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

by Jim McEnery

  It doesn’t take long in the tropical heat for dead bodies to start rotting and stinking like hell, so we were trying to put some distance between ourselves and those dead Nips when a sudden explosion splattered us with mud and sent us ducking for cover.

  “What the hell was that?” yelled PFC Sterling Mace, swinging his BAR in the direction of the blast.

  “Sounded like a grenade or maybe a booby trap,” I said.

  “Hey, we got a man hit over here!” somebody else hollered. “Corpsman! We need a corpsman!”

  As Mace and I pushed the brush aside and moved together toward the sound, we saw PFC Seymour Levy squatting on his knees a few yards away. He was holding the lower part of his face with both hands, and I saw blood running down his neck. He was mumbling something I couldn’t hear, and he seemed to be in shock.

  “What happened to you, Sy?” Mace said, but Levy didn’t respond.

  A corpsman came up and covered Levy’s chin and lower jaw with a field dressing. “There’s shrapnel in there,” he said. “Looks like several fragments. He needs to go to an aid station, maybe a hospital ship.”

  While we waited for a stretcher, Levy was barely conscious and still losing quite a bit of blood, but the shrapnel had missed his jugular vein—although not by much.

  “Hey, cheer up, man,” Mace said, trying to console his friend. “That looks like a million-dollar wound to me. I think you just got yourself a ticket home.”

  After Levy was evacuated, the platoon moved on. We were checking our route carefully now in case the Nips had left some more surprises for us, but I couldn’t help noticing that Mace seemed gloomy and downcast.

  “You worried about your pal?” I asked, moving up beside him.

  “Nah, he’ll be okay, I guess,” he said. “Actually I kind of envy him, but I’m gonna miss him, too, Mac. I mean, Christ, I may never see the crazy so-and-so again.”

  I sort of shrugged. “Yeah, well, probably not till after the war, anyway.”

  For the record, Mace and I were both wrong.

  AFTER JUST TEN DAYS on Peleliu, the surviving troops of the First Marines were ordered evacuated and sent back to Pavuvu to recuperate and regroup. The Seventh Marines had also taken a lot of casualties while eliminating a bunch of heavily fortified Jap bunkers down at the south end of the island. (PFC Arthur J. Jackson, a nineteen-year-old BAR man with 1/7, would earn another Medal of Honor for wiping out an even dozen enemy pillboxes.)

  By now it was pretty obvious that the Fifth Marines’ turn on the hot seat was coming up. We weren’t exactly overjoyed about it, but we knew it was only fair. In the fighting so far, only thirty-seven members of K/3/5 had been killed or wounded in action while K/3/1, our sister company in the First Marines, had lost about 175 men.

  This time, though, because of the heavy casualties the division had already suffered, the brass decided to try a different approach from the one that had bloodied Puller’s regiment so badly.

  And this time, the Fifth Marines would be spearheading the attack.

  “We’re going to the north end of the island and circle behind the main Jap defenses so we can hit them from a new direction,” Captain Haldane told us. “Trucks are coming to pick us up and take us to the main road along the coast, but we’ll have to hoof it from there through some pretty tough territory. The Marines who’ve already traveled that route have nicknamed it Sniper Alley, so be careful, and good luck.”

  When I looked at our maps, I could see what Ack-Ack was talking about. The narrow West Road passed within 300 yards or so of the heart of Japanese fortifications—an area called the Pocket—carved into the maze of ridges identified on our maps as the Umurbrogol Plateau.

  For a distance of more than half a mile, the ocean was only a few yards to the left of the road, and the first of the ridges veered up sharply just a few yards to the right. This made it a perfect killing ground for snipers. Infantry passing that way was caught, literally, between the devil and the deep blue sea. There was almost no place to take cover.

  From all indications, it was going to be a more dangerous half-mile than the one across the airport had been.

  THE MOST SURPRISING THING that happened while we were on Purple Beach was that Seymour Levy suddenly showed up back in camp. His wounded chin was wrapped up in white bandages and he still had a little problem eating and talking. He looked tired and a little pale, but he seemed to feel okay.

