The Pacific (33 page)

The next day, McClish took them all on a long horseback ride to the town of Gingoog. The radio there was out, so they rode on to a guerrilla outpost in Anakan. From there they sent two messages. One went to the office of the Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Australia, General Douglas MacArthur; the other went to the Marine Corps' Australian HQ. Making contact with their headquarters was a glorious moment of achievement. No immediate reply was received. In the evening, after enjoying a fine meal in a house with electric lights, Shifty took a moment to remember. That day, May 6, marked the one-year anniversary of the surrender on Corregidor. He and the others gave thanks. The next day the local Chinese community donated clothing for the Americans, and just in time, too, since a number of parties and fiestas awaited. Shifty and the team attended one in the Chinese area before attending a ball celebrating the coronation of a queen. Shifty got a laugh out of wearing a clean pair of coveralls to a formal ball with women in gowns and men in white evening coats.

On May 10, Lieutenant Commander McCoy and Major Mellnik left the team and proceeded to the headquarters of the Tenth Military District in Misamis, under the command of Colonel Wendell W. Fertig. All of the guerrillas on the island reported to Colonel Fertig, including McClish's division. McCoy and Mellnik hoped to send more messages to Australia and to inquire about transportation off Mindanao. After they departed, Ed Dyess went after them. Colonel McClish induced the remainder of the escapees to help him run his operation. He promoted each member of the team and assigned them a job. Shifty became Major Austin Shofner of the 110th Division in the Army of the United States. He set about organizing the guerrillas of Mindanao to fight the occupiers.

MANILA JOHN HAD BEEN ENJOYING HIMSELF IN AUSTRALIA. ALTHOUGH HE DIDN'T say much about it, he did usually have to spend part of each payday paying off debts incurred within the last pay period.
¹³
His buddy J.P. had caused a stir back in March when he allowed his enlistment to expire.
¹⁴
Morgan had cashed himself out completely, all $452 worth, which some in the 1/7 must have assumed would be spent on a big drunk. J.P. had a reputation for getting into trouble and for sending his hefty poker winnings home to his wife, Katy. J.P.'s close friends knew, though, that Morgan's parents were in desperate circumstances. A mining accident had completely disabled his father; his mother had to provide full-time care of her husband.J.P. may have mustered out of the corps because he was considering going home to help. His steady pay as a sergeant, however, had won out and he reenlisted the next day.

Manila's own relationship with the corps changed soon thereafter, when he received a temporary citation for the Congressional Medal of Honor on May 7, signed by Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He did not know much about it--his CO would have told him it was America's highest award for valor--nor did he appreciate how it would change his life. Two weeks later, on the parade ground of the Seventh Marines' camp, the regiment held an awards ceremony attended by General Vandegrift, the former CO of the 1st Marine Division, as well as the new CO, General Rupertus. The month of May heralded the onset of winter in the Southern Hemisphere and it grew quite chilly. Still without their Class A Marine Corps uniforms, the men wore the rough wool Eisenhower jackets with their 1st Marine Division patch sewn on the shoulder.

Sergeant John Basilone's years of service had made the forms and conventions of parades, reviews, and inspections familiar. This time, however, he stood not with his platoon but with a small group who were to receive important decorations. Manila knew most of the guys. Mitchell Paige, who had been a sergeant in charge of a machine-gun squad on the Canal, had been in the corps longer than John and they knew each other well. Paige was also about to receive the Medal of Honor for his actions up near the Matanikau River. Colonel Puller strode up and everyone snapped to attention and saluted. Chesty looked at Mitch and said, "Sergeant Paige, you're senior here, oh yes, now you're a looie." Paige had been promoted to second lieutenant before leaving on the Canal and his officer bars were on his collar. With a smile, Chesty said, "You'll always be a sergeant to me. You know the backbone of the Corps is the noncommissioned officer." Turning to John, he said, "Sergeant Basilone, you'll march next to Paige;" then he lined up the others.
¹⁵

