With the Old Breed (18 page)

I dared not fire at him yet, because directly between us was a foxhole with two Marines in it. If I fired just as the Marine on watch rose up to meet the Japanese intruder, my bullet would surely hit a comrade in the back. The thought flashed through my mind, “Why doesn't Sam or Bill fire at him?”

With a wild yell the Japanese jumped into the hole with the
two Marines. A frantic, desperate, hand-to-hand struggle ensued, accompanied by the most gruesome combination of curses, wild babbling, animalistic guttural noises, and grunts. Sounds of men hitting each other and thrashing around came from the foxhole.

I saw a figure pop out of the hole and run a few steps toward the CP. In the pale moonlight, I then saw a Marine nearest the running man jump up. Holding his rifle by the muzzle and swinging it like a baseball bat, he blasted the infiltrator with a smashing blow.

From our right, where the Japanese had gone into the company on our flank, came hideous, agonized, and prolonged screams that defied description. Those wild, primitive, brutish yellings unnerved me more than what was happening within my own field of vision.

Finally a rifle shot rang out from the foxhole in front of me, and I heard Sam say, “I got him.”

The figure that had been clubbed by the rifle lay groaning on the deck about twenty feet to the left of my hole. The yelling over to our right ceased abruptly. By this time, of course, everyone was on the alert.

“How many Nips were there?” asked a sergeant near me.

“I saw two,” I answered.

“There must'a been more,” someone else put in.

“No,” I insisted, “only two came across the road here. One of them ran to the right where all that yelling was, and the other jumped into the hole where Sam shot him.”

“Well, then, if there were just those two Nips, what's all that groanin’ over here then?” he asked, indicating the man felled by the rifle butt.

“I don't know, but I didn't see but two Nips, and I'm sure of it,” I said adamantly—with an insistence that has given me peace of mind ever since.

A man in a nearby hole said, “I'll check it out.” Everyone sat still as he crawled to the groaning man in the shadows. A .45 pistol shot rang out. The moaning stopped, and the Marine returned to his hole.

A few hours later as objects around me became faintly visible with the dawn, I noticed that the still form lying to my left
didn't appear Japanese. It was either an enemy in Marine dungarees and leggings, or it was a Marine. I went over to find out which.

Before I got to the prone body, its identity was obvious to me. “My God!” I said in horror.

Several men looked at me and asked what was the matter.

“It's Bill,” I said.

An officer and an NCO came over from the CP.

“Did he get shot by one of those Japs?” asked the sergeant.

I didn't answer, just looked at him with a blank stare and felt sick. I looked at the man who had crawled past me to check on the groaning man in the dark. He had shot Bill through the temple, mistakenly assuming him to be a Japanese. Bill hadn't told any of us he was leaving his foxhole.

As the realization of his fatal mistake hit him, the man's face turned ashen, his jaw trembled, and he looked as though he were going to cry. Man that he was, though, he went straight over and reported to the CP. Ack Ack sent for and questioned several men who were dug in nearby, including myself, to ascertain exactly what had happened.

Ack Ack was seated off to himself. “At ease, Sledge,” he said. “Do you know what happened last night?”

I told him I had a pretty good idea.

“Tell me exactly what you saw.”

I told him, making clear I had seen two, and only two, Japanese and had said so at the time. I also told him where I saw those enemy soldiers go.

“Do you know who killed Bill?” the captain asked.

“Yes,” I said.

Then he told me it had been a tragic mistake that anyone could have made under the circumstances and never to discuss it or mention the man's name. He dismissed me.

As far as the men were concerned, the villain in the tragedy was Sam. At the time of the incident Sam was supposed to be on watch while Bill was taking his turn at getting much-needed sleep. It was routine that at a preagreed time, the man on watch woke his buddy and, after reporting anything he had seen or heard, took his turn at sleep.

This standard procedure in combat on the front line was
based on a fundamental creed of faith and trust. You could depend on your buddy; he could depend on you. It extended beyond your foxhole, too. We felt secure, knowing that one man in each hole was on watch through the night.

