With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [146]
They expressed themselves in various ways, but the gist of their disillusionment was a feeling of alienation from everyone but their old comrades. Although there was gasoline and meat rationing back in the States, life was safe and easy. Plenty of people were ready to buy a Marine combat veteran wearing campaign ribbons and battle stars a drink or a beer anytime. But all the good life and luxury didn't seem to take the place of old friendships forged in combat.
There was talk of war profiteers and able-bodied men who got easy duty at the expense of others. Some letters said simply that folks back in the States “just don't understand what the hell it's all about, because they have had it so easy.” I heard more than one buddy express the opinion, as we sat in the mud, that civilians would “understand” if the Japanese or .the Germans bombed an American city. Some men thought that would have been a good idea if no American civilians got killed, just scared. But nobody wanted it to be his hometown.
It was hard to believe that some of our old friends who had wanted so much to return home actually were writing us that they thought of volunteering again for overseas duty. (Some actually did.) They had had enough of war, but they had greater difficulty adjusting to civilians or to comfortable Stateside military posts. We were unable to understand their attitudes until we ourselves returned home and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn't perfect, or their coffee wasn't hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.
Our buddies who had gone back had been greeted enthusiastically—as those of us who survived were received later on. But the folks back home didn't, and in retrospect couldn't have been expected to, understand what we had experienced, what in our minds seemed to set us apart forever from anyone who hadn't been in combat. We didn't want to indulge in self-pity. We just wished that people back home could understand how lucky they were and stop complaining about trivial inconveniences.
Siegfried Sassoon, an English combat infantry officer and poet in World War I, experienced the same feeling when he returned home. He summed it up in the following verse:
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.*
The poet might just as well have been referring to Peleliu or to the mudfields in front of Shuri as to France in World War I. Some of the younger replacements who came to us then had trouble adjusting, and not just to the shelling. That was enough to shake up the strongest veteran, but they were utterly dismayed by our horrible surroundings. Numerous Marine replacements for combat units on Okinawa never had their names added to their units’ muster rolls, because they got hit before notice of their transfer from their replacement draft to the combat unit ever reached Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. So they were listed on the casualty rolls as members of various replacement drafts.
It was also common throughout the campaign for replacements to get hit before we even knew their names. They came up confused, frightened, and hopeful, got wounded or killed, and went right back to the rear on the route by which they had come, shocked, bleeding, or stiff. They were forlorn figures coming up to the meat grinder and going right back out of it like homeless waifs, unknown and faceless to us, like unread books on a shelf. They never “belonged” to the company or made any friends before they got hit.
Of course, those replacements who got hit right away with the “million-dollar wound” were actually fortunate.*
Our food usually consisted of a cold can of C rations and, rarely, a canteen cup of hot coffee. When we could