Jocko Podcast - 202: Never Forget The History of Our Freedom. "Faithful Warriors" with Dean Ladd.

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:41 - Dean Ladd. "Faithful Warriors" 3:50:04 - Final thoughts. 3:55:15 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:14:07 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 202 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. On a bright and violent morning in the Central Pacific, a dying Marine with part of his face shot off, saved my life. He was perched atop the partially raised ramp of an LCVP. He was a big, solidly built man with a gaping, gory hole, whereas I was a... I should have been. Blood streaming from the wound.

Moments earlier, he had been standing in the water beside me at the bottom of the ramp, waiting with the other wounded men for his turn to board. Another casualty in the battle for Basio Island. I was dying. I had been shot through the lower abdomen, hit as my unit waited toward the shore to assault the island. Two men from my platoon hauled me back to the L.C. VP and struggled to lift me into the boat.

The Marine with the ravaged face who had just boarded now saw that they were having trouble with me. He reached down, grabbed me with one hand, and pulled me up and over the top of the ramp. Amazing. And so I didn't die. That too was amazing. But not really all that significant in the grand scheme. of things that incident is just a small scene in a very big picture so an insignificant event like that can you imagine being gut shot in waste deep water under heavy machine gun fire barely

making it back to a landing craft which is going to save save you being pulled into that landing craft by another wounded marine and survive And can you imagine considering that that series of events to be insignificant? It's almost impossible to think that way. But that excerpt is from a book called Faithful Warriors, written by Lieutenant Colonel Dean Ladd, who served as an enlisted and officer in the Marine Corps in the Pacific Campaign in World War II. He participated in the battles for Guadalcanal, Tarwa, Saipan, and Tinian. Battles where tens of thousands of Americans were wounded or killed as they fought against the fanatical Japanese Imperial War Machine.

And while it's impossible for us to understand what those men actually went through and what those battles were like, this book does an amazing job of giving us. us a glimpse into this savage part of war. And it is a complete honor to have the author of this book, Dean Ladd, here to talk with us about his experiences. Colonel Ladd, welcome to the program. Thank you. That's incredible. The things that you went through in this book has been,

I could not put this book down and this book is just the picture that it paints of what you all went through in that Pacific campaign is It's unbelievable what you guys went through. It truly is So I guess if we're going to start I always like to start I always like to start at the start So for you going to the book here it says in early 1939 a book boy from the next block came home from overseas. And I was never the same because of it. His name was Lee Preston. And he was a corporal on leave from the Marine Corps.

He showed up wearing his dress blues, creating quite a stir in our quiet Spokane neighborhood. Mostly, I think, the stir was in me. He looked so sharp in that uniform and his manner, the way he carried himself at once modest, but utterly self-assured. Got me thinking about myself and my future. I was only a couple years younger than Lee, but it didn't seem that way.

I was a senior in high school, just a teenager, still a kid. And Lee, well, he was different now. He had changed. He had left home a boy and returned a Marine, a warrior, a man. So the old Marine Corps recruiting process of just sending Marines home on leave and their dressed uniform worked on you, huh? It really did. And what did you know about the military?

the Marine Corps at that point in time? Not very much. I was being approached by one of the old timers in the local Marine Corps Reserve organized, and they were trying to get me to join. And so this was an opportunity just to find a little bit from another source, what it was going to be, what it was like.

I was surprised later on thinking about this, that at that time, the Marine Corps was only 20,000. and a lot of people, they felt fortunate to be able to be asslicted to get in there, actually. And this is all in 1939, and long before we even thought we were going to get in World War II. And it wasn't until, it wasn't much longer after I joined in 1939 that I went to a couple of, we meet just like National Guard once a week. and have drill, right down, right, very close to where we're having this broadcast right now, right across the road from us. And we, and then I went on, went to college, Washington State University,

and had one year, one year of college, and went to two encampments with the organized reserve. One, the first one is San Diego, and the second one was to Brimerton. And so then we got called active duty, though, in November of 1940. And that's not very long, well, just a year. That's a year before we got into the war. Here we were called and went by troop train. There was about 300 of us at least. And ended up in San Diego.

And that was sort of an encampment. Then a year later, well, in November, 1940, we were called in active duty. And now we thought we were going to be gone one year, but we were only gone, but we were gone for a total of five years. So where were you when Pearl Harbor happened? When Pearl Harbor happened, we were in San Diego, and I was going through a scout sniper school at a place called Mission Valley. I don't know if you've been to San Diego lately, but Mission Valley is now a mall. Isn't that amazing? That was nothing but, nothing but sagebrush and a lot of rattlesnakes.

And so you're going through that sniper school. Pearl Harbor happens. And what, what did they do? Do they immediately recall you? Did they cancel the school? We all had returned, returned to the base and get ready to go here, go there. There were just all kinds of commands going out. First of all, hey, we've got to go here.

No, no, we're going to go there and this, all of that. And in spite of all of that, within one month, well, by first part of January, we were a board of ship heading to American Samoa and to defend that island from the Japanese taken over and blocking the supply line from United States to New Zealand and Australia. Now, did the Japanese ever show up and attack that section of American Samoa? They didn't. They didn't for a long time. They would have if it hadn't been for,

what's that main island? Where they're a big battle? Midway. Midway. Midway. At my age, I'm a little difficulty recalling names anymore. That's all good. We got time.

Yeah. So at what point did you get the next, the next orders that you were going to not discard this island. anymore, you guys were going to head out. Yeah, about a month before we finally left. We've been training the Japanese young men who joined the Marine Corps Reserve, and they took over guarding each of the little beaches all around the island, some were very remote.

