for fifteen thousand Marines and their weapons to pull maneuvers at the same time. One unit would be doing close-order drill and another would come along and march right through it, neither paying any attention to the other. The weapons ranges were in constant use, always some unit waiting to get on. If they ever lined all of us up to hike, we were sure the front of the column would come right up to the back of the column. We’d be like a snake chasing its tail.
After breakfast most mornings the mortar section would go out for a training exercise. We wanted to teach the new guys just as the Guadalcanal veterans had taught us. We showed them what to do and what not to do in combat, we told them what to look for, all the Jap tricks. We’d work on how and where to set up the guns. We’d have them humping ammunition. Of course they’d been through it all before at boot camp. They knew the routine. But we’d practice it, carry it out and practice it again.
I don’t know who in the Marines dreams up all that stuff in your training. Like jerking you out of your sleep and doing a forced run or a forced march. But they do a very good job of it. I don’t think I can stress it too much: They don’t only train you physically. They train you mentally. They know if they can make you upset about something, if they can aggravate you, they’re getting you in the right frame of mind for combat. They throw something unexpected into the agenda, so that when you get on the battlefield you’re already mad. You’re ready to get out of all that you’ve been going through, all that BS you’ve been doing. You’re ready to kill someone.
Some thought it was all BS, the whole four months we spent on that island. I wasn’t on the same page with a lot of guys who downgrade Pavuvu. When you look back on it, the Marines knew what they were doing. We were glad when it was over, even though we knew we were facing death where we were going. In a way, anything would have been better than Pavuvu.
Around July 4 a few of us caught a break.
Captain Andrew Allison Haldane—we called him “Ack-Ack” on account of his initials—called nine or ten of us in. He had a special assignment for us. Besides myself, there was Hillbilly Jones, John Teskevich, Jim Day, George Sarrett, Paul R. Yarborough, P. A. Wilson and a few others.
Captain Haldane had been K/3/5’s commander the night we fought off five banzai charges on New Britain. They’d awarded him the Silver Star for that. He was as well liked as any officer I knew. I never heard him raise his voice at any man. He was firm, but he was a gentleman, and compassionate.
We were to take the boat across to Banika, he told us, and guard a storehouse for two weeks. We’d heard of Banika, but none of us had been there. Everything good came from Banika. The Navy had a supply dump on the island. If we got fresh meat, it came over from Banika. If we got fresh eggs, they were from Banika.
One of us asked what we’d be guarding. Beer and soda pop, Haldane told us. A whole warehouse. Thousands of cases. It was like sending foxes to guard the chicken coop.
I figured afterward that Captain Haldane and our first sergeant, Mo Darsey, had gone down a list and handpicked us for the assignment. I can’t speak for myself, but everyone else chosen was a top-notch Marine. I felt proud to be in their company.
It didn’t take us long to get to our warehouse on Banika, about a twenty-mile boat ride from Pavuvu. We had two six-man pyramid tents, on real wooden platforms for a change. The duty was light. Four hours on, ninety-six hours off. For chow, we went down to the wharf and climbed on board a ship that was anchored there. The first time I went aboard I almost fainted. I had never seen anything like that in the Pacific.
When we went in they sat us down and brought us menus. There were napkins and tablecloths on the tables. White linen towels to dry your face and hands. After we looked over the menu, the waiter asked, “What will you have, sir?” We could order anything—breakfast, lunch or dinner—and he’d bring it to us like we were in a restaurant. I’d never dreamed of being served like that anywhere in the Marines. On a troopship you’d just go through a line and they’d dish it out, just slop it on your tray.
We helped ourselves to a share from the warehouse. It was hot, but it was beer.
One Saturday night on Banika four of us were sitting around—Hillbilly Jones, Yarborough, myself, and somebody else. Maybe Sarrett. I can’t recall. We were pouring 190-proof alcohol in the bottom of a canteen cup and filling the rest with grapefruit juice. We were singing and telling jokes and drinking that stuff, and by ten thirty we started to run low on grapefruit juice, and so we poured in more alcohol.
Oh, my God. You talk about drunk. I had to put all three of them to bed, I mean every single one. Haul him to his feet. There was a jeep outside that had a 250-gallon water tank on the back, with a spigot on the side. I’d wrestle each one out there and stick his head under the spigot and run water over him until I thought he could make it to the tent more or less upright. I’d get him there and put him on his cot. Tuck him in. All three of them.
And I was thinking, Man, I’m doing okay, you know? Here I’ve put these three drunks to bed and I’m still walking straight.
About three o’clock that morning I woke up vomiting. I want to tell you, I never vomited so hard in my life. I got up the next morning and looked over the side of my cot. And there was blood everywhere. I’d vomited so hard I’d vomited blood.
That was on Sunday morning. My first meal after that was on Thursday.
Toward the end of our stay on Pavuvu we had a visitor from Banika.
Bob Hope had been entertaining troops across the South Pacific. He had taken his whole USO troupe with him—singer Frances Langford, comedian Jerry Colonna, Tony Romano, who played the guitar. And a lively, pretty little blond dancer named Patty Thomas.
We weren’t on their schedule. They’d been to Christmas Island, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Bougainville, Tulagi. A Catalina flying boat that was taking them to Australia had made a crash-landing in a river bar, but they’d made it out okay. In late July they were putting on a show over on Banika.
Somebody had flown over and told Hope there was a whole division stuck on this little island, about to go into battle. We hadn’t seen an outsider for months, much less a female outsider.
“Where are they?” he asked. Pavuvu, somebody told him.
Hope had never heard of it. “Where in the hell is that?” he asked.
We had no runway, but our one road could accommodate the occasional Piper Cub that flew in with messages or visiting officers. If the troupe could be ready the next morning, they could be flown over one by one.
We got word the same day and by next morning we had put up a makeshift stage down by the beach, at the end of an open area where we played baseball and drilled. By the time the first of the planes appeared, there must have been fifteen thousand of us standing in that field, all of us yelling our heads off. The pilot cut the engine on Jerry Colonna’s plane as it circled over and we heard him let out that famous Colonna howl: “Yee …ow …ow.” Even from the ground we could see his handlebar mustache and those shining white teeth.
The show lasted about ninety minutes, but it seemed shorter. Patty Thomas, who was wearing a skimpy skirt and a halter top, invited guys from the front rows to come up onstage and jitterbug with her. Hope and Colonna traded jokes.
Hope asked Colonna how he had enjoyed the flight from Banika.
“Tough sledding,” Colonna said.
“Why tough sledding?” Hope asked.
“No snow.”
We roared with laughter.
Somebody must have briefed them on Pavuvu, because Hope even got in a joke about our land crabs. He said they reminded him of Bing Crosby’s racehorses—“they run sideways.”
Pavuvu was so small, he said, “the gophers have to take turns coming up.”
At the end of the show, Hope sang his theme song, “Thanks for the Memories.” Then they got into their Piper Cubs and, one by one, took off. We stood alongside the road cheering.
For days afterward we’d talk about that show. It really lifted our spirits.
Years later, on one of his last television broadcasts, Hope called that appearance on Pavuvu one of the most moving shows he ever played.
“You knew when you walked out there that a lot of those guys you’d never see again,” he said. “And as it worked out sixty percent of these kids were knocked off.”
