Battleground Pacific Read online

  All I knew was that the whole 1st Marine Division was moving eastward across the waist of Okinawa, with the 7th Army Division on our right flank and the 6th Marine Division shoring up our left. According to the original battle plan, the 1st Marine Division was supposed to be at spot X, but we had surpassed that by making it all the way to spot Y, on some general’s map. At least that’s what we heard, anyway. The rumor was that we had moved so far, so fast, that we were in danger of becoming unsupported and alone at the forefront of the American lines, possibly running into a large number of Japanese troops bearing down from the east coast.

  Soon after hearing this news, K Company was called to a halt. My fire team and I picked out an abandoned farmhouse to set up camp, the four of us settling down in a patch of land behind the farm—or whatever passed for a backyard, in that neck of the woods.

  “Think we’ll run into any Nips tonight?” Weisdack asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be okay, and if we do, just keep Eubanks loaded, alright?”

  Bob said, “I’ll take first watch if you guys don’t mind.”

  “It’s okay, Wimp,” I said. “I’ll take first watch. You guys get some shut-eye.”

  “Well,” Eubanks said, “I don’t know about you fellas, but I don’t think I can sleep, even if I was in my own bed.”

  The marines in my fire team were a good group of guys. I say “my” fire team simply because I inherited them by default—much the same way I made corporal on Pavuvu, when we got back from Peleliu. I certainly didn’t ask for the promotion. Someone must have thought I had done pretty well to earn it. Since it was only me and Charlie Allmann left of our original team, I got the stripe, and Charlie got a new fire team. By the time the replacements arrived to bolster our depleted ranks, my BAR was taken away from me, and I was given an M-1 rifle and a new BAR man in PFC Eubanks.

  Now, if I was just a kid at twenty-one, then nineteen-year-old Eubanks was just a baby—and a country bumpkin, at that. He was tall and lanky, the sort of guy who if you put him in a new suit, the suit would never fit, no matter how much tailoring you did. A product of the Appalachians, Eubanks seemed to me like he would have been more at ease in a pair of bibbed overalls with a piece of straw hanging out of his mouth—or maybe stumbling down a yellow brick road, with Dorothy and Toto in tow.

  A marine could say anything he wanted to about Eubanks, but he could never say anything negative about his dedication to the marines, or his readiness for action.

  Then there was our BAR assistant, PFC George Weisdack, from Donora, Pennsylvania. George was a little older than me, though not by much, short, good-looking, with dark hair, and a real pencil-thin mustache—a touch of the Hollywood look, by Weisdack’s own design.

  Poor George, exactly like Lyman Rice, had all those nickels and quarters on his back, red-ringed and sprinkled with white powder: totally infested with ringworm. It must have hurt like a sonuvabitch; nevertheless, Weisdack didn’t say much about it—though I knew it was just a matter of time before he wouldn’t be able to lump it anymore.

  Rounding out the bunch was PFC Robert “Wimpy” Whitby, from Solon, Ohio. Our scout. A real good man. A real good family man. I had no idea how he even ended up in the marines. They would say that the marines didn’t draft married men with two young daughters, but with Bob they certainly did. There’s no way a man like Bob Whitby was going to volunteer for the service, the marines no less, with several mouths to feed, a mortgage, and everything that went with the white-picket-fence life. Furthermore, Whitby was about thirty-two years old, only a private first class, and no more than 5′7″. He was a little chunky, with dark, sort of curly hair, already graying at the temples. Not your prototypical poster model for the Marine Corps. Yet, who knows, by 1945 maybe Bob was.

  All of them were untested in combat. They relied on veterans to give them the skinny on what combat was like—but short of giving them a line of bullshit, it was a difficult thing to describe. The straight dope was about as crooked as a crooked mile; whatever you told them had the potential to either scare the crap out of them or give them a false sense of reality. It was a lose-lose situation, no matter what you said, because you never knew what shade of green a new marine was.