And so we're able to leave and had no idea where we're going. We thought, well, it could be the East Indies. We had no idea. But on the other hand, we knew it pretty much was going to be going to go out of Cornell because we were having difficulties there. And somewhere in here, you got your commission and you became an officer.

How did that happen? Okay. After we've been on Samoa for about three or four months, I was now a corporal as a squad leader of a machine gun, light machine gun squad. and I got along very well with the NCOs and with our Patoon leader. And so I was recommended to go to a machine gun. It was billed as a machine gun training school.

But it turned out it was just to identify likely candidates to become commissioned. So I recognized there was probably about, could have been 150 or more of us. And it lasted six weeks. And here as corporal, I was one of those selected to get a field commission. And that's it. You had one year of college.

They put you from corporal to second lieutenant. To second lieutenant. And at that time, we had no means of even getting second lieutenant bars. It had made one down at the, where they, their aircraft were. So you guys just fashioned some butter bars for yourself?

Right, we did. And then the next thing would matter of in the first fire in November, this was only a month after I was commissioned. Here we were a bar ship heading to Lord knows where, turned out to be Guadalcanal. And here I am entering combat with the same group that I had been enlisted in before, the same company. And I know our first sergeant, he was a griff old guy. And he used to read me out like he did everybody else. But he saw that any time that I was giving a command that he said, you listen to your second intend and you're going to have to contend with me. So it was just wonderful.

So I was an extra officer assigned to the company headquarters. And that was pretty much the situation. They had to have extra officers when we got into casualties, they could immediately fill the ranks with a new platoon commander. And that's a long story after how I got into the actual action of itself, not knowing how I was going to be able to react as a young lieutenant leader. Well, you write about that here. We'll go back to the book and here is you actually heading into Guadalcanal. And here we go.

I remember thinking as my LCVP chug toward the beach that my time had come. and that it would be a time of testing when I would get to show what I was made of at last. Even so, a part of me wished I were somewhere else. What if I failed the test? I was assigned to the headquarters section of B Company First Battalion as an extra second lieutenant with no specific duties other than to follow

whatever orders I was given and make myself useful in whatever possible way. The regiment was actually above full strength with junior officers to spare. It was an unusual circumstance, and I knew it would soon change because junior officers typically suffer the highest casualties relative to the other ranks.

Attrition would quickly and inevitably take its toll. Lieutenant's in command of line units would get killed, wounded, injured, and sick. Extras like me would replace them. Inevitably, too, a few junior officers would be relieved for incompetence or cowardice. I prayed that I wouldn't be one of them, that I wouldn't turn yellow and let my buddies down

when the going got tough, a fate worse than death. As for death itself, no worries there. Getting killed was something that happened to the other guy. And then, arrival. Our LCVPs came to a gentle halt at the waterline, nosing into the sand of Beach Red between the Tenoroo River and Lunga Point. We climbed over the sides. There were no ramps on those early model Higginboats,

and we walked on to Guadalcanal. We hardly got our trousers wet. We'd experienced rougher landings during amphibious assault exercises outside San Diego. San Camini for one. So you're heading into Guadalcanal, and it's a pretty calm entry, even though there had been a lot of fighting going on. Yeah, previously they had been at that location.

So once you get on Guadalcanal, you start to move towards the front lines. Yeah. In this case, it was opposite direction where the front lines were. The Japanese had landed way south of us, and there was concern that they were going to come and develop us from that location. So our regiment moved out to head them off and going through jungle and at the night. And we didn't know.

really where we were, didn't know where they were. We finally got up to an army outfit, 164th from the Cotas, and they had just entered up shooting each other just the day before. And here we saw blood all over the place from that situation. We entered up at night, and we just had to stop right along a river bank, and I had my feet dangling in the water at the time. So anyway, we never did. They'll run into the Japanese.

All of a sudden they disappeared from that particular location. But that was quite a trying time, just what it was like moving into combat, not knowing what's going to happen next. You know, one thing that I talk about a lot is the possibility of friendly fire occurring. That is exactly what happened. I know I had friendly fire incidents happen with me in Iraq. And this happened to you as. well I'm going to the book here you were you're you've been moving for a while and you're

holding up at night and you guys are in your position then all of a sudden bang someone yelled another shot fired yeah and then another and then another several shots in quick succession all from our foxholes more shots all at once and just the whole company shooting firing every which way shooting and shouting grenades were thrown bursting left and right front and to my rear explosions and muzzle blast lit the area like popping flash bulbs Corporal Lane was hit in the arm, a minor wound, but he didn't think that it was minor. He panicked and shouted out to Sergeant Wimpy Wright. Top, my arm shot off.

Since Wright and Lane were best buddies, a show of concern from the first sergeant might in the circumstances have been expected and when certainly have been warranted. But Wright, an old salt, who is as crusty as they come, was not practiced in showing concern, even to best buddies who had been wounded in combat. Muttering just loud enough to make himself heard above the racket, Wright replied, shut up, you fool. You want to let them know where I am? The shooting continued. More grenades exploded. PFC Harold Park, a bar gunner with first platoon, realized that several men just to his left were throwing grenades all around the darn place.

The guys were just having a little hand grenade war with each other. Maybe the Japanese were out there too, tossing a few grenades of their own, but Park didn't think so. He stayed low and didn't fire his weapon. I didn't figure it would do any good, even if they were Japanese. You couldn't see nothing. All you could do is sounds. was a half Korean and half Irish.

Yes. I had a lot of contact with him after the war as well. So it was important for him to, because I know you say in the book that he inherited his father's looks, not his mother's, so he looked more Korean. He looked more Korean.

