The Pacific (35 page)

ON JULY 1, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS EUGENE SLEDGE LEFT MOBILE ON A TRAIN TO Atlanta, Georgia, and reported to the commanding officer, Marine Detachment, Navy Training Unit, at the Georgia School of Technology.
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Eugene's long wait had at last ended and his enthusiasm knew no bounds. The graceful arches of the brick and stone buildings on the campus of Georgia Tech made an impression. Students filled the walks and hallways even in high summer, as Tech had adopted a three-semester schedule to speed students through their courses and thus ease the nation's manpower shortage.
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Lieutenant Holmes, the commanding officer of the marine detachment, informed Sledge that he was a private, not a private first class, and assigned him to Harrison Dorm. A modern brick building on the southeastern edge of campus and near the Navy Armory, Harrison appealed to him because it housed only marines.
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Eugene liked being issued "navy bedding," with which to make up his bunk, and being measured for his uniform. The first rumors he heard about his course work, however, made him wonder if he would have to ask his father to call his friend at the Marine Corps and "cuss him out." Eugene had not come to Tech to study engineering.

The next day, Eugene came close to being kicked out of the V-12 program. The doctor examining him determined that he was underweight. Private Sledge insisted he had just been ill and he would soon regain the weight. The doc passed him. Pleased with his adroit handling of the problem, Eugene began eating more. He wanted to measure up. "Don't let anyone tell you that the Marine Corps has lowered its requirements," he wrote his mother. "If you look at the doc like you aren't feeling well, out you go." The prospect of putting on the uniform of "the best outfit in the world" inspired him to have stationery printed with a Marine Corps logo above his name and to write his friend Sid Phillips.

The demands of service, however, lagged somewhat. The officers in charge of the Navy ROTC Armory plainly had their hands full with Sledge's class, the first class of students for the V-12 program. They had to order the lives of almost a thousand students from the navy, as well as about three hundred marines, and fit them in with the traditional ROTC, or Reserve Officers Training Program. Putting all of these together in the midst of a crowded campus took time.

After a week, the semester began. Reveille awakened the students at 0545. They fell out for calisthenics, led by a navy chief petty officer; then their routine became like that of college students attending Georgia Tech. The steam whistle signaled the class periods every hour from seven fifty- five a.m. to four fifty- five p.m. The V-12 program assigned its students courses in physics and other sciences. Sledge complained about having to take physics and biology, though he liked the economics class on his schedule. After class, they held drill on their parade ground, Rose Bowl Field, on the opposite corner of campus from his dorm. Curfew on military time began at 1930 during the week and the lights went out in Harrison Dorm at 2330.

Attending college in civilian clothes irritated Sledge. He had worn a uniform at Marion Military Institute. Eugene fretted about the arrival of his Marine Corps uniform in part because he and his friends were occasionally asked why they had not signed up to fight. Such questions set him off like a firecracker. Anyone who asked found out in no uncertain terms that Eugene regarded men who wanted to stay out of the war as "yellow." A uniform would solve the problem. As he put it in a letter to his mother, "I'm tired of acting like a marine and dressing like a civilian."

Eugene was surprised and even a bit disappointed at the amount of liberty he enjoyed. Putting it to good use, he put on his sport coat and went walking in downtown Atlanta. Although he found it cold, he liked the city. Its sedate pace and social order had not been disturbed by hordes of workers, like Mobile, where they filled the streets, shops, and restaurants. He found a place that offered Hershey bars for sale--not many shops did--and visited it most every day.

Gene's classmates soon came up with a plan to escape the regimentation of the V-12 program. On the weekends, they pooled their money to rent a hotel room, where they threw a big party and got gloriously drunk and perhaps romantically entangled. Eugene skipped these affairs. He read a great deal, munching on homemade chocolate or one of the other treats his mother sent him every few days. He also wrote his parents every few days. As usual for a man of eighteen years, Sledge had an easier time writing his mother his true feelings than speaking to his father directly, so he addressed them to her. She responded in kind. Since she had also purchased him a subscription to the Mobile newspaper, which he read avidly, they carried on a conversation about their respective lives and that of their country. Most of Eugene's letters also contained requests of some kind, usually for treats and frequently for items he could not find or not afford: a set of clean hand towels, or to have his film rolls developed.