  Before Peleliu, my squad leader, Sergeant Thomas Palmisano, bunked with Jim McEnery. Jim told me on Peleliu that Palmisano was constantly asking him what combat was like—what to expect, what to do, how to do it. I don’t know what Jimmy told him—something ambiguous, I’m sure. Nevertheless, the reason we never saw Palmisano on Peleliu was that as soon as we landed, he took another amtrac right back out to the ships, and there he stayed, having crapped out on the operation. Maybe he had cold feet, or maybe he simply realized, right there on the beach, that the Marine Corps wasn’t for him. Whatever the case, when Peleliu was over and we reached Pavuvu again, they lined us all up to witness Palmisano’s court-martial.

  They gave Sergeant Thomas Palmisano five years in the naval penitentiary on Mare Island for cowardice. And there we were, on Peleliu, almost near the end of the operation, thinking that Palmisano was either killed or wounded in the landing.

  Maybe he would have been better off with the latter two options.

  Then there was Lieutenant Robert Mackenzie, “Mac” for short—Bill Bauerschmidt’s replacement as leader of the 3rd Platoon. Mac wanted to know what combat was like, too.

  After Peleliu, we had only been back on Pavuvu maybe a week when, much to our surprise, Mac called a few of the riflemen to his tent in Officers’ Country.

  “Huh, I wonder what he wants with us?” Orley Uhls asked.

  “Beats me,” I replied. “Maybe he’s got a medal to pin on ya, Uhls.”

  “Sure.” Orley laughed. “In a pig’s eye!”

  All joking aside, we couldn’t figure out what Mac’s angle was, why he’d call the enlisted men to his tent. If it was for debriefing, wouldn’t he be better off talking to what was left of the sergeants or the other officers?

  Mac was new, so maybe he was simply inquisitive.

  When I went inside his tent, he asked me to have a seat and relax. Before me was a real healthy-looking man, robust, a true marine-type officer in appearance and demeanor, only not too overbearing or blusterous. What he was missing, however, was that “salt” that gave the combat man his natural air.

  “PFC Mace,” he began, after I had seated myself. “So, I understand you spent a considerable amount of time on Peleliu, in combat, is that correct?”

  I informed him that was correct.

  “Made the landing, did you?” He looked up at me, from whatever papers he had in front of him. “What was that like?”

  I proceeded to tell him how we had come in first, and how the machine guns and mortars had come in right behind us. How there was a lot of shelling, and Nip knee mortars peppering the beachhead—machine-gun fire, etc. I also told him about Shifty Shofner and how Lieutenant Moose Barrett was killed soon after landing.

  “So … the mortars and machine guns”—he appeared to jot something down on his papers—“the mortars came in right behind the first wave?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. I almost said something about that being standard operational procedure, but since I was talking to an officer, I figured he already knew that. Plus, I didn’t want to come across as a wiseass, so I just left it at that. First the infantry goes in. Then the mortars and heavy weapons have to follow close behind for immediate support. The setup was both practical and logical.

  “Okay, fine.” He paused. “Did you see any Nips? Kill any Japs?”

  Boy, this guy sure doesn’t have any idea, does he?

  “Yes, that’s right, Lieutenant; you didn’t have to go far to see Nips. We came across some in a cave. Between me and Nippo—”

  “Nippo?”

  “Umm … PFC Thomas Baxter, sir. He’s dead.”

  “Oh. Okay, carry on.” Lieutenant Mackenzie looked a little green around the gills when I mentioned a dead marine.

  “So,” I contin
ued, “we got a few of them. But you get down real quick, like, because you never know when a Nip might have you sighted in at the same time.”

  I paused, thinking that was all he wanted to know. Then I added, “Also got a lot of them by the Five Sisters. Like I said, you don’t have to go far.”

  Later that night, I was playing 500 Rummy with George Weisdack, and during a lull in the game, he said to me, “So … I heard the new lieutenant wanted to see some of you guys today?”

  “You heard that, huh? Yeah, new lieutenant’s got somethin’ cookin’. Wanted to know all about combat, this and that.”

  “So what did ya tell him?”

  “Oh, you know, this and that.”

  “No, I mean, what is combat like?” George gazed at me intently. This was Weisdack’s perfect chance to broach the subject, without appearing too desperate in the attempt—without sounding too green himself (although George was as green as a new crabapple).