Sam had betrayed that basic trust and had committed an unforgivable breach of faith. He went to sleep on watch while on the line. As a result his buddy died and another man would bear the heavy burden of knowing that, accident though it was, he had pulled the trigger.

Sam admitted that he might have dozed off. The men were extremely hard on him for what had happened. He was visibly remorseful, but it made no difference to the others who openly blamed him. He whined and said he was too tired to stay awake on watch, but he only got sworn at by men who were equally tired yet reliable.

We all liked Bill a great deal. He was a nice young guy, probably in his teens. On the neatly typewritten muster roll for the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines on 25 September 1944, one reads these stark words: “__________, William S., killed in action against the enemy (wound, gunshot, head)—remains interred in grave #3/M.” So simply stated. Such an economy of words. But to someone who was there, they convey a tragic story. What a waste.

The Japanese who had come across the road in front of me were probably members of what the enemy called a “close-quarter combat unit.” The enemy soldier shot by Sam was not dressed or equipped like their typical infantryman. Rather he wore only tropical khaki shorts, short-sleeved shirt, and
tabi
footwear (split-toed, rubber-soled canvas shoes). He carried only his bayonet. Why he entered our line where he did may have been pure accident, or he may have had an eye on our mortar. His comrade angled off toward the right near a machine gun on our flank. Mortars and machine guns were favorite targets for infiltrators on the front lines. To the rear, they went after heavy mortars, communications, and artillery.

Before Company K moved out, I went down the road to the next company to see what had happened during the night. I learned that those blood-chilling screams had come from the
Japanese I had seen run to the right. He had jumped into a foxhole where he met an alert Marine. In the ensuing struggle each had lost his weapon. The desperate Marine had jammed his forefinger into his enemy's eye socket and killed him. Such was the physical horror and brutish reality of war for us.

Early the next morning our battalion made a successful assault on a small hill on the narrow neck of northern Peleliu. Because of its isolated position, it lacked the mutual support from surrounding caves that made most of the ridges on the island impregnable.

At this time the rest of the regiment was getting a lot of enemy fire from Ngesebus Island. The word was that several days earlier the Japanese had slipped reinforcements by barge down to Peleliu from the larger islands to the north; some of the barges had been shot up and sunk by the navy, but several hundred enemy troops got ashore. It was a real blow to our morale to hear this.
*

“Sounds just like Guadalcanal,” said a veteran. “About the time we think we got the bastards boxed in, the damn Nips bring in reinforcements, and it'll go on and on.”

“Yeah,” said another, “and once them slant-eyed bastards get in these caves around here, it'll be hell to pay.”

On 27 September army troops took over our positions. We moved northward.

“Our battalion is ordered to hit the beach on Ngesebus Island tomorrow,” an officer told us.
†

I shuddered as I recalled the beachhead we had made on 15 September. The battalion moved into an area near the northern peninsula and dug in for the night in a quiet area. It was
sandy, open, and had some shattered, drooping palms. We didn't know what to expect on Ngesebus. I prayed the landing wouldn't be a repeat of the holocaust of D day.

Early in the morning of 28 September (D + 3) we squared away our gear and stood by to board the amtracs that would take us across the 500-700 yards of shallow reef to Ngesebus.

“We'll probably get another battle star for this beachhead,” said a man enthusiastically.

“No we won't,” answered another. “It's still just part of the Peleliu operation.”

“The hell you say; it's still another beachhead,” the first man responded.

“I don't make the regulation, ole buddy, but you check with the gunny, and I'll betcha I'm right.” Several mumbled comments came out about how stingy the high command was in authorizing battle stars, which were little enough compensation for combat duty.

We boarded the tractors and tried to suppress our fear. Ships were firing on Ngesebus, and we saw Marine F4U Corsair fighter planes approaching from the Peleliu airfield to the south. “We gonna have lots of support for this one,” an NCO said.

