With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [90]
* A knapsack was the lower half of the two-part World War II Marine combat pack. The upper part was called the haversack. The latter half was the part a Marine normally carried with him into a fight.
†I later wore this same lucky jacket through the long, muddy Okinawa campaign. Faded now, it hangs peacefully in my closet, one of my most prized possessions.
*Graves, Robert, “Introduction” in Old Soldiers Never Die by Frank Richards, Berkley Publishing Corp., N.Y. 1966
PART II
Okinawa:
The Final Triumph
FOREWORD TO PART II
Peleliu took its toll. As the executive officer and then commander of Company K, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, I saw in the eyes of each survivor the price he paid for thirty days of unrelenting close combat on that hunk of blasted coral.
For those weary men returning to Pavuvu in November 1944, the war was far from over. Pavuvu was a better place the second time around than when we had left it. But it wasn't a rest haven. The survivors of Peleliu weren't allowed such a luxury. There was little time for licking wounds. We had to absorb a lot of new men as replacements for those lost on Peleliu and for the rotation home of the Guadalcanal veterans who by then had fought three campaigns.
Peleliu was something special for the Marines of K/⅗— for all of the 1st Marine Division. It has remained so down through the years. Yet Okinawa had its own character, more forbidding in many ways than its predecessor. There the 1st Marine Division fought a different war under a new set of rules where tactics and movement were used in a fashion previously unknown to the island-fighting Marines.
Okinawa is a large island, more than sixty miles long and from two to eighteen miles wide. It introduced the Marines to “land” warfare for the first time. Even in 1945 it had a city, towns and villages, several large airfields, an intricate road network, and a good-sized civilian population. Most important, the Japanese defended it with more than 100,000 of their best troops. Okinawa was Japanese territory. They knew it was our final stepping-stone to the home islands of Japan.
The Marines had learned a lot on the way to Okinawa. We had improved our force structure, tactics, and techniques for combat along the way. The Japanese had learned, too. On Okinawa we faced a set of defenses and defensive tactics made sophisticated by the Japanese through application of lessons learned from all of their previous losses. They also fought with an intensity born of a certain knowledge that if they failed, nothing remained to prevent our direct assault into their homeland.
Irrespective of the new elements, the battle for Okinawa was fought and ultimately decided the way all battles have been fought and won or lost. The men on both sides, facing each other day after day across the sights of a rifle, determined the outcome. Pfc. Eugene B. Sledge was one of those men. In this book he gives us a unique experience of seeing and feeling war at its most important level, that of the enlisted fighting man. His words ring true, clean of analysis and reaction to past events. They simply reflect what happened to him and, therefore, to all of the Marines who fought there. I know, because I fought with them.
For the men of the “old breed” who struggled, bled, died, and eventually won on Peleliu and Okinawa, Sledgehammer is their most eloquent spokesman. I'm proud to have served with them—and with him.
Capt. Thomas J. Stanley
U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Ret.)
Houston, Texas
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rest and Rehabilitation
Early next morning the Sea Runner, in convoy with other ships including those carrying the survivors of the 7th