Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [39]
“He was actually born in Buffalo,” someone said, “November 4 in 1916.” Halfway through World War I, I calculated hastily to orient the time frame we were discussing, “and at twenty-eight he was dead.” My guides showed off buildings where Basilone family or friends had at one time lived, other places of significance to Basilone, anxious to be helpful and at the same time to provide me a positive slant on their town. But not phonying it up. They took turns at talking or sometimes all spoke at once. I scribbled notes.
“New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly (also a Marine, of the Vietnam era) was here for the Basilone Parade one September, and he called Raritan ‘a Norman Rockwell sort of town.’ It’s really a blue-collar town. Back then most people worked at Johns Manville. Or the Raritan Woolen Mills. Raritan started out Dutch, then it was Irish, and at the turn of the century the Italians and Slovaks came in. The Irish controlled all the justice system. Oh, sure, there was bias (established Irish versus the arriviste Italians), a couple of incidents.
“There’s the statue, at Somerset Street and the Olde York Road, the stagecoach road between New York and Philly.”
We pulled over and got out of the truck to look at the town’s big monument, the outsized statue of John Basilone, a few yards from the Raritan River. “How tall was he?” I asked one of the men. “Five eight, five nine.” Someone else said, “Maybe five ten.”
Proud of their hometown boy, I think they kind of wanted him to be taller. The statue itself was big and bronze, maybe seven or eight feet high, a muscular young man, bare-chested as he had been in that fight on the Lunga River on Guadalcanal. His arms cradled a heavy machine gun, the weapon he loved, his weapon for killing. He fought that night barefoot in the mud for better traction, but the sculptor had added what looked to me like modern Army combat boots. The replicated Medal of Honor on the statue was also, alas, a mistake, the Army version of the award, not the slightly different Navy version, as is appropriate for a Marine. Patullo pointed out for my tutelage the minor design distinctions in the two versions of the medal. That’s how sensitive these men are about “their guy” John.
Next, we swung by Bridgewater-Raritan High and parked at John Basilone Memorial Field. We went into the athletic building and were greeted by a huge mural, maybe ten feet wide and about eight high, of Gunnery Sergeant Basilone. Out the other side of the building we walked onto the athletic field made of artificial turf, and the impressively modern composition running track surrounding it. Some boys in the infield played touch football while other kids, boys and girls both, in running shorts or sweats, sprinted or jogged laps. On the exterior walls of the athletic building looking out at the field were replicas of the two citations, the one for the Medal of Honor, the other for the Navy Cross Basilone was awarded posthumously on Iwo Jima.
We stood there reading the citations. Once again, talking up Raritan as a fine place, someone said, “Out of six thousand people in Raritan, nine hundred or a thousand went into the service during the war.” They meant World War II, it was clear, not Iraq.
It was obvious that Raritan remembers almost everything about its hero. “He went to St. Bernard’s grammar school. It burned down years ago. St. Ann’s was his parish. Father Russo was his priest. Amadeo Russo.” I noticed no one bothered to use Basilone’s name with me anymore. They realized by now I know who “he” was. As in, “He never went to high school.”
After grammar school Basilone caddied at the Raritan Valley Country Club. “Could I see that?” I asked. “Will they let us in?” The answer was, “Sure.”
“Raritan Valley C.C. was very elitist then,” I was informed, once again with a possessive local pride about their country club. “And the only way kids could make a living was to caddy. It was the Depression.” I was interested in knowing more about the caddying, about Basilone’s own golf. “John was good,