Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [85]
On February 12, Lincoln’s Birthday, and with only another six or seven hundred miles to go, the convoy paused at Saipan, where John’s outfit was transferred to another ship, an LST (Landing Ship Tank) carrying a flotilla of smaller landing craft in which the Marines would hit the Iwo beach. On February 16 the LST departed Saipan on the last leg of its long voyage. Men were quieter now. Religious services were well attended.
Medics on some of the smaller ships reported an outbreak of diarrhea. Doorly suggests that some of the “new” men were getting nervy. Had Doorly never heard the popular and often uttered combat phrase “scared shitless,” conveying an entirely different situation? And as for only the newer Marines being affected, seasoned Marines with a few firefights under their belts will tell you that the worst time of all is before battle, the anticipation of action, and that once the firing starts, the adrenaline flows and a man’s focus becomes more acute and shifts to killing the enemy instead of worrying about oneself. But all of this is small-unit stuff, and those the humble infantrymen, not the planners or decision-makers, but only the traditional raw meat at the end of the stick that prods the enemy.
Alexander provides the bigger picture. General Schmidt, who was expecting a ten-day fight, issued operation plan 5-44 on December 23. Despite its pre-Christmas timing, says Alexander, there was little gift-wrapping: “The plan offered nothing fancy.” Another, slightly junior Marine general, Holland M. Smith (“Howlin’ Mad” Smith to his Marines) said of the invasion, “It’s a tough proposition,” and gloomily predicted “severe casualties unless greater and more effective preliminary naval bombardment was provided.” There were two potential landing beaches, both dominated by the 550-foot-high Mount Suribachi. The three thousand yards of black sand beach to the southeast appeared more sheltered and was favored by Schmidt. On D-Day the 4th Division (George Basilone) would land on the right of that black sand beach, the 5th Division (John Basilone) on the left with the 3rd Division held in reserve and to be sent in later. It was the classic triangular USMC setup, two up and one back. Alexander lists the initial objectives: one airfield, the lower one of the three, the western shore, and the hill, Suribachi. A first-night, and probably major, enemy counterattack was expected, and welcomed, cheerfully this time, by Smith. “That’s generally when we break their backs,” he said pleasantly of the anticipated enemy strike; he was a man who enjoys a good battle.
As Basilone’s LST and scores of other ships, large and small, steamed toward Iwo, toward the waiting enemy and the battle to come, it may be that some of the more contemplative Marines reflected on the company of men with whom they sailed and would fight, their Corps, and how during only a few years it had grown. When Basilone and others, including 4th Marine Division C.O. Major General Clifton B. Cates, fought on the ’Canal in 1942, there existed in the entire Corps only the 1st Marine Division in the Pacific, with a 2nd Marine Division still forming up at Camp Lejeune. Now the Marine Corps comprised five divisions with a sixth on the way. There loomed yet another overall goal for the Corps, once Iwo and later Okinawa were digested, when the United States would be invading Japan’s mainland, its home islands, probably starting with Honshu, with a huge American Army—an army that was to be spearheaded