ACT IV

"HAZE GRAY AND UNDERWAY "

December 1943 - June 1945

MOST OF 1943 HAD PASSED IN A SLOW, GRINDING WARFARE CONDUCTED BY America and her allies along the periphery of the Japanese empire. Less noticeable, the enemy had struggled to make up its losses in weapons and men. As the Imperial Navy shrank, the U.S. Navy experienced an unprecedented expansion. The war entered a new phase in late 1943 because Americans in factories, laboratories, and training camps had spent the last two years producing a vast arsenal of military weapons and equipment, as well as men and women trained to use them. The arrival of this awesome power fueled two separate drives aimed at Tokyo: one led by General Douglas MacArthur through the South Pacific; the other by Admiral Chester Nimitz through the central Pacific. The onslaught reduced the Empire of Japan to one set of military tactics.

THE PASSWORD FOR DECEMBER 26, D-DAY ON CAPE GLOUCESTER, WAS "GUADALCANAL." Just after five a.m. the mortar platoon watched a long stream of bombers off to their left and assumed they were bombing the main invasion beaches. The two destroyers nearby began firing their five-inch guns at the beach at seven thirty. Sid heard a friend beg Uncle Sam "not to be too thrifty" and fire more rounds, damn the expense. The shelling, however, halted after fifteen minutes and a squadron of fifteen medium bombers bombed and strafed the beach.¹ The bombers' fighter escort shot down eight enemy airplanes. The 2/1 landed at 8:05 a.m. against no opposition. Sid walked down the portside stairs and through knee- deep water to shore. The word was "the japs fled leaving everything." Abandoned packs, rifles, ammunition, and supplies indicated the enemy had occupied the area just prior to the morning's assault. The enemy's departure made more and more sense as the marines discovered the level of destruction wrought by the bombardment. All hands turned to the work of setting up the perimeter, unloading the ships, and getting their camp organized. Inexplicably, no chow had been unloaded for lunch.

The object of their invasion, the coastal trail, turned out to be "nothing more than a single footpath," so far as Sid could tell. The trail ran along a ridge about twelve hundred yards inland, paralleling the ocean. The 2/1 made the ridge and its section of trail the apex of its semicircular perimeter, with the line running back toward the beach on both sides. The perimeter enclosed an area of about three city blocks, all of it on an angle from the shore to the ridge. Beyond the ridge, the ground rose precipitously upward to the top of nearby Mount Talawe, at sixty-six hundred feet. In the center of his perimeter, Colonel Masters put his 81mm mortar crews and a battery of 75mm guns. The day after the invasion, the #4 gun squad continued building their firing positions in the rain. It rained two and one-half inches that day, the water finding its way through the dense underbrush to the sharp ravines leading to the sea. The rain and the work continued the next two days. The working parties beat back and tramped down the mass of vegetation, which grew thicker and denser than the jungle of Guadalcanal. They strung barbed wire. They enjoyed eating the K rations, a step up from the C rations, although K rations convinced them the army got the best chow. They were glad when the cooks got their galleys operational on the twenty-eighth. Shots rang out along the perimeter several times that morning, and three patrols had reported skirmishes by noon. Marines manning the lines in Company E's sector saw enemy soldiers moving toward them. It was only a matter of time. Sid and all the others not manning foxholes on the line swung in their hammocks that evening, grateful for a dry place to sleep.

In the steady rain of the next day, another patrol contacted a large enemy force near the village of Tauali. A gale gathered around them in the afternoon and darkness came quickly. Just after midnight, during "a wild howling monsoon lightning and rain storm," the shit hit the fan on the right flank. The observation post called in the coordinates; the spotter asked for a barrage along that side of the perimeter, where G and H companies' lines met.² A fire mission so close to marines demanded careful leveling of the bubbles in the gun sights, the correct number of increments on the bottom of each shell, and precise calculations based on the range card. Each of the gun squads had been issued a one- cell flashlight for just such a contingency. Only Sid's worked, though. He moved from gun to gun as the others groped in the darkness. To get the rounds up and out of the jungle canopy, Sid had to keep the guns above a seventy-five-degree elevation. The big 75mm howitzers nearby lacked that trajectory and were therefore useless. The 81mms provided the fire support. An experienced gunner, Sid likened the job of firing a mortar in a jungle to standing inside a barn and "throwing rocks at the enemy . . . through holes in the roof." He walked the bursts to within fifteen yards of the front line. Some moments his squad could hear marines on the perimeter "pouring lead"; at other moments the concussions mixed with the thunder and became confusing. The soft cough of the 60mm mortars, being directed by his friend Deacon out there in the darkness, could not be heard at all.

Over the telephone came news of hand-to-hand fighting and a running total of banzai charges. Some of the men in Sid's OP were hit. The battle slackened after the fifth charge and stopped at about seven thirty a.m. The #4 gun squad dug out the base plate of their mortar. The concussions had forced it deep into the mud. Colonel Masters came to congratulate his 81mm mortar platoon on a fine performance. Masters asked his mortarmen to introduce themselves. He asked Private First Class Phillips to show him the one flashlight that had worked. It was a proud moment in an otherwise depressing situation. Instead of hot chow for breakfast--the cooks and the mess men had spent the night carrying ammo--they received more of the wax-paper cartons marked "U.S. Army Field Ration K" above a list of its contents. Slipping and struggling through the mud came the stretcher bearers, bringing back the dead and wounded. How Company had been hit hardest--of the six killed in action, four came from H Company; sixteen of the nineteen wounded had been How Company men. The surgical tent happened to be near the 81mm mortar platoon, so Sid got a good look at his friends' suffering. He felt helpless. They were in agony. He hated the feeling of not knowing what to do. In that moment a desire to learn to heal came to him.

The 81mm gun squads spent the morning cleaning up the mess around their mortars--most of it the packaging that encased their shells. Yellow range cards, one per canister, were strewn about. A few of them had been kissed by girls in the ammunition factory, imprinting the shape of their lips in red. Under the red lips the girls wrote messages like "Love you, Betty." Scrambling after these cards made the work go faster. "These cards were prized and passed around in the rain for everyone to kiss the red lip imprint and make obscene remarks about Betty." How Company prepared for another attack. The enemy body count arrived later. Someone said it was 185 and that "more japs were killed inside our line than outside."³ Five wounded Japanese had become POWs.

The enemy that the marines could not kill or capture was the rain. It drilled them relentlessly. The area inside LT-21's perimeter had become a morass of mud. Sid and W.O. and the rest of #4 gun squad threw away their underclothes and socks, wearing only their "dungarees and boondockers and helmets just like we had done on Guadalcanal." The rain fed a dense thicket of jungle, which they had taken to calling the green inferno. The infinite shape and variety of green vegetation could drive a man to distraction. Sid saw it a bit differently. The heavy rains faded the color of his dungarees. Storm clouds darkened the jungle around him until he saw only shades of black and white.

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS EUGENE SLEDGE HAD HOPED TO STAY AT THE RECRUIT Depot in San Diego and receive training at its Sea School, where a marine learned how to serve in a detachment aboard a navy ship. A marine's duties on board a battleship or a carrier included a fair amount of ceremony, like serving in an Honor Guard, along with providing security and handling some of the ship's AA guns. Sledge thought the most elite marines went to Sea School and was disappointed not to have made it. He arrived at Camp Elliott, outside San Diego, on Christmas Day and learned that it trained tankers as well as infantry. Relieved to be assigned a bunk in a big barracks "with hot showers, good lights, and steam heat," he recovered from a fever and set his sights on getting into the tank or the artillery corps. The Marine Corps quickly decided that Private First Class Sledge would make a fine mortarman, and assigned him to Company E of its infantry battalion.

New Year's Day marked his first liberty since boot camp. He considered traveling into Los Angeles. Every man he spoke to, though, planned to go there "after women and whisky." He chose to visit the base library and write his parents to tell them he "was lucky to get in the best branch of the Corps. That is 60mm mortars. It is about the safest thing next to a desk job." That last observation was surely intended to assuage the concerns of his mother, to whom he also promised to be safe and to try to make corporal. He asked her to please send him his dress blue uniform, including for her benefit a detailed list of the items and packing instructions.

After ten days of training to be light artillery support for the infantry, E Company got up at five thirty a.m. and prepared to join the battalion for its first amphibious training exercise. Carrying the full complement of personal gear--pack, helmet, canteen, and M1--they boarded trucks for the twenty- mile ride to the shore of San Diego Bay. To give their training more authenticity, the wharves had been draped with cargo nets. The marines put on their life belts and climbed down the nets into Higgins boats.

Eugene's boat circled out in the bay for half an hour. He recognized several species of birds. At last the flotilla of small amphibious craft motored west through the dozens of large ships at anchor. Gene counted four enormous aircraft carriers as his boat went around North Island and out into the Pacific Ocean. The flotilla continued west for about a mile, where the powerful ocean swells took hold of the same landing craft, before turning back toward the coast. Another delay, inexplicable as always, began. Sledge noted a number of marines looking decidedly green around the gills.

The command boat flashed the signal, and the waves of boats roared toward North Island. Sledge's lieutenant ordered his three squads of eleven men to get below the gunwales. At the breakers, they hit a sandbar. The coxswain waited for the next wave to lift his boat; then he gunned the engine and got them close to the beach. Racing down the ramp, Eugene almost tripped on the man in front of him, who had sprawled into the knee-deep surf. He caught himself, however, and raced onto shore.

The marines of Easy Company threw themselves on the ground and awaited orders. After a few minutes, an officer came up and congratulated them. He pointed down the road and said, "Go get your chow." Leaving their rifles stacked, they walked over and formed a line for sandwiches and coffee. Hours passed. Sledge dried his dungarees as best he could, then went to examine a Japanese landing craft. It had several bullet holes in it. Compared to the Higgins boat, the enemy's landing craft appeared clumsy. An LCM (a larger version of the Higgins boat made for carrying a tank) arrived and E Company climbed aboard for the ride home. In describing it to his parents, he wrote, "We really learned a lot & feel pretty 'salty' now. Next time we will probably take our mortars with us."

The training satisfied Private First Class Sledge. He liked the 60mm mortar, although when another chance came up to become a tanker, he ran to sign up. His blues arrived, carefully tailored, just in time to wear them to a concert by the philharmonic orchestra.

The arrival of a battalion of paratroopers caught his interest. The paratroops had fought on Bougainville and were only too happy to tell the new marines all about jungle fighting. They were tough, hardened veterans who spoke of banzai charges in disparaging terms. Sledge found their opinion of MacArthur's soldiers not much higher. In the course of a story, one trooper remarked that "army discipline was pretty much a joke." The paratroopers also happily parted with their specialized knives and jump boots in exchange for pairs of nice leather shoes and other civilian accoutrement--the veterans had a month's furlough coming to them. Eugene traded for the jump boots. As he came to know Camp Elliott he also sought out other men from Mobile. One of them told him tales of flying in a Dauntless as the tail gunner in the Solomon Islands. Each bit of news about his new profession he carefully gathered, weighed, and remembered. Excelling in the Marine Corps meant learning from the "old salts," and Gene strove to excel.

BOMBING TWO'S SHIP HAD DOCKED AT PEARL HARBOR, THE NEXUS OF THE CARRIER war. Cranes unloaded their planes and mechanics prepared them for flight. As soon as was possible, they flew east to NAS Hilo, a naval air station recently carved out of the dense tropical rain forest and the hard black volcanic rock lining the coast of Hawaii. A brass band tried mightily to play "Aloha" as a welcome, on behalf of the citizens of the small town of the same name. From the windows of their quarters, they could see the ocean in one direction and two great volcanic mountains (Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea) in the other. Micheel liked the small town, although it was quiet. Many of Hilo's citizens were of Japanese descent and not all of them spoke English. The pilots in his squadron would have preferred to be closer to the bright lights of Honolulu than on "the big island" of Hawaii. Their New Year's Eve party had not been worthy of note. Still, they admitted they had moved to paradise.

Their training regimen resumed in January. No one knew how long it would last. When their air group's fighter squadron arrived at Hilo, they saw that as a good sign. Given the navy's emphasis on the air group as a team, instead of a collection of squadrons, the assembly of Air Group Two meant that someday soon an empty aircraft carrier would show up. The skipper, aided by veterans like Mike and Buell, strove to make this training pay off. The bombing skills of their squadron had not become so sharp that they could avoid the occasional miss. During one exercise on the far side of the island, they practiced supporting ground troops near the marine base called Camp Tarawa. One of their practice bombs, which emitted only smoke, "was noticed fumigating the friendly marine camp."⁴ Navigation exercises required a long flight to be effective because the two volcanoes near Hilo stood nearly fourteen thousand feet and were visible for fifty miles.

Along with stressing the mathematics of navigation, Lieutenant Micheel emphasized fuel conservation to the pilots in his wing. Their survival would depend upon their ability to do more than simply select the "auto-lean" setting on their fuel mixture. A good pilot experimented with his machine, sliding the control to a dash near "idle cut-off."⁵ Leaning out the fuel mixture saved gasoline, but it also increased the cylinder head temperature. The RPMs would drop off as well. The pilot had to compensate for these, had to make wise choices about speed and altitude, had to dial in the proper trim. Knowing how far to push it and when, and why--these questions required the judgment that experience alone could produce. Bombing Two had had ample time to gain that experience, unlike Scouting Six's Ensign John Lough and so many others who had flown at Midway.

Lieutenant Micheel never mentioned Lough in his instruction. It was not his style. Perhaps he knew better. The pilots of Bombing Two had the prerequisite for success, confidence, in abundance. The wolves loved to fly and they loved being pilots. Their big joke was about life in their boring little town. "Culture raised its shiny dome in Hilo; it had to." On their off days they acted like tourists, visiting sites of Hawaiian culture or taking scenic drives in rented cars. They scouted many locations like the trained navigators they were. It took a few weeks, but the wolves finally threw themselves a "Squadron Party" at the Hilo Country Club. " The orchestra was small but," one wolf reported, "the drinks were heavy."⁶ Many desirable young ladies attended, new friendships were made, and "culture passed away just as quickly as it had unexpectedly arrived."⁷

PATROLS FROM MASTERS'S BASTARDS CONTINUED TO ENCOUNTER SMALL ENEMY forces out in the jungle of Cape Gloucester. They found enemy troops sitting on logs and eating coconuts, found them sleeping with no one standing sentry. One patrol killed a column of IJA soldiers who had been marching on the trail without a man on point. Another found equipment stashes that included USMC items taken from the Philippines. Although Washing Machine Charlie often threatened harm at night, rarely did the air raid alert end with bombs being dropped. The marines on Cape Gloucester began to win handily in early January. The rough seas made resupply by ship difficult, though. On the morning of January 3, Colonel Masters had B-17s air-drop crates of mortar ammunition and some other critical supplies inside the perimeter.

One Japanese officer had come to their lines carrying a "flag of truce" and surrendered. ⁸ Every veteran of the Canal, though, knew this was an isolated occurrence and remained on the alert for the next onslaught. Enemy artillery ranged in on LT-21's perimeter on a few occasions. Much of it landed in the surf behind them. The OP called the 81mm mortar platoon to provide "counter-battery fire," to destroy the enemy artillery. They set the azimuth and range and fired a few white phosphorus rounds. The OP called in a correction and the whole battery of 81mms cut loose with a concentration of forty rounds from each of the #4 guns. The enemy battery fell silent only for a short time. At least when it resumed, the aim was still lousy. A rumor went around that the Japanese officer who had surrendered had offered to bring in five hundred more men and Colonel Masters had turned him down.

On the fifth, a Wednesday, word came to stand by: enemy troops had snuck inside the perimeter. "No shooting tonight," ordered Colonel Masters. "Get a knife or a bayonet and slit the yellow bastard's throat, draw blood." Nothing more came of the alarm, though, except a lot of lost sleep.

The occasional skirmishes with small bands of the enemy did not warrant the continued presence of Masters's Bastards astride the trail near Tauali. A combat force went north along the trail to the village of Sag Sag, said to be an enemy stronghold. The captain leading it decided the natives there were cooperating with the Japanese and he ordered the village burned. Pushing north, his patrol met another coming south, sent from its regiment. The trail between them was clear. LT-21 had completed its mission and would rejoin the 1st Division. Amphibious craft of various types began arriving offshore. The high seas delayed their beaching; eventually they came in and working parties began to load the gear. Although enemy planes from Rabaul still caused air raids occasionally, the word was that the U.S. fleet had "pulled into Rabaul Harbor in plain daylight and shelled them. That place must be deserted by now."

While their equipment went by ship, the men of LT-21 were ordered to march to the division's perimeter, where they would lose their support units and become the 2/1 again. Hiking along the thin trail leading north through the inferno proved a two-day ordeal. "Slipping and cursing" his way along "in single file carrying a full pack and a 46 pound mortar bipod," Sid came face-to-face with Colonel Masters. The colonel recognized Private First Class Sidney Phillips from the flashlight incident. "Phillips, are you tired?"

"No, sir."

"You look tired to me." Masters called a ten- minute break and stunned Sid. "He calls a ten-minute break because one of his privates looks tired?" Sid had no sooner dropped his gear and sat down than someone called out, "Come look." He walked less than twenty yards to a camouflaged seaplane hangar. Approaching it "gave me the creeps and I slipped a round in the chamber of my carbine." Others followed suit. Inside, they found a dock, drums of gasoline, a propeller, and other equipment. Even without the floatplane at the dock, "we knew we had found one of Washing Machine Charlie's home ports." It proved one of the few moments of relief from the hard slog north.

THE TRANSFER CAME THROUGH ON JANUARY 13. JOHN DEPARTED D.C. WITH JUST $7 left in his account as he took a train west to join his new outfit, the Twenty-seventh Infantry Regiment of the 5th Marine Division. He stepped off in Oceanside, a small town just north of San Diego. Accustomed to making his way around, he caught a ride to Camp Pendleton. No central reception area crowded the main gate. It was a few miles before he saw any buildings at all. The road wound through the arid countryside, passing tent cities, regimental and battalion headquarters, and row after row of war machinery. The units of the division were housed in a number of camps spread out over the two hundred square miles.⁹

He found the headquarters of the Twenty-seventh Regiment housed in a wooden-frame two-story building about ten miles from the front gate.¹⁰ The regimental staff was consumed with organizing itself and its new division, the 5th. Few of the officers and men had arrived. Those who had arrived had their hands full building a division from the top down.¹¹ The 5th Marine Division was just days away from becoming officially activated. The 4th Marine Division had departed a few days ago for its first overseas deployment. Sergeant Basilone reported in to the assistant to the adjutant.

With a division being built from scratch as quickly as possible, a sergeant with experience could have found any number of billets for himself. John made sure to ask to be assigned to a machine-gun platoon.¹² The assistant went to check with the adjutant, who came out of his office to say hello. He readily assented to John's request, and pretty soon John was headed down the road to the 1st Battalion. The battalion staff officers weren't quite sure what to make of John. The CO, Lieutenant Colonel Justin Duryea, saw a marine walking around with "only half a uniform on" and asked his sergeant, "Who is he?" When told his name and the medal he held, Duryea cracked that they all go over and bow to their hero.¹³ John again made it clear that he had not come all this way to do paperwork, and he was assigned to Baker Company's machine-gun platoon for the time being.¹⁴ Sometime soon after his arrival, John caught sight of "the long line of machine guns parked in the aisle" and was thrilled to be home. "I felt like kissing the heavies on their water jackets."¹⁵

Baker Company's skipper, Captain Wilfred S. Le Francois, had a lot of paperwork and few men. He had earned his bars, though, serving with the 2nd Raider Battalion on the Makin Island Raid back in 1942.¹⁶ Directing John to Baker Company's quarters, he would have added that the Twenty-seventh Regiment was lucky to be quartered in wooden barracks. The Twenty-eighth Marines, also in the 5th Division, had been assigned tents in an area called Las Pulgas, which was Spanish for "the Fleas."¹⁷

The long wooden barracks, a few hundred yards from another just like it, had been painted a dull cream color. In the center of the long side were two large double doors. Inside, a stairwell divided the two-storied building into four large sections. Each platoon had one quarter. After opening the door to one of these, John went through a short hallway. The left-hand side had small rooms for the platoon's NCOs; they got some privacy. The heads and showers took up the right side. Farther along, the hallway entered a large open room with metal double-decker bunks running down each side. Each bunk had two wooden footlockers, one in front and one in the back aisle by the wall. A row of lightbulbs ran down the center aisle. Most of the light came through the windows. The room held enough bunks for an entire platoon, but John found just two men there, sleeping. One marine jumped to attention, obviously freshly minted. The other moved more slowly, evidently hungover.

"I'm John Basilone." The announcement had no effect on the drunk, but the young one looked like he might faint. "I'm going to be in B Company and I'm going to be in machine guns. I'm going to be the machine- gun instructor." His manner was calm and easy, even friendly. He asked for their names and ranks.¹⁸ With obvious glee the young private said, "I'm in B Company, too."¹⁹ It was clear that neither of his charges had received any orders or knew what was going on.

"How long have you been here?"

"Three days."

"Don't worry. Other Marines will be arriving in a few days. We're forming the 5th Marine Division, best one in the Corps."²⁰ John went off to find a rack in the sergeants' area. The next morning, he marched his two-man company down to the mess hall, had chow, and marched them back. At the door of the barracks, he said, "I want this whole place squared away when I get back." His two marines went to work, mopping the wooden deck with pine oil and washing cobwebs from the windows. There was plenty for them to do. As for himself, John set about getting his skipper to approve a loan from the USMC. He was broke.

John wrote his parents. He was waiting to be assigned to an outfit, but "I know I will be in a machine gun co. again which I want to be." His brother George, with the 4th Division, had shipped out two days before he arrived. He liked being out in the country." The days here is hot, but the nights are cold."²¹ The nights grew quiet, so "one thing you can get plenty of sleep." He included a request as a postscript. "Mom you know some of those letters I got home will you look through them and see if you can find some that girls had writen me from Calif and send them to me. Love and kisses to all. Love always, Johnny."²²

THE SECOND DAY OF HIKING THE TRAIL AROUND CAPE GLOUCESTER TOOK LESS time because the 2/1 only had three miles to hike. The commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, General Rupertus, passed the column, accompanied by General Kreuger, a top army general. The brass elicited about as much comment by the marines slogging through the mud as the 2/1 itself received when it arrived at the division's perimeter. Sid's How Company set up camp in a muddy open area pockmarked with shell craters. The jagged stumps of the forest that had once stood there littered the land. Their personal gear, including their hammocks, had been brought around by ship. As men began to remove theirs from the pile, it turned out that about a quarter of them were missing. The main news from the marines around them concerned the Seventh Marines. Several of them had been found beheaded earlier that day.

