Battleground Pacific Read online

  It was true. Gunnery Sergeant Elmo Haney was a fossil. A veteran of World War I, he was scrawny; his dungarees hung off him like a scarecrow’s raiment. His skin was a road map, wrinkled and leathered. In fact, Haney gave every impression that he was an animated cadaver. If you opened up his blouse, you’d probably see the Y-incision from his autopsy.

  He was a real puzzle to wrap your head around, too.

  If you had the misfortune to pass him in the company street and say hello, his gravelly response was “What do you mean by that?”

  To us young riflemen he was a joke. At any given time you’d find Haney talking to himself, or fighting an imaginary enemy with a bayonet affixed to the end of his rifle, looking out on the world with rheumy eyes. The world had simply grown too unfamiliar for him to comprehend it any longer.

  “Who’s he fightin’ now, I wonder? Attila the Hun?” Everybody laughed.

  On the other hand, he was a sad case—someone to be pitied.

  The scuttlebutt was that the officers kept Haney around just so they could have something to laugh about over in Officers’ Country. You got the distinct impression that the brass were merely mollifying him—humoring his antics, with a wink and a nod.

  “Yeah,” I told Mahan. “The other day, Billy and I—”

  “Leyden?”

  “Yeah, me and Leyden. We were over at the swimming hole, taking a dip, right? When we see Old Man Haney over there, too, having a bath. Now get this. This guy has this—I don’t know what you’d call it—one of those horse brushes or somethin’. Real stiff bristles, and Haney is just scrubbin’ an’ scrubbin’ hisself with this friggin’ thing—back an’ forth—an’ he’s even picking up his nuts and scrubbin’ under those, too, with this goddamn brush! Never seen anything like it.”

  “Yeah, no foolin’, huh?” Mahan asked.

  “Hey.” I held up a hand. “Never seen anything like it.”

  “Yeah, and here’s one more for ya.” Sy stood up. “The guys over in the mortars worship this friggin’ guy.”

  Larry smirked. “Now I know you guys are fulla shit. The mortarmen in my company only worship themselves.”

  The fact is, Haney should have never been on Pavuvu in the first place; in his mind, poor Haney was still somewhere in France, scrubbing the mustard gas from his skin.

  Haney was no longer a rifleman in 1944, but once upon a time … he lived the real Pacific war.

  Semper Fidelis.

  In fact, so many of us lived the real Pacific war. Right down the line. It’s not as if the rifleman’s war was somehow more genuine, or in some way more important, or even more terrible than any other marine’s experiences. The sacrifices of the few are the sacrifices of the many.

  Esprit de Corps. We were the goddamn Marine Corps.

  Yet beneath all the glory rests the key that turned the lock, that enabled our boys to return home. The still silent men who took the brunt of the fighting. The silent dead who never returned.

  The Marine Corps riflemen. We weren’t the be-all-end-all, but if we had to do it all to end it all, we would.

  Marines like PFC Orley Uhls—as we boarded LST 661 on our way to Peleliu—a nice, quiet country boy from Illinois: another blond, warm smile. If you entered a bar with Orley and a few others, he’d be the only one to come out sober. Like Lieutenant William “Bill” Bauerschmidt, USMC, from Pottstown, Pennsylvania, recipient of the Silver Star for bravery—with his high-top lace-up boots that were never tied up all the way but instead they flared out at the tops. He had a hop to his walk, and his eyes tilted in like a boxer’s. Bill carried his dad’s World War I .45 service revolver into combat—engraved with the initials WB on its grip—dearly wanting to make his father proud. Beyond pride, Bill had no other choice. He had to be a fine officer, in order to counteract some of the deficiencies inherent in our platoon. Like Sergeant Thomas Palmisano—his heart simply wasn’t in it. Palmisano was pretty quiet for a squad leader, a dark, heavyset Italian, almost a little too fat.

  There’s PFC Jack Baugh, from Tennessee—you could get a smile from him every once in a while. PFC Roy Kelly, from Kansas, and Corporal John Teskevich. John was a Cape Gloucester vet, who pulled a wounded Roy Kelly to safety under intense Japanese fire. Everyone thought John should have received a medal. Nothing happened.

