Hero of the Pacific by James Brady Page A

from the outpost and reached Puller. Speaking softly, Briggs said, “Colonel, there’s about three thousand Japs between you and me.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œPositive. They’ve been all around us, singing and smoking cigarettes, heading your way.”
    â€œAll right, Briggs, but make damned sure. Take your men to the left—understand me? Go down and pass through the lines near the sea. I’ll call ’em to let you in. Don’t fail, and don’t go in any other direction. I’ll hold my fire as long as I can.”
    â€œYes, sir,” Briggs said, and hung up. Crawling on their bellies to the left, he and most of his forty-six outpost men got out. The Japanese caught and killed four of them. This was about nine-thirty p.m. Soon the enemy had reached the tactical barbed wire in front of the 1st Battalion and began to cut lanes through it.
    Toward eleven o’clock, still in heavy rain, the main body of the Japanese force attacked Puller’s line amid the usual screaming of “Blood for the Emperor!” and “Marines, you die!”
    The Marines responded with, “To hell with your goddamned emperor!” and, hilariously, “Blood for Franklin and Eleanor!”
    Writing years later in New Jersey, Bruce Doorly provides us a first mention of Basilone that crucial night about ten o’clock: “The field phone rang. Having waited for days, they thought it must be just another outpost getting lonely. However, when John answered the phone he heard trouble. It was one of his men from a post closer to the front line. He screamed, ‘Sarge, the Japs are coming. ’ In the background John could hear the sound of explosions and gun fire. ‘Thousands of them, my God! They just keep coming, Sarge, they just keep coming.’ The phone went dead.”
    This reputed exchange doesn’t entirely make sense. Basilone headed a two-machine-gun section of perhaps six or eight men total. Why would he have an outpost of his own reporting to him? Wouldn’t an outpost Marine with the enemy that close have whispered and not screamed?
    Doorly then writes, “John Basilone took control. He turned to his men and said, ‘All right, you guys, don’t forget your orders. The Japs are not going to get through to the field. I’m telling you that goes, no matter what!’”
    Doorly cites battle descriptions by Basilone that “were often very descriptive and at times comical.” Doorly pictures the first assault wave this way: “They could soon hear the Japanese cutting the barbed wire. Unfortunately, they could not see the Japanese in the dark as they had hoped. Their first line of defense, the barbed wire, was already falling. Basilone set the strategy for his unit. He told his men to let the enemy get within fifty yards and then, ‘let them have it!’ They fired at the first group of attacking Japanese, successfully wiping them out.” He quotes Basilone as saying, “The noise was terrific and I could see the Japs jumping as they were smacked by our bullets. Screaming, yelling, and dying all at the same time. Still they came, only to fall back, twisting and falling in all sorts of motions, as we dispatched them to their honorable ancestors.”
    That first enemy charge was only the beginning of the overall attack. The enemy charged again. The dead began to pile up. “One thing you’ve got to give the Japanese, they were not afraid to die, and believe me, they did,” Basilone is quoted as saying. Grenades flew into the Marine lines and “one Japanese soldier got to within five feet of Basilone—here Basilone used his pistol, killing the attacker.”
    Leckie picks up Basilone’s fight:
    â€œNow the attack was veering toward dead center. The Japanese hordes were rushing at Manila John Basilone’s machine guns. They came tumbling down an incline and Basilone’s gunners raked them at