With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [61]
* The shore party battalion consisted of Marines assigned the mission of unloading and handling supplies and of directing logistics traffic on the beach during an amphibious assault.
* Determined from experience, a unit of fire was the amount of ammunition that would last, on average, for one day of heavy fighting. A unit of fire for the M1 rifle was 100 rounds; for the carbine, 45 rounds; for the .45 caliber pistol, 14 rounds; for the light machine gun, 1,500 rounds; and for the 60mm mortar, 100 rounds.
* Paul Douglas became a legend in the 1st Marine Division. This remarkable man was fifty-three years old, had been an economics professor at the University of Chicago, and had enlisted in the Marine Corps as a private. In the Peleliu battle he was slightly wounded carrying flamethrower ammunition up to the lines. At Okinawa he was wounded seriously by a bullet in the arm while carrying wounded for ⅗. Even after months of therapy, he didn't regain complete use of the limb.
†Both Hillbilly and Teskevich were later killed.
* For nearly a week of bitter combat, Maj. Gen. William H. Rupertus insisted that the 1st Marine Division could handle the job on Peleliu alone. Only after the 1st Marine Regiment was ground down to a nub—suffering 56 percent casualties—did Maj. Gen. Roy Geiger, commander of the III Marine Amphibious Corps, overrule Rupertus and order in the U.S. Army's 321st Infantry Regiment to help the Marines.
* I fulfilled that vow in July 1945 after the battle for Okinawa ended.
* During and after the war, army men told me that if a soldier got wounded and later returned to infantry duty, there was little chance it would be to his old company. They all agreed that was regrettable. They didn't like the practice, because a recuperated veteran became just another replacement in a strange outfit.
CHAPTER FIVE
Another Amphibious Assault
The 5th Marines now had the mission to secure the northern part of the island—that is, the upper part of the larger “lobster claw.” Following that chore the regiment was to move south again on the eastern side of the Umurbrogol ridges to complete the isolation and encirclement. Most of us in the ranks never saw a map of Peleliu except during training on Pavuvu, and had never heard the ridge system referred to by its correct name, Umurbrogol Mountain. We usually referred to the whole ridge system as “Bloody Nose,” “Bloody Nose Ridge,” or simply “the ridges.”
As we moved through the army lines, Japanese machine guns were raking the crest of the ridge on our right. The slugs and bluish white tracers pinned down the American troops on the ridge but passed high above us on the road. The terrain was flat and sparsely wooded. Tanks supported us, and we were fired on by small arms, artillery, and mortars from the high coral ridges to our right and from Ngesebus Island a few hundred yards north of Peleliu.
Our battalion turned right at the junction of West Road and East Road, headed south along the latter, and stopped at dusk. As usual, there wasn't much digging in as such, mostly finding some crater or depression and piling rocks around it for what protection we could get.
I was ordered to carry a five-gallon can of water over to the company CP. When I got there, Ack Ack was studying a map by the light of a tiny flashlight that his runner shielded with another folded map. The company's radioman was sitting with him, quietly tuning his radio and calling an artillery battery of the 11th Marines.
Putting the water can down, I sat on it and watched my skipper with admiration. Never before had I regretted so profoundly my lack of artistic talent and inability to draw the scene before me. The tiny flashlight faintly illuminated Captain Haldane's face as he studied the map. His big jaw, covered with a charcoal stubble of beard, jutted out. His heavy