For Hideki Tojo, a hard-line expansionist, this must have been a particularly bitter pill to swallow. When Tojo seized the positions of war minister and prime minister, and initiated the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had served as a naval attaché in Washington and was impressed by America’s productive capacity, counseled Tojo that Japan had only six months to win the war before the “sleeping giant” of America woke. Now Yamamoto’s warning had proved prophetic.
At the Imperial Council Chambers in Tokyo, the Japanese leaders agreed that the borders of the empire were overextended and could not be defended. They produced a chart with a heavy black line that passed east of the Shoto islands (including Okinawa), through the Bonins (including Iwo Jima), south to the Marianas and to Truk in the Carolines, down to the Vogelkop Peninsula at the western tip of New Guinea, west to the Timor Sea, and then through Borneo, Singapore, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. The line represented what Tojo designated the “Absolute Imperial Defense Line.”
It was a desperate gamble. Territories outside the line, including Tarawa and the Marshalls, Tojo explained, would be sacrificed. Here Japanese forces would fight a series of delaying actions that would slow the American advance and buy time for the empire to build up its military arsenal, especially its carrier fleet. Possessions inside the line would be held at all costs. Every position, however, regardless of its status, would be defended to the last man.
CHAPTER 18
Baptism by Fire
On January 11, 1944, Carl Matthews and Richard Freeby, the Gold Dust Twins, toted their heavy seabags onto the USS Sheridan and prepared to ship out for points unknown. Had the 23rd Marine Regiment remained at Pendleton, the Gold Dust Twins would have faced a long stint in the brig. In mid-November the two, having been refused leave by the battalion commander, took matters into their own hands and jumped ship, hitchhiking to San Diego, where earlier Matthews had served as a clerk at base headquarters. After inveigling another clerk to give him the key to the office, Matthews typed up furlough papers for himself and Freeby and forged the battalion commander’s signature with an authoritative flourish. Their intention was to make their way to Texas. Without furlough papers, they would be seized at the state line and returned to base under lock and key and thrown in jail. In San Diego the pair split up. While Freeby took a bus home to Quannah, Texas, in the Panhandle, Matthews hitchhiked. Because of the gas shortage, public buses could only go thirty-five miles per hour. Matthews reasoned that if he could catch a ride with a driver who had a heavy foot—people were always willing to pick up a Marine wearing his dress blues—he could get home almost twice as fast.
Matthews spent “twenty-three glorious days” in Hubbard, Texas. He dated, went to church with his family, and even picked up with his old music buddy, Royce Reeves, and his new string band. Mostly, though, he just soaked everything in. Odds were he would never see home again.
Under normal circumstances, when Matthews and Freeby returned to Pendleton, military police would have promptly locked them up. What they discovered, however, was that the brig was full. The very day that Matthews and Freeby fled for Texas, five hundred more men, denied leave, and aware that they would soon be going off to war, went “over the hill.”
The Gold Dust Twins were court-martialed, sentenced to sixty days’ confinement and sixty days’ extra police duty, fined a whopping $136, and had their rank reduced. “Hashmark” Matthews was once again an ordinary private.
Aboard the Sheridan, the two were assigned to clean the officers’ quarters for the duration of the journey. The job was meant to be a punishment—in lieu of the sixty days’ confinement—but the Gold Dust Twins had the unique ability to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Every day, Matthews and Freeby went from the stinky, cluttered enlisted men’s quarters with its cold showers and crude toilets to the cooled officers’ wardroom. There they would sweep the floors, make the beds, and clean the head. The officers attended hours-long meetings, so after performing their duties, the Gold Dust Twins would linger long enough for a hot shower and a shave. They even took the liberty of including their dungarees with the officers’ laundry and were the only enlisted men aboard ship with clean, starched, and pressed uniforms.
Robert Graf was also aboard the Sheridan, and so was Jimmy Haskell. In early 1943, after shacking up with a female acquaintance, Haskell had missed the ship that was leaving Norfolk for sea maneuvers. This time, however, he had used better judgment and resisted the temptation. Bill Jurcsak, another buddy from Ballston Spa, was also aboard.