He loved everything about being a marine and wanted more of it. He enjoyed drilling after class, requesting additional assignments, and pushing himself to excel. Although not "one of the boys," Eugene was adept at listening to the others, particularly those in authority, and picking up some of the habits and customs of "salty" marines. The lore of the corps fascinated him. He sought out stories about his corps' glorious defense of Wake Island. He watched the documentary about the Battle of Midway shot by the famed Hollywood director John Ford. Ford's cameramen had been located on Midway when the attack had come.

Ford's cameras caught marines in pillboxes firing .50-caliber machine guns at enemy planes zooming overhead. The explosions of the bombs and the destruction they wrought appeared in full color, as the narrator told of the enemy bombs that had destroyed the hospital and chapel deliberately. Other cameras had been aboard the carriers. The navy pilots, dressed in khaki uniforms with yellow life jackets and cloth helmets, smiled at the audience. The narrator pointed out the "seven meatballs," or imperial battle flags, adorning Jimmy Thach's plane. The film introduced the audience to the throaty buzz of a Dauntless launching off the end of a flight deck, its red dive flaps slightly extended, and the high whine of an enemy plane falling out of the sky. Building to a grand conclusion, the camera panned through the black smoke on Midway, first finding parts of enemy planes littering the airfield. The soundtrack gave way to "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," the choir singing "let Freedom ring," until Old Glory appeared high above the smoke. The choir let the last word ring: "Amen."

Pride in the corps ran rampant through the marines of Harrison Dorm. When the instruction failed to satisfy, though, Eugene went looking for Civil War sites. He took a friend to a battlefield at Stone Mountain. Another weekend, Eugene visited the Atlanta Cyclorama, a mixture of art and music designed to transport visitors back to July 22, 1864, an eventful day in the Battle of Atlanta. He loved it.

A picture from his older brother, though, was all that it took to ruin his V-12 program. Edward sent him a photo of himself with the tank he commanded. It reminded Eugene that Edward was in the war and he was not. It reminded Eugene of the promise his parents had extracted from him. Dr. and Mrs. Sledge were plainly worried by the thinly veiled denunciations of the V-12 program they began to find in their youngest son's letters. When pressed by his parents, he admitted he "had a wonderful opportunity," but he insisted, "I am a Marine now, it's still pretty irksome to be sitting in school. All of us feel the same. So don't get all upset. Every Marine here will be glad when he gets to P.I. [Parris Island], but until then, we are doing what's been assigned us."

BASILONE COULD NOT KEEP THE NEWS OF THE EXCITEMENT BREWING IN RARITAN, New Jersey, to himself. He would have known something was amiss when photographers staged some more photos. One required him to put on his dirty dungarees and his helmet. While he stood pointing off camera toward nothing, the new CO of the 1st Division, General Rupertus, and his aide, both clad in new uniforms, coolly observed. Eventually Manila would have been told that the big splash his story had made back home had attracted the attention of the U.S. Treasury Department. The Treasury raised money to fund the war effort by selling war bonds. In order to get people to purchase bonds, the department had begun to hold war bond rallies with famous people. The Hollywood stars attracted large audiences, but they needed some service personnel as well. Platoon Sergeant John Basilone would join them for a series of rallies known as a War Bond Loan Drive.