We told him he better stay close. Yeah, that's a rough one. Yeah. So you get done. with this, this just happening basically all night. I mean, crazy firefights and you don't even know if there's any Japanese out there. At the time, Murdoch, that was our acting company commander at the time. And the man near him got shot through the abdomen area. And he's more concerned that he lost his private parts, but he didn't. Now was Murdoch, did Murdoch have experience from some of the other

campaigns. No, no, he was new just like the rest of us. We're all new to combat. Speaking of, you know, near misses and whatnot, you're waiting to do a link up and here we go back to the book. I thought I might grab a quick bite to eat and started to open my sea ration can. In the process, I somehow managed to cut my thumb to the bone, blood gushed from the wound, and I spent some frantic moments applying a field dressing to stanch the flow. The non-coms and enlisted men watched me, probably trying hard not to laugh. I still have a scar right there in that thumb from that. And they're watching, they're thinking, second lieutenants are idiots.

Hard to argue with that assessment, which the lower ranks held as virtually axiomatic. And I just given them another reason for their certitude. How humiliating and annoying, the cut would not fully heal as long as I remained on Guadalcanal and I still bear a scar from it. Thus far, the chief dangers in Guadalcanal posed to my well-being had come from, one, my buddies via friendly fire, and two, myself. the Japanese in comparison had been a relatively benign presence. There are a couple of situations right at that same time that happened.

One was a young Marine from another outfit. He was real bad. He thought he was, he's really been there. He says, I'm used to all this stuff. You know, and here he had a Japanese skull hanging from a, from a cord of some sort, and he was just swinging that around. It was crazy. And then a little bit later, within an hour or so, we had a big air raid,

hundreds of Japanese planes dropped bombs on us. And then I was watching one of our N-aircraft cruisers shooting at them, and many of their planes dropped at that time. But that was really getting into it in deep way, but not really directly in direct fire at the time. So at that time, that kid that you talk about, and you mentioned him in the book, this is sort of the, so he's a guy that had been fighting somewhere,

else and he comes back and so this is the first person that you see that you look at that's starting to be you know he's having some let's see how did you put it he had acclimated to conditions on guadal canal that's what you wrote and you know however long that takes before you know it's a it's a different it's a different yeah it's a different environment it's a completely different mindset yeah and that's what he was doing um now these all these young people they they all had beards now you know they haven't shaved for a long time. And they hadn't had enough food, really. They were eating Japanese rice and whatnot.

Because our transports all had to leave. They loaded off the troops, but most of the material, all of the food and stuff, they weren't able to unload. So they had to eat this Japanese food. So anyway, they were a pretty gaunt-looking people. But even so, they were full of fight, you could tell. Young people, and you know, young guys that are in the, they're teens still, you know.

Wow. You get into this Montenacow. Am I saying that right? The Montenacau. Matanacow. Yeah. Matanacow. Yeah.

This river, this offensive that you guys start on 10 November, which is the 167th anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps. And here we go to the book, separating our forces from their geographical objective, a coastal village, with some four miles of exceptionally rugged terrain. grassy ridges falling away steeply to jungle choked ravines and several thousand Japanese infantrymen also exceptionally rugged our mission objective was to engage defeat and destroy the enemy formations in our path Our assault units advanced slowly but steadily against determined resistance the eighth Marines ordered to move up in column behind the two seven

Filed across a narrow pontoon bridge over the Matna Kau Matanakau and continued a short distance before halting for noon chow as before the sweep to Cully point we encountered no Japanese the attacking units had driven them off but we suffered casualty just the same let me tell you a little bit about there where we had the chow there were many Japanese bodies lying about some had been partially buried some of their legs are still sticking out there had been a major battle between between them attacking the other Marines that have been there just before a few weeks before and here all these mongol all these bodies and flies and maggots and everything else.

So we ate among all of that. Yeah, you're saying some guys couldn't even carry on barely because it smelled so bad. Yeah, yeah, it did. Yeah. This right near a place called Point Cruz, by the way. And today, it's a city, well, over 20,000. That's the capital of the Solomon Islands. At this point, you actually say in the book,

as you were sitting there amongst all these bodies, these dead bodies, and as you're sitting there, eating your chow, you say, like that kid twirling the skull, I was acclimating to the conditions on Guadalcanal. I'd been on the island for seven days. Yeah. Yeah. So that's an indication to you. So then you guys, later that day, an enemy unit penetrated our line and ambushed weapons platoon, killing three Marines with a burst of enemy fire, with a burst of machine gun fire. And then the entire, offensive had suddenly been called off. And not only that, we were going to give up the ground we had taken, relinquishing it to the Japanese. What the hell we thought. So you get told, hey, you guys stop attacking. The reason was, which you'll get into in just a bit, is that there's a major task force, the Japanese, about 12 transports full of troops, can you imagine, and battleship and cruisers and a lot of destroyers. And they, they were, were going to, they were going to just knock us off of there. We, we hadn't, we didn't have a good feel that it was that dire, but boy, it turned out it was because that, when they did come in at

night, we saw them come in in in mid-November and major battle between naval battle, naval battle, gaol canal, and you never know, watching at nighttime, you didn't know which are our ships and which are theirs, all of a sudden you see something blow up, or you see red hot shells being, fired going back and criss-crossing back and forth and then the next next morning he we have troops have the some our men that they're their own ships were sunk and now they they're all full of oil and they're coming up there's now they're landing on our shore it was uh what and here we watched it from a grandstand viewpoint on a ridge watching all this happened Incredible.

Did you know that this naval battle was about to take place? Didn't know it's going to be anything like that. To imagine roughly 12 transports full of troops, all but three of them were sunk. And the three that did beach, their troops got off, but all their supplies and stuff remained on. And we have, our planes bombed that. our artillery did.