  Then PFC Lyman Rice—5′10″, broad shoulders, he’d go into combat with a ringworm-riddled back. Here’s Private Frankie Ocepek, from Cleveland, Ohio, loved humor—laughed at anything, 5′ 6″ and wielded a nineteen-pound BAR, thirty-four years old, black hair, graying at the temples, probably never had a bad word to say about anyone. Private Henry Ryzner—just a strange kid, who might have been more in touch with reality if he and Private Mercer had been tentmates.

  Like Corporal R. D. Wilson—“Blowtorch Willy”—an above-and-beyond marine, from Bozeman, Montana; you could always count on him. He got his name from bringing a small blowtorch overseas. PFC P. A. Wilson, from Des Moines, Iowa—a good marine, but as goofy as they came. There’s PFC Frank Minkewitz—a tall Polack, married, thinning hair, probably a draft board decision. PFC Gene Holland—artsy, a deep thinker, like something was in his mind always wanting out. His father died when he was a child, so he was raised by his mother and sister.

  They all lived the real Pacific war, like Corporal Richard Van Trump and PFC Donald Schwantz—those two were a pair in harmony. You’d walk into their tent and they’d both stop talking until you left. Schwantz could have been muscular, with a little exercise, but instead he was full of baby fat. Along with PFC Charlie Allmann—a quiet guy, almost lethargic and built wiry. The kind of guy who’d get lost in a crowd. Not too much to look at. Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Rigney—Hollywood good looks, always confident, a real poster marine; he carried his Thompson machine gun with pride. Also PFC Jesse Googe. Googe lied about his age to get into the marines and served on Guadalcanal, at maybe sixteen; he also moonlighted as a runner. Then there was PFC Thomas “Nippo” Baxter—a mystic, from Yazoo City, Mississippi. He only wore a cap, never a helmet. He had a goatee, which gave him a mysterious look. Maybe 5′9″ and 155 pounds, if that. I wondered if the people back in Mississippi knew what a good marine he was.

  They lined up to get on the ship: PFC Pete Candella, from San Francisco—a really good kid, always smiling. Corporal Raymond Grawet—another Hollywood type, sporting a goatee as well—and PFC Aubrey Rogers, kind of husky, nice and talkative, had a yellowed atabrine tint to his skin from the malaria pills he took; both guys were Leyden’s friends. Rogers was a friend of Baxter’s, too. Platoon Sergeant Harry Spiece—a great marine, who didn’t like my wiseass New York ways. Here’s Corporal Walter B. Stay, from Syracuse, New York, took on a big job leading his squad, despite his small stature.

  Then there was Sergeant Jim McEnery.

  I met him during my third day on Pavuvu (though I really wouldn’t call it a “meeting”). Jim was a snappy marine with a Leo Carrillo pencil-thin mustache, coming at us with his unmistakable whiny Brooklyn accent, calling us out for a work detail.

  It was lightly raining, and he had us all standing in the company street. The only things you could see of Jim were that unmistakable mustache, the inner lining of his helmet, and a rain-slick poncho.

  “Alright, you marines, when I say fall out, I mean fall out! We’re on a working party here, you guys, so get your shit together and follow me!”

  Walking behind this McEnery guy, I looked over to Gene Holland and said, “Who the fuck is this big-shit marine?”

  I would soon find out. Jim and I would see a lot of combat together.

  *

  September 15, 1944. Dawn, off the coast of Peleliu. D-day minus 2 hours.

  Suddenly the LST stopped. After nearly two weeks at sea, we had reached our terminus.

  The trip to Peleliu was pretty uneventful, except for our one-day stop on Guadalcanal.

  There, we did a practice amphibious assault. Only, in practice, they sent us out in the front-exiting Higgins boats, instead of
the back-exiting amtracs—a big difference in how we’d actually land on Peleliu, sort of defeating the purpose of a “dress rehearsal.” Speaking of “dress,” they had the entire company put on nice pressed khakis, as if we were on a parade ground, really uptowning it for a general or something. So when our Higgins boat stopped, about twenty yards out from the beach, and they let down the ramp? So much for clean khakis. We waded the rest of the way in, making shore on Guadalcanal with the black churned-up beach water all over our fresh parade pants.

  Afterward, though, we had a nice little party on the sand. Just lounging around, or swinging from the rope that was above the local swimming hole. Every marine received two Coca-Colas, and they passed out the latest issues of Leatherneck magazine for our viewing pleasure.