The orders came through on July 22, 1943, ordering him to Brisbane for shipment stateside.
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With time for one last bash, Manila could not wait for the liberty bus. He started drinking at the slop chute on base. With a load of beer, John started clowning around, putting his cap on sideways and pretending he was Napoleon.
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His friend Richard gave him a hand getting his tie on straight so that he could make it past the guards at the gate and into town. His friends in Charlie and Dog companies wanted to do something for him, so they applied for a furlough for him. They also chipped in to buy him a watch. The donations totaled the princely sum of $200--much of that would have come from the poker winnings of his buddy J. P. Morgan. Time ran out before they could get the watch, so J.P. gave him the money and told him to buy himself one stateside. Manila departed from Brisbane, Queensland, on July 25. To his great luck, his buddy Private First Class Stephen Helstowski, who had served in his platoon before being evacuated from Guadalcanal, joined him on the journey.
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SHIFTY'S LIFE AS A GUERRILLA COULD NOT HAVE STARTED BETTER. COLONEL McClish promoted him to deputy chief of staff and made him the operations officer for the 110th Division. Major Shofner traveled throughout the division area, encompassing four provinces in northern Mindanao. By boats known as bancas, in canoes, on horseback, in a car whose engine burned alcohol, he met the leaders of the four understrength regiments. A party, fiesta, or dance required his attendance most every day. The Filipino people and an array of wealthy plantation owners supplied the cadre of U.S. military men with shelter, information, and a fabulous abundance of food. Shifty described the dishes of each meal in glowing detail in his diary.

"In all provinces except Davao," Shofner noted during his inspections, "the Japanese are compelled to stay in a small fortified area surrounded by our forces." While the enemy forces numbered above ten thousand in Davao, Shifty's area of operations held less than one thousand. Unlike Shofner's men, though, the IJA were well trained, disciplined, and well armed. The five thousand farmers and villagers who made up the four regiments of the 110th Division had hidden two thousand small-caliber weapons, most in poor condition. While the guerrillas harassed the enemy garrisons in the major cities, they focused on maintaining peace and order in the areas under their control.

Becoming a successful guerrilla leader, he realized, was not going to be easy. "There are a thousand obstacles to every task." He saw great potential. His division controlled four landing fields, two large docks, and great swaths of coastline. The division's seven launches and many sailing bancas plied the waters throughout the Mindanao Sea and the Agusan River, the largest river on the island. Most of the road network had been opened to its one diesel truck and four alcohol trucks. One of the region's lakes, Shifty thought, would make a perfect seaplane base.

Shifty's friends Hawkins and Dobervich, and the other members of the escape team, had also been promoted. Their assignments placed them in distant villages, but they saw one another often. McCoy, Mellnik, and Ed Dyess remained at the headquarters of the Tenth Military District, which commanded Shifty's 110th Division and four other divisions. The district took responsibility for all of Mindanao and a few small islands around it. It fielded about twenty thousand men. With only ten thousand rifles and other small arms, each of its soldiers shared his weapon with the others. The Tenth Military District trained its soldiers for war but more frequently used them as a police force. It printed currency that was accepted throughout the island--it had a favorable exchange rate against the money printed by the occupiers. The officers at the headquarters, and those like Shifty at the division level, presided over marriages or imprisoned criminals instead of leading strikes against enemy troops.

Throughout the summer of 1943, Major Shofner and his cohorts played a game of cat and mouse with the enemy on Mindanao. The emperor's soldiers might cause the Americans to move their headquarters, but the enemy never got close. The locals made sure "their army" had plenty of advance warning. The guerrilla officers built their organization as best they could. They spied on the enemy and provided intelligence reports to Tenth Military Headquarters so that it could be radioed back to Australia.

On August 2, Colonel McClish returned from a visit to the headquarters. He brought with him new shoes, socks, underwear, razor blades, cigarettes, and a small amount of ammunition for their rifles and pistols. He told Shifty and the others that the supplies had been dropped off by a U.S. submarine. The thought of it was thrilling. Next McClish revealed that the submarine had picked up McCoy, Mellnik, and Dyess and taken them to Australia. Before departing for freedom, McCoy and Mellnik had given McClish some general statement about helping Shifty and the others; Captain Ed Dyess had written a letter promising to get them out as well. For Shifty Shofner, it was a moment when he found out who his friends were.

LIEUTENANT HOLMES AND HIS NCOS HANDED OUT USMC UNIFORMS TO THE V-12 students on July 20 and Eugene Sledge was thrilled. His new seabag contained full sets of khaki, dungaree, and dress green uniforms. He liked the look of the khaki and figured it would look even better when he got some starch ironed into it. He asked his lieutenant about the dress blue uniform and was told that while blues would not be issued, a marine could purchase a set. Eugene immediately started looking for a set, setting aside money from his pay for it. Later, he put on his "greens," or formal uniform, and took some pictures for his family.