The next morning the 2/1 received supplies from the PX: cigarettes, candy, and toilet articles, along with the news they were headed for the fighting up at Hill 660. They heard the company they would soon relieve, K Company, "has only 61 men left, no officers, but they killed over 200 Japs." As they thought about what awaited them, Hill 660 received a violent storm of artillery shells. The walk up to the hill the next day found them floundering through knee-deep mud. It got worse. How Company waded into the aftermath of the violent battle for a portion of Hill 660. "We are at the don't care position now, the very air is putrid from rotting human flesh. It is theirs and ours, several foxholes are filled with dead, equipment lying everywhere." They found places amid the silent misery to set up their guns and their bivouac.

The silence did not last. As usual, the Japanese waited until the middle of the night to attack. The U.S. artillery exploded so much ordnance on the crest in three and one-half hours that men in How Company wondered if "the elevation of 660 was knocked down 100 feet." Sid's mortar platoon waited it out, swatting mosquitoes. The rain and the shelling continued steadily for the next two days. The enemy counterattacks seemed like proof of his desperation. The IJA units had been cut off. The constant thunder of the Marine Corps' big guns assured the men on Hill 660 that nothing was going to be alive on the other side.

Without an active role in the battle, though, the men got bored. Sid and W.O. sloshed their way five hundred yards down a trail and found the remains of "a Jap hospital tent about 10 by 20, abandoned, dead Jap soldiers in uniform on canvas stretchers in line on the deck . . . all reduced to skeletons, no odor except for the strange odor like Colgate tooth powder." A folding table held medical equipment of all types and Sid examined glass syringes, ampoules, and a "beautiful binocular microscope." He looked back at the ground. "All of the dead Japs still had on wrapped leggings and uniforms." The hunt for souvenirs gathered speed in the following days. Some marines began digging up graves after they found out the cadavers held some of the best trophies. It took longer--the stench made them stop and puke before they could dig some more, then puke again, then dig deeper.

A major in battalion HQ put a stop to the forays to the enemy's former bivouacs, storage sites, and hospital. No one could leave the area without the major's permission. The boredom increased. Scuttlebutt from a well-placed source said they would return to Melbourne, but did not say when. The mess served real pot roast for dinner the night before the sun came out--not just a glint, but strong and clear--for the first time in a month. On January 21, the men rushed to set their clothing and blankets out to dry in the hot sun. The beautiful and welcome day ended with an air raid at eight p.m. The AA guns of the Eleventh Marines sent up constellations of red bursts in the dark sky and Washing Machine Charlie departed.

Around midnight, Sid took his turn at the guard with his friend Les. They sat in the darkness next to the phone for their platoon "and fed the mosquitoes." The telephone rang. Battalion HQ informed them that "we have night fighters in the air, and if there was a condition red (air raid alert) they would call and let us know." After a time, Les and Sid heard the "drone of aircraft overhead" and they both observed "that it really did sound like Washing Machine Charlie." They waited for the phone to ring. Charlie flew right at them and dropped three bombs "almost in our pocket." The thunder of the AA guns followed quickly. Unfazed, Charlie and his friends motored over the area and scattered more shells around the marines' area. The men of How Company cursed as they ran from their hammocks to their holes.

At the mortar platoon's roll call the next morning, Lieutenant Benson informed Sid and Les that they "were on permanent mess duty for ever and ever." Attempts to explain gained them nothing. Benny refused to hear them. Everyone knew Benny was going to punish them because of the damage to his precious hammock caused by him ripping it open when the bombs went off. They also knew that the severity of the punishment came from the desire of Benson and his boss, Lieutenant Gaze Sotak, to pay Sid back for an incident that had occurred months ago. Back in Australia, Lieutenant Sotak had wanted to use Sid as a witness in a court-martial of Sid's friend Whitfield. In a small town outside Melbourne, Sotak had given Whitfield a "mean and stupid order" and Whitfield had told Sotak where he could shove it. The lieutenant took one look at Whitfield's massive frame and decided to get him for insubordination. When pressed to bear witness, Private First Class Sidney Phillips had said his "hearing was bad but if Whitfield would repeat it I would listen closely this time."

Officers almost always win. Lieutenant Gaze Sotak had the last laugh as Sid and Les grabbed their gear and set off for the bivouac of the battalion mess men about two hundred yards away. The mess men gave them the lowliest job, that of "pot walloping." They stood in the creek near the kitchen and scrubbed the large pots with rags and sand and small stones. "It really wasn't hard work," Sid observed. "Japs were no longer a problem." In the chow line they might hear the latest dope: how the Fifth Marines had met resistance up the coast; that the Seventh Marines "has a promise to be home by Father's Day"; or that the "japs landed a reinforced regiment last night" and were massing along the 2/1's line. None of that seemed to matter too much to a pot walloper.

At the end of January, the 2/1 moved up to the top of Hill 660, where the Fifth Marines and the Seventh Marines had fought great battles. While the rest of How Company surveyed the devastation, Sid and Les found themselves setting up camp near another creek. The two Cinderellas realized too late that all the best trees for swinging their hammocks had been taken. They had to tie their hammocks to trees farther up the ridge. The next night a storm blew in and grew in intensity until the rain poured like a waterfall. The flowing water washed the earth from the roots of the trees and the wind pushed them over.

Sid lay nude in his hammock, wrapped in his wool blanket, hoping for the best. In the morning, he unzipped and put on his sopping clothes. He and Les Clark looked down to the battalion mess and "dissolved into fits of laughter." The cooks' "hammocks were shreds, their clothes were gone, and their weapons were gone. The mess tent, stoves, pits and cases of food were gone, but Clark and I were high and safe and crying in delight." The creek, swollen into a powerful river by the torrent, had swept it all away. When the water had risen to the level of the cooks' hammocks, they had had to abandon their warm, dry beds and climb naked into the trees, waiting for morning and help. Sid and Les would help but, being marines, first they would enjoy a good laugh at the expense of the naked men in the trees. A lighter, normal rain began later that morning.

WHILE RECOVERING AT HOME MAJOR SHOFNER RECEIVED A TELEGRAM ON JANUARY 27 from the Marine Corps. "Public release of your experience will be made shortly by Washington." The country would soon know of the atrocity that had killed so many men. It would have been great news had it not been for the accompanying orders. "You are not repeat not to grant press interviews without contacting your nearest Navy or Marine Corps public relations officer and care must be taken not to describe any experiences after your escape or any means whereby you escaped. . . ." Another telegram followed two days later "to include newsreels." Were these orders logical? A public release of the story should have rendered further secrecy unnecessary. Something was up.

The telegrams would have stimulated another discussion in the Shofner household about the war in general and of U.S. POWs in particular. As the family of a POW, they had paid keen attention to the developments. Aside from Austin's letters, they had received two letters from the Marine Corps. One had advised them of his Silver Star; the other that he had been listed as Missing in Action. Aside from that, much of what they had learned about Japan's conquest of the Philippines had come from General MacArthur. His communiques of 1942 had described the heroic defense and burnished his national reputation as one of the country's outstanding generals. After the defeat, little in the way of hard news had arrived.

Most commentators had agreed with Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, who explained that the defeat had not been the commander's fault. General MacArthur, Dewey stated, had "performed [a] miracle with inadequate supplies, inadequate air force, and inadequate ground forces."²³ The editorialists could not explain what had happened in the Philippines since the surrender. In June 1943 the film studio MGM released a film entitled Bataan starring one of its leading men, Robert Taylor. This major studio release followed the shorter film Letter from Bataan, released in September 1942.²⁴ These films had helped establish the public's perception of the loss of the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam. The U.S. military, particularly its army, had fought a gallant yet doomed fight. This understanding, produced by the filmmakers in Hollywood under the direction of the government, was intended to focus the public's energies on the war effort.

Hollywood had not, however, been able to resolve two nagging questions: Why had there been a surrender? Were Americans less brave than the Japanese? These doubts had smoldered within the national consciousness, causing thousands of families like the Shofners no end of heartache.

The concerns of the families of the POWs had received the full attention of their members of Congress.²⁵ In the fall of 1943, just a month before Shofner and his friends escaped to Australia, a bill had been introduced into Congress "to provide for the promotion of certain prisoners of war."²⁶ Since many of the soldiers in the POW camps served in the New Mexico National Guard, the senator from New Mexico had introduced the legislation to make sure any man "who is now a prisoner of war, shall be advanced one grade" in rank for every year of his captivity. The Honorable Dennis Chavez wanted justice for the men of his state and others who "through no fault of their own are now prisoners of war." Since everyone understood that "they didn't have the wherewithal with which to fight," then the POWs should be entitled to the same schedule of promotions that the "swivel chair officers" in Washington, D.C., were receiving.

Senator Chavez's bill, watched with interest by all members of Congress, had been opposed by the War Department. In November 1943, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had sent a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs explaining that it could not provide for blanket promotions for men because it could not "distinguish between those men who, by virtue of having fought to the last, might be deserving of a reward in the form of a promotion and those who surrendered in circumstances under which they might reasonably have been expected to resist."²⁷ Secretary Stimson was not prepared to absolve the POWs of responsibility for defeat.

His letter had ignited controversy within the country, especially in the families of the POWs and in states like New Mexico, which had hundreds of men listed as missing in action. Armed with letters from lots of angry families, Chavez had led a growing number of congressmen willing to take on Stimson.

The question about the surrender had naturally devolved into a debate over whether or not MacArthur's army had been supplied by their government with the tools to win. Chavez's group had the upper hand. No ships had been sent to aid MacArthur. Moreover, the troops had not surrendered; General Wainwright had ordered it. Stimson's War Department could not argue that its army in the Philippines had been well equipped because in hindsight it was not true. Moreover, such an argument implied American boys were cowards. Nor could Stimson blame General MacArthur. The Roosevelt administration, after extracting the general from Corregidor, had entrusted the defense of Australia and the leadership of the U.S. Army to him.

Helping his family to appreciate MacArthur's role in the Philippines was something Austin Shofner would have undertaken with great passion. He looked forward to the moment when the nation learned the truth about Douglas MacArthur. For the Shofner family, that moment came when they received the February 7, 1944, issue of Life magazine. It carried a long story on page 25 under the headline "Prisoners of Japan: Ten Americans Who Escaped Recently from the Philippines Report on the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese in Their Prisoner of War Camps." Although it included photos of each of the ten escapees, only two of them contributed to the article. Commander Melvyn McCoy and Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Mellnik had "finally broken" the silence about the fate of America's army in the Philippines. Their story, dictated from their hospital beds, had been sent to the secretary of navy, who had forwarded it on to President Roosevelt. The publisher of Life magazine loved the scoop. "In the third year of war, censorship finally lifted the curtain on what happened at Corregidor and Bataan after the American surrender."

Life magazine had not, however, lifted the veil concealing the story of the POWs. Its story followed a week's worth of stories appearing in the Chicago Tribune and the one hundred newspapers affiliated with it. The Tribune's series would continue for the rest of February, detailing the story of Lieutenant Colonel William E. "Ed" Dyess, the army air corps pilot who had returned with McCoy and Mellnik. The way Colonel Dyess began his story indicated that he had a different message from that offered by McCoy and Mellnik in Life.

Dyess began his account two days before the Japanese attack on the Philippines in order to impress upon the reader that the U.S. forces in the Far East had been expecting a Japanese attack. At great length he detailed the quick destruction of American military might on Luzon, followed by its slow disintegration on the peninsula of Bataan. At every turn, he made it plain that valor could not mitigate the huge deficits in numbers, arms, and materiel that the Americans and Filipinos had faced. The big joke in the air corps had been a note written to President Roosevelt: "Dear Mr. President: Please send us another P-40. The one we have is all shot up."²⁸ Dyess described catching and eating lizards after their rations ran out. As Ed Dyess made clear that the Americans had been abandoned by their country, the Chicago Tribune published tables showing the hundreds of millions of dollars in tanks, aircraft, and artillery the United States had sent to Great Britain, the Soviet Union and other allies at the same moment. The facts set the Roosevelt administration's "Europe First" policy in stark relief. America's real enemy was the Empire of Japan.

When Dyess's series came to the surrender, it overlapped with McCoy's and Mellnik's story. The Life magazine article had omitted the start of the war entirely, thereby evading any questions as to how the defeat had come to pass, and focused on Japan's treatment of POWs. It grabbed readers' attention with specific atrocities from the March of Death from Bataan. The second page featured an artist's rendering of one horror. The caption under the picture explained: "Americans were forced to bury other Americans alive. At the point of jap bayonets this man is forced to hit a countryman with a shovel and bury him." A long description of the conditions in the POW camp followed. The Japanese had killed five thousand helpless Americans. Mellnik and McCoy believed that "not more than 10% of the American military prisoners in the Philippines will survive another year of the conditions which has existed at the time of our escape."

Amid promises that none of these descriptions had been exaggerated, the authors explained at length that all of this had occurred as the deliberate policy of the imperial Japanese government. McCoy and Mellnik wanted to establish these facts for the record to prevent the Japanese from claiming that these atrocities had never happened, or that its political leadership had not been aware of conditions in these camps. In this way the article might create pressure on the Japanese government to take better care of the men. Most of all, though, the escapees wanted to increase the American people's feeling of urgency and necessity to make a supreme effort in the war.

The story of the monstrous cruelty committed at Cabanatuan and elsewhere caused the national sensation of which all POWs, not just the ten who had escaped, had dreamed. The editorial page of the Chicago Tribune declared that in the Pacific, the United States faced "the task of dealing not merely with Hitler and his gangsters, but with a race of Hitlers who have made gangsterism their state religion."²⁹ Congressmen used words like "revenge" and issued pledges to "ruin Japan" by bombing Tokyo. The public bought more bonds to quicken the pace with which America destroyed the hated enemy.³⁰ The gift that McCoy, Dyess, Shofner, and the others had so desperately wanted to give the men left behind in Cabanatuan had been delivered.

The stories from the escapees also fed the ongoing debate in Congress about the promotion of the POWs. Senator Chavez and his allies believed they had all the proof needed to justify the promotions. The families became more strident because they considered the promotion issue to be recognition of their sons' and brothers' sacrifices. Interviewed by congressmen who visited him in New Guinea, MacArthur told them his men "didn't surrender . . . they fought until they were too weak to stand and fight any longer."³¹ His comments seemed to support the idea of promoting the POWs.

Austin Shofner saw the promotion debate as a sideshow. As escapees, he and the others had proven their courage and had been promptly promoted upon return. The manner in which Melvyn McCoy and Stephen Mellnik had become famous as the leaders of the escape rankled him, though he said nothing. Shofner wanted the public's fury at the debacle on Bataan to be directed toward a frank appraisal of the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur. From what he had seen, the Japanese invasion need not have led to the March of Death. MacArthur and his staff had allowed their air force to be destroyed on the ground a full nine hours after learning of the enemy's offensive. The defense strategy he had crafted had descended into a rout. Hundreds of tons of foodstuffs had never made it to Bataan. Tens of thousands of men had paid a huge price for the mistakes made by MacArthur. This accounting, however, did not occur.

In the national discussion that followed its appearance, pity for the POWs' suffering gave way to acceptance that the American troops had not been equipped to fight Japan. Left unsaid, but certainly part of the public's calculations, was the growing realization that war demanded sacrifice, even callous sacrifice. In the estimation of many knowledgeable observers, the men who had fought on Bataan and Corregidor had slowed the enemy's advance and given the United States time to prepare for war; they had lifted morale in the United States and had inspired her troops like nothing "since the Alamo."³² This logic placed them in one of America's favorite stories: the gallant stand of the lost cause. It removed from the POWs the stigma of shame. The tide turned against Secretary Stimson. The families of the POWs, who had for so long been outraged and heartsick, would be mollified.

A potent blend of mythology, patriotism, practical necessity, and skillful public relations overwhelmed all those who, like Shifty Shofner, had experienced a different truth. The public understood that the sacrifice had been an unfortunate necessity and, once the blot of cowardice had been removed, moved on. Public opinion on the fate of the Philippines contrasted sharply with the disdain with which Americans regarded Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the two commanders of U.S. forces in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. These leaders had been summarily relieved of duty in the wake of the attack upon Pearl Harbor, their careers ruined. Douglas MacArthur had been awarded the Medal of Honor "for the heroic conduct of defensive and offensive operations on the Bataan Peninsula."

ON FEBRUARY 10, EUGENE SLEDGE COMPLETED HIS TRAINING WITH A TEST OF HIS skill on the 60mm mortar. He scored a 94, two points shy of being certified as Expert. It angered him to have come so close because it reminded him of his rifle test, but also because an Expert rating would help him make corporal quicker. Gene was pushing hard, as usual. He had only just witnessed a live-fire exercise and would not fire a live round himself for another week. Although his request for a transfer to the tank corps had not been granted, he was enjoying the life of a marine.

His platoon had been issued carbines (lightweight semiautomatic rifles), a sure sign they would ship out soon. Most of his platoon "armed themselves to the teeth" with pistols and knives. Censorship forbade him from being too obvious about his imminent departure, but the signs were in his letters. He got some pictures taken in his blues and sent them home along with a box of nonessential items he could not take with him. He thanked his parents for hiring someone to have his room "done over" in preparation for his return and reminded his father about his request for a .45 automatic pistol. Eugene could hardly wait to ship out. He closed a letter to his mother with "Love you & pop more than tongue can tell & heart can wish." In mid-February Private First Class Sledge was placed into the Forty-sixth Replacement Battalion. A week later, his replacement battalion shipped out on USS President Polk.

Out at sea Eugene read a lot, mostly the New Testament to renew his faith, and a few outdoor sporting magazines, which reminded him of all the great hunting trips he had had with his father. Standing in the hot sun watching the trackless Pacific, he felt the pride he had wanted to feel of doing his part for his country. The passing days gave him a marine's deep tan, sea legs, and something else Gene had wanted so badly he could only now admit it. He was catching up to his older brother Edward, who had shipped out for England in November.

THE RUMOR ARRIVED IN HILO DAYS BEFORE THE AIRPLANES DID. IN EARLY February Bombing Two traded in their Dauntlesses for SB2C Helldivers. Trading in the old Dauntlesses for the navy's modern dive-bomber meant an imminent deployment to a carrier. Everybody liked the idea, especially the young wolves. The Helldiver carried more bombs, flew faster, and had four 20mm cannons. Rumors about the Beast did not intimidate them. It "had wings, an engine . . . and various other things."³³ The Helldivers they received had not come directly from the factory. Walking up to them on the flight line, Mike's preflight check confirmed his first impression: "they sent us some old junkers." The condition of the airplanes concerned Mike both as a pilot and as the squadron's engineering officer.

The skipper of Bombing Two looked to Mike as the key officer to lead the transition because he was the only one who had flown the SB2C. The squadron was informed it had a month to get carrier qualified with the SB2C. Lieutenant Micheel told them about the high stall speed, which meant they had to carry more speed into their landing approach. He led the flights off their airfield, nestled between the ocean and two tall volcanoes, to show them how impossible it was to dial in the right trim on the Beast. The Dauntless could be trimmed to fly straight and stable; the SB2C could not. A pilot had to keep an eye on the SB2C. Before long, Mike became as busy being the engineering officer as the flight instructor. The aircraft suffered from the same malady that had gotten them and Mike kicked off the Yorktown a year ago: the wing lock.

The manufacturers of the Helldiver, Curtiss-Wright, had solved the problem of the locking wing by installing a wing lock lever inside the cockpit. When the wings were let down in flight position, the locking pins inside the wings were inserted. To lock the locking pins in position, the pilot pushed in the wing lock lever down by his feet. The lever, though, had a problem caused by the plane's vibration. Mike and his comrades noticed "you'd be flying along and pretty soon you'd see that thing moving out so you'd sit up here and boot it back in." Lieutenant Micheel found himself in the hangar with the mechanics. One of the crew's chief warrant officers wondered, "Why don't you put a bungee on it?" Mike tried it. It held the wing lock lever in place and also allowed it to be unlocked quickly. All of the cockpits were outfitted so that the bungee cord could be connected to the lever on one end and a secure bit of metal on the other.

New SB2Cs, fitted with improved wing lock levers, arrived to replace the old ones they had trained in. The Beast, however, had not earned the pilots' trust the way the Dauntless had. The squadron's skipper, Campbell, reported to his superiors that "most pilots felt that it was a decided change for the worse. The reputation of the SB2C was bad and on the whole the pilots did not trust the plane and felt that they would be unable to dive accurately therein."³⁴ It was too late. The air group's other squadron, the torpedo planes, arrived. Air Group Two's CO explained that they had been assigned duty aboard USS Hornet because the air group currently embarked on Hornet "isn't doing very well and we're going to go replace them."

THE MARINES WHO WOULD MAKE UP BAKER COMPANY TRICKLED INTO CAMP Pendleton from a variety of sources. The men who had been paramarines arrived with their trousers tucked into their jump boots. Others, usually NCOs, had been yanked from behind their desks in D.C.; these men frequently carried some extra pounds around their waists, but at least they did not have a chip on their shoulders like the men who had been picked to be paratroopers. Those marines considered themselves elite, even if they had not seen action. A few veterans of the war, like John Basilone, found themselves salted into Baker Company, 1st Battalion, Twenty-seventh Marines. One of the new men, Corporal Tremulis, had manned a 20mm antiaircraft gun along the flight deck of USS Yorktown. He had had to swim in the open ocean when the captain had ordered the ship abandoned during the Battle of Midway.³⁵

The majority of the men flooding into the 1/27 in late January, though, came from boot camp. They found their new battalion slightly chaotic. Some routine was imposed through the physical training held each morning out in front of their barracks. One afternoon, Captain Le Francois went on liberty in San Diego and failed to return. Officially listed as absent without leave, Le Francois had "gone over the hill," in marine parlance. Experienced men going AWOL was not an isolated occurrence, although most returned eventually--happy to be busted in rank for a few extra days of liberty.³⁶ Baker Company received a second skipper and never heard of Le Francois again.

