Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [101]
When the word finally came to Raritan on March 8, sixteen days after Manila John’s death, there was some confusion. A reporter that morning phoned brother Angelo Basilone’s house on Second Avenue. His wife answered, then went directly to the parents’ home on First Avenue to ask the matriarch of the family, Dora Basilone, if she knew anything. Dora didn’t, and for a time the two women took comfort in the possibility that this was all a mistake and the reporter had gotten it wrong. Ten minutes later via Western Union a War Department notification (I suspect it was actually a Navy Department wire, which would be standard operating procedure for a Marine death) arrived, not at the Basilone family’s front door, but at Pop Basilone’s new place of work at Holcombe & Holcombe (he had sold his own shop). It went to Sal Basilone because he was officially listed as next of kin in John’s service record book. This is how the telegram read: “Deeply regret to inform you that your son, Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, USMC, was killed in action February 19, 1945 at Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, in the performance of his duty and service to his country. When information is received regarding burial, you will be notified. Please accept my heartfelt sympathy.”
It was signed, “General Alexander Vandegrift,” who had been John’s commanding officer on Guadalcanal and later presented him with his medal. The circle was closed.
In Camp Pendleton, Sergeant Lena Riggi Basilone, John’s wife, got a similar wire.
Salvatore immediately phoned home and broke the news. It was official now, official and confirmed—no more comforting doubt, no hope there’d been a mistake. Bruce Doorly writes in his book, “Dora was in a state of shock and described as being on the verge of collapse. Salvatore quickly came home and soon word of John’s death sped throughout the town. When a local Raritan boy died in the war, the word always spread quickly. Police Chief Lorenzo Rossi went around town informing people of John’s death. The station master at the Raritan Train Station told commuters as they walked to the train. The church bells at St. Ann’s were rung. Father Amadeo Russo [the youthful John’s mentor] soon arrived at the house to comfort the family. The Basilone house was quickly flooded with visitors offering their sympathy. John’s sister Dolores described for Doorly’s monograph how she was notified. She was in class at Somerville High School when the principal of the school came in and said her dad had called. She and her younger brother Donald had to go home. No other information was given them but when the principal himself drove them both home, they started to realize that something major had happened. They were informed of John’s death when they arrived home.”
Both local newspapers, the Somerset Messenger-Gazette and the Plainfield Courier News, were afternoon papers, and on that same day, March 8, Basilone would be their front-page lead story. On a larger scale, the New York Times commented editorially, “Being a Marine fighting man, and therefore a realist, Sergeant Basilone must have known in his heart that his luck could not last forever. Yet he chose to return to battle.” Also that day, March 8, Marines were still fighting on Iwo, pushing forward against fierce opposition. In Germany U.S. infantry and armor crowded onto the congested Remagen Bridge across the Rhine while desperate Nazi counterattacks continued. In Burma, British and Indian divisions broke out of their bridgeheads across the Irrawaddy, west of and “on the road to” Mandalay, where in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Road to Mandalay” “the old flotilla lay.”
Back home in Raritan, while everyone mourned John Basilone, the family thought about and prayed for another son, George, still