  “Say, Mace! Isn’t this you?” Ray Grawet held up a copy of Leatherneck, tapping it with his finger, waving it around, showing off a photograph in the book.

  Pete Candella laughed. “Hey, it sure as hell is!”

  “Here, lemme see that!” I said.

  It really was a photograph of me and a few other marines, in a train car heading from the East to the West Coast, en route to Camp Linda Vista, California, my station before shipping out overseas. It was a nice picture, despite the fact that I was stuffing my face with food in it.

  “Boy.” Ray beamed. “Looks like we have a regular Hollywood marine in our midst!” (This was funny, coming from a guy like Grawet.)

  “Yeah, ha ha! Yuk it up, wiseguys.” I grinned. The boys really gave me the business over that photo.

  Not long after, however, our revelry was broken by this god-awful grating noise—almost akin to a high-pitched buzz saw, being turned off and on, off and on, repeatedly. Haw! Haw! Haw! this yammering went on. Except that the racket wasn’t caused by a machine of any sort. No, that irritating clamor came from a single marine: PFC Merriell “Snafu” Shelton, from the mortars. It was amazing how much hubbub could come out of one so diminutive as Shelton. He was the shortest guy in the entire company, and one had to wonder how they even let him into the service in the first place.

  It didn’t take much of a Perry Mason, though, to figure out how he got the nickname Snafu. In common military parlance, SNAFU stood for “situation normal: all fouled up.”

  “Goddammit,” Blowtorch Willy growled. “I wish that little shit would learn to button his lip.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!” Frankie Ocepek agreed.

  “Nah, listen, Frank,” Blowtorch continued. “It was bad enough on that great big island, with his backwater nonsense, but we’re about to get back on that little boat with that dumb shit, and you won’t be able to get far enough from this guy to suit ya.”

  I interjected, “Yeah, and he’s got those new mortarmen that came in after me so snowed over with his bullshit war stories, just ’cos he was on Gloucester.”

  “Exactly!” Blowtorch said. “Look, I’m going to cure this piece of shit, once and for all.”

  The mortarmen were lounging right next to us, so all Blowtorch had to do was lean over and call out, “Hey, Shelton!”

  “Huh?” Snafu looked over with that stupid face of his.

  You couldn’t fault a guy for being short, or ugly, or even uneducated, considering the circumstances most of us came out of—but being all of those things, with a big mouth to boot? Snafu Shelton simply didn’t come equipped with an off button.

  “Yeah, you, Shelton,” Blowtorch smirked. “Say, listen, my mother was thinkin’ about joinin’ the marines and she was wonderin’ if she could be in the mortars.”

  Immediately everybody cracked up. Poor Frankie was so doubled over and red, it was a wonder he didn’t pass out from laughing so hard.

  Gazing over at the mortar squad, I saw that a couple of the mortarmen, PFC John Redifer and PFC Vincent Santos (our company’s only guy of Spanish descent), had their heads down, smiling, really giving it everything they had to hold back their laughter.

  Snafu didn’t say anything for a change.

  As it turned out, that was the last really fun time we had as a group, before we threw it all up on Peleliu’s shore.

  Weeks later, just off the coast of Peleliu, we stood on the deck of LST 661, as the dawn eased in, focusing on the ocean, barely making out the outline of the island—just a phantom hump on the horizon, no more foreboding than a cube of ice in a cup of water.

  “There she is, huh?” Levy said.

  I sighed. “Yeah, I guess so. Although how they find these places in the middle of the friggin’ ocean, I’ll never know.”

  About a week into our voyage the brass told us the name of the island was Peleliu. During the briefing they also informed us that Peleliu was infested with bugs and snakes, indigenous birds that made strange noises, and Japanese forces of an unknown quantity. More importantly, however, the word came to us that the island had no natural water source.

  “Well, if it’s so goddamn lousy, what the hell are we taking it for?” I leaned into McEnery.

  Of course, there’s no answer to a question like that. You just do it and shut your trap.

  Standing on the deck of the LST that morning, Levy took that theorem to heart. He was pretty quiet. His eyes remained fixed on the horizon.

  “Hey, c’mon, Sy.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, here comes Spiece and Sergeant [Kenneth] Boaz. We’re gonna have to get our stuff together.”

