Hell in the Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Journey From Guadalcanal to Peleliu

by Jim McEnery

  I thought a lot about that stuff with Mom and Peter and Dad and Peter Jr. on that first night at Guadalcanal. I knew I still had some anger toward my dad bottled up inside me for all the misery he caused Mom, but I felt sad about what happened to him, too.

  I made a pledge to myself that, if I ever had a wife, I’d never treat her the way Mom was treated, and I believe I’ve kept that pledge. If any good came out of me busting Peter with that coffeepot, I guess that was it. Plus it taught me later on to keep strict limits on my own drinking. A beer or two was okay, but I always seemed to have a sixth sense that warned me when to stop.

  The way I figured it, having two drunks in the family was more than enough.

  AFTER I DROPPED OUT of trade school, I wanted to join the Navy. But I was still a few months shy of my seventeenth birthday, and Mom refused to sign for me. I fussed and pleaded, but she wouldn’t change her mind.

  Maybe she really thought I was too young, or maybe she just wanted to keep me around for a while longer to keep Peter in line. Whichever it was, Mom’s refusal turned out to be a lucky break for our whole family. After many months of searching for work, I finally landed a great job as a shipping clerk for a company that manufactured ink pens.

  I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming when they told me the salary was fifteen dollars a week. It was like a miracle. There were plenty of guys twice my age who weren’t making that much, and it was a godsend for me and Mom and my sister. I was so happy about the job that I almost quit thinking about joining the service for a while. But after the fall of 1939, when the war started in Europe, my friend Charlie Smith and I started talking about enlisting again, this time in the Army.

  A private’s pay in the Army was only twenty-one dollars a month, which was just about a third of what I was making at the pen company. But all my food, clothes, and housing would be paid, and I could send part of my paycheck home to Mom every month. Every time I saw Charlie, he brought it up, and the more we talked, the more I wanted to do it.

  Finally, we did.

  LIKE I SAID, I think it was sheer fate that the Army recruiting office was closed the day we went to enlist. I never could figure out why it was closed; it just was. It wasn’t a holiday of any kind, and there was a steady stream of guys trying to join up. I think it happened because I was meant to be a Marine—even if I did have some second thoughts about it later.

  The Marines didn’t give me and Charlie much time to wind up our affairs as civilians before they shipped us off to boot camp. In Europe, World War II had been going on for over a year. Hitler’s troops had marched into Paris and taken over France. Now they were bombing the hell out of London. Everybody in New York was talking about it and wondering when the Nazis were going to invade England. From the way they talked, it could happen any day.

  “You think they’ll send us over to fight with the Limeys?” I asked Charlie.

  He shook his head. “I think we’ll end up in the Pacific,” he said.

  That Charlie! He was some kind of prophet!

  We enlisted on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend in 1940. They gave us the weekend and the holiday off, but they told us to be back Tuesday morning to be sworn in. Right after we took the oath, a sergeant took us to the nearest subway station and we rode over to the Hudson River, where a civilian passenger liner was docked, and we went aboard. As I remember, there were seventeen of us in the group, all from New York or northern New Jersey.

  We were on the ship for three days, heading south in the Atlantic. The weather was perfect the whole time, and so was the way we were treated while we were aboard. Charlie and I had our own private stateroom, and the meals were great. We had the run of the ship just like the civilian passengers. We were allowed to dance and buy drinks and even play the slot machines in the casino. The problem was, none of us had any money.

  I’d never been much for getting up early. In fact, I’d always hated it before, but on that trip, I got up every morning at daybreak to look out at the ocean. Sometimes I saw whales and porpoises playing around. That fascinated me.

  Our pleasure cruise ended when the ship docked at Savannah, Georgia. It was the first time I’d ever set foot in a southern state. Then they put us on a bus and took us to Parris Island, South Carolina, over a new road that had just been built through the biggest swamp I ever saw.

  Unfortunately, though, there was plenty of swamp left, and I think we slogged through every foot of it during the two months we were there.