The 5th Division HQ set out a formal training schedule on February 8, even before all the men had arrived.³⁷ The schedule began with the physical conditioning of the individual, training the individual with his weapon (snapping in), and training the individual for his job within the squad. The squad hiked to each of the firing ranges scattered about the vast grounds of Camp Pendleton. While most divisions trained five days a week, the 5th Division HQ decided to speed up the training cycle by working ten days on and three days off.³⁸ The marines in John's machine-gun platoon concentrated on the .30-caliber air-cooled Browning Machine Gun.

One afternoon on the machine-gun range Sergeant Basilone watched Private Charles Tatum, the seventeen-year-old he had met on his first day with Baker Company, whipping the gun back and forth like it was a hose. The sergeant tapped the private on the shoulder and said, " Tatum, you're probably the worst machine gunner in the Marine Corps. You got to be gentle with it. Don't spray it."³⁹ He repeated the earlier admonishments against burning out the barrel. "Fire it in bursts. Don't spray it. Treat it gently." The machine gun was not an all-powerful weapon. Tatum listened in rapt attention.

Every marine knew the name Manila John Basilone and knew his story. It conjured up images of "brute strength and determination."⁴⁰ The men of Baker Company, though, came to know a sergeant who did not take himself too seriously, much less consider himself special. He fit in. The words "Medal of Honor" never came out of his mouth so no one got to know "Manila John."⁴¹ The men in his platoon addressed him as Sergeant. Other sergeants called him John since none of them went back far enough with him to call him "Manila." He did not encourage anyone to call him that.⁴² Perhaps he felt the name belonged to the legend.

The happiness and good cheer that the men noticed marked the return of John's natural disposition.⁴³ In mid-February, the 1st Battalion returned to its barracks after completing one of their first bivouacs. After giving them some time to get squared away, Colonel Butler then called his battalion into formation for an inspection. The men reported with their khakis pressed, field scarves tied as prescribed, their fingernails clean, their shoelaces of uniform length. They carried no packs, only their cartridge belts and personal weapons. The companies passed in review of the battalion CO, Colonel Butler. Baker Company's lieutenant called out, "Eyes right!" and saluted as they passed the colonel.⁴⁴ Colonel Butler inspected each man and his weapon. The company commander followed along. Inspecting hundreds of marines took time. The colonel liked what he saw. He praised the men for a great job and promised them steak and eggs as a reward.⁴⁵ He then asked Sergeant John Basilone to step forward. He did. The colonel handed him some papers and said, "It's now Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone."⁴⁶

This promotion was the moment he had been working toward. Before the war began, men had dedicated most of their lives to reaching the exalted position of a gunnery sergeant. Henceforth, he would be called Gunny. In the world of men who trained hard and fought wars, the gunny had authority, a certain amount of autonomy, and a lot of respect. Officers like Colonel Chesty Puller often stated that the senior NCOs were the "backbone of the Corps." The promotion came with the princely sum of $158.90 per month in pay, including an extra $2 "for Medal of Honor."⁴⁷ Since Baker Company had recently been assigned a gunnery sergeant, John was transferred to Charlie Company. Basilone moved his seabag into the barracks of C/1/27 about a hundred yards away. He was right where he wanted to be.

THE TROOPSHIP STEAMED TO THE DOCK OF A BUSY PORT. EUGENE SLEDGE AND THE other marines of the replacement draft disembarked. Rows of tents of the replacement depot at Noumea, New Caledonia, awaited them. Situated near the Old Mission Church, the camp had a mess hall serving the best food Sledge had ever had in the corps, including fruit juice. There were a lot of rules and the usual delay in finding out what happened next. Men came and went at the replacement depot, so there was little camaraderie. Aside from some physical training, there was little to do. Days turned into weeks before he was even processed completely into the system.⁴⁸

Until his mail caught up with him, Sledge contented himself with reading what he had brought with him. He enjoyed looking at the selection of photos of his family, his horse and dogs, his prized gun collection, his house. He could picture in his mind the pretty azaleas and japonicas blooming on the grounds of Georgia Cottage. He walked into the town of Noumea often. He found the architecture identical to New Orleans' French Quarter and stepped around every corner expecting to see the Cabildo, one of New Orleans' landmarks. In the evening, he might visit the Red Cross to get some free V-mail paper, although he did not care for "dehydrated letters" and found writing difficult since "everything was a secret." He looked forward to being assigned into an outfit and began to hope that it might be the same as Sidney Phillips's unit. After a few weeks he received his first mail call and a letter from Sidney. Although he expected to be rotated home, Sid joked that he would stay if Eugene was put into his outfit.

MAJOR SHOFNER'S FURLOUGH ENDED ON FEBRUARY 27. HE REPORTED TO THE Pentagon for a few days before reporting to the commandant of Marine Corps Schools. The corps had a lot to teach him about the evolutions in theory, practice, and weaponry of war. During the following months, requests for public appearances from the office of the USMC's Director of Public Relations interrupted his instruction. Shofner, and the other escapees, stood up at these events to embody the bravery of the men of the Philippines. Whenever one of the escapees appeared in public, the families of the missing in action surrounded them, pleading for any information--Do you recall this name? Do you recognize the face in this photo?⁴⁹ Those faces of loved ones in photos must have brought the horror back to the fore of his consciousness. It must have been difficult to return to class. Few of the other students received a letter directly from General Vandegrift, who wrote him to express "my deep appreciation of your devotion to duty and your heroic conduct." Vandegrift enclosed Shofner's second Silver Star, this one with the army device.

The recognition and the preparation to return to combat delighted Shofner. Demonstrating a keen understanding of the way large bureaucracies worked, though, his reply to the commandant of the Marine Corps included "data about my services not shown on any muster roll." The muster roll, a sacrosanct document produced monthly by each unit in the corps, was the basis for calculating a marine's monthly pay, his experience in the different types of command (for example, service as a division operations officer, or G-3), promotions, length of service, and the like. Shifty intended to receive the credit for all of his service, including his time as "deputy chief of staff," and as a "G-3."

Shifty also sought to receive reimbursement for the personal items he had been ordered to abandon on that awful Christmas Day back 1941, at a warehouse in Olongapo. In twelve pages, he detailed his collection of carved ivory, his array of evening suits, and all the other contents of his trunks. Calculating in some loss due to "depreciation," his list of personal property "lost, damaged or destroyed by operations of war" totaled $2,621.90.

IN RESPONSE TO THE CONTINUING INTEREST IN GUNNERY SERGEANT JOHN Basilone, he sat down with one of the corps' public relations specialists to produce a statement that could be sent to those who requested interviews.⁵⁰ Acknowledging that he had received both fame and fortune, he struggled to find a way to express how he felt about giving war bond speeches. He couldn't call it what he wanted to call it. The ghostwriter probably suggested the word "hippodrome." An unusual word for someone who had not attended high school, it referred to a game in which the results are fixed in advance. Set in opposition to his obvious joy at being back with the combat troops, the word's disparaging meaning came through clearly.

John felt compelled to deny that he "liked to slog around the South Pacific and let little monkey-faced characters shoot at me any more than the next Marine . . . but, if it's all the same with everybody, I'd much rather spend the rest of the war overseas. I think all real Marines, who are not physically disqualified, feel about the same way." His exasperation at the endless questions he had received from his friends, family, reporters, and even other marines had forced him to explain in detail why he had requested a return to the Fleet Marine Force. "It has been my ambition ever since Pearl Harbor to be with the outfit that recaptured Manila. I kept thinking of how awful it would be if some Marines made a landing on Dewey Boulevard on the Manila waterfront and Manila John Basilone wasn't among them." Once the war ended he would take his $5,000 bond money and buy a restaurant or a farm, and renew the relationship with his "girl back East."

The girl was not named in the article, but John was referring to Helen Helstowski of Pittsfield, Pennsylvania.⁵¹ He heard from her "every other day"; he wrote his parents, teasing his mother with the line "maybe there will be a wedding soon?" John included a newspaper clipping in the letter about his brother George, who had survived the 4th Division's invasion of the Marshall Islands in late January. As far as himself, "well, we ain't doing much down here still waiting for more men to train." Regardless of the number of men in Charlie Company, Gunny Basilone had them outside training. One afternoon he spied an old friend from Dog Company, Clinton Watters. He went over and said hello. As they got caught up--Clint had contracted jaundice in Samoa and missed the Canal--John asked him why he was in a rifle platoon. When Clint said something about going where he was sent, John said he'd fix that. The next day, Sergeant Watters reported for duty with the C/1/27.⁵²

Clint had not been particularly close to John when they had been in Dog Company. He had been a private during their training in New River and he had missed the big show. He was, however, someone John knew from before he had become a celebrity. After work they often went out for a beer and some fun. John wore his khaki uniform, which had no insignia other than his sergeant stripes. Wherever they went, John would get approached by civilians, marines, and other service personnel. He understood their desire to meet a hero and made sure to shake a hand or say hello.⁵³ Both Clint and John had a few sea stories to share with one another. Watters had been put into the Raiders and had seen action in Bougainville and other islands in the Solomons. John told a few fun stories. As for the medal, he told Clint about the moment Chesty Puller saluted him.⁵⁴

Clint didn't join John on the night of February 23, when he went down the road to the Carlsbad Hotel in the nearby village of Carlsbad. It was a beautiful hotel, fairly new, in the Spanish missionary style. A lot more stylish and expensive than the places John frequented, the small bar off the main lobby usually hosted wealthy visitors who had driven down the coast highway from L.A. He and some friends were standing at the bar when Myra King, a member of the Women's Reserve of the USMC, said hello. Myra introduced her group of friends to his.⁵⁵ One of the women seated at the table caught his eye. Her friends called her by her last name, Riggi. Also a member of the marines' auxiliary branch, Lena Riggi wore little makeup and dressed in comfortable clothes. He found her dark brown eyes, set off by waves of jet black hair, beautiful. While the appearance of Manila John Basilone left some of her friends "breathless," Riggi's face betrayed her reaction: "So what?" ⁵⁶

The women invited John and his friends to join them and they did. Although Lena did not say much, what she did say had a forthrightness to it. The manner of her speech, John likely noticed, suggested a background similar to his own. He eventually asked Lena if he could take her home. "No," she replied, "you didn't bring me here. I'm not going home with ya."⁵⁷ He asked about seeing her again. Lena told him that she was going on liberty for five days. He asked if he could call her when she came back. She agreed, thinking "he could have any girl he wanted to" so he'd never call. John wrote down the phone number of the officers' mess where Lena worked on a matchbook cover.⁵⁸

WHEN THE ORDERS ARRIVED TO REPORT TO USS HORNET FOR "CARRIER OPERATIONS," all the wolves of Bombing Two smiled. " The orphans," Micheel's friend Lieutenant Hal Buell later said, "had found a home."⁵⁹ Privately, Lieutenant Vernon "Mike" Micheel wished his ensigns had had more training time in the Beast. In early March they flew over to Ford Island, in Pearl Harbor, to meet their ship. They also met the members of the air group they were replacing, Air Group Fifteen. Bombing Two knew the pilots in Bombing Fifteen because both squadrons had trained at NAS Wildwood. At the officers' club, the new Hornet pilots got the word from the old Hornet pilots. Fifteen had joined the carrier soon after its commissioning in November 1943, and had gone through months of training under Captain Miles Browning only to be summarily replaced upon arrival in Pearl Harbor, before the first combat cruise. In the course of a few "Happy Hours," they told the men of Bombing Two what an awful, belligerent, and vindictive dictator the ship's captain was. Captain Browning had made Hornet a very unhappy ship.

During the Battle of Midway two years earlier, Browning had served aboard Enterprise. His critical role in the great victory at Midway had earned him a DSC, a service-wide reputation, and put him in line to command a carrier. The new Essex-class carrier Hornet was his first.⁶⁰ The wolves' qualifications aboard Browning's carrier began on March 9 and went smoother than Micheel had dared hope. The pilots made their three successful landings. The longer they spent aboard, though, the clearer they came to see the crew's discontent. The attitude came from the top. The captain's capriciousness had everyone unsettled and mistrustful.

The prospect of working for such a captain pleased no one in Air Group Two or its bombing squadron. Mike's immediate future took another startling turn when he discovered that the admiral who arrived to hang his flag from the flattop's staff was none other than Rear Admiral J. J. "Jocko" Clark. A year previously Clark had expressed his unhappiness with Lieutenant Micheel's performance on Yorktown vociferously. Mike figured Clark might not recall him, since the problems with the Beast had caused the admiral to yell at a lot of people that summer, but he decided to stay out of Jocko's way just in case. Luckily, his job did not demand contact with Captain Browning or Admiral Clark. Micheel's responsibilities were the training of the men in his division and the maintenance of the airplanes in his squadron. He focused on the mission and so did his pilots, who weren't going to let the top brass ruin their tour. Micheel found their enthusiasm infectious and a week of training exercises went quickly. He embarked on his second combat tour with more than one thousand hours of flight time and sixty-five carrier landings under his belt. He felt like a hotshot navy pilot. "I had this thing all figured out."

The front line of the navy's carrier war lay pretty far across the Pacific Ocean in March of 1944. Hornet sortied from Pearl Harbor at eight forty a.m. on the fifteenth and joined up with her destroyer escorts and three other aircraft carriers. They steamed southeast for five days, conducting gunnery practice and other drills. Another flattop with its task group sailed about thirty miles south of them.⁶¹ They entered Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands on the morning of March 20. A thin strip of coral ran in almost a complete circle, encompassing more than twenty miles of lagoon. The opening on Majuro's northern side allowed the supporting vessels of the U.S. Navy's great carrier fleet access to a perfect anchorage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The pilots of Bombing Two, as their flattop steamed into the lagoon, saw what looked like "the entire Pacific Fleet."⁶² Hornet joined a task group made up of one other fleet carrier like theirs, two smaller carriers, and their escorts. Task Group 58.2 got under way soon after, steaming to the Palau Islands for the first combat mission. Two more task groups joined them at three p.m. along with the commander of the Fifth Fleet, Admiral Spruance.

With more pilots than planes in his squadron, Mike had not flown much since they departed Pearl Harbor. The new men needed all the experience they could get. When they departed Majuro, though, the air group commander scheduled a "group grope" to see how well his squadrons worked together in a coordinated attack. Micheel took off in his Helldiver and gained altitude, joining up his division. As he gained altitude, the great fleet came into view. "I never saw such a number of ships in my life." Comparing the sight before him with his memory of his first combat tour, "the difference was just phenomenal, how big our fleets were and how many ships we had. It seemed like they were all over. They were out 40 miles ahead." Thinking of all those trained pilots on all those carriers surrounded by all those support ships gave him a surge of confidence. "How could we lose?" The sight may have awed the wolves behind him as well, since the group grope went poorly.⁶³ The problems went beyond a lack of concentration. Several of their Helldivers proved defective. Captain Browning had them pushed over the side.⁶⁴

The training of Air Group Two, however, ended with that flight. The task force had been handed Operation Desecrate One, to destroy the enemy's offensive capabilities in the Palau Islands. The Palaus needed to be neutralized to facilitate General MacArthur's advance along the northern coast of New Guinea. The task force did not sail straight west from Majuro, though. Instead, it dipped south to stay clear of the big enemy base at Truk, and crossed the equator on March 25. Even with combat imminent, the ship's company took the opportunity afforded by crossing the equator to initiate those men who were making their first crossing. Veterans of Guadalcanal, Lieutenants Buell and Micheel had crossed the equator in 1942. Unfortunately, they lacked properly validated identification as a shellback from King Neptune, so they received their share of hazing along with the rest of the wolves. They endured an abbreviated ceremony, however. On Hornet, the pollywogs outnumbered the shellbacks by a considerable number, so the ritual humiliation could only be pushed so far.

Another task group joined them on the twenty-sixth, pushing the number of flattops to eleven. Hornet pulled alongside Kankakee to receive fuel oil and aviation gasoline. Topping off the fuel tanks, like the increased frequency of Combat Air Patrol (CAP) and the antisubmarine (ASW) searches, signified the final steps in long months of preparation. On the twenty-eighth one of the scouts spotted a Japanese two-engine bomber, called a Betty.⁶⁵ The U.S. pilot, in a torpedo plane, took off after the enemy scout. The Betty dropped her load of bombs and fled. Her escape meant the enemy knew the big fleet was bearing down on them. Another Betty spotted them the next day. Close to enemy airfields, Hornet went to general quarters for the remainder of the day; the task force prepared for an enemy counterstrike. It arrived at eight forty-six p.m. No fighters went up to challenge them because the task force commander did not want to risk flight operations at night. The carriers commenced emergency maneuvers while the battlewagons belched showers of flak. None of the stalkers got close. Word came down from the bridge that the attack on the Palau Islands was being moved up to March 30, the next day.

IN EARLY MARCH, SOON AFTER LENA RIGGI RETURNED FROM HER LEAVE, JOHN called her at work. They talked for a bit before he asked her what time she got off work. She agreed to meet him that evening at the USO in Oceanside.⁶⁶ At the club, John attracted a crowd. Lena decided that he had chosen her, so she did not need to get jealous at all the women crowding around him. A time to talk did come and they found a fair amount of common ground other than the Marine Corps. Her parents had both immigrated to the United States from Italy. Her mother had given birth to five boys and one girl. She had grown up on a farm outside of Portland, Oregon, and had learned to do everything her older brothers had done.⁶⁷ She had eventually escaped the farm, moved to Portland and found work.⁶⁸ Working as a clerk at Montgomery Ward, a department store, had bored her. "One morning I woke up," she said, "and I said to my girlfriend who was in the front apartment, 'You know what? I'm going to join the service.' " She set off that morning and had happened upon a Marine Corps Recruitment Center, enlisting on July 5, 1943.⁶⁹ Her story would have reminded John of his own search for direction on July 6, 1940, which had led him to the USMC.

Like him, Lena had trained in New River, North Carolina, before being transferred to Pendleton. She had arrived in late January to discover that women had only just begun to be posted there.⁷⁰ As a field cook, she would become a sergeant officially once the auxiliary formalized its rank system.⁷¹ Her directness gave way to a sense of fun as she got to know him. He liked to laugh, was unpretentious, and was obviously close to his family. They shared an interest in playing sports and even ranked them similarly--their two favorites were softball and golf.⁷² John did not need to say much about his medal or the Canal, so when it came up he said, "My men earned it. I am just wearing it for them."⁷³ At the end of their first date she would not kiss him good night. She had, however, taken to calling him Johnny.⁷⁴ He stopped over to see her at the officers' mess after work a day or two later.⁷⁵ Her friends liked him immediately. He obviously did not share the opinion of other guys at Pendleton, who referred to female marines as BAMs: Broad Assed Marines.

ON MARCH 30, BOMBING TWO ASSEMBLED IN THEIR READY ROOM TO THE sound of the general quarters Klaxon. Campbell briefed them on the strike again. Bombing Two would not fly as a squadron. Two divisions of six planes each would comprise the first sortie. The next two divisions would fly the second strike. The map of the Palau Island chain had a lot of strange names, like Babelthuap. Campbell, leading one division, and Buell, leading the other, would join up with some of their air group's fighter and torpedo planes to hit the enemy's ships in the harbor of the Island of Koror. The enemy knew they were coming. As Campbell went over the details of the raid as displayed on the blackboard and the Teletype--headings, distances, code words, and the like--the assigned pilots scribbled furiously, letting out the occasional "Dammit! Down in front."⁷⁶ The loudspeaker blared, "Pilots, man your planes." With parachutes hanging off their backsides, the pilots of divisions one and two walked to the flight deck for the squadron's first mission. Micheel and the remaining pilots would have found a spot on Vulture's Row to watch the launch before going back to the ready room to wait.

With the tension of combat added to the men's natural exuberance, one of the wolves described the life in the ready room as "a cross between the Roman Coliseum in its heyday and Barnum's freak show."⁷⁷ The truth was much less exciting, however, as they smoked cigarettes, played acey- deucey (backgammon), and prepared for the next mission. Eager pilots engaged in a fair amount of shoptalk, where the qualities of each type of aircraft--like its wing loading and wing aspect--were compared. A few hammocks swung from the ceiling. Down in the ship's store, cigarettes sold for seven cents a pack. Across the passageway outside, a young black man operated a small pantry. Seaman Roland E. Williams prepared light meals for flight crews when the wardroom was closed, and looked forward to the day when the war ended and he could go to hairdresser school. Other seamen cleaned the pilots' staterooms and did their laundry. On the flight deck above their ready room, teams of men spotted aircraft and handled the takeoffs and landings of the CAP and ASW missions. Hornet did not turn into the wind to launch these single-plane missions; it threw them into the air with its catapult.

The first strike returned almost three hours later and their news was mostly good. In the island's harbor the Helldivers had found eight enemy ships, most of which were five-thousand- to eight-thousand-ton transports, with one destroyer and one sampan. Bombing Two had scored two hits on two ships, one hit apiece on two others, but missed the destroyer. The sampan had been thoroughly strafed--and that was saying something with the SB2C's 20mm cannon; the pilots found "their destructive power . . . tremendous."⁷⁸ Though enemy fighters were known to be operating off the nearby island of Peleliu, the only enemy plane spotted had been one "Tojo." It had fled. The enemy's antiaircraft fire, though, had been intense. One of their planes had not returned. The pilot and gunner, last seen as their plane entered its dive, were listed as missing in action.

Later that day Mike's turn came to take the Helldiver into combat. He led the second division and the squadron's XO led the first.⁷⁹ The target was the airfield on the tiny island of Peleliu, 112 miles away. On the map, the airfield's runways looked like a giant number "4" etched into the base of an irregular- shaped island. The Beasts were being loaded with a thousand-pound bomb in the bomb bay and a hundred-pound bomb under each wing. The smaller bombs had an instantaneous fuse setting, to increase the splatter. The larger one had a .1-second delay to give it more destructive power against walls. Visibility was unrestricted. Eight fighters and seven torpedo planes would accompany them. The enemy had demonstrated an effective antiaircraft defense. Pilots in the ready rooms, as they began to copy down important information onto their Ouija Boards, must have begun to pay particular attention to the location of the rescue submarine. The navy had started placing a sub in the vicinity of the strike zone to rescue downed flight crews.

Mike found the mission less than challenging. "Now here I am, been through two squadrons that I trained, and they give us a little target like Palau." After years of training to hit moving ships, the prospect of hitting an airfield and its hangars made him laugh. "My God," he exclaimed, "miss an airfield?" The call came to man their planes.

Up the stairs and out on the flight deck, the pilots walked to the stern. The wind carried the astringent odors of aviation fuel and exhaust. The Helldivers had been jammed on the stern, their wings in the up position to make room for more. The Hellcats and Avengers took off before him, as did the XO's division. Moving up to the launch position, he pushed a button and the wings came down. The plane captain and another deckhand made sure they were locked. Mike taxied forward; the nose of the Beast obstructed his forward view.

