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

enemy soldiers. As for the latter, yes, it could well have happened, but Colonel Ford suggests that it’s “more the sort of detail that somebody only knows from having been there.” Such variations are illustrative of the challange inherent in accurately reporting accounts of battle—the so-called “fog of war.”
    By three a.m. the Marines were once more running short of ammo. And the Japanese kept coming. Here is what Basilone’s nephew Jerry Cutter and writer Jim Proser have to say about what Basilone did that night, the genuine heroism he displayed, the losses of men close to him that he suffered. While much of their book is inaccurate and somewhat misleading, it does convey something of the chaos and has its moments: “Evans fed the ammo and tried to keep mud off the belts. He also kept an eye on the rear of our position where we turned our .45s on the Japs coming up behind us. A hail of TNT and grenades fell all around us and our ears rang from the explosions so we couldn’t hear ourselves yelling from inches away. The concussion was like getting socked in the head by a heavyweight and made it hard to keep your vision clear.”
    Basilone knew about being “socked,” having boxed, often against harder-hitting men. Proser wrote, quoting Basilone, “We were seeing double, and things were moving around. So that we couldn’t draw a clear bead on a target. The dead piled up in front of us obscuring the firing lanes. Both guns jammed. I tore mine open and cleared the receiver of mud. Powell did the same. In the process, Evans yelled just in time and we shot two more Japs coming at us from behind. Garland was frantically trying to clean the mud off the belts but it was tough work. We were getting low again on ammo and were out of water completely. The water jackets were smoking again which meant they were low or out of water too. If we didn’t get water for the guns the barrels would burn out and never last the night. I got mine firing again but I was hitting only corpses piled high in front of us and others hanging on the wire further back.”
    â€œHanging on the wire.” The lethal phrase may sound innocent, meaningless, but men “hanging on the wire” are usually dead attackers, shot to pieces by the machine guns of the defense. The war doesn’t matter—the trenches of Flanders in the Great War, so many other infantry battles in World War II. Maybe Grant’s and Lee’s men had to clear the dead as well. The first dead men I ever saw in combat, five or six North Koreans, were “hanging on the wire” of snow-covered Hill 749 in November 1951. Basilone’s and Powell’s and Evans’s and Garland’s dead happened to be Japanese of the Sendai Division. And when there are too many of them obscuring your aim, it is the gunners who have just killed them who are forced to do the undertaking as well, the tidying up of corpses. Listen to what are said to be Basilone’s words:
    â€œI ordered Garland to go down and clear the firing lanes. He looked at me and I looked back at him. It could easily be a suicide mission. The latest assault backed off. I didn’t have to tell Garland twice. He was up and out of the hole. Evans and I covered him in bursts of fire that kept the field clear on either side of him. He slid down the hill on his butt and pushed the piles of bodies over with his feet, keeping his head below the pile. That did the trick. He slid over to another pile and did the same maneuver. We had a clear field of fire again. He slithered back up the hill while we sent streams of bullets a few inches over his head. For the life of me I didn’t know why we hadn’t been cross-haired by artillery and concentrated mortar fire by now, but I guess that’s where luck comes into it.”
    Obviously John wasn’t aware of all those heavier weapons discarded by the enemy struggling through the jungle along