Read Online Hell in the Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Journey From Guadalcanal to Peleliu by Bill Sloan, Jim McEnery - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bill Sloan, Jim McEnery
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considerable distance away.
The number of Jap planes in the formations that targeted the airfield ranged from five or six to a couple of dozen. They’d aim a few bombs at our positions in passing, but they saved most of what they had for the airfield. We were well dug-in and had pretty good cover from the coconut palms, so we hardly had any casualties to speak of.
But the bombings jangled our nerves and kept us on edge. Especially the ones at night. After dark, they’d send over just one plane at a time. The pilot would come in slow and leisurely, like he didn’t have a care in the world. He must’ve known we didn’t have a damn thing bigger than a .30-caliber or a BAR to fire at him. He’d circle around for a while, then drop one bomb and fly away. A couple of minutes later, another plane would show up and go through the same routine.
The thing that hurt worst was they kept us awake most of the night. Plus they were such arrogant, infuriating sons of bitches. They knew there was nothing we could do against them. It was like they were just toying with us and getting a big kick out of it. We called all the Jap pilots by the same name—“washing-machine Charlie.”
About 1 AM one morning, I heard a frustrated Marine cussing the third or fourth low-flying “Charlie” of the night from a couple of foxholes away.
“Damn you, you asshole!” he yelled. “I’d give a hundred-dollar bill for thirty seconds with a .50-caliber machine gun right now!”
I knew exactly how he felt.
I N BETWEEN AIR raids, we did finally get something to eat.
As far as I remember, the first time we had what you’d consider a full meal was late on the afternoon of August 10 (D-plus-3). Up to that point, the only chow I’d had was a few captured Nip candy bars. But that evening, I got a mess kit full of boiled rice with some dried fish mixed in and a can of tangerines. Naturally, it was all Japanese.
The rice was okay, and it was filling, but the tangerines were really great. I don’t think I ever ate anything before or since that tasted so good. Of course, the fact that I’d gone over three and a half days with almost no food probably had a lot to do with how much I enjoyed them.
With the small amount of edible stuff—mainly just coffee—that had been unloaded from the ships, plus the large supply of Jap rice our guys had found stored near the airfield, we supposedly had enough food to last us about fourteen days. That was only figuring on two meals a day, though. Like I said earlier, our breakfasts were at least 90 percent black coffee—no cream, no sugar—and there was no such thing as lunch.
By this time, some of our guys were getting fairly adept at busting open coconuts. And God knows, there were enough of those. According to the rumors we heard, the Japs were living almost totally on coconuts, now that they’d lost their rice supplies. I can tell you for sure we didn’t feel sorry for them.
The one big break we got in the food situation during those first couple of weeks came in the form of a steer that wandered into our area. For several days, we watched it grazing in a grassy open space down below the ridge where we were set up. None of us had had a bite of real meat since we’d left the troopship.
“Look at all that beef on the hoof,” one of the guys in my platoonfinally said. “Every time I see that beast, my imagination runs wild, and I think I smell steaks cooking.”
“Well, hell, let’s shoot the son of a bitch and have a barbecue,” somebody else said. “I bet I can drop him from here.”
As far as I remember, we didn’t take a vote of any kind on this suggestion, but a few seconds later three or four of my platoon mates raised their ’03s and started taking pot shots at the steer, more or less in unison. At least one of them hit the steer, and it fell over in its tracks without making a sound. It was still kicking a little when a half-dozen of us ran down and grabbed it and dragged it back to
The number of Jap planes in the formations that targeted the airfield ranged from five or six to a couple of dozen. They’d aim a few bombs at our positions in passing, but they saved most of what they had for the airfield. We were well dug-in and had pretty good cover from the coconut palms, so we hardly had any casualties to speak of.
But the bombings jangled our nerves and kept us on edge. Especially the ones at night. After dark, they’d send over just one plane at a time. The pilot would come in slow and leisurely, like he didn’t have a care in the world. He must’ve known we didn’t have a damn thing bigger than a .30-caliber or a BAR to fire at him. He’d circle around for a while, then drop one bomb and fly away. A couple of minutes later, another plane would show up and go through the same routine.
The thing that hurt worst was they kept us awake most of the night. Plus they were such arrogant, infuriating sons of bitches. They knew there was nothing we could do against them. It was like they were just toying with us and getting a big kick out of it. We called all the Jap pilots by the same name—“washing-machine Charlie.”
About 1 AM one morning, I heard a frustrated Marine cussing the third or fourth low-flying “Charlie” of the night from a couple of foxholes away.
“Damn you, you asshole!” he yelled. “I’d give a hundred-dollar bill for thirty seconds with a .50-caliber machine gun right now!”
I knew exactly how he felt.
I N BETWEEN AIR raids, we did finally get something to eat.
As far as I remember, the first time we had what you’d consider a full meal was late on the afternoon of August 10 (D-plus-3). Up to that point, the only chow I’d had was a few captured Nip candy bars. But that evening, I got a mess kit full of boiled rice with some dried fish mixed in and a can of tangerines. Naturally, it was all Japanese.
The rice was okay, and it was filling, but the tangerines were really great. I don’t think I ever ate anything before or since that tasted so good. Of course, the fact that I’d gone over three and a half days with almost no food probably had a lot to do with how much I enjoyed them.
With the small amount of edible stuff—mainly just coffee—that had been unloaded from the ships, plus the large supply of Jap rice our guys had found stored near the airfield, we supposedly had enough food to last us about fourteen days. That was only figuring on two meals a day, though. Like I said earlier, our breakfasts were at least 90 percent black coffee—no cream, no sugar—and there was no such thing as lunch.
By this time, some of our guys were getting fairly adept at busting open coconuts. And God knows, there were enough of those. According to the rumors we heard, the Japs were living almost totally on coconuts, now that they’d lost their rice supplies. I can tell you for sure we didn’t feel sorry for them.
The one big break we got in the food situation during those first couple of weeks came in the form of a steer that wandered into our area. For several days, we watched it grazing in a grassy open space down below the ridge where we were set up. None of us had had a bite of real meat since we’d left the troopship.
“Look at all that beef on the hoof,” one of the guys in my platoonfinally said. “Every time I see that beast, my imagination runs wild, and I think I smell steaks cooking.”
“Well, hell, let’s shoot the son of a bitch and have a barbecue,” somebody else said. “I bet I can drop him from here.”
As far as I remember, we didn’t take a vote of any kind on this suggestion, but a few seconds later three or four of my platoon mates raised their ’03s and started taking pot shots at the steer, more or less in unison. At least one of them hit the steer, and it fell over in its tracks without making a sound. It was still kicking a little when a half-dozen of us ran down and grabbed it and dragged it back to
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