On the Sheridan, water had to be rationed and the heat was stifling. Even when the Navy crew pulled away the hatch covers, the air failed to circulate. Deep in the ship’s bowels where the saggy beds were stacked five tiers high, it felt like a boiler room. So the three upstate New Yorkers slept on deck, wrapped in green blankets, preferring the occasional downpour to the suffocation of the holds. There, after the lights were extinguished, they admired the constellations that lit up the sky and the calmness of the dark ocean. Graf, ever the romantic, remarked that the green phosphorescence that swirled around the ship reminded him of a pirate’s chest of jewels. But it was Haskell, the biggest scoundrel of the three, who wrote, “On our journey across the vast Pacific Ocean, we usually would be topside. Young as we were, we all remarked what a beautiful scene there was out on the sea. Azure blue skies with high cotton clouds rising miles into the sky. Below us, deep blue water, it was a scene never to be forgotten. I wondered, with all this serene beauty around us, why would there have to be wars?”
Out of earshot of others, the three longtime friends could express their true feelings about war. In the company of other young Marines, war held a bewitching sense of glamour and danger. Occasionally a guy would make a comment about the “fucking crazy Marines” always rushing headlong into battle. It was less a lament than a wisecrack, said with a sense of pride. At night on the ship’s deck, however, Graf, Haskell, and Jurcsak could be scared and uncertain. They could wonder whether they had made the right decision, if perhaps they would have been better off going to college or staying in Ballston Spa and raising a family, or buying a farm and getting an agricultural deferment.
The exercises were over now. Graf had written his letters home, explaining that he would be gone for a while, leaving his loved ones to speculate and fill in the essential details. Mrs. Graf, like the other mothers, worried, and the general vagueness of her son’s letters gave her little comfort.
Mrs. Graf had reason to be concerned. The Marines’ reputation for rushing headlong into battle, while exaggerated, contained an element of truth. It was for their reputed boldness that Robert Graf considered the Marines the best fighting men in the world. The assertion might have contained a touch of recruiter’s hyperbole, but there were few Marines who believed otherwise. There was no question about one thing: the Marines were unmatched in their ability to carry out amphibious invasions. Beginning in the years after World War I, planners, hoping to find a role that would justify the Corps’ existence (Army commanders were claiming that their own troops could take over the responsibilities of the Marines), fashioned a new doctrine of warfare based on the inevitability of a showdown with the Japanese in the Central Pacific.
Graf knew that Marine landings, even under the best of circumstances, were high-risk affairs. War in the Central Pacific offered little room for tactical tricks, deception, or the element of surprise. The Japanese would be dug in and waiting and would see the ships coming. In the abstract, this approach to war might have been a good one, but even General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, one of the country’s leading experts on amphibious warfare, knew that on the islands of the Central Pacific, it was a crapshoot; things could go right, as they had on Guadalcanal, or wrong, seriously wrong, as they had on Tarawa.
As the convoy pushed on and someone on deck broke out into a jolly rendition of “Don’t Fence Me In,” the men did not have to speculate about their destination. “Operation Flintlock” was
no longer a mystery. The twin islands of Roi-Namur in the hundred-island Kwajalein Atoll of the Marshall Islands chain was their objective. The sun-scorched Kwajalein Atoll, 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii, measured seventy miles long and twenty miles across and contained one of the world’s largest landlocked lagoons. Although they were two of the biggest in the chain, Roi and Namur were remarkably small islands. Roi, the larger of the two, rose out of the blue-green ocean, less than three quarters of a mile long—though large enough to accommodate an airfield—and was connected to Namur by a narrow, jungle-choked causeway.
A day out of Maui, someone set up a large mock-up of Roi and Namur on deck. Based on submarine observations and aerial photos, the islands looked well defended. In August 1941, after two years of intensive construction, Kwajalein Atoll, located in the geographic center of the Marshall chain, became a fueling station for the Japanese fleet. In 1942 and 1943, Japan sent in reinforcements to help fortify the Marshalls. However, Allied victories in the summer of 1943 altered those plans. Japan was forced to collapse its defensive perimeter, relegating the Marshalls (and the Gilberts) to delaying outpost status. The 6th Base Force would defend the islands, buying time for large-scale construction projects in the Marianas and the Carolines.