He grew nervous as he got to the spot. Sure, the SB2C Helldiver had a lot more horsepower than his old Dauntless, but the air group commander and Captain Browning "took it away from you by giving you a shorter deck." They wanted more planes spotted on the deck ready for takeoff. More planes on the rear of the flight deck in turn pushed the spot from which Mike would begin his takeoff farther forward. He did not like the idea that they had figured exactly "how many feet to take you off so you didn't sink. . . ." The run-up of the engine sounded fine. At full power the plane shook with pent- up energy. The flight director pointed to the bow and ducked. Mike released the brakes, and the Beast rolled forward. Gaining speed, the tail came up level behind him, allowing him to see straight ahead. The edge looked too close. When he cleared the bow of the ship, the aircraft dropped. He realized he was right; "it was maybe 20 feet off of the deck before you got flying speed." As quickly as possible, Mike made a gentle turn to starboard to make the wind better for the pilot behind him. He also had to unbuckle himself so he could reach way down by his feet to pull the handle to retract the landing gear.

Circling, he noticed two other carriers also in the midst of a launch a few miles away. He noted some heavy cumulus clouds. The Hellcats and Avengers circled with him. Only nine of the twelve Helldivers scheduled joined up--more technical problems--and off they went. The flight to the target took less than an hour. The leader had to find the right tiny island amid a great scattering of tiny green islands and atolls. It took a little concentration. They came in an endless variety of shapes, surrounded by the pale blue of shallow water and white coral reefs. The main harbor on the main island was easy to spot: burning Japanese ships filled the water and U.S. planes filled the sky.

The XO led his strike in from the northeast. As he approached the target, he took the planes into a shallow dive to gain speed. The wolves adjusted the settings on their engines and props, then trimmed their planes for the dive. They were at about ninety-five hundred feet when they aligned themselves along Peleliu's northeast- to-southwest runway. The great white 4 stood out clearly amid the green canopy. Micheel peeled off and pointed his plane at the airfield below. As his airspeed indicator slid toward three hundred knots, a fighter plane went roaring by him, strafing the ground to help slow the enemy's AA guns. His speed increased with every second. "I'm going down in, on my diving run, and I'm maybe about 4,000 feet. Pow! I feel something hit the airplane. I look out and . . . my starboard wing's on fire." Mike thought he might as well finish the dive at this point; "maybe it [the fire] will go out." At about two thousand feet he released his thousand-pound center bomb and pulled back on the stick with both hands. Gravity gave his body a tight squeeze.

"When I pull out and head out to sea, I can see the fire has gone out, and my aileron wire is unraveling. . . ." He might lose control at any moment. He got on the intercom. "Prepare to ditch at sea! We're going to land next to the survival submarine."

"Oh, sir," John Hart, the gunner, protested, "I hope we can get back to the ship. I've been shot and I'm bleeding and I can't reach the life raft and I can't swim. So I hope we can go back to the ship." Mike looked over and saw "a great big hole in the wing." He could see the aileron wire flipping around. If it snapped, he might not be able to slide his plane smoothly to a stop near the rescue sub. On the other hand, his gunner was wounded. If the landing went wrong--which was likely during a water landing--John might not make it out before the plane sank.

"Well, we'll try to get back," he said into the intercom. "I don't know if that aileron is going to hold or not. If it goes and I can catch it with my rudder I'll be all right." He turned toward the carrier. The flight back lasted most of an hour, until the welcome sight of the task group hove into view. Mike called down to his carrier to let them know he had a wounded gunner. He listed the damage to his aircraft, so they would know how serious it was. His request for immediate clearance to land, however, was denied. "Wait." Then a pause, and then the controller said, "Go to five thousand feet . . . and dog." From Mike's damage report, Hornet's air controller knew it was likely he would crash on the deck. So Mike would circle the ship until all the others landed and a large crash barrier was raised.

As he circled, Mike had time to think. He had plenty of gas. As long as his aileron held he was fine. As serious as the hole in his wing was the loss of hydraulic fluid, which the fire had consumed. Without his hydraulics, Mike's plane would lack landing flaps, which give the wings more lift at slow speeds. Hydraulics also powered his landing gear, so he would have to crank his wheels down by hand. Once the wheels went down, he had to land on the carrier. He could not land in the water because the wheels and struts would catch the water and slam the nose of the plane into the water. In the ensuing collision, the plane would often flip over on its back before sinking. A new concern shook him: What if only one wheel locked into place? Mike got on the radio. "You didn't forget I'm here?"

"No, sir," the controller replied, "you're going to be the last plane to land. We're going to put up the barricade for you." In order to land, Mike had to know the speed at which the plane would stall. A stall meant total loss of control over the aircraft. He began to experiment, slowing down to just the moment of stall, then catching it and speeding up again, and so on. He wanted to get a precise figure, knowing that he would have to add in some speed to compensate for the extra drag created when he lowered the wheels. "I figure out, well, I got to go about twenty knots faster when I come in than I do normally." After a time the call came and Mike brought the Beast into the landing pattern. He lowered his wheels as he flew the downwind leg.

Making a classic carrier approach, Mike flew alongside the carrier, with it headed in the opposite direction off to his left, or port. He lowered his tail hook. "I know I'm fast. When I get right up there to the ship, I . . . turn my wing up so that those guys on the bridge that are watching can see the hole in my wing!" Even before Mike could begin to make the final turn to come up behind the ship, the LSO waved him off. "So then he gets on the radio and he tells me, 'You're way too fast. You got to slow it down.'" Mike circled the ship at low altitude, setting up for another pass, trying to find the right spot between stall speed and excessive speed. Once again, though, the LSO waved him out of the groove. He told Mike over the radio to take a longer approach. Instead of making a ninety-degree turn off the stern of the ship, Mike would fly straight and level toward it, just like an airplane landing at an airfield. A land-based plane, though, landed on its front wheels; a carrier plane landed by catching its rear hook. Placing a plane in the attitude to catch an arresting wire meant that the nose blocked the pilot's vision forward and the wings blocked his vision below. This was why carrier pilots normally made a sharp turn to land--the turn dropped the port wing and allowed them to see the deck and the LSO until almost the last second. No turn meant no forward vision.

The LSO, an experienced aviator who had undergone advanced training, knew exactly what he was asking of the pilot. Thankfully this pilot had a thousand hours of air time and had spent a month of high stress on Guadalcanal. Mike made the long, straight approach from the stern. "My Landing Signal Officer just let me have my speed, but he just cut me sooner, so I would glide further before I hit. Normally when you come aboard, you're almost over the end of the carrier deck and he gives you a cut . . . you're right there: bang, bang! But this time he gave me a cut way out, and I could see the stern of the ship!" At the LSO's cut signal, Mike yanked the throttle back to zero. The engine's roar faded. "Oh, I had to trust him. I can't do anything else. I just got to do what he tells me. He knows what he's doing, that's what he's there for." The Beast glided for a long, quiet moment. The carrier's island rose quickly in the right-hand window. The cut had been timed perfectly and it "plops me right in on the deck." The tail hook caught the wire.

Mike looked up to see the crash fences in front of him flop down. He throttled forward, then climbed out and let the plane handlers take over. A medical team rushed forward and took his gunner, John, below to sick bay. Micheel went to the ready room to be debriefed. After such a feat, a pilot would receive a warm welcome from his squadron. While the ensigns might have been impressed with Lieutenant Micheel's landing, his skipper was impressed that Mike had completed his dive on the target with a burning wing. The other pilots had confirmed that Mike's thousand-pound bomb had "hit almost dead center of the intersection of the two main runways on Peleliu."⁸⁰ This was the example a division leader set for the men on his wing. The enemy would have a hard time coming after Hornet because Mike's first instinct had been to press home the attack. To Campbell, Lieutenant Micheel's "skilled airmanship and courageous devotion to duty in the face of heavy and accurate antiaircraft fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."⁸¹

While giving his report Micheel learned that his had not been the only plane to get hit with a burst of AA fire. One other had sustained less damage than his. A third Helldiver had burst into flames over Peleliu. The pilot, John Houston, had rolled it over so he and his gunner could get out quickly. Two parachutes were seen to open. Houston and his gunner landed in the water a hundred yards off the enemy's shore, too close to be rescued.⁸²

"After I had had my debrief, I went down to the hangar deck and looked at my airplane." The mechanics had kept the wings down in order to study the damage. "So I got up there and put my head through the hole in the wing, I could turn all the way around, my shoulders could turn all the way around inside that hole." No wonder he had come in a little fast. Up close, he could also see that the SB2C had three cables to control the aileron and only one had been nicked. Even the damaged wire had not unraveled that much; it had only looked that way as it whipped in the wind. Back in the rear seat compartment, the shell that had maimed John had blown off the left handle of his .30-cal machine gun. At that, "I went down to see my gunner and guys were coming out of the sick bay and they said, 'Oh, he's okay, there's nothing wrong with him, he's okay.' "

"What do you mean 'nothing wrong with him'?"

"Well, he just lost his index finger."

"You mean," Mike asked, "he couldn't pull out that life raft because he lost his finger?"

"Well, he was scared. He was in shock. He didn't know what had happened. He was bleeding . . ." Thinking it over, Mike did not blame John for not wanting to attempt a water landing. He had not liked the idea either, but the aileron wire had "scared the daylights" out of him. As the tension eased, he began to laugh at himself. "I thought I was a hotshot. I had this thing all figured out. Then the first thing you know I got a bullet through my wing that set me on fire." He resolved not to be so smug, to understand it could happen to him, regardless of his skill. The first strike of his second combat tour "changed my mind all over again, and then I was always careful, an apprehensive pilot." A little before nine p.m. enemy planes approached the task force. None of them got close to Hornet, but the ship stayed at general quarters until eleven p.m., and that cut into everyone's sleep.

When Mike reported to the ready room the next day, he learned that John Hart had resigned from flying. Rear seat gunners volunteered for the job, so they had the right to return to being an ordinary aviation mechanic again. Hart had flown with Mike since August, but one combat mission had been enough. Another airman volunteered and flew with him on a strike at a spot called Corro. The carrier had another busy day, much of it successful. One of the torpedo planes, however, went off the end of the flight deck and crashed into the water.

On the third day of combat, April 1, the air group shifted its attention away from the Palau Islands to Woleai Atoll. Micheel did not participate. During the nine a.m. launch one Beast failed so badly on takeoff that the pilot "essentially taxied off the bow."⁸³ The plane and her crew disappeared before the guard destroyer could get to them. Both men had wives and children. A second mission against the Woleai cost another Helldiver from AA fire. Before lunchtime, the carriers and their air groups had completed their assignment and set sail for Majuro.

In the ready room, Skipper Campbell began chewing out Hal Buell, who led the second division in Campbell's strike. Campbell told Hal he was not to dive in advance of Campbell's division, but to follow his lead. If the skipper expected Hal to accept this, he had read him wrong. Hal looked him in the eye and told him the leader was not supposed to slow down their attack by circling the target--that just gave the enemy gunners more time to sight in their AA guns. Proper technique dictated a high-speed approach--descending from the cruising altitude to the diving altitude--followed immediately by the dive. "You want to get over the top of the target and out!" Campbell could not accept this challenge to his authority. The two ended up going to the air group commander. Campbell had rank on his side. Hal was a seasoned veteran who knew the doctrine. As a division leader himself, Mike could have been drawn into the confrontation, but refused. He got along well with "Soupy" Campbell. He agreed with Buell. Micheel had been around enough to know the flap would work itself out as such things usually did: Hal would be told to follow orders and Campbell would stop circling the target.

After three days, America's first strike into the Palau Islands ended in complete success. The enemy in the Palau Islands could not threaten MacArthur's advance up the New Guinea coast; 130,000 tons of enemy shipping had been sunk; and dozens of planes had been shot down and more strafed on the ground. The task force had lost about two dozen planes, although the subs had picked up a number of downed crews. It bothered Mike that operational losses had outnumbered the airplanes lost to enemy fighters or AA fire. Steaming back to Majuro, scuttlebutt had it that they would hit New Guinea next.⁸⁴ First they had a chance to get off the ship and onto the Majuro Atoll while the ships received supplies and gasoline. The men played baseball on the beach or went swimming, but there wasn't much to Majuro. One of the wolves surely defined the word "atoll" for his friends--no women atoll, no whiskey atoll, nothin' atoll.

AS BAD AS THE RAIN ON CAPE GLOUCESTER HAD BEEN, IN MARCH THE MORTARMEN of the 2/1 had to admit "the rainy season seems to have only begun now." It rained hard. It rained daily. The rain created the seas of mud that slowed the pace of infantry warfare. The air raid siren sounded occasionally, although seldom did planes arrive. The only troops of the IJA the marines saw were those strung up in the native villages--each village had captured five or six alive. The natives "beat the mortal shit out of every jap they catch," exacting retribution for the injuries the invaders had once inflicted on them. To keep busy, the 2/1 had classes on weapons, had inspections, and worked on their camp.

Sid, as a member of the kitchen team, had seen his popularity sink. The men hated eating the same food every day. Twice in the past two months, steak and eggs had been served to break the monotony of warmed-up K and C rations. In early April, the cooks tried serving fish as an entree. Deacon took one look at it and told the cooks, "They can jam that salmon up their ass as far as I am concerned." When John Wesley "Deacon" Tatum used foul language, the situation had obviously gotten bad. The regimental HQ tried to improve the situation. It issued cigarettes, toothpaste, and other treats. It offered the men a chance to draw out some of their money. No one wanted any. It began showing movies at night, the one bright spot in the jungle.

The night of April 5 they offered a double feature. The rain abated, and that allowed the men to watch them before bed. At about four a.m. a huge crash woke up Sid. Someone yelled, "Tree on a man." Sid climbed out of his hammock to see a huge tree, with a trunk perhaps ten feet in diameter and fifty feet tall, lying on a tent twenty feet from him. The galley men grabbed their Coleman lanterns and the whole of H Company came to help. The tree had crushed the legs of one man in the tent. Deacon and W.O. were with Sid when the company moved the trunk, freeing the injured man and extracting a body out from underneath. The dead body had been Don Rouse, one of the original members of the #4 gun squad.

Later that morning Lieutenant Benson gave Sid the job of going through Rouse's personal effects as a team of Seabees showed up and began to inspect the forest in and around camp. Two of them carried a giant chain saw like a stretcher team. They cut the tree that had killed Rouse into pieces. In Don's possessions Sid found a piece of propaganda that had been dropped by the Japanese on them back in New Guinea. Don had a copy because he had been moved over to the company's intelligence section. Given the propaganda's pornographic content--the Japanese had mistaken the marines for Aussies and had intended to sow discord among the Allies with it--Sid took it to Benson. Benny told him to keep it; he already had one.

Apparently the rain had weakened the hold of the trees in the earth. All of the top-heavy ones had to come down. A Seabee from Oregon dropped trees with precision, not even asking for the tents to be moved. The company held the funeral at two p.m. for Private First Class Don Rouse of Biloxi, Mississippi. They buried his body in the cemetery. The headstones they erected would not last long in the jungle on Cape Gloucester. Nothing man-made lasted within the green inferno. Next to the tents the Seabees cut the felled trees into logs and the marines rolled them out of their way.

A few nights later How Company learned lists were being drawn up for rotation home. A furlough system had also been established for those who qualified, although applying for a furlough meant delaying one's rotation stateside. Neither would happen until they departed Cape Gloucester, New Britain. The first reliable news about their departure reached the men on Easter Sunday, April 9. A senior NCO called a special meeting to announce the army's 40th Division would relieve them in seven to ten days. The 1st Division would either go to Noumea, Guadalcanal, or some island in the Russells.

EASTER SUNDAY FOUND PRIVATE FIRST CLASS EUGENE SLEDGE STILL STUCK IN the replacement battalion camp in Noumea, New Caledonia. The Red Cross held services. Attending church brought him joy and fond memories of attending the Government Street Presbyterian Church in Mobile with his family. As he told his father in a letter written on that day, "You and mummie have given Edward and I a pure Christian outlook on life that we will never lose no matter where we are."

The replacement battalion made long marches into the mountains outside of town. They hiked eighteen miles fast enough that Sledge felt "sure Stonewall's Foot Cavalry would have thought us pretty good."^x His sharp eyes did not miss the cockatoos and parakeets in the trees. The birds' brilliant plumage as well as their scolding replies to any disturbances on the ground below delighted him. Later, when the marines practiced their amphibious maneuvers, he noticed the tiny shells and took interest in the sea life.

Now that he was overseas, Eugene permitted himself to talk the talk of a marine. To a friend in Mobile who had "just joined the best outfit in the world," he counseled, you "will find the furloughs few and the work pretty hard. But when it's all over he can say he was a Marine. I'm proud to say that right now." To his aunt, who had had the temerity to suggest that Gene "looked like an R.A.F. fighter pilot" in a recent photo, he declared, "If a man told me that I'd grab him by the stacking swivel & blacken his sights. In other words--push his face in. Not that I have anything against the R.A.F. But I'm in an outfit with 169 years of fighting spirit & tradition behind it and I don't care to be told I resemble a 'fly- fly glamour' boy." His pride in the Marine Corps only seemed unbounded, however. He drew the line at tattoos. A lot of the men in camp had had the eagle, globe, and anchor etched into their arms or chests, but he knew his parents would be "horrified."

Private First Class Sledge also quickly adopted the fighting man's disgust at receiving bad news from home. "When I'm down here doing the best I can," he advised his mother, he didn't want to hear about "strikes, racial trouble, or political bickering." He liked the clippings from the newspaper she sent that were about hunting or history, but he asked her to stop sending him news about the war--the recreation room was full of it and he was sick of it. So far as politics went, "When we win the war I hope the politicians have left enough of America for us fellows to live peacefully in."

HORNET SAILED OUT OF MAJURO ON APRIL 11 ON THE WAY TO HELP GENERAL MacArthur's army move farther up the northern coast of New Guinea. Due to a shake-up in command, Micheel's flattop had become the flagship of Task Group 58.1, which included USS Bataan and two other light carriers, under the command of Jocko Clark. The task group sailed with the other task groups of Task Force 58, a force totaling twelve carriers and dozens of escorts. In offensive capability, it had no equal.

Sailing with an armada of cruisers, destroyers, and other carriers made launching sorties more difficult. The carrier had to turn into the wind, whatever its direction, and speed up. The speed of the carriers made life difficult for the slower vessels. On the trip to New Guinea, Admiral Clark informed his task group that his "flipper turn" was now standard operating procedure. As a carrier commander, Clark had invented "the flipper turn," in which his carrier exited the group formation at twenty-five knots while the other ships held steady at eighteen knots.⁸⁵ It saved fuel. Now that he commanded 58.1, Jocko Clark decreed the entire task group make the flipper turn, whose prosaic name was changed to "Modified Baker" to fit better with naval lingo. Jocko, a former pilot, ordered the change because he put the needs of his carriers first. His plan angered the captains of the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, who had "to give way" to the carriers.⁸⁶ Modified Baker represented another marker in the destruction of centuries of navy tradition and doctrine. The line of great battlewagons had once ruled the seas. Breaking that line meant the battleships were no longer preparing to fight the decisive fleet engagement; their guns existed to protect the carriers from enemy aircraft. Admiral Mitscher, in command of all of the task groups, also wore the Golden Wings of a naval aviator. Mitscher observed Jocko's 58.1 execute the flipper turn, decided it worked better than any other, and ordered it adopted by all the task groups of the Fifth Fleet.

In the Bombing Two ready room, Campbell showed his men a map of New Guinea and of MacArthur's target, Hollandia. As usual, they would help the soldiers by destroying several airfields nearby. Reports by army reconnaissance estimated Japanese strength at 350 aircraft. While other squadrons hit Hollandia itself, the wolves were assigned to strike bases about 120 miles farther west along the coast. Part of the preflight briefing concerned the location of a place to land or to bail out over in the case of trouble. Hitting targets on the coast of New Guinea gave them a lot more options than the Palau Islands had, but Mike warned his guys with a grin, "Don't land in the jungle because there's aborigines in the jungle . . . man eaters!" As they approached New Guinea, they again found themselves within the range of enemy planes. The Combat Air Patrol (CAP) began to have bogeys to chase down. The bogeys came in singles, though, not in squadrons.

An unexpected ruckus broke out early in the morning of April 19, the day before the next combat mission. As the ship turned into the wind to launch some routine ASW scouts, general quarters sounded.⁸⁷ Mike and the other pilots had to remain in the ready room. It turned out that the carrier had turned into the path of another ship of the task group. More of the story came in later, when Hal Buell returned from his routine ASW search. He had seen two ships almost collide with Hornet. He had been sitting in his plane, the engine idling, when he had looked over the starboard (right) side of the ship to see the prow of another charging at him through the darkness. It had slid past with perhaps twenty feet to spare. Just as he had gushed relief, another one appeared; its prow "appeared as tall as our flight deck" and "on a direct collision course." Hal had cut the engine, released his harness and jumped from his plane. He watched as the tanker threw itself into reverse, sliding past "our stern with only inches to spare; I could have jumped from our fantail onto her bridge deck. . . ." From the bridge word came that Captain Browning had been at the helm when this happened and had gotten an earful from Admiral Clark, "who had run to the bridge in his bathrobe."⁸⁸ It ended with Jocko warning Browning, "Don't you ever do that again."⁸⁹ The ship's captain walked away, shaking his head.

Beginning on April 20, the airplanes of Task Force 58.1 spent four days hitting targets at Sawar, Sarmi, and Wakde Island. The weather was terrible, with a ceiling so low that the Helldivers began their dives from four thousand feet.⁹⁰ The low altitude helped the enemy gunners on the ground. In a few days, the wolves lost eight planes.⁹¹ Mistakes and malfunctions accounted for more losses than enemy AA fire. Two planes collided. Another had engine trouble soon after takeoff and crashed while attempting to get back aboard. The pilot survived; his gunner did not. Another plane failed on takeoff and fell into the ocean. His gunner got out, but the pilot's body had to be pulled from it. Blunt- force trauma to the head had killed him. Every pilot knew why: the handle to pull up the wheels was beyond most pilots' reach. Pilots had begun taking off with their shoulder straps unbuckled, so they could get their wheels up quickly. Getting the gear up quickly helped the Helldiver reach flying speed faster and thus reduced the chances of hitting the water. Without his straps on, Lieutenant Bosworth had sustained a severe blow to the head when his Beast fell off the end of the bow and hit the water 52.3 feet below.

