Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [93]
“On the morning of 19 February, 1945, we hit Red Beach on Iwo and started climbing its black sides under a storm of enemy mortar and artillery. Basilone had landed one wave earlier and apparently moved in. He didn’t know how to stand still. ‘Let’s go in and set up them guns for firing,’ a correspondent later quoted him. Whose guns the correspondent is talking about is hard to imagine. From the moment we landed it was total confusion: platoons and companies mixed up and in the wrong places; men and equipment sinking into the black sand while officers and NCOs drifted about, looking for their men. All that as Kuribayashi’s pre-sighted weapons tore our battalions to pieces.
“In the midst of the hellish noise and confusion,” Lansford wrote, “two Marines were seen moving among the stalled troops shouting, cursing, and moving them out. One was Colonel Louis C. Plain, the regimental executive officer of the 27th Marines, who would soon be wounded and evacuated, the other was John Basilone. Having cleared a path for the troops on the beach, Basilone gathered several more Marines, set up a base of fire, and ordered them to hold while he went back for more men and weapons. On his way Basilone spotted three M-4 Sherman tanks, their water-cooled V-8s grinding like hell as they struggled up the beach under heavy fire. Knowing their value for knocking out bunkers, Basilone immediately took over.”
There is usually a telephone on the exterior rear of tanks, and it may be that Basilone was using that to communicate with the crew inside and give them the benefit of his superior field of vision outside the buttoned-up vehicle.
Lansford continues: “Sergeant Adolph Brusa, a mortar squad leader, remembered he suddenly looked up and there was this lone Marine with those tanks. ‘And I said to myself, that’s John Basilone! What the hell is he doing standing up when everyone else is hugging the ground?’ What Basilone was doing was guiding the tanks through a minefield and pointing out targets while completely exposed to the fire aimed at the Shermans.”
We’ve got to wonder, how would a machine-gun sergeant just off the beach know where the enemy minefields were located? There is no description I can find of Basilone’s going ahead of the tanks on hands and knees, probing with a bayonet for the telltale clank of metal on metal as Marines were trained to do when traversing mined areas. And defenders don’t usually leave marking stakes to alert an oncoming foe. I accept the other suggestion, his pointing out targets of opportunity to the tankers. Good infantrymen do that.
“Leaving the tanks on high ground, Basilone returned to round up more troops for the assault team he had started building near the edge of Motoyama Airfield #1 (one of his unit’s several first-day objectives). To do this he’d have to re-cross the steep volcanic beach where he had met the tanks and where many Marines were still pinned down by Kuribayashi’s relentless shelling and well-camouflaged pillboxes.” To one who’s read descriptions and the citation for what Basilone did on Guadalcanal in October 1942, there is an eerie resonance, this business of going back, under heavy fire, small arms as well as shelling, and more than once, to pick up ammo or water or even a few stragglers he could use in the fight.
Lansford cites one of the officers in the battle who was an eyewitness: “Among those trying to reorganize their scattered units was Major (later Colonel) Justin G. Duryea of the 1st Battalion, 27th Marines. Duryea, who would lose an arm in an enemy mine explosion on D118, (and who) was so impressed by Basilone’s heroism that he later recommended him for a second Medal of Honor.” The second medal he once joked with buddies about going after?
“Basilone had landed with the fourth wave approximately at 0930. It was now almost noon and throughout the battle he had risked his life repeatedly, disregarding every danger, to