So we had those, we had to reckon with those troops that came, got off of those transports over the next week or so. Your description of this battle is crazy to read. I'm going to read it. The battle between the American and Japanese

surface fleets began a little before 0200 like a suddenly breaking storm of cataclysmic size and power. Yeah. In the language of naval tacticians, the coming together of two fleets in C-LARC channel constituted what is known as a meeting

engagement, but collision engagement is a better term for describing what happened. Steaming more or less blindly into the channel, the fleets ran into each other at oblique angles. Their ships quickly became intermingled, resulting in a close quarters melee

that saw the combatants charging madly about. Their big guns flashing and booming, hurling red-hot shells and high flaming arcs above the channel. The thunder of the Guns rolled across the black water, a steady pulsating roar, and the molten projectile, streak-legged meteors, criss-crossing the skies with fiery tails, rising and falling and crashing into ships and exploding in massive fireballs. Violent secondary explosions caused by ammunition, cooking off in the

intense heat of the detonating shells, rocked some of the ships and sent them furiously ablaze, burning like Roman candles, fountains of fire, sparking and shooting flames and blasting big chunks of steel in every direction. All the while, star shells and flares burst high above the channel and then faded like dying galaxies as they drifted down at the end of their parachutes into the extinguishing water. The canisters that held the flares periodically flew over our positions, chugging like locomotives. Searchlights probe the lower darkness with their long, brilliant beams sweeping back and forth above the surface, bisecting, fixing on some hapless ship, bringing the blazing shells down on it. Streams of trees.

Tracers from automatic cannons and machine guns curved through the middle of the air. Every now and then an errant torpedo slammed into the beach below us, 2,500 pounds of explosives blasting a big crater at the waterline. We watched all this from our foxholes on the ridge. Front row seats to a spectacle that John Murdoch likened to all the Fourth of Julys I ever saw in my life, all put together at once. We were a vocal audience, awestruck and profane. A ship would explode and all up and down the line, you'd hear men exclaiming,

Jesus Christ and holy shit and oh my fucking God, did you see that? It was thrilling, really. You couldn't help but feel that way. But I also couldn't help but wondering which ships were ours and how they could distinguish friend from foe. I thought of the many men who were losing their young lives right before our eyes. I felt very fortunate to be safe in my foxhole, and I wondered, who's winning.

Yeah, we had no idea who was winning. We just knew that what a... We had seen a massive combat. It's just incredible. And we were at a ringside seat. Now, as that's going on, obviously you have to realize that if the Americans don't win this thing...

Yeah, that was it. You guys are done. Yeah, yeah. Can you imagine a convoy like that? that many transports. They probably matched our numbers at that time if they had all gotten ashore, but they didn't. Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah. Early the next morning, B Company crossed the river to spearhead the attack by another Green Army Battalion, the one, the first of the 182nd, along the coastal flat toward the base of Point Cruz. So you guys took lead. Yeah, we were spearheading that particular attack.

You know, you talked about, you mentioned Wimpy Wright a little earlier, and that's a heck of a nickname. It doesn't sound like it suits in very well. And thought about that, true. But we talk about, you know, a lot of times we talk about leadership on this podcast. And you do a great description of this kind of transition and the relationship that you had with Wimpy Right. I think it's worth.

Well, this is my co-author, Steve. wine gardener. I tell you, he was, he's a, he's a great, you know, he got an award,

uh, for a Polish woman that was, that escaped the, uh, holy cost. Okay. Called Lala's story. Well,

we can definitely look into that book. Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, here's how he describes your relationship with him. Wimpey Wright was the company's first sergeant. He was a tough old salt, short and stocky,

late 30s or 40s, old enough to be my father, old enough for that matter, matter to be my father. matter to be the father of quite of the few of the lieutenants in the regiment he was going on 20 years in the marine corps and it served in china nicaragua in Haiti he was no newcomer to war no stranger to combat he was an assault in our terms he possessed a commanding voice which he used in a full-throated bellow when reading off one of his charges read when reading off one of his charges for doing something

stupid on samoa before i was commissioned i had been one of his charges and it usually more than once deservedly been on the receiving end of one of his harangues. But now I outranked him. I was at first uncomfortable with our new relationship. I found it hard to imagine giving orders to a man who not so long ago had been shouting in my face and giving me addressing down the likes of which I had never experienced before and never would again. It wasn't that I was afraid of him. Rather, I respected him too much and knew him and knew too well that he was a great Marine to think that I could or should be telling him what to do. And I thought that he might resent my status and just to be cantankerous make things difficult for me. I needn't have worried about right. A consummate professional,

he supported me fully and sincerely. I should have expected that. After all, it was because of his recommendation that I received my commission. He looked on me as his protege and he wanted me to succeed in part because my success would reflect well on him, but mainly because he was genuinely proud of me. Also because I was a known quantity whom he had personally mentored, he much preferred me to be giving orders rather than some 90-day wonder fresh out of training in the States. Since he had taught me everything I knew, he was confident that in combat together, we would more or less be thinking along the same lines an important connection for a top sergeant to have with his platoon leader. Nor would he broke the slightest.

insubordination toward me from anyone else in the platoon. You will obey your lieutenant or you'll have to answer to me. He growled at my guys and you could be damn sure they did. Nobody wanted to have to answer to right. Sounds like an outstanding Marine. Pretty soon you're going to get me getting into a part. It's my my first encounter of very close calls was losing me alive. Um, on Hill 78. Second platoon was dealing with a lone sniper who had fired on us from the open trees on the coastal flap below. He was high up in one of those trees, high enough to place him a little above the hilltop, allowing him to shoot down at us at a shallow angle. He potted at us for a better part of four hours.

