Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [108]
I’m neither a scholar nor a historian, just another old newspaperman who once fought in a war, but I remain fascinated and often puzzled by John Basilone, a professional Marine machine gunner in two climactic battles, one at the very start of a Pacific war we were losing and then in a second fight near the end of a war we knew we were going to win. He was a man already dead when I was a Catholic high school boy reading about him in the Daily News, and most of what I later knew of Basilone came from Marines and Marine Corps lore and the memories of old men in New Jersey, what they told me, the black-and-white photos at the Raritan library, when they drove me to the big bronze statue and took me to visit the little frame boyhood home, to see his hangouts.
I mentioned earlier a resemblance to the youthful Sly Stallone. Basilone was Stallone’s Rambo, a real-life Rambo. And despite the wars and the years that separate the generations of Marines, I feel I knew a man I never met—because every Marine knew Manila John.
Even though . . .
More than sixty years after his death at age twenty-eight on Iwo Jima, Basilone remains an enigma. There are still questions about the famous decorations for his heroic battles. Some of these are insignificant points, matters of detail, an incorrect stat here, a confusion of names there, the chaos of battle, the tendency of loved ones to boast a little. Other questions were more substantive. This was the exasperating part of Manila John’s story.
It goes without saying that neither sergeant, Mitchell Paige nor Basilone, campaigned for a decoration of any sort, never mind the top medal we have. Marines don’t recommend themselves for awards; their superiors write them up.
The Navy Cross awarded posthumously on Iwo Jima is a strange affair, more complicated than any doubts about Guadalcanal. And being dead, Basilone can have no responsibility for what was subsequently written, said, or sworn to. The facts seem to be that Gunny Basilone, when confronted by a Japanese blockhouse, did precisely what the moment called for. He demonstrated initiative by getting a demolition assault team to send a man forward with a heavy explosive charge and another, the giant William Pegg, with the flamethrower, while Basilone’s machine gunners gave them overhead covering fire.
Sergeant Basilone did his job perfectly, and so did the demo guy and the flamethrower, as did Basilone’s machine gunners. The Japanese position fell to the combined Marine operation of explosives, flame, and machine-gun fire, and the stalled Marine drive inland got going, thanks in large part to Basilone’s gutsy, intelligent leadership.
If that’s the story, those the precise facts—and Chuck Tatum, there as a machine gunner, writes that they were—it is both rational and believable. If “Sergeant Basilone directed this operation ‘by the book,’ the way we practiced it at Pendleton and Camp Tarawa,” then why conjure up a fantastic story about how Basilone scaled the roof and single-handedly destroyed the position with grenades? Or spent his time waving a hunting knife around, taunting and capering?
Basilone made the thing happen. It wasn’t a solo performance, but it was heroic. Two other men backed up by his machine guns carried it out.
Then reread the official Navy Cross citation. The story of the tank in the minefield. Why pad the already impressive résumé? Did the Department of the Navy have so much invested in Basilone that he couldn’t just die, he had to die gloriously, capable of superhuman feats?