Our amtracs moved to the water's edge and waited for H hour as the thunderous prelanding naval gunfire bombardment covered the little island in smoke, flame, and dust. The Corsairs from Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 114 peeled off and began bombing and strafing the beach. The engines of the beautiful blue gull-winged planes roared, whined, and strained as they dove and pulled out. They plastered the beach with machine guns, bombs, and rockets. The effect was awesome as dirt, sand, and debris spewed into the air.
*

Our Marine pilots outdid themselves, and we cheered, yelled, waved, and raised our clenched fists to indicate our approval. Never during the war did I see fighter pilots take
such risks by not pulling out of their dives until the very last instant. We were certain, more than once, that a pilot was pulling out too late and would crash. But, expert flyers that they were, they gave that beach a brutal pounding without mishap to plane or pilot. We talked about their spectacular flying even after the war ended.

Out to sea on our left, with a cruiser, destroyers, and other ships firing support, was a huge battleship. Someone said it was the USS
Mississippi,
but I never knew for sure. She ranked with the Corsairs in the mass of destruction she hurled at Ngesebus. The huge shells rumbled like freight cars—as the men always used to describe the sound of projectiles from full-sized battleships’ 16-inch guns.

At H hour our tractor driver revved up his engine. We moved into the water and started the assault. My heart pounded in my throat. Would my luck hold out? “The Lord is my shepherd,” I prayed quietly and squeezed my carbine stock.

To our relief we received no fire as we approached the island. When my amtrac lurched to a stop well up on the beach, the tailgate went down with a bump, and we scrambled out. With its usual din and thunder the bombardment moved inland ahead of us. Some Company K Marines on the beach were already firing into pillboxes and bunkers and dropping in grenades. With several other men, I headed inland a short distance. But as we got to the edge of the airstrip, we had to dive for cover. A Nambu (Japanese light machine gun) had cut loose on us.

A buddy and I huddled behind a coral rock as the machine-gun slugs zipped viciously overhead. He was on my right. Because the rock was small, we pressed shoulder to shoulder, hugging it for protection. Suddenly there was a sickening crack like someone snapping a large stick.

My friend screamed, “Oh God, I'm hit!” and lurched over onto his right side. He grabbed his left elbow with his right hand, groaning and grimacing with pain as he thrashed around kicking up dust.

A bypassed sniper had seen us behind the rock and shot him. The bullet hit him in the left arm, which was pressed
tightly against my right arm as we sought cover from the machine gun out front. The Nambu was firing a bit high, but there was no doubt the sniper had his sights right on us. We were between a rock and a hard place. I dragged him around the rock out of sight of the sniper as the Nambu bullets whizzed overhead.

I yelled, “Corpsman!” and Ken (Doc) Caswell,
*
the mortar section corpsman, crawled over, opening his pouch to get at his first aid supplies as he came. Another man also came over to see if he could help. While I cut away the bloody dungaree sleeve from the injured arm with my kabar, Doc began to tend the wound. As he knelt over his patient, the other Marine placed his kabar under the injured man's pack strap and gave a violent upward jerk to cut away the shoulder pack. The razor-sharp blade sliced through the thick web pack strap as though it were a piece of string. But before the Marine could arrest its upward motion, the knife cut Doc in the face to the bone.

Doc recoiled in pain from the impact of the knife thrust. Blood flowed down his face from the nasty gash to the left of his nose. He regained his balance immediately and returned to his work on the smashed arm as though nothing had happened. The clumsy Marine cursed himself for his blunder as I asked Doc what I could do to help him. Despite considerable pain, Doc kept at his work. In a quiet, calm voice he told me to get a battle dressing out of his pouch and press it firmly against his face to stop the bleeding while he finished work on the wounded arm. Such was the selfless dedication of the navy hospital corpsmen who served in Marine infantry units. It was little wonder that we held them in such high esteem. (Doc later got his face tended and was back with the mortar section in a matter of a few hours.)

While I did as Doc directed, I yelled at two Marines coming our way and pointed toward the sniper. They took off quickly toward the beach and hailed a tank. By the time a stretcher team came up and took my wounded friend, the two
men trotted by, waved, and one said, “We got the bastard; he ain't gonna shoot nobody else.”

The Nambu had ceased firing, and an NCO signaled us forward. Before moving out, I looked toward the beach and saw the walking wounded wading back toward Peleliu.