When the men of the Seventh Regiment were assembled, Lieutenant Colonel Puller led John, Mitchell Paige, and a handful of others out across the field, followed by the Stars and Stripes and the guidon of the Marine Corps. Chesty, striding along with his oddly shaped chest out, had received a Gold Star in lieu of his third Navy Cross. He was proud that so many of his men in the 1/7 were now being recognized. Billie Joe Crumpton was decorated with the Navy Cross. Cecil Evans had a Silver Star pinned on his breast.
¹⁶
J. P. Morgan and others also received Silver Stars, although not necessarily for the same battle as Basilone.

At the ceremony, Lieutenant Mitchell Paige received the Medal of Honor first.
¹⁷
Vandegrift read the citation for Platoon Sergeant John Basilone "for extraordinary heroism . . . above and beyond the call of duty," then hung the medal around his neck. Vandegrift told John it was a "great pleasure to deliver the medal" to him in the name of the president of the United States of America.
¹⁸

Official Marine Corps reporters and photographers roamed at will, capturing the moment.
¹⁹
They lined up the four winners of the Medal of Honor from Guadalcanal--Paige and Basilone standing next to General Archer Vandegrift and Colonel Mike Edson--for a photo entitled "Medal of Honor Men."
^s
Edson didn't have his medal with him, so he borrowed a ribbon from Paige. The photographers took a picture of the men shaking hands. They staged a photo of the medal being hung around Manila's neck, this time placing the camera at ground level, looking up between the outstretched arms. They took a portrait of Basilone, looking serious, with the blue and white ribbon around his neck.

Back with his platoon, though, Manila loosened up. While the cameramen snapped photos, the reporters asked questions and got their facts right. They read the citations, too. Everybody had to give their hometown addresses. The reporter who wrote a piece about Private Cecil Evans's Silver Star got good quotes from Basilone, who was only too happy to attest to his friend's courage under fire. "What a guy Evans is. He's only nineteen, has curly hair, and runs around barefoot all the time. We call him Peck's Bad Boy."
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To another reporter, John called Dog Company "the best damn company in the world."
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The reporter quickly realized the "facts bear him out," for the company "lays claim to being the most decorated company." Along with John's medal, Dog Company had three Navy Crosses, four Silver Stars, and eleven Letters of Commendation. All the Navy Crosses went to privates first class like Crumpton. Sergeant J. P. Morgan got a Letter of Commendation from Admiral William Halsey. Captain Rodgers, the CO of Dog Company, received a Silver Star. The 1/7 had a commendation from General Vandegrift: their division had earned a Presidential Unit Citation.

At the reporter's behest, all the men of John's platoon gathered around a .30-caliber Browning water-cooled machine gun. John displayed his medal, Billie Joe Crumpton showed his Navy Cross, and Cecil Evans displayed his Silver Star.
²²
John's medal sat in an oblong box. From a powder blue ribbon with white stars hung a large star-shaped medallion. Inset into the medallion was a strange image: a woman with a shield shoving a guy holding some snakes. All the other guys gawked on cue and the camera flashed.

Before the ceremony ended on May 17, Colonel Chesty Puller saluted Basilone. Of all the hoopla on this day, looking the old warrior in the eye and snapping his fingertips to the edge of his brow meant the most to Manila.
²³

THE SHAKEDOWN CRUISE OF MICHEEL'S NEW CARRIER
, YORKTOWN
, GOT OFF TO A hilarious start. The tugs pushed the great ship away from the dock on the morning of May 21 with all of the crew assembled on the flight deck. The bugler began to sound the signals relating to the ritual when an officer grabbed the microphone suddenly and yelled, "You dopey no good sonofabitch! What in the hell did you do that for?"
²⁴
He continued to berate the bugler at some length as everyone on the flight deck began to laugh. The officer doing the yelling was Captain J. J. Clark, the commander of
Yorktown
. This display proved the word already going around about "Jocko" Clark: he demanded perfection and woe to any sailor who failed to provide it.