  Sterling Mace could hardly believe his eyes when the platoon came back from a patrol and he saw Levy sitting there waiting for him.

  “What the heck’re you doing here?” Mace said. “I thought you’d be halfway to the States by now.”

  “Aw, I sneaked off the hospital ship and bummed a ride to the beach on a ferry,” Levy mumbled through the bandages. “I just wanted to be back with the company. I missed you guys. Besides, it’s where I belong.”

  Mace just grinned and shook his head. “Jeez, Sy, you must be nuts. You know that?”

  It was hard to tell because of the bandages, but I think Levy grinned back. Then, just like old times, he started reciting a Rudyard Kipling poem.

  “It was Din! Din! Din! You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been . . .”

  THE EVENING BEFORE we moved out, my friend John Teskevich and I were lying on our backs beside the foxhole we were sharing and bullshitting about all the stuff we’d been through together in the past and what might happen after we finished up at Peleliu. We both agreed we’d seen some tough times but it could’ve been worse.

  “This one hasn’t been all that rough so far,” John said, “and once we get done here, we’ll be heading home. My God, Mac, even the Marine Corps can’t put it off forever. They’ll have to send us stateside after this crapshoot.”

  “Damn straight,” I said. “They won’t have any choice. What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get back to Pennsylvania?”

  He laughed. “Call up my friends. Drink some beer. Hustle some broads. Maybe get in a fistfight or two. It sure as hell won’t be working in no damn coal mine, I can tell you that.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” I said, “but in a week or two, this whole mess could be over, and we could actually be on our way.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “time’s runnin’ low for my old man to collect that twenty grand in GI insurance, and my luck’s been holdin’ pretty good lately. If he gets it, the Japs’re gonna have to hurry.”

  ON THE MORNING of September 25 (D-plus-10), K/3/5 and the rest of the Third Battalion loaded up our gear and got ready to move out. Our semi-holiday on Purple Beach was over. It was the last break we’d get at Peleliu.

  As we hiked toward a rendezvous point on the East Road where some trucks were supposed to pick us up, we passed a column of men from the First Marines as they filed slowly down the other side of the road on their way to Purple Beach to board boats and begin their trip to Pavuvu.

  They looked so pitiful that I couldn’t help stopping for a minute to watch them. Their uniforms were torn, filthy, and bloodstained in many cases, and their faces were blank and hollow-eyed. They shambled along like walking dead men.

  “Man, look at those guys,” said Lieutenant Bauerschmidt, pausing beside me and shaking his head. “You can tell they’ve been through hell.”

  “Yeah, I’d been kind of envying the First Marines because they were getting relieved and we weren’t,” I told the lieutenant. “But now that I see the poor devils, I sure as hell don’t envy ’em anymore.”

  “Well, don’t envy us, either,” Bauerschmidt said. “In a few days, we may be in the same shape. The Nips are still in firm control of those ridges where the First got beaten bloody. Now it’s our job to come at ’em from a different direction and dislodge ’em, but it’s still the same Japs in the same kind of ridges.”

  A few minutes later, we climbed onto the trucks and headed toward the West Road. On the way, we passed just north of the airfield and saw it for the first time since we’d crossed it under fire on D-plus-1. It had chang
ed so much we could hardly tell it was the same place. All the wreckage from Jap planes and other debris had been hauled away, and all the shell craters had been filled. Crews of Seabees and service personnel in clean uniforms were calmly going about their business, using heavy equipment to grade and repair the runways.

  Since the field was no longer within range of enemy mortars and artillery, our own planes would soon be flying missions from it against the Japs in the ridges. That was the most encouraging part of all.

  I had a feeling we were going to need all the help we could get.

  OUR CONVOY OF trucks stopped a short distance up the West Road, where the drivers told us to get off, that this was as far as they went. A bunch of Army troops—the first ones we’d seen on Peleliu—were congregated along the side of the road where we stopped. They were with the 321st Regiment of the 81st Infantry Division, and I asked a couple of them if they were going north with us.