Tactically the picture looked frighteningly similar to Tarawa. The islands were well defended and protected by a coral reef. Guys looked at the maps and photos and swallowed hard. Now the 4th Division was going to get hammered, too.
Lieutenant Roth called it their “baptism by fire.” With his men huddled around the diagrams, he went through every detail of the invasion. If it meant saving one extra life, he and his platoon would sit in front of the mock-up every day until D-Day, until the men saw the beaches, trees, fortifications, drainage tunnels, aircraft hangars, and landing strips in their dreams.
On January, 31, 1944, seventeen days after leaving the California coast, and one day before the invasion, Graf climbed over the side of the Sheridan into a transport boat that carried him to a waiting LST.
Aboard the LST, Graf grabbed a folding cot and took a spot on the deck under a life raft and listened to the far-off thunder of the big Navy guns. Haskell and Jurcsak listened on a combat radio to scratchy bursts of communication from the 25th Marines. By nightfall the 25th had raised the first American flag in the Marshalls on a coconut tree on Ennubirr Island.
That night Graf witnessed a beautiful sunset, unlike anything he had ever seen before. The sun burned intensely red and then plunged into the sea and Graf heard the command, “Darken ship!”
Reveille came early on D-Day—0400 hours—though in reality, few slept, and no one needed a wake-up call. Soon Graf heard the big guns pounding Roi-Namur and saw the sky light up. The still tropical air smelled of exploded shells. Over the last three days American destroyers and planes had pulverized the islands with 2,655 tons of shells. While men whose stomachs or bowels had not rebelled waited in line for their “condemned man’s breakfast” of steak, potatoes, vegetables, eggs, and hot coffee salted by sweat from the cooks’ brows, Graf watched planes take off from a nearby carrier. In the distance he located Roi-Namur by the clouds of thick black smoke billowing into the sky. In the stifling heat he lingered on the deck as long as he could, grateful for the slight breeze.
At 7:00 a.m., three hours before the invasion, Lieutenant Roth ordered his men to load up. The loudspeaker blared instructions. In the fetid dimness belowdecks the amtrac landing vehicles were getting revved up, their powerful engines rumbling and coughing diesel fumes. The large fans worked hard to dissipate the smoke, but still it was enough to make Graf choke. Lieutenant Roth waved him over, and Graf joined the lieutenant and his buddy Dick Crerar in a crowded amtrac. Gunners assumed their positions at the mounted machine guns. Then came the signal. The traffic lights changed from red to amber to green, the bow doors of the LST opened, and the amtracs, scraping against the iron ridges of the ramp, lurched forward.
Bobbing like a cork, the amtrac waited for the signal from the control boat and then made its way to the destroyer escort and the line of departure. Spray flew over the bow, and in no time Graf was wet. At least the water was warm. At least it wasn’t the Chesapeake Bay.
The attack was scheduled for ten that morning, but as the landing hour (H-hour) came and went, the amtracs circled. What the hell’s gone wrong? the guys thought. When a nearby battlewagon fired its fourteen-inch naval guns and the shells tore across the sky with the roar of a freight train, Graf felt the amtrac tremble and every muscle in his body clench tightly. When they saw the shell hit, everyone aboard cheered as if they were at a weekend football game.
At just after 1100 hours, Graf’s amtrac made for the line of departure. When the command vessel sent up a flare, the coxswain gunned the engines. Graf knew that at top speed the amtrac would cover the two miles in fifteen minutes, provided it was not swamped. Only two feet of freeboard remained. Everyone was thinking the same thing: If we take on water, we’ll go down like an anchor.
When Lieutenant Roth yelled, “Fix bayonets!” Graf slipped his bayonet from its scabbard and locked it in. He liked the look of the ten-inch blade shining in the sun and hoped that he would remember how to use it. If a Jap soldier rushed him, would he keep his composure long enough to lunge and then slash his attacker diagonally from shoulder to hipbone?
As planes flew over for bombing and strafing runs, Graf slammed the eight-round clip into the breech of his M1 and touched its cold, deadly steel for reassurance. Then the amtrac’s machine gunner opened up from his turret, spattering bullets across the beach. As the tread of the amtrac hit the beach and dug into the sand, Graf glanced at his watch—February 1, 1200 hours.
