With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [97]
Then we listened daily with sympathetic interest to the news reports of the terrible fighting encountered by the 3d, 4th, and 5th Marine divisions during the battle for Iwo Jima that began on 19 February.
“It sounds just like a larger version of Peleliu,” a buddy of mine said one day.
He didn't realize how correct he was. The new pattern of defense-in-depth and no banzai charges that the Japanese had tried on the 1st Marine Division at Peleliu was repeated on Iwo Jima. When that island was declared secured on 16 March, the cost to the three Marine divisions that fought there sounded like our Peleliu casualties magnified three times.
During our training we were told that we would have to climb over a seawall or cliff (exact height unknown) to move inland during the coming battle. Several times we practiced scaling a sheer coral cliff (about forty feet high) across the bay from the division's camp on Pavuvu. We had no more than two ropes to get the entire company up and over the cliff. Supposedly we would be furnished rope ladders before D day, but I never saw any.
While we stood at the foot of the cliff during those exercises, waiting our turn and watching other men struggle up the ropes to the top of the cliff with all their combat gear, I heard some choice comments from my buddies regarding the proceedings. The company officers (all new except First Lieutenant Stanley, the CO) were rushing around with great enthusiasm urging the troops up the cliff like it was some sort of college football training routine.
“What a fouled-up bunch of boot lieutenants if I ever saw any. Just what the hell do they think them goddamn Nips are gonna be doin’ while we climb up that cliff one at a time?” grumbled a veteran machine gunner.
“Seems pretty stupid to me. If that beach is anything like Peleliu, we 'll get picked off before anybody gets up any cliff,” I said.
“You said that right, Sledgehammer, and them Nips ain't gonna be sittin’ around on their cans; they're gonna bracket that beach with mortars and artillery, and machine guns are gonna sweep the top of that cliff,” he said with melancholy resignation.
Our new mortar section leader was a New Englander out of an Ivy League college. Mac was blond, not large, but was well built, energetic, and talkative, with a broad New England accent. He was a conscientious officer, but he irritated the veterans by talking frequently and at great length about what he was going to do to the Japanese when we went into action again. We sometimes heard such big talk from enlisted replacements who were trying to impress someone (mostly themselves) with how brave they would be under fire, but Mac was about the only officer I ever heard indulge in it.
Whenever he got started with, “The first time one of our guys gets hit, its gonna make me so mad that I'm gonna take my kabar between my teeth and my .45 in my hand and charge the Japs,” all the veterans would sit back and smirk. We threw knowing glances at each other and rolled our eyes like disgusted schoolboys listening to a coach brag that he could lick the opposing team single-handed.
I felt embarrassed for Mac, because it was so obvious he conceived combat as a mixture of football and a boy scout campout. He wouldn't listen to the few words of caution from some of us who suggested he had a shock coming. I agreed with a buddy from Texas who said, “I hope to God that big-mouth Yankee lieutenant has to eat every one of them words of his when the stuff hits the fan.” The Texan's wish came true on Okinawa, and it was one of the funniest things I ever saw under fire.
Before the next campaign, we had to take the usual inoculations plus some additional ones. Our arms were sore, and many men became feverish. The troops hated getting injections, and the large number (someone said it was seven) before Okinawa made us crotchety. The plague shot burned like fire and was the worst.
Most of our corpsmen did a good job of making the shots as painless as possible, and this