  “No, man,” they said, “they told us we’re relieving the First Marines, and we’re staying right here in this area.” They’d obviously heard the same scuttlebutt about Sniper Alley that we’d heard.

  “Looks like we’ll be walkin’ the rest of the way from here by ourselves,” said John Teskevich as he and I sat down beside the road to wait for the order to move out. “That don’t sound like such a hot idea to me.”

  “Bauerschmidt says they’re sending up some tanks to go with us,” I told him, repeating something the lieutenant had just told me. “He says maybe we can hitch a ride on one of them, but that doesn’t strike me as such a great idea, either.”

  “Beats walkin’, though,” John said.

  “Maybe so,” I said, “but it makes you a good target, too, sittin’ there on the deck of a tank.”

  It was past noon when a platoon of Shermans showed up, and we got the order to move out. No one suggested that we bum a ride on any of the tanks, so we grabbed our weapons and started plodding up the road, which seemed to get narrower the farther we went. About a stone’s throw to our left was a rocky beach and the ocean, and roughly the same distance to our right was the first of the ridges.

  Some low undergrowth off to the right was about the only available cover, but it also could be the hiding place for a Jap sniper if one was nervy enough to set up that close.

  We could hear the chatter of Jap machine guns in the distance, and occasionally we’d see a stream of their blue tracer bullets passing high above our heads and bound for some target in the ridges. There were also sporadic rifle shots that sounded a lot nearer.

  Sure enough, it didn’t take the Japs long to start picking our guys off. Before you could even hear the shot, you’d see somebody go stiff and fall. We almost never spotted a target to shoot back at, but some Marines would always fire a few rounds in the direction they thought the shot had come from.

  Despite my misgivings about riding on a tank, we were sweating buckets by now, and I felt kind of relieved when Lieutenant Bauerschmidt waved one of the Shermans over and motioned to a group of us to climb aboard.

  Teskevich and I climbed up on the platform to the left of the turret, putting it between us and those Jap-infested ridges. PFCs Jesse Googe, Sterling Mace, and Seymour Levy got aboard, too. Then Bauerschmidt signaled the tank driver to go on, and the big Sherman started to roll again.

  We hadn’t gone more than about thirty yards when I heard a shot that sounded like it came from ahead of us and to the right. I ducked instinctively and glanced at John, who was sitting about a foot from me toward the front of the tank. I thought for a second he was ducking, too. Then I realized he was doubled up with pain and clutching his belly. Blood was running out between his fingers.

  Then I heard a second shot, and I heard Googe let out a howl from the other side of the tank. “God, I’m hit! I’m hit!”

  “Stop the tank!” I yelled at the driver. “We got two men wounded!”

  I jerked my head around to look toward Mace and Levy and asked them where Googe was hit.

  “He got it in the arm,” Mace said.

  “Well come here and help me with Teskevich,” I told him. “He’s hurt bad. Corpsman! We need a corpsman!”

  A medic showed up just as we got Teskevich to the ground. He took one look at John and shook his head.

  “The slug went all through his intestines,” he said. “Nothing much I can do.”

  “Then see about Googe,” I said. “I think his arm’s busted.”

  When I looked back at John, his face was gray and the front of his dungarees was solid blood. The worst part of it was that he was still conscious and looking me straight in the eye. I’ll never forget how he looked at me and how he kind of smiled.

  “Guess I’m gonna make my old man rich, after all, Mac,” he whispered.

  I tried to think of something to say to him, but I couldn’t. I was afraid I’d bawl if I tried.

  I wondered if I ought to inject him with one of the needle-equipped tubes of morphine we all carried, but he didn’t seem to be in that much pain, so I couldn’t see the point.

  I stayed with John beside the road till he died a few minutes later. Mace and Levy stayed, too. Quite a few of the guys from K Company turned to look at us as they passed by, then they shook their heads and glanced quickly away.

  Teskevich and I had been in the same company since the fall of 1941. It was damn hard to see somebody you’d spent so much time with get his guts blown out a few inches away from you. I remembered how we’d talked just the night before about going home, but after a few seconds I had to force the memory out of my mind.

