Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [59]
While Basilone was still in California the Marine Corps was already briefing him on an upcoming tour with movie people to sell war bonds around the country. “We kept hearing that this bond tour was going to get going but one thing or another held up the show. First it was some movie star couldn’t get away, and then it was a scheduled event that was delayed and would throw the whole schedule off. So we ended up sitting in our barracks with absolutely nothing to do except waiting to be called for interviews with newspaper or radio people. They all asked pretty much the same questions. So I started telling them they could read the other newspaper and get all the answers they wanted.”
So Basilone was starting to mouth off, wise-guy style. “My shadow [his guide and monitor on the tour] lit into me after that. These were all important people from important places. If I didn’t toe the line he’d see about getting me shipped back to that jungle. That was definitely the wrong thing to say. He said it like being in the jungle fighting was a place where you went if you couldn’t get a soft desk job like him, and his important people.”
You wonder why Manila John didn’t just deck the creep. Apparently the significant next step in his journey was the order to report to the senior Marine at 90 Church Street in Manhattan. Maybe they were finally getting started on the war bond tour.
Phyllis picks up Basilone’s story in New York, at the Marine Corps office there, where the returning warrior would again be trotted out for the press, his first organized Manhattan press conference. A comic book called War Heroes had been released, his story as a superhero garishly reported in detail. There is no suggestion anyone in the Corps or in publishing even bothered to ask Basilone’s clearance on the comic. He was a serving Marine and, medal or no medal, he was expected to do what he was told.
Wrote Phyllis in her brother’s voice: “It was mid-morning on September 4, and sitting in the Corps office nervous, with the perspiration rolling down my brow, I remarked, ‘Geez, this is something.’ Well, anyway, I told the reporters who had jammed the press room my story exactly as it happened. As I once again related my experiences, I seemed to have drifted back to the ’Canal, bringing home the realization that as long as I had to repeat the experience time and time again, it would take a long time to erase its memory from my mind. Maybe that’s the price a hero pays. I didn’t know.” You sense the confusion in the young man’s mind, the understandable stage fright, almost a longing for military routine, for the structure of the unit, the outfit, his pals, the Marine Corps itself. Yet this was in a Marine office in Manhattan and the Marine Corps was more or less running the show, and the sergeant was going along with it as best he could. Things lightened up that September afternoon.
“At noon I was taken over to City Hall to meet ‘The Little Flower,’ Mayor LaGuardia. He turned out to be an all-right Joe. Of course the reporters and photographers tagged along, jotting down our every word to the steady pop of the flash-bulbs all over the place.” LaGuardia made a little talk about the significance of Basilone’s medal and the requisite pitch for Americans to buy war bonds during the bond drive coming up, and then he turned back to Basilone with a question. “Sergeant, where did your old man come from?”
Basilone gave the proudly parochial Italian American mayor chapter and verse about Italy, Naples, the name of the ship on which his father sailed to the States, and his work as a tailor, and the Little Flower beamed. There were other press conferences, with family members participating in some of them, and Marine brother George marveling to John at one point, “The whole country is crazy