And then by the, by and by, and much to my astonishment, a lieutenant I didn't recognize came strolling along the ridge, fully upright, fully exposed to the sniper, smirking at us. I was lying on my belly in the grass and he approached me saying, ah, what are you worried about? That sniper can't hit anyone. In the next instant, a shot rang out and a bullet winged his arm. Yeah, yeah. Can't get complacent. You continue on.

I didn't much care where that lieutenant went or what happened to him. I wanted to get that sniper. I pulled out my field glasses and scanned the trees below our position. As luck would have it, I spotted the sniper almost at once. That is, I spotted his putty wrapped legs and booted feet dangling from the limb of a huge banyan tree about 150 yards from my position. I lifted the field glasses a notch to the clump of leaves where those above those legs. I couldn't see him, but he had to be there.

Japanese legs were always attached to Japanese bodies. Just then, he took a shot at me. He must have seen me looking. Maybe my field glasses glinting in the sun and give me away. His bullet hit the ground just inches from my nose, spraying dirt in my face. I dropped my field glasses and snatched up my springfield. Firing from the prone position, I unloaded the entire clip at the clump of leaves above his feet. Five shots, one after the other, working the bolt quickly, but smoothly, so it's to not spoil my aim.

Just as I had been taught to do and just as I had practiced on the Marine Corps rifle ranges. I didn't think about it. I didn't have to think. All that training just kicked right in and I killed the man who had been trying to kill me. He didn't drop from the tree. He didn't drop his rifle. but that was to be expected. Japanese snipers

customarily tied themselves and their rifles to the trees. Bottom line, he didn't shoot at us after that. He was dead all right. The first man I had killed. Yeah, that's my first call. The first call of...

My first call of... Having a round hit right in front of your face. By my nose, yeah. Knocking dirt in my face. Yeesh. Boy, he spotted me. I was no longer somebody to harass. I was somebody that was going to kill him.

Now we had a duel, a duel going on. All right. The 8th Marines, first and second battalions were to advance by side in columns into a ravine, then attack and capture Hill 83, Ridgelined. The first battalion was to move forward on the right. B Company would lead in the battalion's advance and my platoon would lead the company's advance. Does that put you, does that put your company right, your company right at the front? Yeah, at that time.

Your platoon right at the front of the company. Yeah, we were at that time. We were right in the crux of it. Following an artillery bombardment, second platoon, with the rest of the battalion behind it, passed through the army lines and advanced into the ravine. Enemy machine guns and riflemen fired down on us from concealed positions on the ridge,

some 75 yards ahead and above us. Machine guns chattered relentlessly, ripping through the jungle, rustling foliage, clipping branches and leaves. Corporal Olson DeMoss and his squad led the way moving up out of the ravine and onto the ridge. Suddenly a voice shouted, Baker Company, get off the ridge. Huh? I looked around at my men. Who gave that order? Most of my men had gone to ground, hiding in the bush, and were invisible to the Japanese. That's the nature of jungle

warfare. Everyone tries to stay hidden. You can hardly see anyone, either enemy or friendly. The battlefield seems empty and you feel, and you can feel alone and isolated on it, especially when you're in command, especially when in the middle of a firefight, and when somebody else starts giving orders to your men. I looked around and a few of the men I could see stared back at me. Their blank expressions, a firm denial. It wasn't me. A few minutes later, DeMoss and his squad returned to the ravine, having relinquished their brief hold on the ridgetop. Somebody yelled at us to get off, DeMoss explained. He thought one of our guys had given the order. Then we both realized what had happened. Those clever Japanese, one of them, someone flut in

American English, had given that order. Very clever. He must be pleased with himself. He must be laughing at us just about now, him and his men laughing. And how did he know that we were Baker Company? You heard us say that. That's it. Now we're going to get a little bit later than this. Now I took over the platoon, second platoon. The platoon leader was yellow. He wouldn't get up out of his hole. So now I'm in charge. And you're going to get into what the close calls I had there. Boy, they were, they were mighty close. unbelievable. I don't know how I survived it.

Yeah, going back to this, we resumed our uphill attack, and we were met with more devastating machine gun and rifle fire. So would you say this engagement right here is the first time that you were under real? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, other than getting bombed, other than having aerial attack, other than a sniper shooting at you.

No, this was it. This is it. And it's about the closest call as it can be, I tell you. We kept going forward, firing on the move, leaning slightly into the incline, shooting from the shoulder and the hip, firing blindly at the top of the ridge. We couldn't see the enemy, but we knew he was up there. DeMoss on my left, banged away with his springfield just as fast as he could, worked a bolt.

And then his rifle seized up. DeMoss looked at me and I looked at him and the spell was broken. Just like just that fast, I came out of my battle trance. I felt very exposed and insecure. Judging by the wide-eyed look he gave me, DeMoss felt the same. DeMoss inspected his rifle and discovered that he had to be. a bullet had pierced his magazine, barely missing his nose in the process. He never cursed, never uttered profanities, and now, true to form, his big eyes still as saucers.

His eyes still as big as saucers, he exclaimed, well, I'll be a dirty name. Then he discarded his rifle and started throwing grenades at the top of the ridge. The reality of our sudden harrowing plight then struck me. This was my first major combat test as a platoon leader, and I realized that I had to take immediate and firm control of my I could not show fear in front of my men. A couple feet to my right, private McCoy Reynolds had been hurling grenades one after the other, each time courageously standing up and exposing himself to enemy fire. He crouched down next to me and scanned the top of the ridge.

