With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [55]
We pitied the 1st Marines attacking the ridges. They were suffering heavy casualties.
“The word is the 1st Marines catchin’ hell,” said Snafu.
“Poor guys, I pity 'em,” another man said.
“Yeah, me too, but I hope like hell they take that damn ridge, and we don't have to go up there,” said another.
“That shelling coming from up there was hell, and you couldn't even locate the guns with field glasses,” added someone else.
From what we had seen thrown at us from the left flank during the past two days, and what I saw of the ridges then, I felt sure that sooner or later every battalion of every regiment in the division would get thrown against Bloody Nose. I was right.
The 1st Marines’ predicament at the time was worse than ours in ⅗. They were attacking the end of the ridge itself, and not only received heavy shelling from enemy caves there but deadly accurate small-arms fire as well. Being tied in with the 1st Marines at the time, we got “the word” straight from the troops themselves and not from some overly optimistic officer in a CP putting pins on a map.
The word passed along the line to us told that when the men of 2/1 moved up toward the Japanese positions following preassault artillery fire, the enemy fired on them from mutually supporting positions, pinning them down and inflicting heavy losses. If they managed to get onto the slopes, the Japanese opened fire point-blank from caves as soon as our artillery lifted. The enemy then moved back into their caves. If Marines got close enough to an enemy position to attack it with flamethrowers and demolition charges, Japanese in mutually supporting positions raked them with cross fire. Each slight gain by the 1st Marines on the ridges came at almost prohibitive cost in casualties. From what little we could see of the terrain and from the great deal we heard firsthand of the desperate struggle on our left, some of us suspected that Bloody Nose was going to drag on and on in a long battle with many casualties.
The troops got paid to do the fighting (I made sixty dollars a month), and the high command the thinking; but the big brass were predicting optimistically that the Japanese defenses in the ridges would be “breached any day” and Peleliu would be secured in a few days.*
As ⅗ moved eastward on 18 September, a buddy commented sadly, “You know, Sledgehammer, a guy from the 1st Marines told me they got them poor boys makin’ frontal attacks with fixed bayonets on that damn ridge, and they can't even see the Nips that are shootin’ at 'em. That poor kid was really depressed; don't see no way he can come out alive. There just ain't no sense in that. They can't get nowhere like that. It's slaughter.”
“Yeah, some goddamn glory-happy officer wants another medal, I guess, and the guys get shot up for it. The officer gets the medal and goes back to the States, and he's a big hero. Hero, my ass; gettin’ troops slaughtered ain't being no hero,” said a veteran bitterly.
And bitterness it was. Even the most optimistic man I knew believed our battalion must take its turn against those incredible ridges—and dreaded it.
DEATH PATROL
As we moved toward the smaller “lobster claw,” Snafu chanted, “Oh, them mortar shells are bustin’ up that ole gang of mine,” to the tune of “Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.” We halted frequently to rest briefly and to keep down the number of cases of heat prostration.
Although not heavy, my pack felt like a steaming-hot wet compress on my shoulders and upper back. We were sopping wet with sweat, and at night or during a halt in the shade our dungarees dried out a bit. When they did, heavy white lines of fine, powdery salt formed, as though drawn by chalk, along the shoulders, waist, and so on. Later, as the campaign dragged on and our dungarees caked with coral