  It rained just about every day at Parris Island, and there were millions of mosquitoes. I’d never seen such big, bloodthirsty mosquitoes in my life. There was a joke that made the rounds about these two giant mosquitoes who picked up a Marine recruit and looked him over as they got ready to drain his blood.

  “Maybe we should carry this one down to the swamp and save him for later,” one mosquito said.

  “Oh, no,” said the other mosquito. “If we do that, the big ones will take him away from us.”

  ALTHOUGH I BELIEVE I was destined to be a Marine, I didn’t know anything about the Corps and its traditions when I first joined. The first time I heard somebody say “Semper Fidelis,” which is the Marine motto, I thought they said “seventy-five dollars,” and I said, “I’ll take it!” No kidding.

  I got away with that without getting slugged, but I probably shouldn’t have. “Semper Fidelis” is Latin for “Always Faithful.” That’s what Marines are expected to be, and they take it serious. Even when they shorten it to “Semper Fi,” as they usually do, the meaning’s still the same. It’s a beautiful meaning, and it’s no joking matter.

  In fact, hardly anything in boot camp was a joking matter—and if it was, the joke was on you. There were all kinds of rules that had to be followed. Most of us “boots” broke at least a few of them, and when we did, we ended up in deep shit. But the important thing was, we learned to live by rules and not make the same mistakes again.

  Charlie and I were now officially members of the First Recruit Battalion, Platoon 102, and we were about to learn a whole new language. The Marine NCO (noncommissioned officer) in charge of us was called a DI (for drill instructor). We were all a bunch of “boots” or “shitbirds,” depending on the DI’s mood at any given moment. He told us we’d damn well better learn to “listen up” so he didn’t have to repeat an order. After getting our first “chow” (meal), we were each issued a uniform and a “bucket” (a pail containing a toothbrush, razor, soap, etc.). We also received a rifle (or “’03”), and heaven help any boot who ever called it a “gun.”

  Two favorite punishments for not following the rules were duck waddling and the belt line. In duck waddling, you squatted with your rifle held over your head and waddled around the marching platoon until the DI told you to stop. As for the belt line, the platoon lined up in two ranks with their belts in hand, and the boot who was being punished ran between them as fast as he could while they swatted at him with their belts.

  There were other penalties that the DIs dreamed up as they went along. One day a boot passed wind while standing in formation, and the DI made him fall out of ranks, dig a hole with his bayonet in front of the whole platoon, and bury the fart. Once they’d been singled out for this kind of embarrassment, most guys would’ve rather exploded than pass gas while they were in formation.

  One day at the rifle range, Charlie got in a mess of trouble for leaving the firing line with his rifle bolt closed. This was a definite no-no because the only way the rifle was completely safe to carry was with the bolt open. A gunnery sergeant (gunny) grabbed the rifle, jerked the bolt out, and threw it as far as he could down the rifle range. It took Charlie a good half-hour to track it down and clean all the dirt and debris off it.

  To the average boot, stuff like this seemed like nitpicking or just plain meanness, at least at first. But there was a point to having so many rules and penalties. Everybody makes mistakes, but when you repeat a mistake in a combat situation, the penalty can be sudden death—yours
or one of your buddies’. In a lot of cases on Guadalcanal, it was exactly that.

  BOOT CAMP WAS made up of two main parts—drilling and maneuvers. First, we’d march for God knows how many miles with rifles and full field gear. Then we’d crawl on our bellies while some guys fired streams of machine gun bullets a few inches above our heads.

  Taking target practice at the rifle range was also part of our routine, and most of us were really terrible at it. Out of seventy-six men in Platoon 102, we didn’t have a single one who qualified as expert, which was the highest rating. Only three qualified as sharpshooter, the second-highest rating, and only six others qualified at all. Part of the problem was the weather—lots of rain and wind—but even when we came back a second day, we still stunk up the joint.

  I was kind of surprised that I managed to make marksman, the lowest qualifying rating, because I’d never fired anything bigger than a BB gun before joining the Marines.

  ONE GOOD THING about boot camp is that you make some really good friends there. I was luckier than most guys because Charlie was there with me from the start, but another guy that I got to be really good friends with at Parris Island was Remi Balduck from Detroit, Michigan.

  I spotted Remi right off the bat as a guy to watch. There were lots of clowns in boot camp, but Remi wasn’t one of them. He was a year and a half older than me, and he acted a lot more mature than most of the rest of us. He was always careful not to do anything to get himself in trouble with a DI or any other NCO.

  It wasn’t that he was stiff-necked or didn’t have a sense of humor. One day in the barracks, Charlie and I were horsing around, and I’d just busted a pillow wide open over Charlie’s head. Feathers flew everywhere right before a lieutenant walked in for an inspection. Remi was usually pretty quiet, but that day he was laughing so hard at us he had to cover his face and turn the other way. Luckily, the lieutenant didn’t even seem to notice the feathers.

  After we finished boot camp, I was really glad when Remi and I were among just five guys from our recruit platoon assigned to guard duty at the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk, Virginia. Charlie was sent someplace else, but Remi and I pulled a bunch of liberties together at Norfolk. Sometimes we’d go with some other guys, but mostly it was just the two of us. We didn’t do anything all that special, just went to the movies or out to eat or someplace for a couple of beers. I remember one night we went to see Gone With the Wind at the Grand Theatre. I never had much money to spend, but I always had fun with Remi.

  He was one of the neatest, cleanest, soberest guys I ever knew. His uniform buttons were always perfectly buttoned. His boondocker shoes were always shined and properly tied. His bed was always made up just so, and when we were marching, he was never out of step. Everything about him was just plain sharp.

  Remember those dress blue uniforms I told you about earlier? Well, not only did I never own a set of blues in my life, I only wore them one time. Remi was nice enough to let me borrow some blues he’d bought at Norfolk when I went home on leave to Brooklyn.

  Then, God help me, I went to a dance one Saturday night and ended up getting in a fight with a civilian guy who kept spilling drinks on this girl I was dancing with. I decked the guy pretty good, but while I was doing it I ripped a seam out of that beautiful blue tunic of Remi’s.

  I really felt awful about it, so I took it to a tailor shop and got it fixed the best I could before I went back to the base. I don’t think Remi ever noticed anything wrong. At least, he never said anything. But after that I decided one experience with dress blues was enough to last me a lifetime. Remi was the kind of guy who deserved a fancy uniform. I was better off in muddy-green dungarees.

  Remi’s family had come from Belgium originally, and he talked a lot about some of his uncles who’d been heroes fighting the Germans in World War I. I really enjoyed listening to the stories he told about them. I guess maybe heroism ran in Remi’s family. He’d become a hero, too—a big enough hero to have a Navy ship named after him.

  I’ll tell you more about that later.

  MOSTLY, IT WAS good duty at Norfolk, especially compared to what it was at Parris Island. Remi and I spent four hours on duty guarding the Naval Operating Base there and eight hours off when we were on our own. We spent a good bit of our off time sleeping, but the base had once been a summer resort, so there was a lot to do there and plenty of places for swimming, boating, picnicking, and otherwise enjoying the water.

  Navy big shots were always showing up at the motor gate to the base where we manned a guard station. One day, a car pulled up with a Navy commander in the backseat. I went over and saluted him like I was supposed to do, and when he saluted me back, I saw it was the former world heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney.

  Our commanding officer, Captain Saunders, organized a company baseball team, and I was on it. I alternated between playing second base and shortstop. We had a game about once a week against teams from other Army and Navy outfits.

  All kinds of traffic came onto the base, including boxcars loaded with high-explosive ammo. It was clear to anybody on the base that we were sending war matériel to the British and tooling up for war ourselves. Meanwhile, according to the newspapers, the situation in Europe kept getting darker and darker.

  IN JUNE 1941, the good duty at Norfolk came to an end for Remi and me. I was transferred to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, and Remi went somewhere else. Quantico was the home of the legendary Fifth Marines, who’d sailed from there to France in 1917 to become the American unit that was “first to fight” in World War I.

  I was assigned to K Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines—K/3/5. It would be my home for the next two years and six months. On too many occasions to count, it would also come close to being the death of me.

  At Quantico, I was reunited with my Brooklyn buddy Charlie Smith, but Charlie wasn’t in K Company or even in the Third Battalion. He was in the First Battalion, Fifth, along with some other guys from old Platoon 102 at Parris Island. So I didn’t see Charlie all that much, but it was still good to know he was around.

  I hadn’t really had any serious field training in boot camp, but now I started making up for it in a hurry. After a short stay at Quantico, we shipped out for amphibious maneuvers and made dozens of practice landings on beaches at New River, North Carolina. That was where Camp Lejeune would be built later to serve as the home of the First Marine Division, but it was nothing but a swampy wilderness then.

  Sometimes we were the assault troops, and sometimes we were the defenders. In one landing, we hit the beach and stormed the defenders, and I discovered I was running straight at Charlie Smith, who was laughing like a damned hyena.

  After we “killed” each other with our blank ammo, my assault team regrouped and moved inland, where we “attacked and seized” imaginary objectives. We ended the maneuvers with a simulated forced march that was much too real for comfort.

  The landing areas at New River covered over 111,700 acres of shoreline, swamps, snakes, chiggers, and mosquitoes, and I think we covered them all. The biggest timber rattlesnake I ever saw was there.

  Between landings, they sent me back up to Quantico for a few days to learn to fire the Thompson submachine gun. The first tommy gun I was assigned to was a 1928 Navy model, and it was a piece of junk. I had to aim it at the ground to have any hope of hitting the target.

  Later, I was issued an Army model of the same 1928 weapon, and it was terrific. The difference between it and the Navy version was in the bolt, which was heavier in the Army model. It was a million times easier to handle under combat conditions, too. You could drop it in the water or roll it in the sand, then pick it up, and it would fire like nothing had happened.

  I made sharpshooter with that Army model, and knowing how to use a tommy gun to maximum advantage would save my life more than once in the months to come.

  Another good thing that happened when I went back to Quantico was that I met up again with Remi Balduck, my buddy from Parris Island and Norfo
lk. He was working on the same firing range where I was firing the tommy guns, and we had a chance to catch up on old times. But our reunion didn’t last long, and then we shook hands and went our separate ways.

  The following April, I got word that Remi had been shipped to American Samoa with the Seventh Marines, the first of the division’s infantry regiments to reach full strength. As it turned out, those few days at Quantico would be the last time I ever saw him.

  I made private first class before we left New River. I also survived epidemics of scarlet fever and meningitis that broke out among the troops while we were there.

  But K/3/5 was headed for places and problems that would make what we went through at New River look like a Sunday School picnic.

  Places like Guadalcanal.

  IN THAT SUMMER of 1941, the newly created First Marine Division was just taking shape. It really was the first division ever organized in the history of the Marine Corps, and it was only five months old. It was born on February 1, 1941, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until then, throughout 166 years of Corps history, the largest Marine unit had been a regiment.

  Besides the Fifth, there were only two other active regiments in the Corps at this time. One was the Sixth, based on the West Coast and sometimes called the “Hollywood Marines” because of the bit parts they played in some movies. The other was the Fourth, which was based in China and ended up fighting in the Philippines when the war started. Most other Marines were in small units scattered around the world.

  But now the situation was changing fast. One new regiment, the Seventh, was split off from the Fifth, and another one, the First Marines, was activated about that same time. The division’s artillery regiment, the Eleventh, was beefed up with new 105-millimeter field pieces to go with their old 75-millimeter pack howitzers.