The monotony and the
loneliness on the Canal bred a sick kind of humor. The longer they stayed, the
less civilized they became. In one particular incident Dad defused and
reassembled a grenade. As he walked by a fox hole, he pulled the pin, let the
spoon fly and tossed it in. As the frightened Marine scrambled for safety, Dad
yelled back, “Sucker!”
Loud farting and
belching became competitive sports, in which Dad excelled. After the war he
often reserved his better performances for Thanksgiving dinner at our maternal
grandmother’s. As a rule, my brother and I flanked him at the table. He waited until after “Grace,” when everyone
had started eating then he would let a horrendous one go. I swear the air
changed color as a sulfuric cloud hovered above us. He turned to me and said I
had been taught better manners, which often resulted in me having to leave the
table. I will never forget the time he told me, “A hiccup is and educated fart
that went up an elevator.” I shared that with my grandmother only once.
The humor bordered on
cruelty. He would sing “Cool, Clear Water,” when we had to relieve ourselves
and had no place to do so or he would eat an entire steak in front of us while
we got vegetables. All the while, with each bite he let us know how succulent it
tasted.
Life on the island
reduced itself to survival from nature, boredom, and the Japanese who sniped at
the Marines as they patrolled their perimeters. The enemy tied themselves in
treetops and shot down the Marines behind their own lines. As a wire runner,
Dad not only had to drag in the dead and bury them but he had to string phone
wire between the rear lines and the forward command posts. On one occasion
while running a spool of wire with his rifle across his back, he distinctly
recalled a Japanese sniper pocking up the dirt at his heels. On other occasions
he had to crawl along the wire to mend broken or cut lines.
He feared Japanese
pilots the most. For the three weeks after August 7, until the first Navy and
Marine planes arrived at the airfield, the Japanese bombed the island and
Henderson field every night. The raids generated few casualties but they kept
the isolated Marines awake and on constant alert. During the day reconnaissance
planes sortied over Henderson. For two weeks the Japanese showed no serious
ground opposition.
Did recalled stringing
wire in the trees along the airfield when a Zero made a strafing run along the
strip. From 10 feet up in the tree he got a very good look at the pilot’s teeth
and scarf as the wing tip swooshed by him.
Another time, while on
patrol, a Japanese spotter plane swooped low over Dad’s squad. All 13 men,
except the lieutenant hit the deck. He ordered them not to go to ground again.
The plane flew over again and everyone took cover but the lieutenant. With his
back to the squad, he impetuously reached for his sidearm. Simultaneously 13
’03 Springfields chambered rounds and the lieutenant joined his men on the
ground.”He, who lives to run away, lives to run another day,” Dad quipped. The
steely glint in his eyes told us that the lieutenant would have succumbed to
“friendly fire.”
Death lurked everywhere
on the island, which stank of decaying wildlife and vegetation. Dad always grew
worse at night, especially during lightning storms. He constantly paced the
floor, vehemently curding. He cried and when sleeping woke up frightened and
angry. We never approached him when he slept.
The Japanese usually
attacked at night. On the evening of October 13, after a day of intense bombing
which destroyed the fuel depot and most of the aircraft at Henderson Field, two
Japanese ships shelled the Marines along their entire perimeter. Dad’s eyes glazed over when he described that
night. The men crammed themselves into their dugouts. He said they could hear
the men in the back screaming as they fought for air as the last men in pushed
them into the mud and coral walls. Several suffocated to death. The ground
heaved and rolled. Sand sifted down on the Marines’ heads. The concussions
jarred their skulls. They covered their ears and bawled uncontrollably for the
bombardment to stop. That sense of absolute helplessness plagued him for the 13
years he lived with us. He escaped by taking long walks, alone, at night. One
time, when the car blew a hose on a Florida back road, he took off and left us
sitting for what seemed like hours.
Death haunted him. He
often cursed God for not letting him die like a large portion of his battalion.
(The 2nd Battalion lost all but 45 in killed and wounded on Peleliu.) On the
evening of August 22, when the severely wounded native, Sergeant Major Vouza,
staggered into Dad’s outpost, he was sent back to get Colonel Pollock at his
command post along the Ilu. He returned with the colonel, who stayed long
enough to interrogate Vouza before returning to the CP with Dad.
About that time, the
Japanese attacked the perimeter along the river. He seldom spoke of the
battler, except that three of his friends died there and he had to drag them to
the rear for burial. When the attack broke off near dawn, the Japanese lay in
mounds in front of the Marine machine gun emplacements. The bodies, in the
morning light had already began to bloat and burst, Dad with the other wire
runners went out to sort out the bodies and bring in the American dead.
Thirty-four Marines had died. He found his three friends, all of whom he had
played cards with the day before. They lay in the sun, their distended stomachs
gurgling and black. He and another Marine grabbed one of the corpses by the
wrists and feet to haul it off when the fellow’s hand tore free into Dad’s. I
still see him burying his face in his hands and crying.
By December 22, 1942,
the 2nd Battalion had received orders to leave the Canal. Crippled with malaria
and weight loss, a lot of the Marines, my father among them, had to be evacuated
on stretchers. Every summer after that it literally knocked him flat. I can
still see him on the couch, covered with quilts, saturated with sweat,
delirious, and freezing at the same time. He suffered so terribly.
He never served in
combat again. He spent the rest of the war stateside or in Hawaii. While in
Hawaii he was blackjacked and rolled. The resulting brain damage exacerbated
his already disturbed mental state. Memory lapses, blackouts, and seizures
followed him to his grave.
Dad taught me the
history lessons not found in textbooks. He taught me how fragile love and
compassion are. He taught me never to forget the “little man.” He showed me
that emotion scars run deeper than physical ones and that many men, like
himself, have carried and will carry bitter memories and broken spirits to the
edge of eternity. They died long before they physically grew old.
A navy doctor who
examined the Marines after they left the Canal said they suffered not so much
from “a bloodstream infection nor gastrointestinal disease but from a
disturbance of the whole organism – a disorder of thinking and living, or even
wanting to live.” It is no coincidence that Dad suffered from Survivors’ Guilt.
He equated death in combat with sainthood. After the Canal he lived to die – to
release himself from the bondage of his memories. He penned his epitaph long
before he passed on.
Defenders
of the Faith
Out
on that burning sand,
Thinking
of God, home, and wife,
You
gave to your native land:
All
you had; your life:
We
left you on Guadalcanal,
A
bit of America on a foreign shore,
Sleep
in peace; John, Joe and Al:
America
will honor you; ever more:
When
Christ rewards the brave,
After
all evil is cast down,
You
boys may leave your grave,
And,
rightly claim your crown.
Looking back,
the years having dissipated but not totally erased the raw emotions which
thinking of him resurrect, I am so very thankful that there are organizations,
support groups, and doctors available today to assist and treat the veterans
and their families with the effects of PTSD. Described as “the melancholy,”
“soldier’s heart,” and “insanity,” the veterans of the past just lived with it.
Like so many, Laura Ingalls Wilder explained her uncle’s bizarre behavior at a
family function with, “He was in the war.” Lieutenant J. Volney Pierce (Company
G, 147th New York), writing 19 years after Gettysburg, frankly stated, “The
battle is a huge ‘nightmare’ to me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment