looked pretty comical with half a mustache. Sergeant Jim Day got him calmed down, but I really do believe he would have taken us all on at once. I don’t know who did that, probably never will know.
Occasional sniper fire continued as we moved on, but nobody else was hit. When we stopped for the evening word was passed along to watch for infiltrators. Our line extended from the road to the shoreline, no more than 150 feet to our left. We were under the eyes of the Japs up in the caves on the ridge, and we knew there were more scattered through the woods to the right of the road. But Captain Haldane thought the Japs might try to wade along the shore and come in on our left. Jim Burke and I scraped out foxholes a few feet apart where we had a clear view of the water. Again it was impossible to dig deep in the hard coral, so we piled up rocks around our positions and waited. Just before dark, Captain Haldane ordered artillery to work over the woods in front of us along the base of the ridge. It was satisfying to hear those incoming 75s. We’d soon find out if they did much good.
A little after dark, Jim whispered that he heard someone splashing out in the water. A low-hanging half-moon cast a long bar of light across the waves. We watched and waited, and pretty soon we heard voices from that direction. I never could figure out why the Japs would jabber when they were trying to sneak around in the dark. But they always did.
Jim saw him first, a silhouette moving along in the moonlight just offshore. He said later all he really saw at first was the head and shoulders.
“Burgin, give me your rifle,” he whispered. He had been carrying only his .45. “I can see that son of a bitch.”
I eased my M1 over to him. I heard the safety softly click.
We waited for five or ten seconds. Then Jim fired and there was a splash.
“Got him,” I said.
Jim handed my rifle back. “Thank you very much,” he said.
Then he shouted, “Heads up, you guys. There’s more of them out there.”
Up closer to the road Sledgehammer and Snafu Shelton were sharing a foxhole. The drill was that one man would sleep while the other kept watch. An hour on, an hour off.
Sledge was on watch a few hours before dawn. Snafu was sleeping, snoring as usual and occasionally muttering to himself. Probably something like “We need more men in here!” That was his constant complaint no matter where we were.
In the moonlight, the coral road was a bright ribbon through the dark wall of trees. While Sledge watched, two figures popped out of the darkness on the other side of the road, yelling something in Japanese and waving their arms. One of them cut to Sledge’s right, ran down the road and disappeared to where Sledge knew another company was dug in.
The other figure ran straight for Sledge, waving a bayonet over his head.
Sledge grabbed his carbine, but hesitated. Other Marines lay in his line of fire.
With a yell, the oncoming Jap disappeared into a nearer foxhole. There was a series of thuds and grunts and yells, the sounds of a wild struggle. Then as Sledge watched, a figure jumped out of the hole and started in the direction of the command post nearby. Just then a Marine stood up and swung his rifle by the barrel, clubbing the running figure and bringing him down in midstride.
Down the road, where the first Jap had disappeared, someone started screaming wildly—Jap or Marine, Sledge couldn’t tell. Then the screaming stopped. The figure clubbed with the rifle lay in the road groaning.
There was a rifle shot from the foxhole just in front of Sledge, and someone yelled, “I got him.”
Everyone was awake now, but nobody knew what had happened.
“How many were there?” somebody asked.
“I saw two,” Sledge said.
“There must have been more,” somebody else said.
No, Sledge insisted. Two. One ran across the road and the other ran down to the right, where he got shot.
Then who was that groaning in the road? the other Marine asked.
“I don’t know,” Sledge said. “I didn’t see but two of them. I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll check it out,” somebody said and crawled out onto the road in the direction the groans were coming from. There was a sharp report of a .45, and the Marine crawled back to his foxhole.
In the graying light before dawn, Sledge looked over at the figure lying in the road. Somehow it didn’t look Jap. He wore Marine leggings. Sledge crawled over for a closer look.
He recognized the fallen man instantly. It was Bill Middlebrook, one of the riflemen. He had a hole in his temple.
“My God,” Sledge gasped.
A sergeant ran over. “Did he get shot by one of the Japs?”
Sledge couldn’t answer.
The man who had crawled into the road to see who was groaning turned pale. With quivering lips, he went straight to the command post to report what had happened.
A little later that morning Captain Haldane appeared and, one by one, questioned the men who had been close enough to have seen at least part of what happened the night before. How many Japs? he wanted to know.
Two, Sledge told him. Only two.
Had Sledge seen who shot Middlebrook?
Yes, he had, Sledge replied.
Captain Haldane nodded. Sledge should keep that information to himself, he said. This had been a tragic mistake, and there was nothing now that would bring Middlebrook back. The Marine who shot him would feel it for the rest of his life.
Over the decades, those of us who know about the incident, who know who shot Middlebrook, have kept faith. Like those of us who know who killed the dog handler, it’s never spoken of. When we get together, the last few of us, we don’t talk about it.
Headquarters had sent our regiment north along the west road because there was a change in strategy. Instead of tackling the Umurbrogols head-on, they had decided to move around behind them and come down from the north. Our job was now to secure the north end of Peleliu. Once this was done we’d start working our way down the ridges and valleys, digging the Japs out of their caves as we went.
The morning after the terrible night along the west road, we moved through the ruins of a small village that Second Battalion had taken the day before. Then we attacked and overran a steep hill that overlooked a trail connecting the island’s west and east roads across a broad saddle. All the time we were taking Jap artillery fire from somewhere north of us and from a big gun over on Ngesebus Island. Every time it went off you could hear the
North of our hill, a row of four round-topped hills extended across the island to the eastern shore. At right angles to these hills a ridge continued along the west road, overlooking the narrow channel that separated Peleliu from Ngesebus. Once the hills had been covered with thick trees, but we’d blasted them until they looked like they’d had a bad haircut. Still, they were full of hidden caves, and the caves were full of Japs. As long as they stood in front of us, there was no way to get at Ngesebus.
From the top of our hill we looked across a sixty-foot drop-off to the valley floor. On the hills opposite we could watch for Japs to appear in the cave openings and pick them off. And they could pick us off. There was a man on my left that afternoon, sitting about three or four feet away. I heard the
There was no way to dig two-man foxholes, so once again we piled up rocks and hoped for the best. Normally we’d stay about six feet apart, almost at arm’s length so we could reach out and touch one another. Through the night we’d take turns sleeping. I’d watch and the next man over would sleep. The man beyond him would watch and the next one would sleep, and so on.
When the Japs came calling at night they wore these rubber-soled canvas shoes, a little like sneakers. They didn’t make a sound. You’d look out and not see a thing. You’d look the other way for a second and turn back. And there’d be a Jap right in front of you. Twenty feet away, where there was nothing at all before.
