scene.
After I had made corporal on Pavuvu I never fired the mortar again. I trained guys on it. But as squad leader my job was to be out front with the riflemen, observing and directing the gunner by phone, telling him how many yards to the target, how many degrees left or right.
I was working with good men. They had their quirks. But we were an effective team.
Private First Class George Sarrett, the guy I’d spooked with the land crab on New Britain, was one of the best Marines that ever put on a uniform. He was smart and fearless, and he was fiercely individualistic. I never had a bit of trouble from him, but I never saw him back down from anybody, either. I liked him because he was a fellow Texan.
Our gunner was Jim Burke. Gene Sledge, in
The assistant gunner was Private First Class Merriel Shelton. I’m the one who stuck Shelton with the nickname “Snafu.” We were in the barracks at Camp Balcombe getting ready to go on liberty. Snafu was always talking, and when he’d get excited you couldn’t always understand him. He was a Louisiana Cajun from down around Francisville, and he had that accent that kind of swallowed up his words.
That day he had his Australian money lying out on the cot. I said, “How much you got there, Shelton?”
He counted up the bills. “Well, I’ve got ten or eleven pounds,” he said. Then he went through the small change. “And I must have eight or ten ounces.”
I looked at him. “You’re screwed up or something. You’re just a snafu waiting to happen.”
And that was it. From then on he was Snafu Shelton.
Whenever we got into a firefight Snafu would hunker down behind something and mutter over and over, “They need to send more men up here! We need more men here!”
I used to think, You get your ass up out of that hole and behind that gun and see what’s going on, you might could take care of a few of them yourself. But I never said anything. Besides, he was a good man.
Private First Class Eugene Sledge was an ammo carrier. I never had to tell Sledge to do a thing twice. You asked him to do it, and he’d do it. He might be scared half to death, and a lot of the time he probably was. But he would do it. That’s all you can ask of a man.
Private First Class John Redifer was our other ammo carrier. He was the type of person who likes to think things over. Slow and deliberate, but rock-solid. Nothing unnerved him. I never saw him panic. He and his buddy Private First Class Vincent Santos, a gunner and a Texan, used to go fishing on Pavuvu with hand grenades until somebody higher up put a stop to it.
All of these men were sure-enough Marines. I can’t think of a higher compliment to pay them. You could count on them.
We’d been there around the bunker for a few minutes when Sledge called out.
“Burgin, there’s Japs in this bunker!”
You never assumed your back was safe on Peleliu. We hadn’t been watching our backs. Now, if Sledge was right, we had more than an isolated sniper behind us. We had a whole bunker full of them.
“I think you’re cracking up, Sledgehammer,” I yelled. “Saunders says it’s clear.”
Sledge, Vincent Santos, Snafu and Redifer were crouching in front of the bunker, watching several horizontal slits along its wall.
“I don’t give a damn what Saunders told you,” Sledge yelled back. “There’s Japs in this thing. I can hear voices.”
I went back to look over the situation. From what I could see, the low mound of coral sand about four feet high concealed a concrete box about twenty feet long and five feet wide. At each end steps led down behind an embankment and around a corner to a low entrance. You’d have to stoop to get in. The slits everyone had their eyes on were about eight inches long and two inches high with steel bars, like a jail cell.
“I could hear them jabbering in there,” Sledge said.
I bent to look into one of the slits and a face looked back at me.
Before he could duck I stuck my M1 between the bars and got off two or three rounds. The face vanished. I’m sure I hit him. There was a sudden commotion in the bunker, like you’d hear from a beehive if you slapped a hollow tree.
I stuck the rifle in the slit again and emptied the clip, turning the barrel right and left, trying to get at every corner of that thing. Bullets were singing, ricocheting all over.
When the racket died down I could still hear jabbering. I couldn’t tell how many there were in there. But I knew there had to be a bunch.
Just then a grenade came bouncing out of one of the side entrances. Everyone dove for cover as it went off. Two or three more grenades followed.
Redifer, Santos, Shelton and Private First Class Leslie Porter, another ammo carrier, climbed on top of the mound and the rest of us crawled around to the front—the beach side—and hunkered down.
“Sledge,” I called out, “take a look in the end of that thing and tell me what you see.”
Sledge poked his head over the embankment and ducked back. Instantly there was a burst of machine-gun fire from inside.
“You all right, Sledge?” I called out. He managed a weak croak, then disappeared around the corner of the bunker and climbed on top to join Redifer, Santos and Shelton.
Redifer was on his belly above one of the entrances when the barrel of a machine gun poked out. Before the gunner could fire, Redifer reached down and grabbed the barrel. The Jap jerked it back inside.
“There’s an automatic weapon in here,” Redifer shouted.
“It’s just rifles,” Snafu said.
That was Snafu. He could argue whether the sun came up.
While Snafu and Redifer bickered, Santos found a pipe sticking a couple inches above the bunker, probably the same one where Saunders’s riflemen had dropped in their grenades. Santos started dropping grenades down the pipe as fast as he could pull the pins—and believe me, that was fast. Santos was a little guy but he was quick. When he ran out, Sledge and Snafu passed him their own grenades. We could hear a dull thump each time one exploded in the bunker below. It was hard to see how anybody inside could be alive after that. There was a moment of silence, then two Jap grenades flew out the side of the bunker. Most of us were clear, but Redifer and Porter, who were standing closest, raised their arms to shield their faces just as the grenades went off.
Both were peppered with fragments. Doc Caswell had returned, his face swathed in bandages. He worked over their forearms and soon had them patched up enough so they were able to go on. But I was thinking, This could go on forever. We’re pinned down here. There’s no need in getting my men killed. I motioned everybody back a few dozen yards to a couple bomb craters.
I knew one of the amtracs was idling down by the beach and it had a 75 mounted in a turret. I figured if we could get that amtrac to blast a hole in the bunker, we could make short work of the Japs and finish our business. While I was thinking, four or five Japs scrambled out of the bunker and took off to our right, running for a thicket. They were carrying rifles with bayonets, but they weren’t shooting. What struck me as funny was they were running clutching their pants, which seemed half falling off. We cut them down before they got to the woods. I thought, What kind of army sends its men into battle without belts to hold up their pants?
I told everyone to stand by while I trotted down toward the beach. On my way I found Corporal Charlie Womack, I Company’s red-bearded flamethrower specialist, and his assistant, Private First Class William Lewis. Lewis had a combat shotgun. Womack was broad-shouldered and big as a football lineman. He needed to be—he carried seventy pounds of napalm and nitrogen in tanks strapped to his back. I told him to wait while I got the amtrac. When I had rounded everyone up we rumbled through the brush the hundred yards or so back to the bunker.
“Here’s what I need,” I told the amtrac’s gunner. “Knock me a hole in that thing at least two feet wide to where a flamethrower can get in and scorch ’em.”
We ducked into the bomb craters to watch. The amtrac pulled closer to the bunker, then let loose with three or four deafening rounds that left our ears ringing for minutes afterward. Coral sand and chunks of concrete rattled down on us and the mortars. Seconds passed before we could make out anything through the smoke and dust. But sure enough, the 75 had done its work, opening a hole in the bunker about four feet wide. One shell had gone clean
