beach, where the invasion maps had indicated “damp flats,” they ran into a wall of jungle and a swamp. The flats were damp, all right, up to the Marines’ armpits.
Supplies from the LSTs piled up on the beaches as the Marines hacked and waded and swam through to solid land. Then they went on in driving rain to capture part of the airfield by December 30.
We landed the next morning, New Year’s Day.
By then engineers had bulldozed a path across the swamp and laid down logs to make a corduroy road. Supplies were moving. We were scattered but we were able to get together pretty quickly, and next morning we started a sweep inland, moving south and west. The Seventh Marines were somewhere ahead of us and on our left. By late afternoon we had gone a few miles without encountering a single enemy. We stopped for the night and were just starting to dig in alongside a little creek when about fifteen Japs popped out of the jungle on the other side. They came splashing through the water and the high grass, bayonets raised over their heads and screaming banzai!
I had been carrying the mortar base plate and didn’t have a rifle. I dropped the plate and pulled my .45 out quick—I don’t even remember drawing it—and fired, catching one of them in the chest. He was about thirty-five or forty feet away from me, still running when he went down. Other Marines were firing right and left and more Japs were stumbling, going down. The rest turned back to the woods. I don’t think more than one or two got away.
That was the first man I killed. I didn’t feel anything but relief. He didn’t get me. I got him.
After that episode, I always carried an M1 and my pistol. A pistol is fine if somebody’s up close, but I didn’t want anybody getting that close again. That attack broke me in right away.
We pulled off the creek and moved three hundred yards up a knoll and dug in again. It was a very nervous night. I couldn’t see a thing. In the dark the land crabs came out and started rustling around in the leaves, and I was half convinced that the Japs were coming any minute. Everybody was a little trigger-happy anyway after the banzai charge. In the middle of the night one of the guys crawled out of his foxhole, probably to take a piss, and our sergeant, Johnny Marmet, shot him. He was wounded, not killed, but we had our first casualty.
At daybreak moisture was dripping off the leaves. Everything was soaked, and a kind of gray-blue haze hung in the air, a spooky mist that hid everything beyond the closest trees. It would be there almost every morning, especially after a rain. I never saw anything like it anywhere else and I never got used to it.
We started out again. We were picking our way south through thick jungle without finding any Japs when we came under fire on our left. It turned into a pretty good firefight until somebody up the line realized that we had run into the Seventh Marines, Third Battalion. Before we got it stopped, one of our men had been killed. It wasn’t the only time we would encounter friendly fire, Marines shooting Marines. And when we did, it would again be from the Seventh Marines.
We had been advancing parallel to their Third Battalion when they had come up against a pocket of Japs that slowed them down. We went on without meeting any opposition and then began a swing back to the left. That’s when we suddenly appeared on their right, and they opened fire.
We all finally caught up with a large body of Japs dug in along the far side of a stream we came to call Suicide Creek. They were screened behind brush, and every time we tried to wade across, they just cut us to pieces. We lost a lot of good men there.
Jim Burke and I were holed up some distance to the right of where the Seventh Marines were trying to cross. There was a small break in the trees, hardly big enough to call a clearing, and we’d set up a five-gallon water can with a canteen cup on top. I got thirsty and walked over to get a drink,
Supplies from the LSTs piled up on the beaches as the Marines hacked and waded and swam through to solid land. Then they went on in driving rain to capture part of the airfield by December 30.
We landed the next morning, New Year’s Day.
By then engineers had bulldozed a path across the swamp and laid down logs to make a corduroy road. Supplies were moving. We were scattered but we were able to get together pretty quickly, and next morning we started a sweep inland, moving south and west. The Seventh Marines were somewhere ahead of us and on our left. By late afternoon we had gone a few miles without encountering a single enemy. We stopped for the night and were just starting to dig in alongside a little creek when about fifteen Japs popped out of the jungle on the other side. They came splashing through the water and the high grass, bayonets raised over their heads and screaming banzai!
I had been carrying the mortar base plate and didn’t have a rifle. I dropped the plate and pulled my .45 out quick—I don’t even remember drawing it—and fired, catching one of them in the chest. He was about thirty-five or forty feet away from me, still running when he went down. Other Marines were firing right and left and more Japs were stumbling, going down. The rest turned back to the woods. I don’t think more than one or two got away.
That was the first man I killed. I didn’t feel anything but relief. He didn’t get me. I got him.
After that episode, I always carried an M1 and my pistol. A pistol is fine if somebody’s up close, but I didn’t want anybody getting that close again. That attack broke me in right away.
We pulled off the creek and moved three hundred yards up a knoll and dug in again. It was a very nervous night. I couldn’t see a thing. In the dark the land crabs came out and started rustling around in the leaves, and I was half convinced that the Japs were coming any minute. Everybody was a little trigger-happy anyway after the banzai charge. In the middle of the night one of the guys crawled out of his foxhole, probably to take a piss, and our sergeant, Johnny Marmet, shot him. He was wounded, not killed, but we had our first casualty.
At daybreak moisture was dripping off the leaves. Everything was soaked, and a kind of gray-blue haze hung in the air, a spooky mist that hid everything beyond the closest trees. It would be there almost every morning, especially after a rain. I never saw anything like it anywhere else and I never got used to it.
We started out again. We were picking our way south through thick jungle without finding any Japs when we came under fire on our left. It turned into a pretty good firefight until somebody up the line realized that we had run into the Seventh Marines, Third Battalion. Before we got it stopped, one of our men had been killed. It wasn’t the only time we would encounter friendly fire, Marines shooting Marines. And when we did, it would again be from the Seventh Marines.
We had been advancing parallel to their Third Battalion when they had come up against a pocket of Japs that slowed them down. We went on without meeting any opposition and then began a swing back to the left. That’s when we suddenly appeared on their right, and they opened fire.
We all finally caught up with a large body of Japs dug in along the far side of a stream we came to call Suicide Creek. They were screened behind brush, and every time we tried to wade across, they just cut us to pieces. We lost a lot of good men there.
Jim Burke and I were holed up some distance to the right of where the Seventh Marines were trying to cross. There was a small break in the trees, hardly big enough to call a clearing, and we’d set up a five-gallon water can with a canteen cup on top. I got thirsty and walked over to get a drink,
Similar Books