The accident prompted the skipper to make sure the navy understood the problem. Campbell also asked for immediate assistance in extending the handle. The pilots had to be able to bring up the wheels while remaining strapped in. When another SB2C failed on takeoff and hit the water, the pilot had his shoulder strap on. When he was fished out of the water, he described being "trapped in the cockpit and dragged thirty to forty feet below the surface before he could fight clear."⁹² The crash brought Hal Buell and Mike Micheel together for a talk. Something had to be done. Their air group had suffered ten crashes. After reviewing the circumstances of each, the two veterans decided the pilot had been at fault in one or two; "insufficient wind" over the flight deck had caused the others. While the ship's other planes, the Hellcats and the Avengers, seemingly jumped off the deck in a light breeze, a fully loaded SB2C demanded lots of wind and lots of flight deck. Buell did not think their squadron CO, Campbell, appreciated the danger and recommended going over his head to the air group commander. Mike agreed. Roy Johnson, the CAG, listened carefully to his veterans and decided they were correct. He found a way to convince Captain Miles Browning to either get twenty- five to thirty knots of wind or allow the Helldivers to fly with a fifteen-hundred-pound payload of bombs instead of two thousand pounds. Skipper Campbell of Bombing Two found out about the meeting, of course, and he blamed Buell.

Their task group spent a few more days in the area, providing air cover and escort services in support of MacArthur's attack. From the radio news programs, it soon became evident that "MacArthur's public relations department was extolling the accomplishments of the Army's invasion of Hollandia but there wasn't one word about the Navy's support."⁹³ The wolves could only shake their heads in disgust at the unabashed machinations of "Dugout Doug." Some of the frustration they felt, however, resulted from the feeling that their strikes had not been effective. The exact locations of the enemy installations had not been known in advance. Their targets on the ground had been "heavily covered by coconut trees," and well dispersed. "Dives were therefore made," Campbell complained, "on areas of the island rather than a specific target. In most cases it was a matter of luck whether a valuable target was hit and destroyed."⁹⁴

JOHN BASILONE WROTE HIS FAMILY AGAIN IN APRIL--OBVIOUSLY HIS MOTHER had given him a stern lecture about writing more often--to tell them he had spent the first part of the month out in the fields of Camp Pendleton.⁹⁵ Living out of his backpack for two weeks had been easy. "I'm feeling fine only I got a lot of sun burn. I'm as Black as the ace of Spades." As usual he spent most of his short letter inquiring about his family--his grandmother, who was ill; his father, who had been hired by a prestigious clothing store; his brothers and sisters. His brother Al had joined the marines. Johnny asked his mother to "tell him all the luck in the world for me." He signed his letters, "Love and Kisses, your loving son Johnny." He asked his mother to send a copy of Parade magazine: "I want to show it to the boys."⁹⁶

"The boys" were some of the sergeants in his company: Clinton Watters, Jack Wheeler, Rinaldo Martini, and Edward Johnston. These were his buddies in Charlie Company, which was just back from field maneuvers in the boondocks. The NCOs had to get their green marines accustomed to firing live ammunition, conducting patrols, and infiltrating enemy positions at night, crawling under fire.⁹⁷ Out in the field the marines of Charlie Company found their attention focused on their gunnery sergeant. Basilone was special. All of his fame and fortune made a few things self-evident to the men just out of boot camp. He loved being a marine. He believed the war was a worthy endeavor. He would always do his best. These truths stayed with them even as the glitter of fame gave way to the familiarity born of camping in the field. Not that a private first class ever got too familiar with a senior NCO, only that the gunny's easy way with everyone broke down the stereotype of Manila John.⁹⁸ Most of all, he made it clear that he would have to depend on them, too, when the shooting started. Mutual trust created a team, not adulation.

Johnny relied on his sergeants--Clint, Ed, Jack, and Rinaldo--to help him with the company's administration and with the guidebooks used to explain theory to the men. He taught his men how to operate and maintain the Browning .30-cal light machine gun by demonstrating it to them. The new air-cooled Brownings weighed a lot less than the old water-cooled models, and that helped a lot as they moved in support of the advancing fire teams. His enthusiasm for machine guns and for the physical demands of field problems impressed his men. They became imbued with his understanding of what being a marine meant. Charlie Company knew their gunny was going to be out in front.

Back in camp, they could see him at the slop chute on base or at a beer hall in Oceanside, drinking a beer "with all the gusto of a millionaire guzzling champagne."⁹⁹ If Lena had to work, he'd be there with Clint, Ed, Jack, and Rinaldo. Ed had played some semipro baseball and was the best athlete. Jack was the quiet one. Rinaldo had ridden the rails as a hobo so long he claimed to have no hometown.¹⁰⁰ When Johnny came back to camp with his garrison cap on sideways, doing his impression of Napoleon, his friends knew he was just goofing off. It looked different to marines in the other companies of 1st Battalion, however. Now the air carried a whiff of "Oh, he gets away with it because he's a Medal of Honor winner."¹⁰¹

RATHER THAN RETURN TO THE FLEET ANCHORAGE AT MAJURO WHEN THEIR New Guinea mission ended, the ships of Task Force 58 blasted through a fearsome storm, bound for the island of Truk in the Caroline Island chain. Everyone in the navy knew of Truk's fearsome reputation as the enemy's great forward fleet anchorage. The air force's B-24s had been working it over for some time, and the carrier fleet had hit it previously. The Imperial Navy had sent more planes there, though, and the wolves still feared it.¹⁰² As Hornet steamed north, Bombing Two began reviewing maps, becoming familiar with the several atolls that made up the location known as Truk. Their new maps noted every building, their function, and type of construction. In the briefings, the skipper made clear that a massive fighter sweep would be launched first, in order to clear out the enemy fighters, so the dive-bombers could do their job. The ship would launch them about a hundred miles from their targets.

Before dawn on April 29, Hornet came to course one hundred degrees True, her speed twenty-five knots. The fighters took off from all the carriers in the group.¹⁰³ During the course of that morning, they shot down fifty-nine enemy fighters, and destroyed another thirty-four on the ground. When Campbell led the first of Bombing Two's missions, a few Zeros made passes at them, but the wolves' problems came not from enemy planes during the following days. In eleven strikes against Truk and other enemy bases in the Caroline Island chain, the enemy AA guns took a lot of bites out of their planes. Mike led four strikes, punishing any signs of life with five-hundred-pound bombs. On one sortie, an enemy gunner blew another hole in his wing, but the shell failed to explode. It left a three-inch hole in the leading edge of his left wing. He hardly noticed. Other squadrons, however, lost a lot of guys to the heavy AA fire. News of the losses on the other carriers came slowly to the squadron ready room, usually arriving in dribs and drabs. Pilots needed to know. More than half of the forty-six airmen shot down were rescued. The rescue submarine USS Tangpicked up twenty-two by itself. Floatplanes launched from the cruisers picked up others, an idea Admiral Clark in his flag bridge atop Hornet's island had put into action.

The neutralization of the enemy's ocean fortress went well, but the Beast did not hold up under the strain. Several planes collapsed upon landing, one of them catching fire and later pushed overboard. The Helldiver's bomb release mechanism had begun sticking.¹⁰⁴ On the last day of their mission, the problem became severe. In one instance, a pilot landed on Hornet with a hundred-pound bomb still attached under his wing. He had tried all manner of maneuvers to shake it loose on the return flight, with no success. As soon as he slammed into the carrier's deck, though, it disengaged and rolled down the deck and exploded. Two men died. The damage to the deck was repaired temporarily within twenty minutes, allowing flight operations to continue. Later that day another pilot landed with a five-hundred-pound bomb in his center rack. This bomb also detached upon impact, fell through the airplane's closed bomb bay doors, rolled underneath the spinning propeller and up the deck.¹⁰⁵ All hands jumped off the deck and down onto the catwalk that surrounded it. When nothing happened, one of the wolves peeked over the edge. The flight deck "looked like a ghost town."¹⁰⁶ Finally, the deck crew got a cart and disposed of it.

Reviewing the reports and photographs taken on the last sortie, the senior staff decided their mission had been accomplished. On the evening of May 1, Task Force 58 broke off contact and steamed back to the Marshall Islands. The wolves could stand down.

A FEW DAYS BEFORE SID PHILLIPS AND THE REST OF THE 2/1 DEPARTED CAPE Gloucester, they knew they were headed for the Russell Islands near Guadalcanal. The Canal had grown into a large U.S. base. Hope of returning to Melbourne had been dashed. The news helped provoke a fair amount of angry mutters--what Sid called "gum beating" because it served no purpose--as the working parties loaded the ships. The 2/1 boarded President Adams on April 24 and sailed the next day. The stifling heat made it hard to breathe down in the holds where the bunks were. The ship's gallery served big pork chops that night and cold ice cream the next, making it easier to enjoy the trip. Two sub chasers and two destroyers guarded the ten transports hauling the 1st Division off the green inferno and depositing them on what scuttlebutt called Buvuvu Island, which turned out to be incorrect. The 1st Division extracted itself from MacArthur's control and rejoined the U.S. Navy on April 28, 1944, when it landed on Pavuvu in the Russell Islands.

The disembarkation began at nine a.m. They found themselves on a small island covered mostly by a coconut plantation. The only camp in sight belonged to the 15th Field Depot Battalion. The marines had to build their own. The idea of being required to build one's own rest camp angered everyone. Working parties fell out to erect tents in long rows. They discovered they first had to clean up piles of rotting coconuts. The long first day ended on a bright spot. The new ten- in-one rations were issued. Created to sustain ten men for one meal or vice versa, they had been tasted by the marines and judged to be an improvement in field chow. The hard work continued for days, though, as the men began hauling crushed coral. Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller, who had taken command of the First Regiment back on Cape Gloucester, decreed that they could not use the jeeps to haul coral. Staggering along with helmets full of coral, Sid and W.O. "felt like Chinese coolies." They spread the coral along the footpaths and at the bottom of their tents in an effort to reduce the amount of time spent walking in the mud. The engineers strung lights in the tents, beginning with those of the officers and NCOs first.

When the 15th Field Depot unit moved over to Banika on May 4, the marines rushed to grab any of the boxes, tables, or construction materials they left behind. The veterans knew that every little bit of comfort helped. Most nights, one or more of the regiments and often the division HQ showed a film. The projectors tended to break down, though. The entertainment on the evening of May 9 received everyone's full attention. A drawing was held to determine who in the 2/1 would get rotated stateside. In the mortar platoon about thirty pieces of paper were put into a helmet. Half of them had a number on them. The colonel announced that if a man drew a piece with a number, he went home; if he drew two pieces of paper, he forfeited his chance. Every marine "felt very carefully before they withdrew a piece." Both Sid and W.O. won, as did Lieutenant Benson. Their friend Deacon, now a sergeant, did not, nor did any other member of the #4 gun. Deacon noticed the colonel gave tickets home to a number of marines considered "mentally and physically unfit," as well as those with "domestic trouble."

Colonel Puller's tent happened to stand near the regimental mess hall and just a few feet from the series of washing tubs that Private First Class Sidney Phillips kept full of hot water for the men to wash and rinse their mess kits. In the afternoon before chow, Puller would come out of his tent and see Sid at work, lighting the fires under the "GI cans." He asked Sid how he had come to be on mess duty and laughed heartily when he heard the story. The colonel's stature, at "maybe five six," surprised Sid, since Chesty Puller was a legend of the corps."The thing that impressed me most about him was how genuinely friendly he was." With a stubby pipe clamped in his mouth, he'd say hello to anyone. He asked Sid about his family, his hometown, and his plans. "When I told him I wanted to go to medical school, I remember he said that wouldn't be easy, but there was no reason why I couldn't make it if that was what I really wanted." Sid felt very lucky to have the chance to speak with such "a great American," as he stoked the fires so the water boiled to the point that "it was hazardous to approach the GI cans at chow time. I couldn't be reprimanded for doing too good a job."

Colonel Puller held his first inspection of his regiment's camp on May 20. He expected his marines to have themselves squared away and he took his time making sure they were. His men learned what to expect.¹⁰⁷ On May 21, the battalions began receiving their share of the fourteen hundred replacements that had arrived. Puller put the First on a training schedule. Reveille blew at five thirty a.m., followed by physical drill, and then chow. The work for the working parties looked endless to everyone but Sid and W.O. On May 23, they turned in their gear. All the guys who were going home had been assigned to a "casual company."

EARLY MAY HAD PASSED IN ALMOST A PACIFIC IDYLL FOR BOMBING SQUADRON Two. Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls had become an important base, which meant lots of Seabees had come to build the base, which meant there was an officers' club serving cold beer. The wolves liked to have parties. A few of the more intrepid pilots went to see the bunkers where the Japanese had fought the 4th Marine Division.

One night in mid- May a few thousand members of the ship's crew crowded into the hangar deck to watch a movie. A deck full of folding chairs in the darkened expanse made a great theater. When the opening cartoon ended, "a loud hissing noise" erupted from the back of the room. "A cry of 'It's a bomb' started a human tidal wave action rolling from the rear toward the front."¹⁰⁸ The wave of panic crashed through the wooden chairs until the lights came on. The sight of bodies sprawled all over his hangar incensed Admiral Clark. Mindless fear had no place aboard a warship. Some thirty men had to be sent to sick bay. One seaman was fished out of the bay. When at last things got squared away, the film began again.

Two days later, the body of a Hornet seaman was found floating in the harbor. The story quickly came out that another seaman, one who had been pulled from the water during the melee at the movie, had reported seeing someone else in the water. No muster had been held and no search had been launched at that time. The chairs had been reset and the movie shown. While a court of inquiry was convened to investigate the death, Hornet set sail for Majuro to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. Scuttlebutt about the movie riot and the next mission flowed through the Bombing Two ready room. The court of inquiry came back with a bland statement about an accident. Admiral Clark directed it to convene again and this time to "assign blame."¹⁰⁹ At Majuro the carrier began to take on fuel and supplies for another sortie. On May 30 the commander of the carrier fleet, Admiral Mitscher, relieved Captain Miles Browning of command. Captain W. D. Sample reported aboard Admiral Clark's flagship at ten thirty-eight a.m.

Stories about the irascible Miles Browning all had to be told. A few instances of poor seamanship and many examples of petty cruelty while aboard Hornet contrasted sharply with the prevailing opinion within the navy: Browning's brilliant mind had created the victory at Midway--a victory so massive, it had changed the course of the Pacific War. The word was Mitscher had sent Browning to command the naval air station at Leavenworth, Kansas. In other words, his career had just ended. On the topic of how such a hero could be dismissed so quickly and completely, everyone had an opinion. Stories of Browning's excessive drinking and even a case of adultery also wafted through.¹¹⁰ Lieutenant Micheel stayed out of it. He did not, however, regret the loss of a captain who had shortened his pilots' flight deck and who often failed to provide them twenty- five knots of headwind during the launch. Mike measured his life expectancy in those few extra feet of deck and knots of wind.

The new captain, Sample, made a good first impression on his air group. Two days after he arrived, representatives of the Marine Corps came on board to brief the carrier's air group officers on Operation Forager, the invasion of the Mariana Islands. To stop this amphibious assault, Japan would send her carrier fleet. Aircraft carriers had not clashed since October 1942, when they had traded punches in the waters around Guadalcanal.

OUT IN THE FIELDS OF CAMP PENDLETON, THE TRAINING OF BASILONE'S MARINES shifted again. The individual's proficiency with his weapons and the squad's integration gave way in early June. The training cycle focused more on the battalion-level field problems.¹¹¹ These included the use of heavy mortars, 37mms, and half-tracks carrying 75mm howitzers. The next step, to a regimental-size exercise, came soon after. Units from artillery, engineers, motor transports, MPs, and others had been attached to the Twenty-seventh. The reinforced regiment became designated a regimental combat team (RCT). Topside intended each of the three RCTs of the 5th Division to have everything it needed to sustain itself in combat.

After a day's work in the field, Gunny Basilone went out with his girlfriend, Lena, whenever she could get away. Sometimes he and his friends stopped by her mess hall to say hello and beg for some good chow. He made sure his weekend liberties coincided with hers, and they'd go into Los Angeles and stay at the Biltmore Hotel. To Lena it felt like "we were never alone," because everyone tagged along.¹¹² Other women often pestered her with "How in the world did you get him?"

"I don't know, you kids chased after him. That's why you didn't succeed. Play hard to get," Lena said with a laugh. Her sense of fun fit in well with Johnny and his friends. Dancing, drinking, seeing shows, and carrying on, it all got packed into a forty-eight-hour pass. After one of those fun weekends in early June, Johnny came to Lena's room. As she finished packing her bag, she mentioned that she was going on leave to Oregon to visit relatives. "Let's get married and go to Oregon together," he suggested.¹¹³

"Okay," Lena replied. Noting his offhand manner, she paid it little attention. They caught a train from L.A. to Oceanside. At the bus depot, waiting for their ride to camp, Johnny asked Lena if she was going to tell everyone the news. "I thought you were kidding," she said.

"No, I meant it," he said.¹¹⁴ So had she.

FROM THE RELATIVE SAFETY OF HIS KITCHEN MESS DUTY, SID WATCHED THE FIRST Marines begin a training regime. Reveille sounded at five thirty a.m. in the dingy tent camp on Pavuvu and the men went through physical drill before chow. How Company's Lieutenant McGrath decided to exceed Colonel Puller's expectations and hold an inspection of some type (clothing, tents, or equipment) most every day. Deacon and the guys who were staying for another battle uttered dark threats about McGrath as they slaved over details like putting the new cloth camouflage covers on their helmets. They used their ponchos to haul away the piles of stinking coconuts and dug more trenches to drain the rainwater away from their tents. Free time came late in the afternoon.

Somehow, Sid knew he would never escape this "monstrous mud hole." After two years in the boonies, though, he and the other "old timers had become experts at making and hiding jungle juice." Accumulating or stealing enough canned fruit to make the liquor proved tricky but not insurmountable. With Deacon distracted by his duties as a sergeant in the 60mm mortar section, Sid's #4 gun squad had a party "whenever a new batch was ready." Boredom also drove him to the hut of his friend Bob Leckie. The marine gunner known as Lucky had a collection of books he called the Pacific Library of Congress. Lucky would loan Sidney books, but he was a stickler on them being returned. Late in May a ship came in bringing more replacements. It departed on June 1 with W. O. Brown aboard. He and the others in the first half of the rotation had shipped out for stateside duty. The sight of it did not convince Sid he was "ever really going to leave Pavuvu." His ticket home still felt like a dream from which he would be rudely awakened.

EUGENE SLEDGE HAD CHAFED UNDER THE LONG DELAY, WANTING TO GET INTO a good outfit and "see some of the Pacific." Other marines from the replacement depot in Noumea had gotten assignments, some to the 1st Division, and he was jealous, although he had read in the newspapers about U.S. forces being sent to China, and that appealed to him, too. Occasionally a USO show passed through to relieve the tedium and he saw the likes of "Eddie the Banjo King" before at last getting the word. He embarked on USS General R. I. Howze, which sailed north from Noumea and arrived at the small dock of Pavuvu on Thursday, June 1. Eugene Sledge was assigned to the mortar section of King Company, 3rd Battalion, Fifth Marines (K/3/5) of the storied 1st Marine Division. Gene knew the Marine Corps had, up until 1940, always operated as regiments, not divisions. He knew the Fifth Marines were one of the oldest and most decorated regiments in the corps. Joining such an elite force thrilled Private First Class Sledge.

As he walked through the rows and columns of eight-man tents looking for King Company's street, he saw tired men in ragged dungarees. The tents and other equipment looked careworn. The camp at Pavuvu made what he had left in Noumea look good.

He found his way to King Company's platoon mortar leader, a Lieutenant Ellington, who hailed from Birmingham and had attended Marion Military before OCS. "Son," his lieutenant said, "you will find that most of your time overseas will be just like it is here." Eugene assumed the lieutenant meant that most of his life would be boring, but that was only partially correct. It also could be translated as "get used to living in the boonies, kid." The lieutenant turned him over to Johnnie Marmet, the sergeant of the mortar platoon. Sergeant Marmet assigned him to one of his 60mm mortar squads. Corporal R. V. Burgin ran #2 gun. Everybody called the corporal Burgin or Burgie, because lots of guys were known by their last names and also because R.V. stood for Romus Valton. Tall and thin like a bullwhip, R. V. Burgin delivered his short, chopped sentences in a spare Texas accent. The lack of inflection conveyed a no-nonsense attitude. Sledge would have begun by calling him Corporal Burgin.

Burgin and the others in King Company had a yellow hue to their skin and purple blotches where the corpsman had rubbed medicine on their infected flesh. Burgin's toes had begun to rot on Gloucester and he had lost two toenails.¹¹⁵ The first impression startled Gene, although some good news came in the form of Private First Class Merriell "Snafu" Shelton. Snafu, #2 gun's gunner, hailed from Hammond, Louisiana. Southerners (not Yankees) led his squad, Gene noted happily. A walk through the chow line revealed to Eugene that the food quality had also diminished on the short trip from Noumea. Most of the contents had been dehydrated--powdered eggs, powdered potatoes. Men in the line considered Spam, the "pre-cooked meat product," a welcome relief from heated C rations. At some point Sledge made the mistake of complaining. The smoldering anger just under the surface of R. V. Burgin's demeanor cut loose in a hail of cusswords. He had spent four months on Cape Gloucester and it made Pavuvu look good. Gene and the other fresh-faced boys accustomed to clean white sheets, he advised, had better keep their mouths shut.

The Southerners of #2 gun soon found out about the new guy's background and education. They started razzing him about being "a college boy." Burgin had grown up on a farm without running water and electricity. Snafu had dropped out in the seventh grade and gone to work.¹¹⁶ Unlike them, Eugene had led a sheltered and privileged life. " The only damn job you ever had at home," Burgin surmised matter-of-factly, "was feeding the dog." Sledge took it on the chin as he was supposed to do. He and the other new men also took over the grunt work of hauling away coconuts and carrying in crushed coral.

Two days passed before Eugene had a chance to go find Sid. Finding his best friend amid the entire 1st Marine Division and its attached units took some doing, but he ran into someone who knew Sid.

