before he knew it he was making his way back to the train station. Again he passed the park, and this time he noticed the gold stars that had been added to the billboard. Each star meant that a local man had died defending his country. Had they been there the week before? Graf lingered in front of the board and noticed a star next to the name of a childhood friend. He had been in the Scouts with Kenny Le Barron and had worked at the county fair with him.
Back at New River, the rumor mill was churning again. Graf learned that he and the rest of the 23rd Marine Regiment would be shipping out. “Shipping out”—the phrase held such promise. Days later, however, the old China Marine, the company’s gunnery sergeant, clarified the gossip and doused Graf’s notions of heading for the “canal.” They would be shipping out, but they were not going overseas. They were going north to Norfolk, Virginia, for sea maneuvers.
Graf knew better than to doubt Sergeant Townsley. Emberg Townsley was a rugged, no-nonsense Marine who, along with Colonel Louis R. Jones, the 23rd’s commanding officer, had served in China, beginning in the late 1920s. By the time Graf came to the regiment, Townsley had already put in eighteen years in the Marines, a record of which he was proud. It was not the kind of swollen, presumptuous pride of someone who was eager to climb the ranks. Like a host of other regular Marines, Townsley had no desire to become a commissioned officer. The younger Marines revered him. They might have been tough, but Townsley could lick any one of them. Although barely half the size of some of the men in the regiment, he was made of forged steel and was known for his fierce will and athletic ability. He was widely regarded as the greatest track-and-field man the Marines ever had, winning numerous cups in international competition with the Russian, Japanese, and Italian military units.
At the Norfolk Navy Yard, the USS Monrovia waited to take the 23rd out into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Graf was disappointed that Walt “Jimmy” Haskell, a wisecracking buddy from Ballston Spa, would not be making the trip. While on leave, Haskell had been led astray by a woman who was determined to show a Marine a good time. When he got word that the regiment was headed for maneuvers, he jumped a train and tried to get to Norfolk in time. He failed and was declared AOL—absent over leave—and was tossed in the brig.
Except for a flock of swooping gulls, the skies over the bay were a blank, icy blue. As the January winds thrashed across the water and cut through his overcoat, Graf realized that this was to be no pleasure cruise.
Combined with its training at New River, the regiment experienced some of the most rigorous training Marines had ever undergone. Day in and day out, the men of the 23rd climbed up and down rope nets and in and out of Higgins boats until their shoulders ached and they could hardly lift their legs. Soaked and chilled, Graf and the others swore that they would jump ship before they joined their fellow Marines in Iceland. The tropical jungles of the South Pacific might have been teeming with Japanese and disease, but sweating out a malarial fever was preferable to dying of hypothermia in a place that did not even have trees.
For two weeks the regiment practiced its landings, and then it was back to New River where Graf and his fellow Marines learned that the 23rd regiment was being detached from the 3rd Division to become the nucleus of the recently formed 4th Marine Division.
To bring the 23rd Marines up to strength, the regiment for the first time took on draftees who had just finished boot camp. To this group it added men who had fought on Guadalcanal who were returning from thirty-day leaves. The final change came in late spring when the regiment received word that in early July the entire 4th Division was leaving New River and shipping out for Camp Pendleton in California.
For Graf, the journey west was a grand adventure. The division went first class aboard a civilian train with sleepers. Graf drew a lower berth, and unlike most of the men, who played high-stakes card and dice games, he studied the countryside as the train traveled south and then west. Graf was not above gambling, but who wanted to gamble when there was so much to see?
At night he watched the lights flicker in the misty hills and then fell asleep to the comforting rhythms of the train. During the day, people gathered along the route to cheer and wave. On the outside of the train, someone had scrawled WE ARE THE UNITED STATES MARINES. At the whistle-stops, Negro vendors sold coffee in paper cups while black-skinned boys danced on the platforms and scrambled for the pennies and nickels that the Marines tossed to them. The young women who gathered to pay their respects were especially enthusiastic. Graf and the men of Company H cursed their bad luck: “All these girls and no liberty.”
In New Orleans, the men left the train for exercises. They all wanted to stretch their legs in the historic French Quarter with its jazz and booze and women, but their officers herded them back onto the train before any of them tried to slip away.
The trip through Texas was a long one. The troops grumbled about the heat until someone reminded them that July in New River or Parris Island, when the air was thick enough to slice, had been no picnic. Graf did not like the heat any more than the others, but he was too taken with Texas to complain. He loved the small-town names—Apple Springs, Pecan Gap, Crow, Comfort, Cottonwood, Comanche.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the train stopped again. The men were treated to a delicious meal at the local Fred Harvey Restaurant, which had been feeding travelers since the 1870s and serving men aboard troop trains since the
war began.
It was not until the train reached Los Angeles that the serious gamblers looked out the windows. Now everyone talked of getting drunk and strolling along the beach at night with a beautiful Hollywood woman. With the alcohol loosening their tongues, they would tell tales of Guadalcanal that they had overhead from veterans who had recently joined the regiment, and claim the stories as their own.
CHAPTER 6
Eleanor Roosevelt’s Niggers
The first time Sammie Lee Boykin ever saw a black man in a uniform was in the late summer of 1941. J. C. Clark paraded through the Old Camp neighborhood of Bessemer, Alabama, looking so handsome and important. The girls swooned, mothers hugged him, and the old men shook his hand. Although he might have been a romantic figure to Boykin, J. C. Clark was nothing more than a glorified waiter, a Navy messman destined to wait on the officer corps for his entire career, to clean and press their uniforms, iron linens, and set their tables with silverware. To Boykin and his friend Elester Cunningham, however, Clark was someone who commanded attention, and they promptly made a pact. When they graduated from school, they would take the bus to Birmingham and sign up for the Navy. Then they, too, would return home to soak up the admiration.
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