With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [100]
In the gathering twilight we could see the stern of a transport far ahead of us. It was the last ship in the convoy that had passed from view around the end of Guadalcanal. Our coxswain made as much speed as possible to catch the transport, and we shipped more and more water. If we didn't catch up with that transport before dark we didn't know when we would get back to our ship.
Water began filling the bilges below the floor decking, so the coxswain started the pumps to keep us afloat. We stood by to bail with our helmets, but by the time the water rose above the flooring where we could get at it, the boat would probably sink because of its heavy load. The situation was grim, and I dreaded the thought of trying to swim the couple of miles through rough water to the beach. What irony, I thought, if some of us should die after surviving Peleliu by drowning on maneuvers in Iron Bottom Bay.
Slowly we gained on the transport and finally drew alongside. Towering above us, the ship was packed with Marines. We shouted up to them for help. A navy officer leaned over the rail and asked us which ship we were from. We told him we had missed the McCracken and requested to come aboard or we might sink. He gave orders to our coxswain to pull in close under a pair of davits. He did so, and two cables with hooks were lowered to us. Just as the hooks were fastened to rings in the floor, our Higgins boat seemed to start sinking. Only the cables held it up. A cargo net was lowered to us, and we scrambled up and aboard the ship. We were all mighty relieved to be out of that small boat.
Several hours after dark, the ship arrived at the fleet anchorage. A signalman on the bridge went to work with his blinker light sending code to other ships. The McCracken was located, and we were soon back aboard.
“Where the hell you guys been so long?” asked a man in my troop compartment as we fell into our racks.
“We went to ’Frisco for a beer,” someone answered.
“Wise guy,” he replied.
After maneuvers were completed, our convoy sailed from the Russell Islands on 15 March 1945. We were bound for Ulithi Atoll where the convoy would join the gathering invasion fleet. We anchored off Ulithi on 21 March and remained there until 27 March.*
We lined the rails of our transport and looked out over the vast fleet in amazement. We saw ships of every description: huge new battleships, cruisers, sleek destroyers, and a host of fast escort craft. Aircraft carriers were there in greater numbers than any of us had ever seen before. Every conceivable type of amphibious vessel was arrayed. It was the biggest invasion fleet ever assembled in the Pacific, and we were awed by the sight of it.
Because of tides and winds, the ships swung about on their anchor chains, and each day the fleet looked new and different. When I came topside each morning, I felt disoriented. It was a strange sensation, as though I were in a different frame of reference and had to learn my surroundings anew.
The first afternoon at Ulithi a fellow mortarman said, “Break out the field glasses, and let's see how many kinds of ships we can identify.” We passed the mortar section's field glasses around and whiled away many hours studying the different ships.
Suddenly someone gasped, “Look over there at that hospital ship off our port bow! Look at them nurses! Gimme them field glasses!”
Lining the rail of the hospital ship were about a dozen American nurses looking out over the fleet. A scuffle erupted among us over who would use the field glasses first, but we all finally had a look at the girls. We whistled and waved, but we were too far away to be heard.
Aside from the huge new battleships and carriers, we talked most about a terribly scorched and battered aircraft carrier anchored near us. A navy officer told us she was the Franklin.† We could see charred and twisted aircraft on her flight deck, where