Then he exclaimed, I see them and threw another grenade. In the next instant, he was shot through the neck, killed instantly. He fell at my feet. For a moment I just looked at him. His eyes wide open, lifeless stared back at me. Then I realized that now more than ever I had to get a great thing. I had to get a grip on things and seize control of what was becoming an increasingly chaotic situation. I decided at once we needed support from our mortars and backed a little way down the ridge out of the field of fire to further assess the situation.

Now, at the same time, we were running low on an ammunition as well, and we sent back a call. We need more ammunition. Next thing we knew, bandelier after bandolier of ammunition started arriving. Just the same and the same. go out of guys. Now, that's an interesting, I mean, you recognized that you needed to get control of your emotions. Is that something you had thought about? What made you realize that? What made you realize, oh, wow, I better do something because I'm in charge and I need to make some decisions here?

I don't know. All of a sudden, fear went away, I guess. I didn't have fear right at that time. And it's also interesting. But I saw the dire situation. Here we were in a situation that we had it. We were committed. And either to keep going or are we going to back up?

Then back off. Finally, we were called back down. And not only that, that same kind of movement went clear to the top. And decided to just call off that drive in general. Here, I was at the Spears' head right there. It was called off, and the general from the top on down was that, okay, we stopped going after them and losing troops and just let them dry in the vine.

Well, yeah, because at this point, you had, we controlled the waterways. We controlled the supply. And we had taken out their supplies. So let's do some siege warfare on them and make them wait, make them starve. So we had no more fighting. We had a firm defense line along a ridge for a month. Just held the line, continually sending up reconnaissance patrols,

make sure where they were doing, what they were doing. And I led a number of reconnaissance patrol myself, taking out four or five men with me and finding out where they were. That was a scary situation, too, all these reconnaissance patrols. You know, right before they stop that, as you're still pushing forward up that ridge, you've got some great detail in here that's absolutely worth talking about. Going to the book here, the ammunition was quickly distributed. So this is you called for ammunition. The ammunition was quickly distributed and once again we moved uphill, shooting as we went.

Another of my man, men, Private Walter Cuss, was fatally hit while scouting up the ridge from a different direction. At the moment of his death, he exhaled his last breath. let out a long-rising howl of pain and anguish like a dying animal. Yeah. Didn't sound like a human being. Several attempts were made to reach him and drag him back, all unsuccessful. PFC James Bell said, I'm going up there. I'll bring him down.

He was off and running before anyone could stop him. Yeah, on his own. He did that. And he was shot through the chest well before reaching Cuss's body. We were able to retrieve Bell, and he was still alive as we carried him down and out of the line of fire. but he was just about gone. He had a sucking chest wound

that made it increasingly difficult to breathe. Open to both sides so he couldn't breathe, you see? This was the first time I had seen such a wound and it was a terrible sight. Our cormon tried to patch him up but there was little he could do. A sucking chest wound needs to be sealed internally as well as externally

and the cormon could only treat the outside. Finally, Bell said, it looks like this is goodbye. Yeah. And then he calmly died. Yeah. Just like in the movies, I thought. with his last words and everything.

Yeah. Soon after that, we quit attacking and withdrew. We couldn't dislodge the enemy from the ridge. We had been defeated. Our losses were heavy. My platoon alone suffered seven casualties. Four killed. Reynolds, Bell, Cuss, and Private Robert Kessner.

Three wounded, PFC, James Harris. Private Mick Bernie and private named Manderville. Total casualties for First Battalion were nine killed and 23 wounded. Overall in the period spanning 18 to 23 November, the 8th Marines lost 42 men killed and many more wounded. Now, you've gotten a part where a discovery escort was named after McCoy Reynolds. Oh, I did not know that. Well, let me tell you about that.

Yeah. My company commander had been a journalist with a New Orleans paper, So he's good at writing up things. So I recommended something written up on him. He wrote this up in such a matter that a destroyer escort was named after him, that's called him McCoy Reynolds, and it in turn sank two Japanese submarines later on. Wow.

Yeah. And was that Captain LeBlanc that you're talking about? Yes, it is. So Captain LeBlanc was your company commander? He was the company commander at that time. And it sounds like, It sounds like from the book, well, let me give you your thoughts on him. We called him Little Napoleon.

He was notoriously eager to make a name for himself and just as notorious, just as notoriously averse to taking risks. His men took the risks and he took the credit for their success. He would say, come on, we've got a tough job to do. And then he'd assign someone else to do it. Sometimes he'd announce that we were going out on a reconnaissance platoon. And then he turned to Murdoch or me or one of the other junior officers and say, hey, how about you leading it? Uh-huh. And at one point, he tells you to go back to the Army.

This is the stupidest darn thing you can imagine. You're going to read it now. He's telling you to go back to the Army and tell them what, you know, what the enemy disposition is. And they ran into the same stuff that we did. And they really ran into it. Really bad. So he tells you to go, and this is what you write. I cut low across the ridges east-facing.

slope walking in the grass at the edge of the jungle. I was beneath the crest and felt reasonably safe. The area was deserted, a true no man's land. I found this very disconcerting. It was eerie. So you're alone? I'm alone. I'm stupid. Stupid. Then I came upon the body of an American soldier. He lay slightly above me and to my right, astride a narrow trail leading to the top ridge. His abdomen had been torn open and his intestines had spilled out and were spread across the ground, a grisly and heart-rending sight. I church. I hurried past him thinking, I wonder what his dreams were. Will that happen to me?