  John’s eyes were still open when I covered him with a poncho, and he still looked like he was smiling a little.

  “We better haul ass,” I told Mace and Levy. “We got a long way to go.”

  I didn’t look at them when I said it. I couldn’t—I was too choked up. The three of us just stood up and started walking north again.

  THERE WERE BIGGER, longer, costlier, and much better known land battles than Peleliu during the Pacific war. Guadalcanal lasted six times as long. Okinawa claimed twenty times as many lives. Iwo Jima involved thousands more American troops.

  But Peleliu was uniquely horrible. In terms of savage fighting, agonizing battlefield conditions, impossible terrain and logistics, physical misery, and psychological heartbreak, it was in a class by itself.

  It was thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other when the last traces of humanity have been wrung out of them and all that’s left is the blind urge to kill.

  And as we found out afterward, the saddest, most sickening thing about Peleliu for the men who lived through it is that it never should’ve happened at all. Admiral Halsey was outspokenly against invading Peleliu. He knew attacks by the U.S. Navy had left the Jap garrison with only a handful of flyable planes and no offensive capability.

  Even Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Navy’s commander in chief in the Pacific, who initially approved the Peleliu operation, changed his mind and argued against it when he met at Hawaii with President Roosevelt and Dugout Doug MacArthur. But when MacArthur demanded that Peleliu and its airfield be taken to protect his flank when his Army troops invaded the Philippines, Roosevelt gave in and okayed it.

  It was only later that almost all the big brass in Washington realized Peleliu could’ve easily been bypassed and its garrison left to wither.

  For me—and every other living survivor of Peleliu—it hurts to know the truth. But as we know now, from a strategic standpoint, the battle was totally pointless. After the war, former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen, who served in the Pacific as assistant chief of staff to Admiral Halsey and later as a special assistant to President Dwight Eisenhower, called it “a terrible mistake” and “a needless tragedy.”

  And it hurts even worse when I think of the 1,252 members of the First Marine Division who were killed in action on Peleliu and the other 5,274 Marines who left their blood there.

  THE WORST NIGHTMARE
YET

  WITHOUT A DOUBT, the period between late September and mid-October 1944 was the worst time of my life. It was worse than the weeks we spent under siege at Guadalcanal. It was worse than the Green Hell of Cape Gloucester. It was the nastiest, ugliest, slimiest, nonstop fighting that a human being can experience.

  Every day during that stretch was basically the same nightmare all over again. We attacked the underground Jap strongholds in the Umurbrogol Pocket and slaughtered their occupants by every means available. We incinerated them with flamethrowers. We blasted them to bits with artillery rounds fired directly into their caves. We poured grenades by the hundreds into their bunkers and pillboxes. Our planes seared them with napalm from the air. We called in bulldozers and demolition squads armed with TNT to bury them alive.

  The brass at First Marine Division headquarters called it “blowtorch and corkscrew” tactics. I guess that’s as good a description as any.

  And, of course, we shot them and bayoneted them and cut their throats and strangled them with our bare hands when they came at us as infiltrators in the night. We gouged their eyes out and pounded their skulls to mush with rocks. We jerked them up and threw them off cliffs like screaming sacks of shit.

  And still they fought on. Our intelligence estimated total enemy strength on Peleliu at 10,900 troops. When Jap resistance finally ended, only thirty of their soldiers came out to surrender. That was how hard they fought.

  Because the First Marines had been evacuated, and the Seventh Marines were depleted from heavy losses, the main burden of digging, burning, and blasting the Japs out of their caves was now squarely on the shoulders of the Fifth Marines.

  Our turn in the cauldron had come. Beginning when we ran the gauntlet up Sniper Alley, it would continue without letup for seventeen straight days. Every one of those days was horribly the same. We were always going uphill, always under a crossfire from Japs we couldn’t see in mutually supporting caves and bunkers above us. Always inching our way up some naked, rocky cliff with Japs shooting at us from distances ranging from a quarter-mile to a few yards.