He and Crerar followed Roth over the side. Graf rolled, landed on his feet in ankle-deep water. Roth was waving his arm. “Let’s go,” he hollered. “Make room for the next wave. Watch your flanks.” After unloading the first wave, the amtrac backed up and then spun around, avoiding a number of the sixteen-ton amphibious tanks that had flipped over in the violent surf.
Graf and Crerar crawled onto a small sand dune and surveyed the wreckage ahead of them: shattered palm trees, smashed pillboxes and blockhouses, mangled and twisted steel, a potholed airfield, and demolished planes.
Up ahead, through the smoke and dust and reek of cordite, Graf spotted one of his H Company buddies, Trinidad Arrajos. “Arrajos,” he shouted, “what in the hell are you doing out there?” Arrajos was in front of the platoon and was going to get himself killed. “You crazy bastard!” he yelled, and motioned for Arrajos to get back behind the dune. Arrajos was wearing khakis instead of dungarees, and a helmet liner over his head. Then an electric shock shot through Graf’s body. Jap! Son of a bitch, it’s a Jap! Their eyes met for an instant and then Graf dove behind the sand ridge, grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and launched it. The blast spattered sand particles through the air. When he slithered to the top of the dune, he did not see the enemy soldier. Behind him he noticed that the second wave was coming in. Marines fired wildly into the companies that had landed in the first wave until someone got word back to them that they were shooting at their own men.
Carl Matthews realized that he had forgotten to remove his inflatable life vest. As he tried to roll over the side of the amtrac, he activated the CO2 cartridges. The vest blew up like a big balloon and Matthews toppled backward. Corporal Mike Mihalek acted fast, pulling his Ka-Bar knife from its scabbard and puncturing the vest. Matthews could move now, and slid over the wall of the amtrac without a problem, and he and Mihalek ran to the beach. A Marine in dungarees that looked as if they had just been dry-cleaned lay in the sand. His helmet was still on his head, fastened under his chin by a leather strap. One hand was still wrapped around his rifle.
“Is he dead?” Matthews felt as if he was going to be sick.
“Hell, yes,” Mihalek answered, “and you will be, too, if you don’t get your ass off the beach.”
Matthews ran forward and located Lieutenant Leary, who sent hi
m to find the rest of G Company. G Company had landed on the wrong part of the beach, and Leary could not locate two of his platoon’s three squads. Matthews ran down the beach past Navy corpsmen who were tagging the dead. His job was to find the squads and orient them.
By 12:17, the bulk of the 2nd Battalion had reached the airfield, its first-phase destination. Matthews and a buddy, Maurice Maness, a Baptist preacher’s kid from Missouri, worked their way to a bombed-out plane hangar. As they were catching their breath, a mortar landed and hit Maness, tearing up the flesh just below his knee. Luckily for him, the hot fragment had expended much of its hitting power. Matthews cut open his dungarees and, gritting his teeth, Maness dug his Ka-Bar knife into his leg and pried out a piece of shrapnel. Matthews then dusted sulfa powder on the wound and bandaged it.
Using grenades, concussion grenades, and shotguns, G Company investigated every shed, revetment, shell hole, culvert, and drainage ditch. Japanese soldiers, they knew, had an uncanny ability to stay hidden. An officer told them to “flush ’em out like rats.” And “no prisoners,” he added. “Japs love to die.”
By 6:00 p.m. the 2nd Battalion had pushed across to the other side of the island. From a ridge that Graf and Crerar had scouted, Lieutenant Roth instructed the squad leaders to set up a perimeter and machine guns in case of a counterattack. From this low six-foot rise, the battalion watched as the battle still raged on Namur, where most of the Japanese soldiers had taken refuge during the naval bombardment. There the Japanese were fighting a losing battle. Their generals had already decided to sacrifice the island.
Graf and Crerar dug a shallow foxhole. The top layer of sand was easy to dig through, but once they hit the hard coral, it was a lesson in futility. Two feet would have to do. They wiggled into the hole, got situated, and decided it was time to eat. His hand trembling from fatigue, hunger, and dehydration, Graf cut through the waterproof coating on a K-rations box and dined on cold cheese and hash and salt tablets washed down with warm water from his canteen, while Crerar opted for a D-rations chocolate bar.
The Color of War Page 14
