Hero of the Pacific (10 page)

“The bloody Japs aren't a hundred miles away across the Torres Strait, their planes are bombing Darwin [on the northern coast], and our lads are half a world away fighting the bloody Eyeties [Mussolini's Italians].” There was considerable truth to all of this. It was late 1942, early 1943, and the Americans had landed and fought their way through the Vichy French at Oran and Casablanca and near Algiers to open a second front against the Germans and their increasingly insignificant Italian partners. The Aussies (and New Zealanders) were also in North Africa with the British Eighth Army, and soon to be joining up with the new Allied invaders to the west. But in the meanwhile, the Brits and their empire were fighting full-time against Rommel and his Afrika Korps. So until their own 9th Division sailed home for a break, the only sizable forces back home Down Under would be the “bloody Yanks.”

And waiting for them the glories and creature comforts of Melbourne, with its lonely, lusty, and compliant women, to welcome the nearly 20,000 men of the recently landed 1st Marine Division, malaria-ridden, exhausted, wasted, haunted, but randy, womanless, and by now battle-hardened. These Yanks, at least, had proved themselves able to “kill Japs.” A mixed blessing indeed!

There is no indication that Manila John understood such dynamics or cared. All he knew was that he and his machine gunners were out of hell and, like Sydney Carton, in “a far, far better” place, a civilized country much like their own, where, drained and tired and haunted as they were, they could expect to recover and live once more as men and not animals of the field. But just how thin, in wartime with its stresses and losses, might be this veneer of civilization, even in a country as lovely as Melbourne and its agricultural environs? These were a grand people and this Australia a gorgeous place; there was beer to be drunk, liberty to be enjoyed, girls to be loved, money to be spent. Cutter reports further on “Uncle John” Basilone's revels amid the hospitable people of Melbourne: “They'd find a bald-headed Marine dead drunk, planted face-first in their petunias, and they'd bring him into their home, clean him up, and introduce him to their daughter.”

Basilone had singular memories of his own. “I woke up one morning in my bunk and had no idea how I got there. I didn't remember the trip back or how I got my arm all bloodied. Somebody had wrapped it in white gauze so I figured I must have been in the sick bay at some point. All I knew was that my head hurt like hell. My mouth felt like mice had made a nest in it, and my arm hurt as bad as my head. I got myself cleaned up and had to shave with my left arm because my right was so sore. I still couldn't remember how I had banged it up. At chow Powell looked up at me over his coffee and smiled like the cat that just shit in the corner. ‘Death Before Dishonor, sarge,' he said.

“‘What the hell was that?” I was thinking but didn't say anything.

“‘Let's take a look at it,' he said.

“‘At what?' I said. I still wasn't too fast on my feet before coffee. Then it all started to come back to me. The drinking contest on Flinders Street, the cab ride and the little shop by the docks with drawings of dragons in the window. Powell nodded at my arm. Then I saw the rest; the tray of black inks, the needles, and the bald top of a man's head bent over my arm as pain shot through me. Powell was kissing a very heavy, brown-skinned girl and watching us. I peeled back the bandage on my arm, and saw the scabbed-over letters in blue ink, ‘Death Before Dishonor' and some other design that was covered in dried blood. I liked it.

“‘Death Before Dishonor,' I repeated to Powell. ‘Who paid for it?' I asked because I didn't remember that part.

“‘Beats me, but somebody did,' he said. It was done now and I was pleased with it.”

Not every night was tattooed, drunken, or lecherous. The local girls also loved the new American dance, the “jitterbug,” and were mad to learn more about it and work on their technique. There were families that took in some of the boys for domestic, warm, family-style meals and small, relatively sober parties. Men fell in love and got married, some were “adopted” by families and helped out the households with a little cash, and they learned to drink tea, sitting around the kitchen table as they'd done at home. They taught the Aussies our songs and learned theirs. To this day Marines who served Down Under can recite the lyrics of all four stanzas of “Waltzing Matilda” and do a pretty good job on its close harmony. American farmboys vanished for days at a time and then wandered back to the base explaining they'd been helping a local farmer get the crops in. Basilone fell for the younger children of one family and found himself playing on the floor with a little girl who reminded him of a niece in the Reisterstown, Maryland, home of his sister Phyllis Cutter and her husband, Bill.

The Marines who came to Australia, as well as others who went to New Zealand in those days, were there for rest and relaxation and recuperation, to cure the malaria and purge the intestinal worms. To come back from the dead. So that soon they would be sufficiently fit to fight the Japanese all over again on some other lousy island. Or maybe right here up north in the swamps and on the beaches of the northern coast with its malaria and crocodiles. Military bases thrive on rumor, on scuttlebutt; gossip was the circulating blood of everyday garrison life, and here at Melbourne the talk was of when they might be leaving, where they would be going next, about the order of battle and terms of engagement the next time out.

And now, in the spring of 1943 (which was autumn Down Under), other rumors began to circulate through the 1st Marine Division, not about the future but about its so recent past, some of it about Manila John Basilone and his exploits last October on Guadalcanal. There had already been some talk, earlier rumors, the morning after the fight on Bloody Ridge, especially about how Chesty Puller himself had gone out of his way to recognize Manila John and give him a “well done” for having gone back for ammo under fire at the worst of the enemy attack. Basilone heard the talk, of course, but refused to put much stock in it. After all, as he said, “There were thousands of boys fighting and dying. Why should I be singled out?”

Then in May 1943 the scuttlebutt ramped up.

Perhaps the best account of the time and the place comes not from Basilone family accounts or from neighbors and boyhood chums at Raritan, and certainly not from the taciturn John himself, but from another Marine who was there, the “other” Marine machine-gun sergeant from Guadalcanal, Mitchell Paige.