THE DAY AFTER W.O. LEFT, SID WAS SITTING ON HIS COT"WHEN I NOTICED SOMEONE coming down the company street looking in each tent. I recognized 'Ugin' about three tents away and ran into the company street and screamed 'Ugin' as loud as I could. He ran, and I ran, and we hugged each other and pounded on each other and rolled around wrestling on the ground shouting and screaming. A large crowd gathered thinking we were fighting, and I introduced him around and then we got back to pounding on each other."

AFTER THE BIG WELCOME, EUGENE DISCOVERED THAT SID WAS "JUST LIKE HE always was." However miraculous their meeting on Pavuvu might be, their connection meant even more. After a long day of drill and drudgery, Eugene would go find Sid stoking the fires under his cauldrons well past the point of necessity. They talked about guns, they talked about their dismay at Mobile becoming such a "wild place," and they talked about the war. The veteran told his buddy about Cape Gloucester, where the enemy was on the run. Sid confirmed Ugin's understanding of the life of a United States Marine. Nine-tenths of his time would be spent just as it was at this moment. "The newspapers lead people to believe that a man is under fire all the time," Gene learned, "when he is probably sitting on his bunk reading a funny paper . . . I am just as safe now as if I were home."

Sledge wrote his parents what he learned from Sid. He wanted them to know they bore the hardship in war, because marines "only worried when they were in actual danger, while the parents of marines worried all the time." He described his life as "living in a good tent, eating good food, taking a shower every day, and working." Gene left out the ongoing efforts to kill the legions of rats. The camp on Pavuvu provided him with plenty of hard candy, so in a letter written by the light of a "beer bottle smudge pot," he asked his mother to send him chocolate, Fig Newtons, and more magazines. He also made sure to tell his parents about one of his conversations with Sid in which they had talked about some of their other friends. When he had mentioned that their friend Billy had remained in the V-12 program, Eugene said Sid had concluded, "That boy is yellow." The judgment had shocked him, since no one who knew Sid expected him to say something that harsh about a friend. Eugene, of course, had a reason for telling his parents of it.

Ugin confided in his old friend that he had deliberately flunked out of the V-12 program.¹¹⁷ The thought of ending the war as a second lieutenant who had never even seen a rifle range had been more than he could bear. Sid respected him for volunteering and knew he'd be fine, but in his heart Sid also knew Eugene was too sensitive of heart and too serious of mind for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that went with being a Raggedy-Assed Marine. Eugene was so excited to be with someone who would talk about something other than whiskey and women. Sid did show Ugin a picture of his girlfriend he had in Australia, Shirley Finley. He never expected to see her again. The colonel had told him he was going home. Sledge said "she was very pretty."

Once Sid finished his mess duty, the pair usually went to see one of the movies playing, finding seats on the rows of coconut logs. During the love scenes, jokers in the audience "tried to out perform the script" with a few well-placed obscenities. Sid found the improvisations hilarious. On the night of June 6 the movie was entitled This Land Is Mine. It concerned a schoolteacher in France who is forced by the Nazi regime to take action against it. The picture stopped. This time, the machine had not broken. An officer announced the news of the second front, the Allied invasion of occupied France. " The earth literally rocked with yells."¹¹⁸

News of the Allied invasion in Normandy caused Eugene to think of his brother Edward, who had been stationed in England, from whence the invasion had been launched. He looked up to his older brother, who had earned a degree at the Citadel, a prestigious military school, and become an officer. His mother had sent him a portrait of Edward, who looked dashing and impressive in his uniform. Gene kept it by his bed. Next to Edward, he thought, "I've never done anything to amount to a hill of beans." One small step he could make, he took. He sent his father a money order as a gift. He asked his "Pop" to spend the money on anything he wanted, so long as it was not a bond for his youngest son, Eugene. The gift, intended to demonstrate "my appreciation for the millions of things you & mother did for me," imitated the gift Edward had given their father back in April.

THREE NEW FLEET CARRIERS JOINED ADMIRAL SPRUANCE'S FIFTH FLEET IN THE great lagoon of Majuro, allowing him to create Task Group 58.4. The admiral and his carrier commander, Admiral Mitscher, shuffled the assignments a bit. USS Yorktown , Micheel's old ship, joined Hornet's Task Group 58.1, which also included the two light carriers Belleau Wood and Bataan. The other two task groups (58.2 and 58.3) each had four carriers. A grand total of fifteen aircraft carriers, emblazoned with a camouflage of aggressive geometric shapes, swung at anchor together.

At twelve thirty-two p.m. on June 6, 1944, the United States Navy's fleet of fast carriers and a vast array of escort ships stood out from Majuro, setting sail for the Empire of Japan.¹¹⁹ For the tip of his spear, Mitscher selected his most aggressive admiral in command of his most competent task group. He chose Admiral J. J. "Jocko" Clark, who credited his Cherokee blood for his fighting spirit. A reporter traveling with the fleet described Clark as "a mercurial, glandular man" who "has a long, floppy lower lip which protrudes far out when he is angry."¹²⁰

With Clark's Hornet in the van, the fleet's trip to the chain of islands known as the Marianas took five days. The rhythm of battle began on the eleventh with the carriers refueling their escort fleet at five a.m. Hornet launched her CAP and ASW at about eight thirty a.m. The fighters found three enemy planes during the course of the afternoon and shot them down. Everyone assumed the enemy on the islands knew they were coming. In the afternoon, fifteen fighters took off and joined up with two hundred Hellcats from the other carriers to sweep the four islands of the Marianas with airfields (Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Rota) clean of enemy fighters. Fourteen of the fifteen Hornet Hellcats returned at six forty-four p.m.; heavy AA fire had forced one to land on the water near the island of Guam. For this type of emergency, Mike's skipper, Campbell, had accompanied the strike with some life rafts in his bomb bay. The pilot went in close to shore, though, with too many AA guns nearby to attempt a boat drop. The rescue submarine promptly came in submerged and got him. Admiral Clark ordered his task group to pull back to the south for the night.

The fleet pulled away from the Marianas because the Japanese would find a way to attack at night, even though they had lost about 150 airplanes that day. A bogey appeared just before two a.m. The Hellcats equipped for night fighting had a difficult task. They had learned to launch and land at night, but finding the enemy--even with radar--proved difficult. The bogey disappeared.

Bombing Two's day started at two a.m. with breakfast. The wolves assembled in the ready room by three a.m. and the first strike flew off the deck beginning at five a.m.¹²¹ For the next three days, Mike's squadron struck the airfields, beach defenses, and villages of Guam and nearby Rota as many as five times in a day. So many missions placed a real burden on the squadron's mechanics because the SB2C took more man-hours to prepare for flight than other types of planes.¹²² After each mission, fewer and fewer of the planes would be available for the next one. Too many radial engines could not be throttled up to full power.

The scarcity of aircraft produced competition. Most pilots clamored for every chance to fly. As flight officer, Lieutenant Hal Buell had some say in who flew and who did not, as did the skipper. The wolves knew a pilot needed to fly a certain number of combat missions to earn an Air Medal, and that a certain number of Air Medals entitled one to a Distinguished Flying Cross, the coveted DFC, one step below the Navy Cross. In June of 1944, a pilot's confidence came a bit cheaper than in 1942. The gigantic Fifth Fleet, with its overwhelming superiority, surrounded by dozens of destroyers and submarines dedicated to rescuing downed airmen, could certainly overheat a man's dedication and turn it into a desire more personal and more foolish. Lieutenant Hal Buell made no bones about it. He "coveted a major decoration in the worst way."¹²³

Mike did not ascribe his fellow pilots' enthusiasm to being "award hungry" necessarily, nor did he criticize those who were. The wolves were exactly what the naval aviation program had been designed to produce: highly motivated, aggressive, and thoroughly trained dive-bomber pilots. Buell had proven himself in several carrier battles and on Guadalcanal. The new men knew the dangers. Enemy AA fire on Guam and Rota claimed one plane from Bombing Two and scored hits on a few others. The squadron also lost six SB2Cs to "operational losses." Two of those losses occurred during takeoff. Both of the rear seat gunners were recovered, but only one pilot had survived. None of these losses surprised the men of Bombing Two. Clamoring to fly the Beast, therefore, took courage.

The squadron's flight officer did not, however, receive requests from Lieutenant Micheel. While others took issue with Buell's flight schedule, Mike "just went along with them. When it was my turn I went. I didn't scream for any." A cynic might have thought Lieutenant Micheel lacked an aggressive spirit, or perhaps that he was a little too comfortable with the knowledge that the Navy Cross he wore could never be awarded on the basis of the number of missions. A cynic would have been wrong. Mike led his division on four of the eighteen missions flown, taking them in fast. He pushed the Beast all the way down in his dives, through heavy flak, occasionally through heavy clouds. Of the half dozen important hits scored by Bombing Two during its raids, Mike got two confirmed: one on Guam's big ammunition dump and another on a shore battery of #4 guns guarded by intense AA batteries at the northeast corner of Oca Point.¹²⁴ As a result the enemy had less big guns and less ammunition with which to stop the marines' amphibious assault, scheduled to begin June 15.

The pilots had been briefed that their strikes against the Marianas, and the imminent invasion of Saipan, would bring the Imperial Japanese carrier fleet against them. The possibility of at last confronting the flattops had hung over every mission. For the first two days, the searches came up empty, but late on the twelfth one of the U.S. planes spotted an IJN convoy headed toward Guam. Hal Buell led a search team "to relocate the enemy" in advance of a full strike being assembled. He and his men flew to the extreme edge of the SB2C's range and just did spot the surface fleet before their fuel supply forced their return. Four of the scout planes had to land on the first carrier they came to, Bataan. The fourth landed wrong, plunged through the barriers, and destroyed all four Helldivers. The next day, Hornet launched a "special strike" of six fighters and two dive-bombers. The strike found the enemy convoy, comprised of four destroyers and two troop transports, and left two of the ships "burning fiercely."¹²⁵ Mike, meantime, took a division down to the town square in Agana, the largest town on Guam, to drop leaflets. The Japanese knew the Americans were coming. The Americans wanted the native Chamorro to have a chance to prepare themselves.

While the fleet continued to prepare Saipan and Guam for invasion, Clark's Task Group 58.1 began the morning of June 14 with a course change to 000 degrees. A ship came alongside to deliver fuel and aviation gasoline. Another escort came alongside to get some wolves. It brought them to a nearby escort carrier, and later that day they flew home with seven new Helldivers, some new Hellcats, and some replacement pilots. Word of the next mission, hitting the Bonin Islands to the north, also arrived. The enemy could use the airfields in the Bonins to shuttle planes from Tokyo to the Marianas. The task of denying the Japanese their reinforcements created a terse exchange between Admiral Clark on Hornet and Admiral Harrill, in command of Task Group 58.4. Harrill had been ordered to sail his group with Clark's to the Bonin strike. Harrill did not want to go, citing bad weather and lack of fuel.¹²⁶ At about twelve thirty p.m., Clark got in the backseat of an SB2C and was catapulted off the runway so he could speak to the reluctant admiral in person. He returned a few hours later. The gist of the two admirals' conversation became common knowledge. Every sailor could fill in the blanks on what Jocko said and the manner in which he said it. Preparation on Hornet continued. A little after four p.m., the carrier "jettisoned dud airplanes."¹²⁷ In the ready rooms, the pilots studied their charts and reviewed their upcoming mission. While the rest of the fleet continued to pound targets on Saipan and Guam, they would cut off one of Japan's supply routes.

The Bonin Islands held a communications center, a port, and an airfield. At six forty p.m. Hornet steamed north, leading Task Group 58.1 toward Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima, five hundred miles from mainland Japan. Task Group 58.4 followed. Jocko had persuaded Harrill to do his duty.

ONE DAY IN MID-JUNE, JOHNNY FOUND A MOMENT DURING THE LONG DAYS OF training at Camp Pendleton to write the longest letter of his war. "Dearest Mother," he began, "I have a long story to tell you hear it goes. First when I came down here I met a girl and have been going with her ever since, She is a very nice kid and she is Italian too. She has the prettest eyes and hair that you have ever seen. Well mom we are going to be married on Weds 12th of July. I was trying to get enough of a leave to come home but cait get it. So we are going to her place for a few days which is in Orgon. We are being married in a Catholic Church in Oceanside Calif that is about 10 mi from camp. She also is a Marine so you see I'm keeping it in the family. I wish you could be here for the wedding. I just got back from seeing the priest and he was very nice, he asked about you and Pop. She is going to wear a Vail for the wedding. Mom don't think that I'm rushing things to fast, but you see it is the only time that I can get a 7 day leave. Mom I know you will like her when you meet her. One thing mom she really can cook for that's what she does down here. The boys down here have been kidding me as soon as they found out about us getting married. Mom don't forget to wire me, did you get the telegram I sent you about my Baptism paper. I'll send you a picture of the wedding as soon as it gets finish. Mother to know that you and pop aprove of this is going to make me very happy. So I'll be wanting to hear from you in a wire soon. Her name is Sgt. L. Riggi which will soon be Basilone. I wrote to Helen and told her about it too so I hope she isn't hurt. Mom you know that I'm a family man just like you and pop. I want to have children so when the war is over I can relax. Regards to all. Tell the rest of the kids about me will you. Love and Kisses your loving son always Johnny."¹²⁸

AUSTIN "SHIFTY" SHOFNER GRADUATED FROM THE USMC COMMAND AND STAFF School on June 14. During the previous months of training, he also had attended the public functions requested by his superiors. The corps meantime completed its calculation as to his back pay. It had sent him $4,531 in back pay, along with several pages of accounting. Shifty no doubt examined the dates and pay grades carefully. Through it all, he had received very high marks in his Officer Fitness Reports, particularly in the category of "Loyalty." The corps had seen fit to promote him to lieutenant colonel. Yet on the final fitness report, his marks in the areas of "attention to duty, cooperation, intelligence and judgment and common sense" had dropped into the average range. Worst of all, his commander had indicated that he did not "particularly desire to have him," nor would he be "glad to have him"; he would be "willing to have him" serve in his unit in combat. It was not a glowing report.

The report did not slow him down, though. On June 15, Lieutenant Colonel Shofner began his journey back to the Pacific. Halftime had ended.

INTERCEPTS OF JAPANESE COMMUNICATIONS DETAILED THE ENEMY'S INTENTIONS and these were passed on to Clark's task group. The enemy had sent a great number of airplanes to the airfield on Iwo Jima to form the basis of a strike on the Fifth Fleet off Saipan. Eliminating Japan's offensive military capability meant destroying those planes as well as the radar and communications installations at Chichi Jima. Word reached Hornet on June 14 that the enemy fleet carriers had been sighted. They were steaming toward the Marianas to stop the invasion. The pilots of Bombing Two worried they would miss a big carrier battle shaping up to the south. Admiral Clark apparently agreed, because Task Group 58.1 sped up. It was announced that the fighter sweep would launch a day earlier than scheduled. The weather turned bad on June 15, but the attack proceeded. The deck's catapult threw off the CAP and ASW patrols first. At one thirty p.m., about 135 miles from Iwo Jima, a fighter sweep took off to catch the enemy by surprise. A strike of twenty-two Helldivers, twelve torpedo planes, and seven fighters followed quickly. The heavy seas had the deck pitching and rolling, so each takeoff had to be timed so that the plane arrived at the bow at the same moment that the bow pointed upward. A wind of fourteen to eighteen knots helped.

Mike waited it out with the others in the ready room. The scouts returned, excited to have flown north of Chichi Jima and therefore very close to Japan itself--unlike their earlier strikes at the other enemy redoubts, like Truk, Hornet pilots were blazing the trail to Tokyo. The Hellcats' sweep had gone so well, it had created a rare phenomenon, the Ace-in-a-Day. Lieutenant Lloyd Barnard had five confirmed kills in the one action.¹²⁹ The dive-bombers returned with tales of a difficult afternoon. The squall lines had intimidated Campbell, who had led his wing on a bizarre flight around and up and down as he flew around the worst parts of the storm. The flight to Chichi Jima had taken two hours. Once there, the AA guns had given them a hot reception. Diving through the cloud cover had thrown off their aim--they claimed a few hits on the seaplane base and on Omura Town, but the eight to ten ships moored in Futami Ko Harbor had been missed. One Helldiver, Dan Galvin's, had been shot down. The sortie returned to find a flight deck that looked like it was pitching thirty degrees in the waves.¹³⁰ The skipper reported that "the fatigue occasioned by the flying at the extreme range of the plane through bad weather and over rough seas cannot be overstated."¹³¹

The next morning the gale still blew as the flattops steamed toward the targets. At about noon, Task Group 58.1 turned east and found some clear sky. Mike got his chance. He would lead Bombing Two's strike on Iwo Jima. While squadrons from the other flattops attacked the villages of Motoyama and Minami, and the other airfields under construction, he sortied for the main airfield, Motoyama Number One. In the squadron's room, word came that U.S. submarines had spotted the enemy's carrier fleet steaming through the Philippine Islands on their way to Saipan. The key carrier battle might happen without them. They also heard that the airplanes from the other carrier task group, Admiral Harrill's 58.4, would not participate in this mission because of foul weather.

Hornet and her three accomplices put up seventy-six aircraft: Helldivers, Hellcats, and Avengers. Lieutenant Micheel led his strike in from the north, and as they got close, he gathered speed by descending from sixteen thousand to ten thousand feet. Visibility improved and he could see the small island with the volcano at its tip. Mike's mistrust of the Beast led him to wonder, as he peeled over in his dive and felt gravity pull him, what would happen if his dive brakes failed to open. The AA flak did not get bad until his plane passed through eight thousand feet.¹³² The strike leader took his team all the way down to two thousand feet before releasing their bombs. His thousand-pounder scored "a direct hit on a large enemy hangar" just off the southern end of the runway at Motoyama Number One.¹³³ The wingmen scored confirmed hits on other parts of the airfield. The wolves noticed a lot of aircraft on the ground that had survived the air battle. Mike led his guys on some strafing runs. The 20mm cannon burned through targets like a buzz saw, but aiming it meant pointing the plane at the ground. Flying at two hundred knots below a thousand feet, Mike strafed by making quick little dips and triggering quicker little burps. Back in the ready room, the skipper praised their work. Word was the other task group, 58.4, had started south without them.

June 17 dawned with better flying weather. The early sortie comprised twenty planes flying a huge search sector of 150 degrees to 240 degrees, or "the area generally west of the Marianas," with the mission "to detect the approach of the suspected enemy fleet."¹³⁴ Attacks on "the Jimas" had ended and everyone knew why. The Fifth Fleet, still stationed off the Marianas to protect the marine landing on Saipan, needed Task Group 58.1 to return for the battle with the approaching enemy fleet.

Admiral Clark had Hornet fuel up all of his escorts in preparation for battle before ordering full speed ahead. U.S. submarines had reported nine Imperial Japanese carriers, six battleships, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-seven destroyers churning toward Saipan, in the Marianas. Airfields in the Philippines held hundreds of more enemy aircraft. A carrier battle as big as all the others put together looked to be on the horizon. Later that day some pilots would have caught a whiff of "hot dope," or inside information. Admiral Clark had discussed the idea of steaming more west than south in order to place his task group and Harrill's 58.4 in a position behind the Imperial Navy.¹³⁵ Yorktown's captain endorsed the idea; Admiral Harrill rejected it and had continued to steam south toward the other carriers, well ahead of Hornet, Yorktown, and their comrades.

Apparently Clark decided not to take on the enemy's fleet of nine aircraft carriers on his own, because at ten thirty-two the next morning, Task Group 58.1 rejoined 58.2, 58.3, 58.4, and 58.7 on a line running just west of Saipan. The U.S. flattops carried a total of 950 planes, in the midst of six hundred ships and submarines. An armada such as the world had never seen, the Fifth Fleet eagerly awaited a showdown. The scouts flew search sectors of 350 miles to prevent surprises and to provide the United States the opportunity to launch the first sortie. The scouts returned empty-handed and the radar screens picked up only the occasional bogey. A submarine reported sinking an enemy flattop, so they were out there, somewhere. Admiral Jocko Clark and many of his naval aviators concluded the moment had come to steam west and find them. The Fifth Fleet, though, turned east at dusk, into the wind to catch their last scouts, away from the enemy, and much to the consternation of eager naval aviators.

The adrenaline of expectation started pumping early the next day. A few bogeys rose from airfields on Guam, less than a hundred miles away from the U.S. carriers. Their presence came as a surprise. Obviously they had come from the Philippines the previous day and they were heard to report the U.S. fleet's position. An early flight of navy fighters found lots of enemy planes on Guam and another eight Hellcats were dispatched at nine fifty-three a.m. A report of a "large group of bogeys at 250deg, 110 miles" was received at ten fifteen a.m. These had been launched from the enemy carriers. Hal Buell, set to lead a strike of fourteen dive bombers accompanied by twelve Hellcats and seven Avengers, got the order to "clear flight deck of aircraft and neutralize Guam airfields." With enemy inbound, the admiral wanted the deck ready for fighter operations. The deck crews had been so busy with Hellcats they had not completed arming Buell's planes. Most of them left without a bomb in their bay.

Out on the horizon, the screening ships fired black clouds of AA flak into the air at intervals throughout the day. The fighter strikes came and went hour after hour, with the first rumors of victory beginning to resound in passageways belowdecks. Hornet's radar picked up the third wave of bogeys just before one p.m., when Buell's planes began returning. A cruiser off the carrier's port quarter cut loose with a barrage of flak. In the debriefing, Buell admitted that most of his planes had simply circled overhead. They had planted four bombs on the airfield of Agana, Guam's largest city.

The waves of enemy fighters had been handled easily by the Hellcats. Hundreds of Zeros, or "Zekes," "Vals," and "Kates" of the Imperial Japanese Navy had gone down in flames. Denying the few enemy survivors access to the airfields on Guam would drive another stake into the heart of the Japanese carrier fleet. Micheel walked out on the flight deck just after two p.m. to lead fourteen Helldivers against Guam.¹³⁶ His Ouija Board held the details for the destruction of Orote airfield and his plane had been loaded with one thousand pounds of TNT. Being first to launch meant getting the shortest deck. The twenty-foot drop off the bow forced Mike to pucker until the ungainly Beast gained flying speed.

Twelve Hellcats and seven Avengers accompanied Mike's sortie. They flew through heavy clouds. The target lay a shade less than a hundred miles distant. The ships would steam east behind them, making Point Option, where they would meet back with their flattop, closer. He took them in from the south. The Japanese fired a thunderous chorus of AA guns. He flipped over into his dive and went down, watching the target become clear. On the end of the airfield a large phony airplane had been erected. He aimed for a large battery of AA guns and toggled the release higher than usual, at five thousand feet. Mike pulled out and swung around to watch. As strike leader he had to report. Six explosions ruined the runway and five others detonated near the batteries of big guns.

