Read Online Hero of the Pacific by James Brady - Free Book Online

give a damn. I’ll be in command until daylight, at least, because I know what’s going on here and you don’t.”
    Said the sensible Hall, “That’s fine with me.”

6
    Fresh troops were arriving, but the deadly night was decidedly not yet finished, and Manila John Basilone was still fighting. Using the heavy machine gun cradled in his arms, apparently still attached to the tripod, he killed several infiltrating Japanese, the hot barrel burning him as he did so. At another point some enemy infantry were wriggling toward him on their bellies through the long grass. To get lower and in a more effective firing position, Basilone took the big heavy off its tripod and steadied it in his arms, his own belly flat to the ground, and from that prone position fired bursts as low as he could to chop down the Japanese snaking toward him. As he later remarked, he had “mowed down the crawlers.” At the same time the professional machine gunner who knew the gun better than most, in the dark, in the rain, and in combat, continued coolly to instruct his men on using the other guns, finding a jammed gun and reminding them, almost pedantically, “the head spacing is out of line.” This is pretty cool stuff under fire, as the Japanese mounted yet another charge, shouting their banzais as they came. One Marine, perhaps not yet a true believer, asked Basilone as the long, exhausting night wore on, increasingly lethal, “Sarge, how long can we keep this up?”
    According to Bruce Doorly, Basilone himself was wondering the same thing. And ironically, considering the downpours, they were short of drinking water, some canteens holed by shrapnel, with Marines running dry.
    â€œThe attacks kept coming, even in the heavy rain. John told two of his uninjured soldiers, Powell and Evans, to keep the heavy machine guns loaded. He would roll to one machine gun and fire until it was empty, then roll over to the other one that had been loaded while he was firing the first one. When that one was empty he went back to the first one which had now been reloaded. The tactic was used against the remaining Japanese attacks. Just when the Marines could not keep up the pace any longer, the Japanese would retreat to regroup. The enemy would then predictably charge again, in groups of 15 or 20, Basilone letting them get close and then mowing them down. As they were hit, screams filled the night.
    â€œAnother Japanese soldier managed to sneak up to their position and jumped right at them with a knife. Again, John got him with his pistol [it must have been a .45, the standard-issue sidearm for a machine-gun sergeant]. The pistol would see more action through the night, as it was the best weapon for those who crept in close by crawling. Some grenades exploded close to John and his fellow Marines, but none hit them. It was a long night and some of the early kills started to decompose. It brought on a nasty stench.”
    This sounds to me like rather rapid decomposition, but it was, after all, the tropics and these were the dead.
    â€œLater in the night, Basilone saw an incredible sight. The Japanese had taken their dead and piled them up high in front of them to form a wall to protect the living Japanese soldiers who set up their machine guns behind the pile of their dead comrades. To counter the new enemy ‘wall,’ John decided to move his position to get a better angle. Later, in a break in the fighting, John sent one of his men to push over the wall of dead bodies.”
    It’s worth noting that Bob Leckie has the Japanese bodies piling like a wall in the course of action, while Doorly has them being piled up deliberately. According to Robert V. Aquilina, head of the Marine Corps History Division reference branch at Quantico, and Colonel Walt Ford of Leatherneck magazine, there is ample historical precedent, going back to antiquity, for the former, and the piles would have included dying as well as dead