With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [86]
During the morning of 15 October soldiers of the 2d Battalion, 321st Infantry Regiment, 81st Infantry Division (Wildcats) began moving single file into our area. I couldn't believe it! We were being relieved at last!
As the soldiers filed by us into position, a grizzled buddy squatting on his battered helmet eyed them critically and remarked, “Sledgehammer, I don't know about them dogfaces.Look how many of 'em wearin’ glasses, and they look old enough to be my daddy. Besides, them pockets on their dungaree pants sure do look baggy.”
“They look fine to me. They're our replacements,” I answered.
“I guess you're right. Thank God they're here,” he said reflectively.
His observations were correct though, because most of our fellow Marines hadn't reached the age of twenty-one yet, and army dungarees did have large side pockets.
“We sure are glad to see you guys,” I said to one of the soldiers.
He just grinned and said, “Thanks.” I knew he wasn't happy to be there.*
The relief, which had gone smoothly, was completed by 1100, and we were on our way to the northern defense zone of Peleliu. Our battalion deployed along the East Road facing seaward, where we were to stop any counterlanding the Japanese might try.
My mortar was emplaced near the road so we could fire on the strip of mangrove swamp between the narrow beach and the sea as well as up the road toward the Umurbrogol Pocket if necessary. There was a sloping ridge to our rear along which the rest of the company dug in defensively. We stayed there from the time we came off the line until the last week of the month.
The area was quiet. We relaxed as much as we could with the nagging fear that we might get thrown into the line again if an emergency developed.
We learned that our battalion would leave Peleliu as soon as a ship was available to transport us back to Pavuvu. By day we rested and swapped souvenirs, but we had to be on the alert at night for possible Japanese movement. To the south we could hear the constant rattle of machine guns and the thud of mortars and artillery as the 81st Infantry Division kept up the pressure around the Umurbrogol Pocket.
“Have you gone Asiatic?” I gasped. “You know you can't keep that thing. Some officer'll put you on report sure as hell,” I remonstrated as I stared in horror at the shriveled human hand he had unwrapped.
“Aw, Sledgehammer, nobody'll say anything. I've got to dry it in the sun a little more so it won't stink,” he said as he carefully laid it out on the rock in the hot sun. He explained that he thought a dried Japanese hand would be a more interesting souvenir than gold teeth. So when he found a corpse that was drying in the sun and not rotting, he simply took out his kabar and severed the hand from the corpse, and here it was, and what did I think?
“I think you're nuts,” I said. “You know the CO will raise hell if he sees that.”
“Hell no, Sledgehammer, nobody says anything about the guys collecting gold teeth, do they?” he argued.
“Maybe so,” I said, “but it's just the idea of a human hand. Bury it.”
He looked grimly at me, which was totally out of character for his amiable good nature. “How many Marines you reckon that hand pulled the trigger on?” he asked in an icy voice.
I stared at the blackened, shriveled hand and wondered about what he said. I thought how I valued my own hands and what a miracle to do good or evil the human hand is. Although I didn't collect gold teeth, I had gotten used to the idea, but somehow a hand seemed to be going too far. The war had gotten to my friend; he had lost (briefly, I hoped) all his sensitivity. He was a twentieth-century savage now, mild mannered though he still was. I shuddered to think that I might do the same thing if the war went on and on.
Several of our Marines came