Yorktown
steamed south for Trinidad later that day, escorted by two destroyers and a submarine because the German U-boats had not been eliminated from the waters off the eastern seaboard. Trouble started a few days later, when Captain Clark came down to the flight deck hopping mad. Unlike most senior navy officers, Jocko Clark had logged a fair amount of time on a carrier flight deck during his early career. He believed his flight deck had not been "spotted" correctly; in other words, his planes had not been positioned efficiently, and he began shouting instructions to the plane pushers on how he wanted his planes spotted.
²⁵
For the next few days, the flight deck officers had their hands full dealing with the captain's demands.
Yorktown
had two small tractors for use in pushing planes--a novel idea--and these were used to check Clark's flight deck spot against their own.

Since all of the planes were spotted on the stern and took off toward the bow, the deck spot determined the order in which the different types of planes (fighter, bomber, or torpedo) took off. Two other factors mattered, though. Each foot of space saved when creating "the spot," and each minute of time saved while "respotting the deck," made
Yorktown
a more efficient and more deadly weapon in battle. A few days later, Clark came roaring down from his perch on the island to tell the boys on the flight deck how to do it again. His rounded shoulders and pronounced paunch belied the energy with which he moved. When the captain had it the way he wanted it, he turned to one of his flight deck officers, Lieutenant Henry "Hank" Warren, and said, "Mr. Warren, that's the way to spot a flight deck."

"Joe," Hank Warren asked his assistant, "how much time did that take?"

"About two minutes longer than you, Hank," said Joe.

"How much space did we save?" Hank asked.

The captain's spot, Joe replied, was "eight feet further toward the bow than you were," whereupon Lieutenant Hank Warren faced Jocko Clark. "Captain, I promise never to come up there and try to run that bridge if you'll leave me alone and let me spot the flight deck."
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After a tense moment, the captain's thick, wide lips broke into a smile. "I promise." The story of Hank getting Jocko to back down was just the kind of juicy story that made it all the way around the ship, even to Mike, who hadn't flown for a few days and wouldn't step into the cockpit for a few more.

Flight operations began in earnest after the ship entered the Gulf of Paria, a large body of water between the island of Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela. The two entrances to the gulf had been blocked with submarine nets, allowing U.S. carriers--and
Yorktown
was one of several new Essex-class carriers preparing for its first combat tour--to focus on testing all of their systems and personnel to the utmost. Mike's flight on May 28, his first in three weeks, was supposed to mark the start of his squadron's final preparation for a combat tour. Instead, it was the beginning of the end of Bombing Six.

The SB2Cs, in Mike's words, "turned out to be a bust. We couldn't get them off the deck. We'd get up into the launch position, the wings would go down, but they wouldn't lock. So we'd have to taxi the plane off . . . to the side of the ship." The next one up might be able to lock its wings, but the plane after that and the one after that couldn't, so the whole launch sequence disintegrated into a mess, as the plane pushers and elevators worked to get the busted ones out of the way. "Most of them never got their wings locked." The ability to fold its wings had been one of the Helldiver's advantages over the Dauntless because it allowed for a tighter deck spot. The sight of four or five men climbing on each wing to weigh it down enough for it to lock, however, failed to inspire confidence.
²⁷

After a few days of fighting the technology, Captain Clark ordered the Helldivers off his ship. Ray Davis gave Mike the job of going ashore with the faulty planes and seeing what could be done. At an airstrip on Trinidad, Mike and his team spent a week tinkering with the wing-locking mechanism until it worked smoothly. One of the tests they devised involved parking three planes near the SB2Cs and using the propellers to simulate a strong wind. It worked. Even as they were buffeted, the wings snapped down. So they flew back out to the ship, churning through the gulf. The "first time we get in launch position, the wings won't lock down."