Now, he was looking at a photograph. Oh. Do you talk about that there? No. Okay, he's now, the last thing before he died, he's looking at a photograph of his family or his girlfriend. It's laid out there. That's the last, the last, as dying, as he's dying, he was looking at that. And you're thinking, I wonder what his dreams were.

Yeah, that could have been me. That could be me. And will that happen to me? Well, that happened yet because there was still a lot of danger. There are still snipers out there shooting at me at this time. And now you go. I arrived at the Army CP to find it in turmoil. An anxious captain and his visibly agitated staff stood around a field radio listening to a report from the front line.

Eminating from the speaker were the sounds of battle mixed with the crackling of static. A frightened voice crying out. We're taking a lot of fire. Platoon leader hit. Leg blown off. Get us out of here. I could hear the actual sounds of the battle outside, not too far away. Machine guns, rifle fire, grenades, mortars, the usual mayhem.

I reported to the commanding officer and told him what I knew. And then I left the CP, laid out close by, were as many as a dozen bodies covered with ponchos. I hurried on. Instead of staying low on the slope, I headed over toward the top of the ridge. He wasn't interested in hearing me. He's already in it so darn deep. He didn't care about any more details. He knew he was in it over his head.

Yeah, it's old information at this point for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I reached the top of the ridge, I snuck my head, I stuck my head over the crest in the next incident of Japanese machine gun cut loose at me with a long burst, sending a streamable, it snapping just inches above my head. Jesus. That brought me to my senses, and I ran down the slope into the jungle.

I stood there for a minute, gasping for breath, shaking and thinking, holy smokes, almost bought the farm on that one. Holy smokes. Is that count as one of your? close calls. Very close. Yeah, that's what I'm, you've already covered two of them now. Two out of eight.

There's actually, there's three more on Guadalcanal that you'll get to in this a bit. Well, what do they say? A cat has nine lives, so luckily we only have eight to cover. Otherwise, the ninth one, we wouldn't be here sitting here talking. On November 25th, we were pulled off the line and sent to positions

near in the rear near Henderson field for the next 15 days we slept an open-sided tents on the grove of coconut palms on ground that was soddened from frequent heavy rain showers there was always a possibility that Japanese warships would foray and to see lark channeled during the night and throw a few hundred large-calibals into our soggy environs but these dangers were negligible compared to what we had recently been through on the front line and we did not worry about them Actually, we did not worry about much of anything. We were emotionally and physically drained and lacked both energy and inclination to worry.

We mostly sat around doing nothing, nothing, partly because we had nothing much to do, but also because we were sort of in a daze. You might say we were numb. It was not an unpleasant state. We were purely glad to be alive, and the fact that no one was shooting at us, at least not directly or intentionally, made us feel downright euphoric. We were living for the moment, and for the moment. everything was fine and we were content.

See, now we're coming down with malaria as well, you see. Now the other thing you go into here, which is interesting, is during this period, a number of Marines took steps to upgrade their personal armament. The main object of their desire was the superb M1-Garan semi-automatic rifle that had been issued to the Army. Army had that. We still had the old ones. The model 1903 Springfield we carried was a fine weapon.

but it was obsolete. The old salts loved the O3, like a Viking loves his broadsword, but the kids were unsendental about the rifle because they had no history with it. So you say, while submarines acquired their M-1s through honest scrounging and battlefield scavenging,

others resorted to outright theft. And you go through some methods that were used to do that. Moonlighting. You guys had Tommy guns, which you said weren't really all that great for most of the purposes. The rising gun. For a while,

for a while, we even had the shotgun, you know? Yeah. Yeah. On the night of 30 to 31 November, a Japanese... In the beginning,

the beginning, using the flame source as well. Oh, yeah. At that time. Rough weapon right there. Oh, yeah. On the night of 30 to 31 November, a Japanese task force

steamed into Cilark Channel of bringing food to the beleaguered Japanese forces on Guadalcanal. Our warships sailed forth to intercept it, meeting the enemy fleet in that off off Savo Island and Guadalcanal just off Tassafarongo. How do you say that? That's right. Tassafarongo, point. Because our bivouac was situated inland on low ground, I heard the battle but did not see it. Our fleet took an awful beating. One of our heavy cruisers, Northampton was struck by two torpedoes within a matter of seconds, consumed by fire. She sank a few hours later.

Just off shore? The heavy cruisers, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Pensacola were severely damaged. And the sailors were coming off of it, all covered with oil. And so would they swim into shore? Some did. Probably did. It was right near the shore. The battle had been a clear tactical victory for the Japanese, but a strategic defeat.

The task force had failed with its primary mission to deliver food to the Japanese army on Guadalcanal. This was a calamitous development for the Japanese. Even before the battle, their food stocks were desperately low. Now they began falling below substance levels. The entire enemy army was growing physically weaker because the soldiers simply didn't have enough to eat. We were in better shape than the Japanese overall, but only in a relative sense. The first Marine division in particular was greatly reduced by illness and sheer exhaustion, as well as by battle casualties

it had suffered in four months of fighting. Yeah. A large number of its men were unfit for duty and many more were only marginally capable of rendering effective frontline service. The High Command recognizing that the entire division had just about reached the end of its operational utility, pulled it off the front lines,

began sending it units to Australia starting on 9 December. Yeah. It's the day after my birthday, December 8th. So you wave goodbye to those guys as they're leaving. and meanwhile on 11 December the 8th Marines resume return to the ridges Yeah right but we didn't really take off until

first part of the January I guess And the final drive And then so it's you on one set of ridges And the Japanese were on the other set of ridges They were usually somewhere right on the reverse slope in front of us They were dug in like gophers Like gopher holes But most of them were further back

On the next next ridge So So there'd be you on one ridge. They would come up close enough to throw hand grenades at us. We're throwing hand grenades at each other. All right. These dispositions, meaning these two ridges that you guys had occupied, both ours and those of the enemy remained substantially unchanged for the next 34 days.

