Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [42]
But when we phoned, Augie Sena wasn’t available, nor were several other promising sources, so I provided Pacifico a list of questions for the deacon to ask if he could nail any of the sources down and convince them to sit still for a tape-recorded grilling.
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As good as his word, later that month John Pacifico sent from Raritan an audiotape of three interviews he’d conducted.
First was ninety-four-year-old Augie Sena, who said he’d lived all his life in Raritan. As to when he and Basilone met, he said, “In the late thirties at the Raritan Valley Country Club, we both caddied there together. I didn’t know him that good. We lived on different streets. He was very friendly, made friends with a lot of people.” About sports, Sena said, “I knew him as a football player out there. No, I never knew him as a fighter.” Nor did he remember any premonitions about the Japanese golfers. “We caddied for the Japs because they played a lot of golf there. I think [he went into the Army] for the excitement. He wanted to travel. But [contradicting Joe Pinto] he had a lot of girls. He was a good-looking fella. So he had a lot of girls as far as I know.”
Sena remembered Basilone when he came back from Guadalcanal with his medal. “I knew him back then, knew him pretty good. He used to deliver my laundry. A lot of times we used to meet at the Checker Diner around the circle in Somerville and we used to talk a lot. They had a big parade for him and then after that we were having coffee one day together and he was telling me he was going back [to the Pacific war] and I told him he was foolish. He would sever a lot of bonds like that. He told me he had to go back, wanted to go back. I don’t think he changed much from when he went in and when he came back [from the war]. He liked to go back to the Army [Augie meant the Marines], he told me. He had an easy go and was selling bonds and he didn’t have to go back, and I asked him why he wants to go back. He said he had to go back. That’s what he told me.”
Pacifico asked Sena whether he and Basilone discussed combat. “No, we never talked about that.” Was it patriotism that had John out selling war bonds with movie stars? “No, he didn’t think it was patriotic. He’d rather go back and fight. He’d rather go back with his buddies, he said. That’s what he told me. He was anxious to go back, he told me. I told him he was foolish but that’s what he said, that he wanted to go back. He really wanted to go.” Augie kept stressing that. And when the brass said okay? “He really wanted to go back. It was the last time we had coffee and he was telling me he was leaving the next day, and that was the last time I seen him and I never seen him no more after that.”
And when Sena learned his friend and neighbor had been killed? “I think Steven Del Rocco told me. He told me John Basilone got killed on Guadalcanal [actually Iwo Jima]. I’m pretty sure Steve told me on Anderson Street.” And his memories of Manila John? “That he was a good person, that’s all. He fought for the country. He had to go back. He died for his country. He was a good man, that’s all I could tell you.”
Former mayor Steve Del Rocco is eighty-nine years old and a lifelong Raritan inhabitant. He recalls, “I grew up with John and the whole family and got to know John pretty well on the golf course at Raritan Valley C.C. where he excelled in golf and he was a very good golfer. He was a very ambitious kid. [The family certainly didn’t think so, and his father was forever asking John what he was going to do with his life.] He was always looking to do something, like he had ants in his pants and he couldn’t stand still. Always looking to do something. Times were tough then. It was during the Depression, the biggest depression of our lifetime. The sport that I know he was the best in was golf. One of the best golfers