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By Root 431 0

of 1943, Basilone had been for some months distanced from combat, death, and the war, had been home long enough seeing family and old friends, appearing before cheering audiences, consorting with Hollywood movie stars, to understand that the medal had given him some leverage, and that perhaps the time was nearing when he might start using it. He had never been much of a politician, but this could soon be the moment. Perhaps the bond tour had lost its charms, had become boring, the parroted, scripted phrases grown glib, so easily tumbling from the lips. Maybe Virginia Grey’s ardor had cooled. The shrewder of the brass may have begun to sense that their pet machine gunner was no longer as docile and instantly obedient, no longer entirely on board. He’d gotten over his stage fright, his anxiety at being the center of attention, the bashful unease of being “gawked at.” He’d picked up the sales jargon for the war bond drive—“Back the Attack,” that sort of thing—and preached it on demand. Or was that cynical even to suggest?

For the first time, and quite specifically, Basilone bridled at being “Manila John.” After all, Manila was no longer the town he once knew, where he found and loved Lolita, where he’d first tasted a small fame as he boxed undefeated, was backed in wagers and cheered on by his fellows, and where General Douglas “Himself” MacArthur, who lorded it over the poor Filipinos, vice regal in style and manner, had still found time to come back to the dressing room to shake his hand after a winning bout over a tough sailor. That Manila no longer existed, wasn’t Manila anymore; it had been a “Jap” city for more than eighteen months, “Yokohama South.” If there was in Basilone no longer any affinity for the place, why should people still be yammering questions at him as Manila John? Or worse, “Manila John the Jap killer”?

Basilone by now might well have been asking himself, what did civilians, even those who loved or just plain admired him, the home folks, the kids, the reporters, the girls, the fans, with their glib queries about “killing Japs,” really know about war, combat, and death? So, to mollify a performer apparently growing antsy and querulous, the brass again offered Basilone a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, the same rank that Mitch Paige, while they were both Down Under, had quickly accepted. And now six months later, the sergeant in Basilone would again turn it down. He was an enlisted man, a noncommissioned officer, and happy to be so. None of this “officer and a gentleman” snobbery for him. The brass then tried another incentive. Would Basilone like to go to Camp Pendleton at the pleasant seaside town of Oceanside in Southern California as a gunnery instructor and run machine-gun training there? He loved machine guns, knew the weapon intimately, was a proven teacher of the weapon’s construction, operation, usage, its deadly effect. In a way, this would be a perfect fit, a dream assignment. Thanks, sir, but no thanks.

Then just what did John Basilone want? What would it take to keep him out there visiting war plants, selling bonds, doing interviews, boosting home-front morale? To Basilone, if to few others, the answer was simple: he wanted to return to the Pacific, to go back to the old outfit, to “his boys,” to combat and the war. He was starting to mouth off about missing the Pacific, missing being a Marine and being tired of his role as a performing seal.

Every Marine senior NCO or officer who ever served knew guys like Basilone. They could be great Marines, the very men you wanted in the next hole to you in combat, but when it came to the chain of command, the regulations, to getting along, “brown-nosing” a little if he had to, the man could be a pain in the ass. There was the usual old commissioned snobbery at work still in the Corps, the occasional officer’s snarl about “shifty-eyed enlisted men” or about “a guy who every morning you ought to punch right in the face because you know damned well before the day is over, that bastard is going to fuck up one way or another.