They returned about two hours later to find their carrier furiously moving aircraft. Mike and half of his striking force landed. They and their planes were hustled below. Another wave of bogeys had just appeared on Hornet's radar screen. The cruiser off their carrier's port quarter began firing AA guns. A wave of fighters landed. The ship's deck catapult threw a sortie of Hellcats off; then Buell led fourteen wolves aloft. In the ready room, more reports of a massive victory filtered in. The fighters were shooting down enemy planes by the hundreds, if the initial reports were to be believed. The remainder of Micheel's strike landed with bad news. One of his group was MIA. Another pilot reported that he had lost his rear seat gunner. AA fire had hit his plane and set it afire. He had ordered the gunner to jump out, which the airman, Arne Ulin, promptly did. It looked like Arne's parachute had come down at least two miles from the island and not far from the rescue sub. The pilot had decided he could fly his plane back and had done so.

The big day ended with the Hellcats of Clark's Task Group 58.1 accounting for one-fourth of the 402 "confirmed" kills for the entire task force.^y More fighter pilots became Aces-in-a-Day. The United States lost thirty-one aircraft, although some of the pilots had been rescued, and a few dozen sailors on those few ships the enemy had managed to reach. The Helldiver pilots must have felt some disappointment not to have had more of a role. They received good news: the task forces, led by 58.1, were going to churn westward all night long and hunt down the enemy flattops in the Philippine Sea. The fighters had had their turn; now the dive-bombers wanted to finish the job. At long last, the wolves would get a chance to fulfill the mission for which their dive-bombers had been created. They were heartily sick of bombing airfields.

The phone rang in each of the pilots' staterooms at four thirty a.m. When a pilot answered it, he would hear: " This is the Duty Officer. GQ in twenty minutes."¹³⁷ He got dressed and climbed the ladder to Ready Room Four before the alarm sounded general quarters and all hands reported to their battle stations. Twenty minutes later, the catapults threw off eight fighters and four Helldivers--their bomb bays empty to increase their range--for a 325-mile search pattern covering sector 285 degrees to 325 degrees. Hours later Search One returned. No carriers had been sighted. Search Two took off after lunch. The presentation of medals to some of the Hellcat pilots, who had scored the great victory the day before, enlivened the long day's wait. At three forty-nine p.m. Hornet "received report of enemy fleet at Lat. 15deg 00' N, Long. 135deg 25' E, course 270deg, speed 20 knots."¹³⁸ Moments later, Jocko ordered his air group to take off. A deckload of planes had been prepared: fifteen Hellcats, eight Avengers, and fourteen SB2C Helldivers. Commander Campbell, who had always led the first strike against new targets, led this one with Buell in charge of the second division. Working through their navigation, the wolves realized this mission required them to fly close to their maximum range and return at dusk or beyond. They talked a lot about how to conserve their fuel. Instead of circling the ship after takeoff, Campbell would fly the heading to the target at a minimum speed to allow his men to catch up. The first plane launched at four nineteen p.m.

Micheel and those scheduled on the second strike would have watched the first. This was too important. The wings came down and were locked in position as the SB2C taxied forward. Up on the PriFly, a board with new navigation information was put up. It announced that the enemy carriers were another degree of latitude, or 60 miles, farther away. The round-trip had just increased an additional 120 miles. The pilots of Bombing Two, along with Fighting Two and Torpedo Two and all the other strike groups of all the other carriers, knew strike number one was in big trouble before it took off.

A familiar feeling crept over Lieutenant Vernon Micheel. "Oh, always the same ol' stuff. They'd launch us further than we could really go safely." The airplanes were bigger and faster and there were more of them, but on this mission "we knew it was going to end in the dark when they got back." The deckhands began loading aircraft on Hornet's three elevators and sending them up to the flight deck. Down in the squadron's ready room, the pilots of Mike's sortie "were gouging around every place to get colored ammunition. They were just taking it by the fistfuls." Firing colored ammo with their .38 pistols would help the destroyers find them floating at night in the Pacific. Fire a white bullet and "they might not come near you." A blue one or red one would attract a friendly ship. Fear had made them a little crazy, though. With respect for their experience, Mike suggested that bulging pockets of colored ammunition "might be detrimental." In other words, if they landed in the water at night, they might not have time to get the life raft deployed. In that case, all a man would have was his Mae West life preserver. "You might well have to throw all that stuff out of your suit to stay buoyant." He said all that and it didn't work; he stuffed his pockets full of ammo, too.

Hornet steamed into the wind. The daylight already had that late- afternoon quality to it. Mike climbed onto the port wing of the Beast, the plane captain stood on the starboard wing. Mike put his left toe in the step on the fuselage and swung his leg into the cockpit, then sat down while the captain helped him arrange his chute behind him, get into his harness, and connect his oxygen and radio cords. The veteran ran through his checklist. His dive bomber was number one for takeoff after his fighter escort. The props on the Hellcats began turning over. "I was sitting there just puckering away," wondering "why every time you're going to go on a tough strike, you're going to be short on gas." Once the launch began it would go quickly. The plane captain would have yelled "Clear!" so Micheel could start his engine and prepare to taxi. It would be full dark before he reached the enemy carriers. "We were out of range . . . so I was afraid." In that moment an "Angel of Mercy" intervened and saved him from the mission he was pretty certain he would not survive. As the first Hellcat revved its engines for the flight director, the admiral scrubbed it. The relief came out of Micheel with an "Oh boy. . . ." The deckhands began clearing the deck for the return of Strike 1A. Hornet swung around onto course 270 degrees, the last known course of the enemy, and tried to close with her Helldivers, Hellcats, and Avengers.

Mike decided to wait outside for his friends. He knew if they had found the enemy, there would be very little daylight remaining. Whatever they had encountered with the enemy CAP and AA, Bombing Two would have to get down, get out, and join up before full dark. Joining up after dark would be difficult because the little white running lights started to resemble little white stars. Unfortunately, the moon was not lighting the night sky on this evening. Mike knew what it felt like to be that pilot, flying in the darkness. Life came down to fine-tuning the engine and dialing in the right trim, while ignoring the urges to climb higher or go faster and ignoring the fear produced by not being able to distinguish the sea from the sky. The plane's homing device, the YE/ZB, had a good range and its radar would help once a man got close. Inside the ship, cryptic radio messages began to be received. "I'm hit," and "I'm out of gas, going into water."

Jocko Clark, the admiral who had ordered his squadrons to attack even before he had heard from his CO, knew what was happening. His flagship, USS Hornet, turned on her white truck lights at seven fifty-nine p.m. The massive illumination made her a perfect target for enemy submarines, but it had to be done. The pilots deserved it. The Landing Signal Officer (LSO) took his place on the aft port quarter, his lighted paddles ready to guide the boys in. Mike heard the approach of aircraft; the first two arrived very close together. "I sat up there on one of those catwalks and watched those guys trying to come in two at a time . . . those guys were racing for a spot in the landing pattern to get aboard." One plane got the cut from the LSO. Plane two lengthened out his final downwind turn to give plane one a chance to clear the deck. Out of the darkness a third plane dashed in ahead of plane two. Mike did not blame him--plane three might not have even seen plane two in the darkness. More planes approached, their pilots expecting their tanks to run dry any second. He could see discipline giving way to "me or you." The landing pattern became a melee. It hurt too much to watch. "I just got out of there." Down in the ready room, he heard that the "screening vessels began firing star shells and turned on searchlights to aid returning planes in locating the task force."¹³⁹ That began at a quarter to nine. The radio messages from men going down somewhere out there were heartbreaking. In the next hour, two crash landings and a shift in wind direction caused costly delays, as the deckhands pushed the wreckage over the side and the captain brought the ship about. One aircraft landed in the water near the starboard bow. At ten fifteen the LSO waved in the last plane, "no others being in the air."¹⁴⁰

In the dark waters around the ships the rescue of downed pilots and airmen continued as Air Group Two counted noses. One Helldiver had been hit making its dive on the target. Two of fifteen Hellcats and one of four Avengers were missing. The SB2Cs presented the biggest problem: nine of the fourteen Helldivers failed to land on a flattop.¹⁴¹ A total of nine Hornet planes had crashed while landing, killing one airman. As usual, the Beast had the worst record: only one of fourteen would be ready to fly the following day. Reports of Air Group Two planes on other carriers began to arrive.

General quarters sounded at five twenty-two a.m. the next morning. Some of the news heard in the squadron's room was good: the wolves had been credited with eight to ten hits on a carrier of the Shokaku class, an Imperial Japanese Fleet carrier. The escort ships and a few other flattops had, however, escaped. No new contact reports had come in. The admiral expected the IJN to sail north, toward Japan. Micheel led nine dive-bombers, accompanied by a number of fighters and torpedo planes, on a mission "to strike enemy fleet if within range."¹⁴² In his logbook, though, he noted a slightly different priority: "search for buddies and Jap fleet."¹⁴³ Headed north, he saw "numerous oil slicks . . . and considerable wreckage." When he had consumed half of his gasoline, he turned around and flew back.

He found Hornet to be a happy ship.¹⁴⁴ All of the air group had been accounted for. Five planes flew back aboard, having landed on other carriers the previous night. Only one of these returnees was a dive-bomber. In another amazing turn of events, destroyers had recovered the eight pilots and airmen of Bombing Two who had landed in the water. Lieutenant Hal Buell, however, stepped aboard Hornet after crash-landing on the deck of Lexington. Ashen and wincing in pain, Hal had been wounded by shrapnel. He had also accidentally killed a Bombing Two gunner. It had happened in the crash. Buell had been about to get his cut when he got a wave off instead. In that split second, Buell thought about his Beast, with a big hole in its wing and no gas in its tank.¹⁴⁵ He cut the throttle. His tail hook missed, and his plane bounced over two of the wire safety gates and landed on top of his friend Dave Stear's Helldiver. His plane killed Dave's gunner and one of the plane pushers. Some of the men aboard Lexington had angrily denounced Buell. They thought he had cut in when he should not have.¹⁴⁶

Hal Buell came home to a warm welcome on his carrier, though. No one wanted to talk too much about the return landings for a near-suicidal mission. Hal had done what he had set out to do. He had put himself ahead of Campbell's division by plotting his own course and by flying at a lower altitude. As the strike groups had arrived over the top of one of three groups of IJN ships, Lieutenant Buell began his high-speed approach as he asked for and received permission to attack--not from his skipper, but from the air group commander.¹⁴⁷ Buell's division had pushed over from 13,500 feet into very heavy enemy AA fire. Red, green, and orange puffs of AA, "as well as white phosphorus streamer shells," were aimed at them. Set against the darkening sky, the pyrotechnics were unlike anything anyone had seen. While the fighters watched and a photographic plane off of Bataan snapped pictures, "a cone of fire focused on Lieutenant Buell's section."¹⁴⁸ The enemy carrier had swung hard to starboard and had completed a ninety-degree turn before he released. Buell managed to run his division over its length and ignite its destruction with several well-placed thousand-pound bombs.¹⁴⁹ Campbell had followed with several more. No formal rendezvous had followed. A few enemy planes briefly attacked as the pilots raced for their ship. The flak had chased them for fifteen miles. One of those bursts had blown a large hole in Buell's wing and lodged some sharp bits of metal in his back.

Others told equally scary stories of landing at night in the Pacific. The discussions about the previous night's mission, the most dramatic of their tour of duty thus far, had only just begun. Hornet refueled. The scouts failed to find the remainder of the enemy fleet. Still steaming north the next morning, the sailors standing watch "began spotting numerous life rafts, the ship being in the area where pilots were forced to land in the water the night of 20 June. Screening destroyers were sent out to investigate."¹⁵⁰ A lot of carriers had downed pilots. Once the destroyers had checked all the rafts and the searches failed to find more, the carrier fleet gave up the chase. Every carrier task group retired after the battle, steaming back to the fleet anchorage, except for Jocko's group. Hornet and her companions set sail for Iwo Jima. The fighter sweep launched just before six a.m. on June 24.

THE MARINES ON PAVUVU HAD HEARD ALL ABOUT THE CARRIER BATTLE IN THE Philippine Sea, with "better than 300 nip planes down," almost as it happened. Some news came every night with the movies, some hot dope came through more official channels. The 2nd and the 4th divisions had landed on Saipan. Unlike the experience at Guadalcanal and Gloucester, though, those divisions had not walked ashore. Word that the army air corps' B- 29s had detonated hundreds of tons of bombs on Tokyo arrived on Pavuvu on June 16 and brightened everyone's day.

Eugene and Sid got together most afternoons. They made plans for after the war. More immediately, Sid promised to carry Eugene's seashell collection home to Eugene's mother and to visit the Sledges upon his return if--Sid smiled--his own parents ever let him out of the house again. On the night of Sid's two-year anniversary of being overseas, June 22, the outdoor theater showed Gung Ho. The film depicted a USMC Raider Battalion's raid on Makin Island, which had occurred about the same time as the 1st Division landed on Guadalcanal. The marines threw themselves on barbed- wire fences to allow others to climb over them. They ran headlong at Japanese machine guns--bravely getting mowed down until one marine took off his shirt and ran at the bunker half naked with a grenade. The bloodless violence and corresponding level of bravery generally failed to impress the veterans of the 1st Division.

Sid and Gene had a last afternoon together before Private First Class Sidney Phillips reported aboard a troopship. The ship steamed away from Pavuvu's steel pier on June 24. The division, perhaps understanding that a lot of marines would have liked to have sailed home, served each man two fried eggs and a cup of cocoa. Sledge lounged the next day, Sunday, reading a Sunday edition of the Mobile newspaper, studying the map of the Pacific, and enjoying his photographs of home. Sid had promised to go to their favorite Civil War site and take some photos and send them to him. Gene wrote his parents, asking them to let Sid borrow anything in his room, including his good camera. A visit to Eugene's parents meant Sidney would get grilled by them, but Sledge liked the idea of Sid telling his parents everything that he could not put in a letter because of censorship. "Believe everything he tells you," he wrote his parents, "& don't think he is trying to stop you from worrying about me. He'll tell the truth." The loss of Sid, though, meant that Eugene Sledge's only friends in the world were the men of King Company, 3rd Battalion, Fifth Marines, 1st Marine Division.

ON JUNE 29, JOHNNY SPENT THREE DAYS IN THE SICK BAY OF CAMP PENDLETON. He had fever, chills, vomiting, and headaches. He had had malaria on the Canal, so its appearance elicited little interest from the medical staff treating him. The recurrence may have been brought on by the pressure he now found himself under. He was about to get everything he wanted.

Johnny and Lena Mae had been busy planning their wedding. They had visited with the regimental chaplain to see about getting married. The chaplain had agreed to preside over their marriage in the chapel on Camp Pendleton after Lena underwent two weeks of "instruction."¹⁵¹ Lena was having none of it.

"Have you ever been married?" she asked the chaplain.

"Of course not."

"In that case, what can you tell me? You've never been married. You can't tell me nothing." The challenge was classic Lena. She knew they didn't have two weeks to wait. They had to get married before they got their leaves. She also wanted to get married in a church with a long aisle, not on the base. So John went around one morning to see the chaplain of the Twenty-eighth Marines, Father Paul Bradley. Bradley, about John's age, understood and agreed.¹⁵² Lena booked the nearby St. Mary's Star of the Sea Church, in Oceanside, for the evening of July 11.

Along with the pressure of getting married came another momentous decision. On July 6 his four-year enlistment in the USMC would expire. It's likely no one knew that his enlistment was up because in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor everybody had signed up for the duration of the war plus six months. This fact kept service personnel from having conversations about "when are you getting out?" The end of his enlistment brought back a familiar feeling. His family and friends back in Raritan had not even wanted him to request reassignment from D.C. Every marine at Camp Pendleton had found his return to a line unit remarkable. He did not enjoy being remarkable.

John's great gift, however, was to know himself. Being a gunny made him happy. He also felt a strong duty to the men of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, Twenty-seventh Marines. He may have always known he would "ship over," or reenlist, but at some point he had to tell Lena, "I've got to go back overseas. I have men in my platoon that have never been there before." Lena understood that "he couldn't send them over there and let something happen to them."¹⁵³ On July 3, Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone quietly shipped over for another two years of service. His contract with the USMC stated that he would "further oblige myself to serve until 6 months after the end of the war or national emergency if so required."¹⁵⁴ Four days later, Johnny and Lena went and got their marriage certificate. He bought her the wedding ring. It cost six dollars.¹⁵⁵ The next day, the AP wire service carried a story picked up by various newspapers around the country and especially those in New Jersey: "Guadalcanal Hero to Wed."¹⁵⁶

IN OBSERVANCE OF INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE 1ST DIVISION HANDED OUT A BEER ration to all hands on July 3. Sledge sold his ration, as usual, and watched as the boys had a big night of merrymaking. Some sang, others played poker, and others took in the movie starring Frank Sinatra. When the famous singer appeared on-screen, men in the audience feigned swoons of rapture. Gene enjoyed their jokes more than Sinatra's acting.

The guys in Sledge's tent woke up hungover on Tuesday, July 4. In the afternoon, ice cream was served in the division movie area. On the small, crude stage, six Red Cross women doled out scoops as fast as they could. A huge crowd had gathered. Eugene could not tell if they were there to see the women or get a scoop. No officer had bothered to impose order, so the great mass heaved itself against the stage. The convulsions gave way to a riot. Watching the MPs struggle in vain to stop the fights breaking out came as no surprise, although it disgusted him. Two men were knocked out cold and a third fell victim to heatstroke before Eugene decided not to attempt to get ice cream.

He returned to his tent, weary from the heat. Someone had rolled up the side flaps of the tent, allowing air to circulate as they lay on their bunks. "In normal times," Gene concluded, "I am sure a white man, if he was sane, wouldn't live in this part of the world." The heat made him want to be in France with Edward. A stream of packages loaded with treats improved life inside Sledge's tent. If it wasn't cookies or cake, Sledge had copies of Reader's Digest and Muzzle Blast magazine (about antique firearms) to loan. The reading material was eaten up with every bit of relish as the food because it staved off boredom.

While lying on his bunk he heard one of his buddies let out an angry whoop. A big rat was under his bunk. In a fit of rage, the friend found a large stick and attacked. The rat ran out of the tent, followed closely by his attacker, who was yelling, "Kill him! Kill him!" Across the company street they went, the rat searching for cover from the blows. They went through five open tents, throwing everything into confusion. Surprised marines demanded to know what the hell was going on, until at last the angry marine dealt the rat a big blow, the "Coup de Grace," Eugene called it, ending the battle much to the enjoyment of the gawkers.

SHIFTY STEPPED OFF THE BOAT ON JULY 7. THE TRIP TO PAVUVU HAD TAKEN Lieutenant Colonel Shofner three weeks. One look must have made him feel right at home--he was back in the boonies for the start of the second half of his war. Protocol required him to report to the regimental headquarters. Colonel Harold D. "Bucky" Harris commanded the Fifth Marines, to which Shofner had been assigned. Colonel Harris had served on Guadalcanal as an assistant chief of staff and had worked his way up through Cape Gloucester to take command of the regiment. Shofner met Bucky Harris's staff as well as the other battalion commanders. When appropriate he would go to the division's HQ and meet General Rupertus and his staff. Almost all of them were veterans of the Canal. Shifty also looked for his cousin who served with the Eleventh Marines, the division's artillery regiment.

While welcoming Colonel Shofner to Pavuvu, a place everyone acknowledged was "more of a hog farm than a rest camp," Bucky Harris and his staff would have described it as the only choice.¹⁵⁷ Although the huge base at Guadalcanal had Quonset huts with lights and plenty of good chow, it had had drawbacks. Rupertus's boss, General Geiger, had feared that his men would have been put to work as stevedores if he had stationed them on the Canal. Geiger wanted his men to rest after the campaign on Cape Gloucester. He also wanted to make sure they were free to begin training. As for a rest camp in Australia, Shofner heard that keeping the 1st Marine Division out of Australia meant keeping it out of the control of General Douglas MacArthur.

The marines were still bitter about having had to serve under MacArthur and support his New Guinea Campaign. The jungles of Cape Gloucester had been a dead end, they told him, where "more men were hurt from falling trees than by enemy action." The division staff had already begun planning for the next campaign. The target promised to be an escape from the rain forest and the plague of malaria. It would not, however, represent an escape from General MacArthur, for the coming operation would support another MacArthur campaign, this time his invasion of the island of Mindanao. This news thrilled Shofner, even if it meant helping MacArthur. If Shifty could not liberate the Davao Penal Colony on Mindanao himself, at least he would help make its liberation possible.

The 1st Division would neutralize the threats to MacArthur's flank coming from the island of Peleliu, in the Palau Island chain, as well as the islands of Yap and Ulithi Atoll. Aircraft based in these locations could strike Mindanao. "General MacArthur," the marines had been informed, "believed that he could not mount an amphibious campaign against the Philippines unless this potential threat to his lines of communication was eliminated."¹⁵⁸ Not every marine agreed with MacArthur. Other ideas about what the next target should be made for conversation around the officers' mess, with or without references to General MacArthur, especially when the chatter was leavened by a sprinkle of gossip from the highest levels. Admiral Halsey had recommended speeding up the war by skipping past the Philippines and striking Formosa or Japan.

Dinners inside the crude officers' mess also would have been enlivened by descriptions of the beautiful women of Australia and New Zealand. When the discussions turned to life on Pavuvu, Shofner caught a hint from the others: "if you think this is bad, you should have seen it when we arrived." It surprised him. They knew he had been a prisoner of Hirohito. Their knowledge obviously lacked detail if they thought conditions on Pavuvu put him off. He began to feel a little out of step with his fellow officers and the feeling did not fade. After a time he realized the root of it. Even though his war experiences had earned him their respect, he was not going to be immediately "admitted to the fold." The men of the 1st Marine Division had gone through a lot together. Guadalcanal came up in most conversations, either as their beginning or their end. The Canal had forged a bond that he did not share.

The Canal veterans, however, were rotating home in record numbers. In a short span of time, the division received some 260 officers and 4,600 enlisted men to replace those sailing stateside. At all levels, the new men were mixed in with the vets. Bucky Harris assigned Colonel Shofner to command the 3rd Battalion, Fifth Marines (3/5). Shifty walked over to his HQ to meet the officers of the 3/5.