  “Look, George.” I laid my cards down and peered straight into his eyes. “It’s hard for me to tell you what it’s like because each campaign is different. All ya gotta do is stay alert. Don’t anticipate something taking place; just be ready when it does. And don’t goof off, alright? Stay alert. Be a smart marine. Everything after that will come to you. You don’t have to come to it. You’ll be alright, if ya don’t think about it too much. You’ll be alright, okay?”

  Now, as we set up our little camp behind the abandoned farmhouse on Okinawa, I looked over at Weisdack and knew he’d be evacuated soon. His ringworm was about as bad as any case I’d seen. Eventually I’d have to get him out of here. Lucky him.

  I also thought about Lieutenant Mac. Mac was out there—camped somewhere—just not as a member of the 3rd Platoon anymore. Soon after Mac’s little Q&A session with 3rd Platoon riflemen, somehow he had finagled his way out of the rifle platoon and straight to the mortars. It’s no wonder he had been so curious about the mortars. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had swayed him that way, during the session he and I had. What’s more, I wasn’t even sure the mortarmen knew that they had inherited an officer who had snuck out of the rifle squads. It didn’t matter, though. In Mac’s place we received a new officer, “Spud” Dunlop, who was said to have played football with the Brooklyn Dodgers before the war. Lieutenant Spud was a big guy, so nobody doubted his football prowess—and even if you did, you wouldn’t express your reservations to a bruiser like him, officer or not!

  “Okay, fellas, might as well dig in here,” I said to my fire team, looking around the backyard.

  “Say, George, where do ya think the crapper is around here?” I heard Eubanks whisper to Weisdack.

  “Probably inside the house, where they all are, but … hey, be careful, willya?” Weisdack said back.

  No sooner had I stuck my shovel in the ground than an awful smell reached up and grabbed me by the nose hairs.

  “Oh shit!” I said. “Jesus Christ. Hey, Eubanks, I think I found your crapper over here.”

  No more than two feet from where I planned to dig was a perfectly rectangular hole—or perhaps I should say cesspool—dug into the ground, about two by three feet, and reeking to high heaven. On the three-foot side of the hole were two pads, about two feet in length, where you’d place your feet when you squatted over the hole to read. The hole was difficult to see, because the sun was just beginning to set—it was even recessed back from the farmhouse in a shaded area—yet I could still make out the brackish water down there, nearly coming up to the rim of the square.

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll be diggin’ over here. Eubanks, come put your ass over this thing. Got the new Stars and Stripes ya can wipe with.”

  “Oh, brother.” Eubanks looked down the hole. “You’d think they’d have indoor plumbing or something, wouldn’t ya?”

  “Well, maybe,” I said, “but I kinda don’t think they knew we were coming.”

  The Japanese knew we were coming, though. That much was certain. The rising sun was just beginning to set for Japan, although, as riflemen, we only had the vaguest notion that our enemy’s time was ticking down its final seconds toward perpetual twilight.

  As our first night on Okinawa crept in, just as the ball in the sky began its final nod for the day, sinking below the skyline, I looked skyward and saw two planes bearing in, shining silver against the setting sun.

  Now, those are some lucky guys, I thought. Those fighter pilots are coming in for the night, and they’ll be safe and sound aboard ship, and I’ll be sitting right here. I could imagine them in their flight suits, talking back and forth on their radios, about what they’d be eating for evening chow. Maybe one of them would have a pinup of Veronica Lake or June Haver taped against an instrument panel.

  Yet after they banked and flew straight down, I caught a glimpse of meatballs on the underside of their wings. Nip fighters! Instantly, thousands of tracers lit up the sky, scratching the twilight with vertical lines. Thousands of lines, straighter than a person could draw, and suddenly I couldn’t imagine the pilots anymore—let alone Nip pilots actually flying those planes—yet there they were!

  The two planes dipped and disappeared from my view as they cleared below the tree line. Kamikazes. They were going for the ships.

  My heart went out to the navy boys on those tubs, and the American pilots who dared the skies over our anchorage, flying against that sort of menace. It was insanity.

