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I carried a little Gideon's New Testament in my breast pocket, and it stayed soaked with sweat during the early days. The Japanese carried their personal photos and other papers in waterproof green rubber pocket-sized folding bags. I “liberated” one such bag from a corpse and used it as a covering for my New Testament. The little Bible went all the way through Okinawa's rains and mud with me, snug in its captured cover.

During one halt along a sandy road in the woods, we heard the words “hot chow” passed.

“The hell you say,” someone said in disbelief.

“Straight dope; pork chops.”

We couldn't believe it, but it was true. We filed past a cylindrical metal container, and each of us received a hot, delicious pork chop. The chow had been sent ashore for Company K by the crew of LST 661. I vowed if the chance ever came I would express my thanks to those sailors for that chow.*

As we sat along the road eating pork chops with our fingers, a friend sitting on his helmet next to me began to examine a Japanese pistol he had captured. Suddenly the pistol fired. He toppled over on his back but sprang up immediately, holding his hand to his forehead. Several men hit the deck, and we all ducked at the sound of the shot. I had seen what happened but ducked instinctively with an already well-developed conditioned reflex. I stood up and looked at the man's face. The bullet merely had creased his forehead. He was lucky. When the other men realized he wasn't hurt, they really began to kid him unmercifully. Typical comments went something like:

“Hey, ole buddy, I always knew you had a hard head, but I didn't know slugs would bounce off of it.”

“You don't need a helmet except to sit on when we take ten.”

“You're too young to handle dangerous weapons.”

“Some people will do anything to get a Purple Heart.”

“Is this the sort of thing you used to do to attract your mother's attention?”

He rubbed his forehead, embarrassed, and mumbled, “Aw, knock it off.”

We moved along a causeway and finally halted on the edge of a swamp where the company deployed and dug in for the night. Things were fairly quiet. The next morning the company swung south, pushing through the heavy growth behind a mortar and artillery barrage. We killed a few Japanese throughout the area. Late in the day Company K deployed again for the night.

The following day, Company K received a mission to push a strong combat patrol to the east coast of the island. Our orders were to move through the thick growth onto the peninsula that formed the smaller “claw” and set up a defensive position at the northern tip of the land mass on the edge of a mangrove swamp. Our orders didn't specify the number of days we were to remain there.

First Lt. Hillbilly Jones commanded the patrol consisting of about forty Marines plus a war dog, a Doberman pinscher. Sgt. Henry (“Hank”) Boyes was the senior NCO. As with all combat patrols, we were heavily armed with rifles and BARs.We also had a couple of machine-gun squads and the mortar squad with us. Never missing an opportunity to get into the action with his cold steel, Sgt. Haney volunteered to go along.

“G-2 [division intelligence] reports there are a couple thousand Japs somewhere on the other side of that swamp, and if they try to move across it to get back to the defensive positions in Bloody Nose, we're to hold them up until artillery, air strikes, and reinforcements can join us,” a veteran NCO said in a terse voice. Our mission was to make contact with the enemy, test his strength, or occupy and hold a strategic position against enemy attack. I wasn't enthusiastic about it.

We picked up extra rations and ammunition as we filed through the company lines exchanging parting remarks with friends. Heading into the thick scrub brush, I felt pretty lonesome, like a little boy going to spend his first night away from home. I realized that Company K had become my home. No matter how bad a situation was in the company, it was still home to me. It was not just a lettered company in a numbered