With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [60]
We boarded trucks that carried us southward along the east road then some distance northward along the west road. As we bumped and jolted past the airfield, we were amazed at all the work the Seabees (naval construction battalions) had accomplished on the field. Heavy construction equipment was everywhere, and we saw hundreds of service troops living in tents and going about their duties as though they were in Hawaii or Australia. Several groups of men, Army and Marine service troops, watched our dusty truck convoy go by. They wore neat caps and dungarees, were clean-shaven, and seemed relaxed. They eyed us curiously, as though we were wild animals in a circus parade. I looked at my buddies in the truck and saw why. The contrast between us and the onlookers was striking. We were armed, helmeted, unshaven, filthy, tired, and haggard. The sight of clean comfortable noncom-batants was depressing, and we tried to keep up our morale by discussing the show of U.S. material power and technology we saw.
We got off the trucks somewhere up the west road parallel to the section of the ridges on our right that was in American hands. We heard firing on the closest ridge. The troops I saw along the road as we unloaded were army infantrymen from the 321st Infantry Regiment, veterans of Angaur.
As I exchanged a few remarks with some of these men, I felt a deep comradeship and respect for them. Reporters and historians like to write about interservice rivalry among military men; it certainly exists, but I found that frontline combatants in all branches of the services showed a sincere mutual respect when they faced the same danger and misery. Combat soldiers and sailors might call us “gyrenes,” and we called them “dogfaces” and “swabbies,” but we respected each other completely.
After the relief of 1st Marines, a new phase of the fight for Peleliu began. No longer would the Marines suffer prohibitive casualties in fruitless frontal assaults from the south against the ridges. Rather they would sweep up the western coast around the enemy's last-ditch defenses in search of a better route into the final pocket of resistance.
Although the bitter battle for Peleliu would drag on for another two months, the 1st Marine Division seized all of the terrain of strategic value in the first week of bitter fighting. In a series of exhausting assaults, the division had taken the vital airfield, the commanding terrain above it, and all of the island south and east of Umurbrogol Mountain. Yet the cost had been high: 3,946 casualties. The division had lost one regiment as an effective fighting unit, and had severely depleted the strength of its other two.
* Historical accounts of battles often leave a reader with the impression that the individual participants had a panoramic view of events. Such is not the case, however. Even the historians have never been able to piece together completely what happened to ⅗ on D day at Peleliu.
* Shofner had assumed command of ⅗ before the Peleliu campaign. Not only was he highly respected, but his men considered him someone special. As a captain, he had survived the fighting on Corregidor, been captured by the Japanese, escaped, and had returned to combat. He came back to the division later, and commanded the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines on Okinawa. He retired from the Corps as a brigadier general.
†Walt was the executive officer of the 5th Marines when the battle for Peleliu began. He remained with ⅗ for a few days as its commanding officer until a replacement was named. A combat Marine in the truest sense, Walt had served with the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and at Cape Gloucester. He had won the Navy Cross for heroism. He went on to serve in the Korean War and later in Vietnam where, as a lieutenant general, he commanded the III Marine Amphibious Corps for nearly two years. He retired as a general after serving as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.
‡Casualty figures for the 1st Marine Division on