  True enough, Platoon Sergeant Spiece stood in front of the 3rd Platoon. “Alright, fellas, here we go. Let’s get your equipment on, double-check everything, helmets on, we’re gearing up.”

  Just about that time every ship in the anchorage let loose with their artillery—we really jumped!—and we had a bird’s-eye view of it all. First you’d see the fire shooting out from the ends of the cannons, at least twenty yards of flame really sticking out there. Then the instant squeal and the delayed boom from each salvo.

  The reason we had such beautiful seats was that the 3rd Platoon was the last ones aboard as we loaded ourselves onto the LST back at Pavuvu. No room at the inn.

  By the time we made ship, the ship’s holds were packed to the gills with marines. So the 3rd Platoon lived like trolls under a bridge, having our cots placed underneath a Landing Craft, Mechanized that took up nearly the entire ship’s foredeck. If I were sitting on my cot, beneath the LCM, I had about five inches of headroom below that monstrosity. Guys were accidentally knocking their heads on it all the time.

  Sure, it was a crummy way to travel, but it had its perks, too.

  It was good because we weren’t smelling the farts or the sweat or breathing the used-up air in the cramped quarters below deck. Instead, we had a moderate sea breeze that cooled us off and the freedom to walk where we pleased. Yet it was bad in that all we had to drink was warm water, since the watercooler was at midship. What’s more, we hit a groundswell once, and the ocean nearly washed all of our gear into the sea. We scrambled around like mad bastards to grab our stuff before it went into the drink.

  So, to gear up, we had to drag our equipment from underneath our cots, putting it on in full view of the barrage.

  Yet reality? There was nothing real about it. Not even the shouts from the shelling or the feel of our muscles straining under our equipment was real. It was unreal when we ate breakfast that morning, knowing good and well that I was eating steak and eggs but never tasting it, never looking up from my plate, or at any other marine for that matter. Every marine was autonomous in his actions. Thinking. Thinking.

  Those of us who had never been in combat had an idea of what it would be like—but we were completely wrong. Mortally wrong. Like mechanized men, we quietly went through the motions.

  Unreal. We were forced to check that we were still alive before we had the chance to die. That’s a fact. Blind eyes read stories of their own.

  For me, my equipment was easy to put on, although it weighed more than the average marine’s gear, because of my job as a BAR gunner. My pack itself was nothing, with its poncho looped over the
top and an entrenching tool fastened to its center. To secure it, the pack was affixed to a Y-strap, which ran down my spine, attaching to the rear of my cartridge belt at the waist. Therefore, putting it on was akin to donning a jacket. One arm went through one strap, and then the other, leaving only the clasp of the cartridge belt to fasten below my abdomen, securing the whole getup as one piece.

  On the cartridge belt were six BAR magazine pouches, three on each side, holding two magazines apiece. That’s twenty rounds a magazine, making a total of 240 rounds of .30-06 ammo, double what a marine with an M-1 rifle carried. Also I had two canteens of water and a little first-aid pouch on my belt.

  Strapped across my chest and hanging to my waist was my gas-mask bag, with a gas mask inside. Add that to the contents of my pack, housing three boxes of K rations, a change of socks, a dungaree cap, and a waterproof bag with my personal effects—a pocket New Testament and my wallet, including the card I received when I crossed the equator—and that made me combat ready. I had to carry light, given that the weight of my BAR was another nineteen pounds to shoulder—and that’s nineteen pounds without the bipod fixed to the end of the barrel. The bipod was the first thing I took off on Pavuvu; it made the BAR unbalanced and unwieldy.

  My head was covered with my pisspot (helmet), unbuckled at the chinstrap, swathed with the fall motif camouflaged cover. On my legs I had a pair of tan canvas legging, enfolding my dungaree pants close to my legs.

  A marine came around with a little tin of black grease. Other marines began digging their hands in the grease and striping their faces—throwing the war paint on their cheeks and beneath their eyes, looking fierce, maybe a little brave.

  “Hey, Mace. You want some of this?”

  “Sure, guy.” I took a couple of dips in the grease with my fingers, but instead of marking my face with stripes, I naturally gave myself a Salvador Dalí mustache, complete with the curlicues on the ends.

  “Third Platoon, go below deck. Third Platoon … below deck.” The ship’s loudspeaker sounded.

  “Well, that’s us,” McEnery said. “We better get a move on, guys.”