Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [96]
The ostrich buries its head in the sand; Marines in a firefight rely on their vision to target the enemy, to return fire, to figure out what’s happened, to look for orders. If you cover your face with a helmet, you’re blind. And this is an order given by a seasoned gunnery sergeant to his Marines? Phyllis goes on with her account, quoting Basilone: “As if struck by lightning, we hit the ground fast. Carefully tilting our helmets a bit we could see where the machine gun fire was coming from. It had to be silenced or we would be pinned down indefinitely.”
Phyllis picks up Basilone’s early moments on the black sand beach of Iwo with her “tale of the blockhouse,” a dramatic vignette of which there are multiple versions. And she shifts from first to third person and back, in retelling what Basilone did next to silence the enemy gun. “Telling us to stay put [who is ‘us,’ who is narrating here?], Basilone crawled in a large semi-circle toward the blockhouse, which was spitting fire and death. He was able to crawl underneath the smoking gun ports. As he rested his back against the wall of the blockhouse, we counted with him the seconds before each machine gun burst. Waiting for the interval, he pulled the pin on his grenade, slammed it in the gun port and ran like hell down the beach. He tripped in the deep ash and as he buried himself protectively we heard the muffled roar of the exploding grenade. The blockhouse was smoking and the gun at the port had disappeared. Basilone ran back, dropping another grenade in for insurance. There were no signs of life, nothing but silence and the sickening smell of burnt flesh and scorched hair. Working his way back to us Basilone yelled, ‘well, boys, there’s one bunch of slantheads who won’t bother anyone. They’re fried.’”
Why would a machine-gun platoon sergeant be carrying hand grenades? I don’t insist it never happened, but it puzzles me. Riflemen tote grenades, but machine gunners already have such heavy loads that they don’t need to pile on additional gear.
Alternating between third and first person, Phyllis continues, describing the heavy enemy bombardment chewing up Marines on the beach. More disconcerting is Basilone himself explaining from the beach what the Japanese strategy is and what orders General Tadamichi Kuribayashi is sending to his various commanders. How the hell can a gunnery sergeant under fire know what’s going on with general officers at the enemy headquarters as he and his men attempt to mount up and move on against hostile resistance?
When an American tank passes through Basilone’s position and is hit by shells, one of its crew members scrambles out of the hatch to safety, only to be killed by Japanese small-arms fire. “Basilone was raging,” Phyllis wrote, “rising to his feet as he charged over to the tank cradling his machine gun in his arms [machine gunners in the platoon usually carry the guns; the platoon sergeant doesn’t]. Spotting a flash from a tree top [were there many trees on Iwo?] he stood upright and sprayed it furiously. We heard an unearthly scream as the treacherous sniper plummeted to his death. By this time there were other tanks, unaware of the heavily mined path. Basilone yelled and waved his arms, motioning them to follow him. As we watched [who is ‘we?’] he led them in a wide circle into the safety of the wooded area.”
So now Basilone is commanding a tank platoon, and again, how does he know where the mines are? “By now Basilone was as if possessed, ignoring the flesh ripping death all about him he rushed back to us shouting ‘OK, fellows, let’s get moving. We got to get these guns set up.’” Now, either they’re going to set up the machine guns where they’ll make a stand or they’re going to move out; they can’t do both. “We began to work our way off the beach. Without warning the whole beach erupted. The enemy had recovered and was fighting back.”
This is terrible stuff, and it goes on like this,