His battalion HQ comprised the men of the Headquarters and Services Company (H&S Co.). Sixteen officers, supported by NCOs and enlisted personnel, supported and directed the work of the battalion's three rifle companies: Item, King, and Love.^z Most of his officers, including his executive officer, had joined the battalion after the Canal and some after Gloucester.¹⁵⁹ The "lean mixture" of combat veterans in the 3/5 alarmed him. At least King Company, led by Captain Andrew A. Haldane, had an experienced leader. Haldane had fought on the Canal as a lieutenant with a different unit and had a good reputation. When asked about his officers, Haldane would have gone through his list of platoon leaders. The K/3/5 had a few experienced officers. His executive officer, First Lieutenant Thomas J. Stanley, had served with King on Cape Gloucester, as had his mortar section leader, Second Lieutenant Charles C. Ellington.¹⁶⁰ A few of his senior NCOs had proven themselves on the Canal.

Junior officers were not likely to complain to a new CO. If asked, Haldane and the others on the battalion staff would have admitted that the morale of the men had "hit an all time low."¹⁶¹ Every officer knew it. The past few months had been spent clearing rotting coconuts and dragging buckets of crushed coral to make roads and paths. More work remained. The battle against the rats and crabs was being lost. In the meantime, everybody knew that the service troops on the islands nearby (Banika and Guadalcanal) were eating and drinking much better than the combat marines. Fresh meat appeared on the mess tables once a week on Pavuvu and beer was limited to only a few cans a week.

Shifty could not change the conditions on Pavuvu. Speeches about life as a POW in Cabanatuan, he knew, would not help. They had either heard about his story or had read it in Life magazine. When at last he stood in front of his battalion, he made sure his marines understood that he "had a score to settle with the Japanese."

ON THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 10, JOHN BASILONE AND HIS TWO GROOMSMEN--THE sergeants in charge of his machine-gun sections (Clint and Rinaldo)--donned their Class A dress green uniforms with the 5th Division's Spearhead patch on the shoulder. ¹⁶² John had chosen Clinton Watters, the old D Company man, as his best man. Lena's maids, also all marines, wore their white dress uniforms, except for Mary Lambert, her maid of honor.¹⁶³

Lena arrived late to the church, visibly frustrated, wearing a wedding gown of eggshell taffeta. John's other machine-gun section leader, Ed Johnston, met her. He was going to give her away.¹⁶⁴ Lena walked up the aisle with Ed, thinking, "I always wanted a long aisle. Now I wish it wasn't so long.¹⁶⁵ As she reached the altar John gave her a big smile. Her tears dried. They said their vows looking straight into one another's eyes. "Until death do us part." John got the nod from the father and kissed his bride.¹⁶⁶

Afterward they held their reception at the Carlsbad Hotel. Lena explained that her ride to the church, a cabbie with whom she had made a deal, had forgotten her. Her frantic attempts to get in touch with her cabbie seemed funny now in the warm glow of their reception. A lot of their friends left after a turn on the dance floor and a drink or two--the Carlsbad charged a lot for a drink. The wedding party stayed for dinner and the couple spent the night. The next morning, Mr. and Mrs. Basilone left early to catch the train for Salem, Oregon.¹⁶⁷ She wanted to introduce him to her brothers.

LIEUTENANT MICHEEL SPENT THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 10 ON A BOMBING MISSION over the island of Rota in the Marianas, as part of the preparation for the marine invasion of nearby Guam. The preparations had begun on July 1 when, following a short rest at the fleet anchorage, Clark's task group had gone back to the Bonin Islands for several days. Intent upon cutting off Guam from the empire just as they had with Saipan, the wolves had spent a few days destroying the repaired airfield and the new airplanes on Iwo Jima. They attacked the ships and the radar station on Chichi Jima. Enemy AA guns had been a big problem, especially over the latter island. The bombing run on Chichi Jima had cost Lieutenant Micheel his wingman. Along with losing men to AA fire, the wolves had also lost a couple of pilots because they had attempted to perform a "victory roll" and had spun into the sea. Commander Campbell had issued an edict: no more victory rolls. The problems had subsided with their return to Guam and Rota a few days earlier. The enemy AA fire here was not too heavy.

On this afternoon with a few cumulus clouds dotting the sky above Rota, Mike led his division against the island's sugar mill. They scored a few hits and began the short eighty-mile trip back to Hornet. Ensign William Doherty called him on the radio to report trouble with his SB2C. He could not control his ailerons.¹⁶⁸ Like a good pilot, Ensign Doherty had investigated the situation. With both ailerons locked in the up position he could maintain a level flight path. The rudder allowed him to turn the aircraft without ailerons, although not very effectively. Doherty slowed his plane down to see how it performed at landing speed. As he slowed down to 100 knots, Doherty radioed Lieutenant Micheel that the SB2C became "very sluggish and definitely not safe" because of the drag above each wing. When he put his wheels down, he had to increase his speed to 120 knots to remain aloft. A carrier landing at 120 knots was out of the question, so Mike directed Doherty to make a landing at the airstrip on nearby Saipan. Enough of Saipan had been secured by this time that its airfield, Isley Field, had been designated as an emergency strip. The length of Isley's airstrip allowed a high-speed landing. Even with that, though, Doherty still did not trust the Beast with the wheels down, so he kept them up and slid it in on its belly.

Ensign Doherty's problem resembled a problem Ensign Reynolds had had recently. After a sharp dive over Guam, Reynolds's plane had "snapped violently over on its back, causing him to black out momentarily." He had recovered and righted his SB2C. "By holding his right rudder and using full right aileron he was able to return to the formation. Here he noticed that at low speeds the left aileron flapped up and down, with control being maintained only on the right aileron. He climbed to 9500 ft. where he and his gunner parachuted safely in front of the task group formation, being recovered by destroyers."

Noting the similarity of Reynolds's and Doherty's problems, Campbell told his engineering officer, Lieutenant Micheel, to "go find out what's wrong with these planes." The manufacturer of the Helldiver, Curtiss-Wright, had a representative on board Hornet. He climbed into the back of an Avenger on July 11 and Mike flew them both to Saipan. Ensign Doherty would have greeted them with some enthusiasm. Saipan's airfield may have been secure, but the island was not safe. Only three days previously, more than three thousand Japanese soldiers had launched a suicide charge against the army and marine lines.

The aircraft company man knew exactly what to examine. It took him only a few moments before he said, "I found the answer." Inside the wing, the wire controlling the ailerons ran through a bell crank. Both bell cranks on Doherty's plane had snapped. Mike examined them and saw they were made out of a white metal. Reynolds's plane had obviously snapped only one bell crank in his dive, and when he had tried to pull them flush, the one that had not moved had sent his plane into a roll. Mike said, "Well, what's the solution?"

"Get more bell cranks." It seemed simple enough. Mike's borrowed Avenger had room for all three, so they flew back to Hornet. After hearing his engineering officer's report, Campbell checked his documents and found Change Order No. 71, dated June 3, had specified "steel bell cranks and aileron push rods."¹⁶⁹ Put another way, more than a month ago, Curtiss-Wright knew the bell cranks were failing. The company's representative had said nothing. Bombing Two had received many new SB2Cs in late June to replace those lost during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. These aircraft had had defective bell cranks. As the import of all this became understood, the aircraft rep would have found himself in hot water. Steep dives caused the bell cranks to fail. A failure on one side had made it look like the pilot was attempting to perform a victory roll as he pulled out of the dive. "It is possible," the skipper reported to the air group commander, "that many previous losses over the target were the result of this failure rather than of enemy antiaircraft fire as previously supposed." The truth was "hard on a bombing squadron's morale."

Campbell recommended that the SB2C "be restricted from dive bombing or high speed attacks of any sort . . ." until the defective parts were replaced. The ship's storerooms contained no spare bell cranks. Mike watched as "the guy from Curtis Wright went down to the engineering department and started manufacturing them out of steel." He fixed about half of them on July 13, which he hoped would last until new parts arrived. Hornet spent the thirteenth refueling. On July 14, Lieutenant Micheel was among those who climbed back into a Helldiver to continue their missions against Guam and Rota. Admiral Clark's flagship had not missed a beat. "Dives," Campbell noted, "were made from a comparatively shallow angle. . . ."

THE MASS DEPARTURES AND THE FLOOD OF REPLACEMENTS CREATED A LOT OF change within the 1st Division. Experienced men were promoted, creating the need for reassignments. On July 16, King Company's mortar platoon held a contest. Lieutenant Ellington, who commanded the platoon, tested each man's proficiency with the 60mm mortar. Private First Class Eugene Sledge won. He now served next to Snafu Shelton on #2 gun. Snafu served as gunner and Corporal Burgin ran the squad, which included a number of ammo carriers.

Sledge might have been a college boy who could compute an azimuth faster than the others, but he was also a volunteer. That made it easier for him to get to know the men in his squad. Snafu Shelton enjoyed smoking and drinking, was a whiz at poker from his years serving drinks in a saloon called the 400 Club, and spoke with an accent few could decipher. Snafu did not know the names of the towns in which his parents had been born.¹⁷⁰ Corporal Burgin had been a traveling salesman for a few years after high school. Burgin had volunteered for the Marine Corps on November 13, 1942, because he had to--it was either that or be drafted.¹⁷¹ He shared with Sledge a strong faith, for all of his bluster. Both Snafu and R.V. had missed Guadalcanal, joining King Company while in Australia. Merriell Shelton had earned his nickname, Snafu, in Australia for his wild behavior.^aa

Their time in Australia entitled Snafu and Burgin to use Aussie slang, like "cobber" for buddy, but they idolized men like Sergeants Johnnie Marmet and Hank Boyes, both of whom had fought the battle of Guadalcanal. Marmet's stories about

Sledge wanted to hear about Gloucester. King Company, led by Captain Haldane, had repulsed half a dozen banzai charges the night after they landed. "Before the banzai charge"--Burgin told the story easily--"the japs--they had one jap out there that could speak English and our platoon sergeant, Harry Raider, was in charge of the machine guns. And, this Jap would say, 'Harry, Harry, why you no shoot? Harry, why you no shoot?' In a very calm voice Raider said, 'Give him a short burst of about 250 rounds.' " The burst had let the enemy know the machine gun's position. Before dawn the charge had come. "One of the Japs come in . . . to the foxhole where I was at. I stuck my bayonet in his upper stomach and shot him off . . . and just threw him over my shoulder, and I think I got about three rounds off on him before I lost him . . . I think I stuck that bayonet all the way through him. And, later on in--in the morning in the same banzai charge I killed one jap that was within three feet of me, just right in--almost right in my face . . . I don't remember how many japs that we killed that night, but it--it was a bunch of them, it was a lot of japs that . . . committed suicide that night."

Killing the enemy bothered Burgin about as much as "killing a mad dog." He hated the Japanese for the brutality they inflicted on marines. He did not take prisoners. Along with explaining banzai charges, Burgie may have told Sledge and the other new men about fighting in the jungle: the snipers in the trees, the shooting lanes cut through the jungle, the enemy's trick of yelling for a corpsman during a battle. Corporal Romus Valton Burgin also taught his men not to expect him to repeat an order. When Gene's friend Private First Class Jay de L'Eau started having trouble getting out of his bunk in the morning, Burgin walked in, dumped a pail of water on Jay, flipped his bunk over, and walked out without saying a word.

The men of King Company trained together and played together and lived together. Pavuvu offered no alternatives. Gene began to become a part of his #2 gun squad. He missed Sid, of course, and was delighted to receive a letter from him in mid-July. Sid wrote to tell him he had made it to the West Coast. America, he confided, had never looked so beautiful. Sid also repeated his promise to send Gene anything he needed. The letter caused Eugene to imagine Sid's arrival in Mobile. The image made him smile. Sidney Phillips had done his share and deserved his homecoming. Eugene trusted his friend to set the civilians straight on what the war was really like. After careful consideration Sledge decided that it did not matter that Sid came from a low ranking in Mobile society. "He is the best friend I have."

SID'S TROOPSHIP HAD PULLED INTO SAN DIEGO HARBOR ON A SUNNY MORNING in mid-July. On the dock, the marine band struck up "Semper Fidelis" and "Stars and Stripes Forever," as the grizzled vets stepped down the gangway. When the band burst into "Dixie," Sid Phillips got choked up. It had been so long since he had heard a live band. It had been so long since he had been home. Some men knelt to kiss the dock. Trucks took the veterans to the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego. They dropped their gear, such as it was, in a tent camp.

For chow, they walked over to the great mess hall. Sid noticed that he and the other "lean Atabrine-yellow old timers" attracted a fair amount of attention from the endless numbers of clean-cut young marines in the line for the cafeteria. Sid and a cobber grabbed their trays and walked along until they came to the lettuce. "We asked if there was any limit on the lettuce, and when told there was not, we loaded our trays with nothing but lettuce. The lettuce was cut into one fourth heads, and we went again and again for more. A crowd of curious mess men gathered around us and watched us eat lettuce, and eat lettuce and eat lettuce. We hadn't had any lettuce for over two years; Australians didn't eat lettuce."

FOR COLONEL SHOFNER, THE WORK NEVER ENDED ON PAVUVU. ONCE THE briefings started in earnest, he learned the plans for the next operation were still being worked out between the 1st Division's CO, the CO of the provisional corps to which the 1st was attached, and the navy. Each had their own interpretation of the orders that had come from the office of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, Admiral Nimitz, in May.

The campaign had been originally conceived to include three main islands in the Palau group (Angaur, Peleliu, and Babelthuap), as well as the Japanese bases on Yap and Ulithi. After much discussion, the mission became focused on those islands that held airfields: Angaur, Peleliu, and an islet just off Peleliu called Ngesebus. The other targets were dropped because their enemy garrisons posed no threat. Ulithi remained, however, because it would be easy to take and provide a magnificent fleet anchorage. The 1st Division would seize some of these objectives as part of the X-Ray Provisional Corps, which included some other units, most notably a regimental combat team (RCT) from the army's 81st Infantry Division.

The CO of the 1st Marine Division fought with his navy counterparts on the order in which the objectives should be taken. The navy wanted the island of Angaur taken first. General Rupertus insisted that Peleliu and Ngesebus be first. Rupertus not only disagreed with the navy, he also disliked his own assistant division commander, Brigadier General Oliver Smith. Smith, who had been working on the plans longer than Rupertus, was removed from the process.¹⁷² Rupertus also insisted that his division could take Peleliu by itself. He flatly refused to include the army's 81st RCT. Rupertus planned to assault Peleliu with two regiments from his division, with his remaining regiment as reserve. So far as he was concerned, the doggies could take Angaur afterward. These were big fights to be having in July for an operation set to begin on September 15.

While the outcome of the strategic catfight would affect the tactical invasion plans, the marine battalion commanders like Shofner had been told they would invade Peleliu and there were a lot of parts to it they could work on. Bucky Harris, Shofner's CO, had helped glue a mass of photographs of Peleliu onto sheets of plywood to create a huge portrait of the target. Taken by navy pilots in March and later by army bomber crews, the photographs allowed terrain features to be studied. Photos of the beaches had been taken by USS Seawolf, a submarine, affording a ground-level view of the immediate objective. Along with the images, the senior officers consulted a map of Peleliu drawn to the scale of 1 to 20,000. Comparisons of this detailed information to the hand-drawn, grossly inaccurate map of Guadalcanal that Vandegrift had carried ashore on August 7, 1942, were surely drawn by Harris.

Peleliu had a lot of beaches suitable for amphibious assault. The planners had long been drawn to the western edge of the island, where the beach ran essentially twenty-two hundred yards in length. Made of hard coral, the beach rose only slightly from the water's edge to the scrub jungle. Although the enemy had cut the ground with lengths of antitank ditches and erected minefields and log barriers, the LVTs and amphibious tanks could roll over flat ground all the way to the airfield. The island's entire road system found its locus at the village on the north side of the airfield. North of the village of Asias, aerial reconnaissance had revealed high ground. The jungle canopy obscured the hills, but any trained artillerist would emplace his guns up there to command the airfield and the beaches.

The 1st Division had confronted IJA positions on the high ground on Cape Gloucester. It had never crossed a barrier reef, however. The reef that encircled Peleliu undulated off the western shoreline about four hundred to six hundred yards. In his studies at the USMC Command and Staff School, Shofner would certainly have learned that a reef just like this one had been a key factor in the debacle of the invasion of Tarawa. It had inhibited the speed of the assault. Speed and power were the keys to success in any amphibious operation. The Japanese could be expected to use Peleliu's reef to its advantage. A lot of specialized amphibious equipment had been developed since Tarawa, however, and the senior staff spent a lot of time planning for its use.

The specialized equipment of most immediate concern to a battalion commander was the LVT, or amtrac. The tracks of these vehicles would carry his men over the reef and onto shore. A few of them, instead of carrying marines, carried a 37mm antitank gun. These new LVTs would drive inland with the men while the troop carriers went back out to the reef to get more men. It all sounded great to Shofner, except that the 1st Division had nowhere close to the number of amtracs it needed. None of the new LVTs had arrived. He did not have enough marines who knew how to drive an LVT and no one could train on the new ones. In desperation, the staff gave some enlisted men the new LVT's operations manuals to read.

Training the men proved difficult on the tiny island of Pavuvu. Shofner informed his officers that the men of the 3/5 "had to be drilled so that they could do their job when exhausted, afraid, wounded, hungry and thirsty, and in shock from the violence of battle." While his officers no doubt agreed, there were some problems. Battalion-sized exercises were out. The island was so small that attempts to hold large-scale field problems had seen men "slipping between the tents and mess halls of their bivouac area."¹⁷³ As a former guerrilla leader, Shofner had become accustomed to making do with whatever was available.

Of necessity, training on Pavuvu focused on the individual, the platoon, and the company. An infiltration course forced men to crawl forward under live fire. Instructors demonstrated techniques for hand-to-hand fighting with knives, bayonets, and anything handy. Time on the rifle range included practice throwing grenades as well as an introduction to other weapons that the rifle platoons had begun to receive in quantity: the bazookas and the portable flamethrower.

Colonel Shofner believed physical conditioning to be the essential ingredient for successful combat troops. The challenges he had endured on Corregidor, in Cabanatuan, and across Mindanao had taught him how "to make men give more than they thought they had." He intended to lead men into battle who had the strength to fight. Once again, though, the size of Pavuvu limited his options. Long hikes with full packs and equipment had long been used to harden marines for the rigors of combat. In order to have the men march with full packs, most officers put their columns on the shore road. Since the road only circled part of the island, they marched in a circle, down one side of the road and up the other clockwise, while other units did the same counterclockwise. The marching units kept bumping into one another.

Shofner began to earn a reputation among the other battalion commanders as a hard driver, an officer particularly demanding of his captains and lieutenants.¹⁷⁴ Harris and the other senior officers, however, were impressed by Shifty's efforts with his men and his grasp of his responsibilities in the upcoming campaign. The NCOs of the 3/5 like Hank Boyes and the battalion's enlisted men like Eugene Sledge thought Shofner was terrific.¹⁷⁵

AFTER WEEKS OF TURNING GUAM INTO A ROCK PILE, BOMBING TWO SUPPORTED the 3rd Marine Division's landing there on July 21. Lieutenant Micheel took off at five fifty a.m. with nine Helldivers, thirteen Hellcats, and six Avengers on his wing. He led them to Point Nan, on the northern tip of the island, before reporting in to the commander of support aircraft, who had them circle at ten thousand feet until he was ready. The first target was the Red Landing Beaches. The dive-bombers swooped down in shallow dives to drop the five- hundred-pound general-purpose bomb in their belly racks. The second target turned out to be a ridge with defensive positions set into it. At his release point about two thousand feet above it, Mike noticed "the ridges . . . were well covered with bomb hits." He released the bombs in the wing racks. No flak burst around him. The strike group began landing aboard at eight thirty-four a.m. He didn't fly again that day or the next. On July 22, the task group set off for the next mission: the island of Yap. During a busy week of strike missions there, Lieutenant Micheel made his one hundredth carrier landing.

All of the Beast's problems remained: its 20mm cannon jammed 30 percent of the time and Bombing Two had stopped using the bomb racks because of their tendency to release the bomb not on the target but on Hornet's flight deck during landing. Worse, the Beast killed another of Micheel's comrades that week. "As the plane started to nose up out of its dive," the skipper reported to the air group commander, "the left wing was seen to drop, and the plane rolled onto its back and plummeted vertically to the ground. As there was no AA fire at the time of this attack, it is presumed that the failure of the aileron bell crank was responsible for the crash." The wolves eased the angle of their dives to forty-five degrees. Their bombs started falling short of their targets.

AT DINNER ONE EVENING SHOFNER HAPPENED TO BE SITTING NEAR CHESTY Puller when a messenger arrived. Lieutenant Colonel Sam Puller, Chesty's younger brother, had been killed during the invasion of Guam. Chesty became reflective, and he invited Shofner to have a drink. He wanted to spend some time with an old China Marine like himself. Chesty had been the executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, Fourth Marines, when Shofner arrived in Shanghai in June of 1941. Puller spent the night "nursing a bottle of bourbon and telling Shofner stories about Lou and Sam Puller growing up in Tidewater Virginia."

Puller and Shofner's next assignment had come into focus quickly with the arrival of some new information and the return of General Geiger, the commander of the X-Ray Amphibious Force, now called the Third Amphibious Corps. Geiger learned from documents captured on Saipan that the enemy garrison on Peleliu numbered eleven thousand men, a lot more than previously expected. In late July, frogmen had swum close to the beaches looking for mines and other obstacles. The western beaches had not been heavily fortified. General Geiger forced some changes on General Rupertus of the 1st Division.

The idea of a second landing, to catch the enemy in a pincer movement, was abandoned once and for all. Geiger also revised Rupertus's plan to employ two of his regiments and hold the third in reserve. More marines were needed. All three infantry regiments of the division would land abreast of one another. One battalion would remain in reserve. Geiger did not, however, force Rupertus to include the soldiers. Since the other island target, Angaur, would not be invaded until the marines had a firm hold on Peleliu, Geiger designated the 81st RCT as the marines' reserve. He and Rupertus thought that would suffice. As a recent graduate of the USMC's school, though, Shofner would have known that the optimum ratio of attackers to defenders in an amphibious operation is three to one. The 1st Division's three regiments would not quite muster a one-to-one ratio.