In January 1943, Paige, a more buttoned-up NCO than the casual, carousing Basilone, had been commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, his date of rank backdated to October 1942, which meant a nice packet of back pay. Basilone, only slightly junior as sergeant to Paige, was not offered a commission. Later, he would be given several such opportunities, but not in early 1943. Not that he wanted or had politicked for an officer's gold bars. Manila John was happy being a sergeant. Paige, in his own postwar book, writes about that May in Melbourne where some quite extraordinary things had begun to happen. Fortunately for us, if Basilone wrote very little, Paige took notes or had an exceptional memory.

“One day we received word that a very distinguished person would be visiting our camp at Mount Martha. We were all busy with our machine guns when we saw the inspecting party coming through our area. We were instructed to continue our work. This was a great departure from the standard practice of a troop formation and formal inspection for a visiting dignitary. But Eleanor Roosevelt, the President's wife, only wanted to see the camp and see the troops in training. She stopped by our platoon and shook hands with us. I never dreamed that again one day I would shake hands with the First Lady in the White House in Washington.

“[Another] day the entire camp went on parade. There were to be presentations and awards. A group of us were assembled along the parade ground waiting for instructions when Colonel ‘Chesty' Puller came smartly over to us as we all came to attention and rendered a snappy salute. Chesty grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘Sergeant Paige, you're senior here, oh, yes, now you're a looie,' as he twisted his jowls to one side and with a warm smile said, ‘You'll always be a sergeant to me. You know the backbone of the Corps is the non-commissioned officer.' Then he said, ‘Sergeant Basilone, you will march next to Paige,' and then he lined up the rest of our group. The band struck up a march number and Chesty marched us front and center as my spine tingled with pride, being with such men. Chesty halted us directly in front of the Division commander, General Vandegrift. My citation was read and then in the name of the Congress and of the President of the United States, General Vandegrift placed the Congressional Medal of Honor around my neck. After which, I stepped over next to Colonel Merrill ‘Red Mike' Edson and I continued to stand at attention as Johnny Basilone's citation was read and he, too, received the Congressional Medal of Honor from General Vandegrift. The 1st Marine Division Band and all the troops then passed in review as General Vandegrift, Colonel Edson, myself and Johnny Basilone received the honors—all four of us with the Congressional Medal of Honor and all for Guadalcanal.”

Here, from the official records, is how Basilone's citation read:

The citation was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Chesty Puller, that legendary Marine, would eventually, in the time of Korea, win his fifth Navy Cross, but he never possessed what Paige and John Basilone now had, the Medal of Honor.

That night, tired of being gawked at in the barracks, Basilone and his closest buddies visited their old haunts on Flinders Street and, in Basilone's words, “got shit-faced” as he clowned about, wearing his cap sideways and mugging. Newly minted second lieutenant Paige, now an officer and gentleman, presumably celebrated in more decorous fashion.

Paige continued, “A couple of days later Johnny came to see me and said, ‘Listen, we've got a ticket home right away.' That afternoon a jeep pulled up to our battalion headquarters and I was summoned to Colonel Amor LeRoy Sims' office to see General Vandegrift and Colonel Edson. The general told me that Basilone was going home and that we had another campaign coming up. For several days following my visit with General Vandegrift, Colonel Edson and Colonel Sims, reporters and war correspondents continued writing stories about me. I was advised my picture was going to appear on the cover of LIFE magazine [then a very big deal,
Life
being that era's print version of network television, with one of the largest circulations in the business] while holding a machine gun in my arms with a belt of ammunition over my shoulders, as had been told them by Captain Ditta and others whom they had questioned about our action on Guadalcanal. . . . For some reason, my picture never appeared.”

A note of possible jealousy here? There would be many such photos and a sculpture of John Basilone in a similar pose, machine gun cradled in his arms, the ammo belt slung across his shoulders. Paige continued, “I always felt hesitant about talking with them [the journalists], as I wasn't interested in publicity, and medals had never really entered my mind.” Within days Puller would be awarded a third Navy Cross and another lieutenant colonel named Conoley was also given the cross. At the ceremony, Paige stood with Conoley and Basilone with Puller. In this section of Paige's book, he goes into no additional detail on why Basilone may have been selected to go home and why it was assumed Paige himself would stay in the Pacific for that “next campaign.” All Paige would add about his friend Johnny was a gracious little passage of
l'envoi
: “Manila John went home to sell war bonds and two years later he had volunteered to go back overseas. Johnny joined the 5th Marine Division which went to Iwo Jima. A few minutes after they hit the beach in the opening assault, on February 19, 1945, Johnny and four of his men were caught by Japanese mortar fire and were killed. My good friend, Manila John Basilone, was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously for that action.”

Almost three weeks went by at Melbourne before, on June 12, Basilone bothered to write home about the famous medal, and he did so briefly and simply: “I am very happy, for the other day I received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest decoration you can receive in the armed forces. Tell Pop his son is still tough. Tell Don [John's kid brother] thanks for the prayer they say in school [for soldiers overseas].”

For all the talk about “a ticket home,” the famous medal around his neck, and the brief flurry of publicity, as May became June and then July, Basilone was still in Australia, routinely drilling his machine gunners, marching in step, and dutifully saluting officers, including brand-new shavetails, young second lieutenants who'd never heard a shot fired in anger. They, too, were saluted and were to be obeyed. The more sensible young officers knew how absurd the situation was and restrained themselves, playing it cool and trying to learn from these salty and combat-hardened enlisted Marines and NCOs, not throwing their rank around with guys like Basilone. Basilone's new and raw young machine gunners were impressed by their betters, the veterans of the 'Canal, and were eager to listen and to learn—which was what Sergeant Basilone wanted, young men to be taught the hard, deadly lessons of combat.