Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [179]
John Lane, a New York jeweller’s son, joined the 2/25th Marines in the midst of the battle. “We replacements were despised515 and perhaps hated by the survivors of the company,” he wrote, “because we were so green, untrained and innocent, hated because we were there because their buddies had been killed or wounded…All were so bearded, dirty, dusty and exhausted that at first I couldn’t tell them apart.” Lane, a company runner, became famously lucky. He never saw a live Japanese, nor fired his rifle, nor was hit, though it sometimes seemed to him that everyone else was. “You’d come across little piles of dead Marines, waiting to be collected. Six or seven guys piled up, turning greenish-gray, then black. Dead Japanese, some hit by flame-throwers, eyes boiled out, lips burned away, white teeth grinning, uniforms burned away and sometimes the first layer of skin, too, so the muscles would show as in an anatomical sketch. Penis sticking up like a black candle stub. Napalm boiled the blood, causing an erection, some said.”
Patrick Caruso found himself succumbing to silent reveries in the wary hours of darkness: “My mind traversed the spectrum516 of my past: school and college, and how final exams were so critical—until Iwo; why making the football team was so essential—until Iwo; how making a good impression on a date was so important—until Iwo; how getting a job during summer vacations was so significant—until Iwo; what’s in store for my future. My future? Iwo is my present and future…” Marine Jack Colegrove had written home on 26 February: “Dear Mom, finally got time to sit down and write a few lines. I know you must be pretty worried about me by now, no doubt you heard that I am on Iwo Jima. I have come through the battle thus far without a scratch, so did my friend Pentecost, I cant write to everybody so can you just tell all my friends I’m okay, all my love Jack.”
Three weeks later, however, Colegrove was obliged to report: “Gosh, sweetheart, I’m sorry I haven’t written for such a long time. However I have a very good excuse—I have been wounded and all that sort of stuff. Two days before I got hit, Pentecost was hit in the stomach, tho the fellows say it wasn’t too bad. At present I’m in a hospital in the Marianas, no telling how long I’ll be here, might be quite a while. Has our little island grown very popular back there? Man o man, that sure was a rugged place, wasn’t very nice at night, either. Sure did lose a lot of swell buddies…Think I’ll have to come home soon—for good. Guess I’m washed up as a Marine…I was thinking today that it’s a good thing I or you won’t have to pay my hospital bill. It must be quite a bit. Lets see—150 shots of penicillin, hundreds of sulfa pills, blood plasma and whole blood, dressing, chow etc. Today I managed to get into a wheelchair…”
As gently as he could, Colegrove was breaking terrible news to his mother. He sent another letter to a friend in Detroit named Torbet: “I wanted to ask you a favor. You see I lost my left leg on Iwo Jima. I don’t know if I should tell mother now, or wait until I get an artificial leg and start walking again. If you think it best to tell her, I wish you would. I don’t know what the matter is with me, but I can’t seem to tell mom myself. I sure am getting tired of laying around in these damn hospitals.” Next day Colegrove made the effort to write to his mother himself: “You wanted to know how bad517 I was hit, well, here goes, stand by!! one piece of shrapnel in left elbow, another piece in my right leg,