The Pacific (52 page)

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."
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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.
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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
Tang
picked 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.