  You’d think that with all the flak the navy sent up, the Nip planes would be chewed to pieces. However, many of them made it in, crippling our ships, taking hundreds of American lives back with them, and showing them off to Buddha (or whatever god it was that gave them the green light to commit suicide for empire and homeland).

  Before then, I had only heard of kamikaze planes. Yet seeing them that close, especially knowing that on the ocean we had the largest armada of U.S. Navy power the war had ever seen, was a chilling experience. Even when we saw the kamikazes’ handiwork firsthand, when we anchored at Ulithi, nothing came close, no matter how far away I was from the action.

  At Ulithi, where we stopped briefly on our way to Okinawa, we witnessed the USS Franklin pass by—a death ship, a ghost ship, almost totally scuttled—as it limped silently back to the States: An aircraft carrier that had lost over seven hundred sailors to just a few Japanese kamikaze pilots. Tit for tat, in loss of lives, this kamikaze treatment was paying off for the Nips. Still, that didn’t make it any less crazy. You’d see a Jap fighter overhead and immediately want to shoot it down, but the odds of knocking down a Nip plane with a peashooter were equal to standing on a beach on Okinawa and throwing a baseball all the way to New York and having Ernie Lombardi catch it. Nothing doing. In truth, a marine on the ground would have a better chance of getting wounded, with all the flak raining down around us, even as far out to sea as the ships were. The navy sent up mountains of antiaircraft fire, and all we’d have to do was wait a few minutes for the metal chunks to drift over and clobber us with shrapnel. Marines scrambled around, jumping in their foxholes, making sure they grabbed their helmets on their way down. I always kept a big box handy—the box the 10-in-1 rations came in—to use as my shield, holding it over my head as the steel peppered the earth.

  As far as I know, none of us were wounded from the flak residue—the shrapnel had lost a lot of its momentum by the time it reached our company area. Nevertheless, we weren’t taking any chances, despite the fact that the naval fire (a brilliant fireworks display) broke the monotony quite well.

  Just about every night we’d watch the Nip planes dive at our ships. At first, it was a novelty. At last, it made us sick.

  *

  By the time we had reached the eastern side of Okinawa—the Pacific shore—the lunatics were running the asylum.

  The illusion of paradise deceived us.

  The ocean was a lilting shade of azure, the sandy beaches were unsullied and crystalline white, and beautiful Okinawan horses ran wild, close to the water, having been abandoned by their maste
rs. Evidently their civilian handlers made a mad dash out of there, escaping our arrival. Not that we would have harmed the locals, but we would’ve certainly overturned their way of life. We hadn’t seen any action to speak of since landing, and now that we had reached our primary objective, marines began stretching their legs at odd angles. We were euphoric, undisciplined, and stupid. We did everything wrong—including the officers. Everybody was guilty of something. Some of us were guilty of everything.

  “Bring back that fucking horse!”

  Pigs snorted and rooted around our ankles in the dust as Orley Uhls and I had our rifles pointed at two marines. In quick jerks, a dying pig’s trotter lashed out its final nerve spasms against Orley’s leg; a fresh gunshot wound behind the pig’s ear poured a thin stream of blood into the dirt. The rest of the pigs, in the pen, like all crude animals, hadn’t caught on that they could be next.

  The marine closest to us, the one who’d attempted to swipe our horse, looked like he was going to say something, but Orley cut him off.

  “I said. Bring. Back. The goddamn. Horse,” Uhls said between gritted teeth. Orley wanted to make damn sure the two marines had heard us.

  Obviously those two marines had come up from the rear somewhere. They didn’t look anything like us; they didn’t see what we saw, or hear what we heard, or feel what we felt. They knew nothing. The barrels of our weapons were like two pinpoints of black. They knew nothing about black pinpoints. Or how live Nips smelled. Or the anatomy of a dying pig. Or living inside of a pressure cooker.

  “No, hey, I’m sorry,” the second marine said as they walked back with the stolen horse. “We didn’t know…”

  We dropped our weapons. “Yeah, that’s okay, guys.” Orley grinned.