Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [81]
It’s possible that John might have been thinking of himself on Samoa and the ’Canal or of his brother George that day on Saipan. Or of his own new 5th Division, which would soon be headed west to the islands of the Pacific. Of Lewis, he said, “The brass didn’t want him to go [to the war zone] but he needled them until he got himself flown out on a cargo transport. All he brought along, a change of clothes and a few cases of good Scotch. He made a lot of friends and brought a little bit of home out to us. He was a real good guy so I stood up for Joe and fried under the spotlight for awhile. He was a good comic for Marines since his two favorite subjects—drinking and gambling—were pretty much what we liked to do too. Lena didn’t mind all the attention, it was all new to her, so I stood up there and let her enjoy it. It was our best night together. We ended up walking back to our hotel as the sky turned from black to deep blue and the stars faded out. We were getting used to each other. That 72 hours was our best time together. Our last day was just rest. We didn’t get out of bed until dinnertime.”
Two weeks after this Los Angeles idyll, Basilone’s new 5th Division was told it would be shipping out, destination unknown. These were, of course, the days of patriotic, war-winning slogans: “A slip of the lip can sink a ship.” So people, including the troops, were supposed to keep their mouths shut about troop deployments and weren’t told much in the first place. One of Lena’s pals, her maid of honor, in fact, a Marine named Ruby Matalon, gave the couple her Oceanside apartment for their last California night together. But it wasn’t to be, not with the schedule the Marines were on. Basilone’s unit was to leave its area on the base at four a.m., and there was no transport that could get John back there by then from Oceanside. So the couple couldn’t spend their last night in a pleasant if borrowed apartment, and had to say their goodbyes in the place where they had first locked eyes and met, a Camp Pendleton mess hall. “We talked of our life after the war—what we would name the first boy and the first girl,” Basilone said. “She held up pretty well while we talked. She didn’t cry, and pretended she was okay, but she was no poker player. But I was. I told her, ‘I’m coming back,’ and she believed me.”
At dawn the 5th Marine Division was on the move, shipping out and “in the field,” as the orders read, on August 12, 1944, Basilone aboard a tub called the USS Baxter, hot, filthy, and crowded, with many of the new men who’d never been at sea before puking, and the chow some of the worst swill Basilone had yet experienced in the Corps. On the day the Baxter sailed, in France the U.S. Army crossed the Loire, and on the Eastern Front Soviet troops broke the German lines and advanced fifteen miles in a day. It was becoming clear who was winning the war.
The 5th Division Marines still didn’t know where they were ultimately headed, where they would next fight, but it was surely going to be the Pacific, and the islands. The first stop would be decidedly not a hostile beach, but the romantic, lovely Hawaiian Islands, where they would arrive at Hilo harbor on August 18. Neither the voyage from San Diego nor the new base, Camp Tarawa, were the stuff of honeymoons, especially one being taken by the groom without a bride. John still had no word of brother George on Saipan.
Camp Tarawa, named for a bloody and thoroughly screwed-up epic Marine assault that nearly ruined the 2nd Marine Division, had been pitched in the midst of what they called the Great Hawaiian Desert, a tent city in a dusty bowl over which loomed the twin volcanoes of Mauna Loa and Mauna Lea. The nearest swimming beach was a day’s hike distant and the division wasn’t giving many days off. The intensified training schedule stimulated competition