With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [16]
We were drilled thoroughly but were quite nervous about handling live ammunition for the first time. We fired at empty oil drums set on a dry hillside. There were no mishaps. When I saw the first shell burst with a dull bang about two hundred yards out on the range, I suddenly realized what a deadly weapon we were dealing with. A cloud of black smoke appeared at the point of impact. Flying steel fragments kicked up little puffs of dust all around an area about nine by eighteen yards. When three shells were fired from one weapon, the bursts covered an area about thirty-five by thirty-five yards with flying fragments.
“Boy, I'd pity any Jap that had all that shrapnel flying around him,” murmured one of my more thoughtful buddies.
“Yeah, it'll tear their asses up all right. But don't forget they're gonna be throwing stuff at you just as fast as they can,” said the mortar sergeant.
This, I realized, was the difference between war and hunting. When I survived the former, I gave up the latter.
We also received training in hand-to-hand combat. This consisted mostly of judo and knife fighting. To impress us with the effectiveness of his subject, the judo instructor methodically slammed each of us to the ground as we tried to rush him.
“What good is this kind of fighting gonna do us if the Japs can pick us off with machine guns and artillery at five hundred yards?” someone asked.
“When dark comes in the Pacific,” the instructor replied, “the Japs always send men into our positions to try to infiltrate the lines or just to see how many American throats they can slit. They are tough and they like close-in fighting. You can handle them, but you've got to know how.” Needless to say, we paid close attention from then on.
“Don't hesitate to fight the Japs dirty. Most Americans, from the time they are kids, are taught not to hit below the belt. It's not sportsmanlike. Well, nobody has taught the Japs that, and war ain't sport. Kick him in the balls before he kicks you in yours,” growled our instructor.
We were introduced to the Marine's foxhole companion, the Ka-Bar knife. This deadly piece of cutlery was manufactured by the company bearing its name. The knife was a foot long with a seven-inch-long by one-and-a-half-inch-wide blade. The five-inch handle was made of leather washers packed together and had “USMC” stamped on the blade side of the upper hand guard. Light for its size, the knife was beautifully balanced.
“Everybody has heard a lot about all those kinds of fancy fighting knives that are, or should be, carried by infantry troops: throwing knives, stilettos, daggers, and all that stuff. Most of it is nothing but bull. Sure, you'll probably open more cans of C rations than Japs with this knife, but if a Jap ever jumps in your hole, you're better off with a Ka-Bar than any other knife. It's the very best and it's rugged, too. If you guys were gonna fight Germans, I'd guess you'd never need a fighting knife, but with the Japs it's different. I guarantee that you or the man in the next foxhole will use a Ka-Bar on a Jap infiltrator before the war is over.” He was right.*
All of our instructors at Camp Elliott did a professional job. They presented us with the material and made it clear that our chances of surviving the war depended to a great extent on how well we learned. As teachers they had no problem with student motivation.
But I don't recall that anyone really comprehended what was happening outside our own training routine. Maybe it was the naive optimism of youth, but the awesome reality that we were training to be cannon fodder in a global