Yeah, yeah. The brass, anxious to void a repeat performance of the November battles and ordered a temporary halt to large-scale offensive operations. Instead, we were told to hold the line and harassed the enemy with aggressive patrols and raids. In the meantime, our... air and naval forces would strive to interdict the Tokyo Express, which is their supply chain. Now, while we were at that location, there was a sergeant from the adjacent company, and he had a tommy gun, and he didn't have enough action going on where he was.

Instead, he was coming down the line where there's ever action. He wanted to get into it. Well, he came right by where I was, and there wasn't too much, wasn't right, it was right, shortly after that, one of our rounds dropped in short. He lost two legs and an arm. And there was an article in a sad reading post about it and saying that at least I have the right arm to wrap the bar with for a drink. I'll tell about it in there somewhere too. You guys, during this, you also talk about the fact that

you would be yelling stuff back and forth to the Japanese. Certainly a little bit. A little bit. They'd be yelling at you guys and you'd yell back at them. And it sounds like during the daytime, well, you say it was a policy became one of Live and Let Live during the day. A much different policy ruled at night. Probably the case, yeah.

And they would sneak in on it every now and then, make a little, try to sneak in and maybe get one of our guys in a foxhole. Yeah, you're going to one of those. One night during a heavy downpour, the Japanese crept up from the ravines, the sound of their movement massed by the falling rain and jumped the crew. A ferocious hand-to-hand struggle ensued. I heard our men yelling, help. Oh, God, they're in our hole.

Help. Their blood-curdling cries and thrashing sounds were plainly audible to everyone in the vicinity. They were on a point a little bit ahead of our regular line. And this has got to be just, this is unimaginable. We listened horrified but stayed in our holes. That's how bad it was to get out of your holes. You don't dare because anybody outside the hole, his enemy. Suddenly the yelling

sounds of the fighting ceased. We anxiously waited and listened, peering through the rain into the darkness. Then the Japanese began probing our position, all up and down the line, running up to the crest and chucking a few grenades over the top at our holes and running back downhill. After the grenades exploded, usually harmlessly, our guys would leap

from their holes, dashed to the crest, and throw grenades at the fleeting enemy. Then they'd scamper back to their holes, and the Japanese would return to hurl their grenades. Back and forth, it went through the night. Intervals of silence and then flash bang of grenades exploding, and men hollering and cursing in English and Japanese. The next morning we discovered that one of the

men in the machine gun post had been killed. There you go. That's that one. Bayoneted to death. The others had been wounded, but somehow they'd beaten back their attackers. And you were saying this earlier. We also conducted aggressive patrols and probed their lines at night, giving as good as we got, or maybe even better.

If more frontline Japanese soldiers had survived the war, maybe you'd be reading memoirs by those veterans of Guadalcanal campaign, recounting how the U.S. Marines terrorized them at night. And terrorized them we most certainly did. Some guys really enjoyed this part of the job. Teenagers who found their true nature in the jungle, who discovered that they were born for the warrior life. There were a few in every unit, more than a few actually,

more than you might expect, more than I expected. They went after the Japanese with a competence and enthusiasm that made them almost as frightening to their officers as they must have been to their enemies. It was just amazing, observed Murdoch. how you could take kids like these and put them out into the jungle, and in just a few weeks, they'd be great at jungle warfare. For them, it was like playing cowboys and Indians.

They'd come back from a patrol and you'd hear them talk. How many teeth did you get, or how many did you kill? And they'd brag, well, I killed three or four. Now, on one of these patrols, much earlier than what we're talking about right now, I was leading this patrol and had four or five with us with me. And we ended up, we were in a location. where the Army had now passed through our lines, and they were in control.

So we came right by the regimental CP, and the Army colonel says, what are you guys doing here? He said, well, we got a constant patrol out. He says, well, we're in charge here now. We don't need you in here anymore. And so he says, so we moved on a little bit further back to our own line,

where we were in reserve, and it turned out we were a little bit higher than where he was, so he'd look up at us, and we were on the skyline from his perspective, we're in skyline, and that we would have, he said, well, you're going to attract fire being up there. Well, he was partially correct, but not entirely. Well, anyway, as we left, my man says,

see, they're two or three snipers in a tree right over their CP. What should we do? I said, shoot them. So we shot him, killed him, and told the colonel he just shot three snipers right over your CP. And later on, later on, I'm going to return in 1982. There's a big Catholic church right there now. And I talked to the, not a priest, but the next one up, was there. And I was telling him about it.

And then later on that same day, well, he said he's the one as a young priest. He's the one that rescued Joel Foss when he got shut down. I was out in the water and he was all tangled up in his parachute and everything else. Tell him about it, well, later on that day we saw Joe Foss. And then here he met this priest, you know, and they were talking about it. And so anyway, what's interesting is that when they told this Army colonel what we had just done, the colonel was still unhappy with us. And at this same reunion, when we saw Joe Foss and all, there was a veteran army who had previously been a Marine in China. And he joined the National Guard, and that's where he was out there this time.

And he came to me, he says, you know, I just heard you talking. I was there. And he had a beer like Santa Claus. And he said, you were there. Yeah. And I said, after you left, I told the colonel and said, you know, after all, we're on the same side. A small world. Yeah.

That's crazy after all those years. You know, we talked a little bit about Murdoch, and he's quite the character. And you talk about him a little bit here. Because Captain, what happened to Captain LeBlanc? You get, somehow Murdoch ends up taking over. Eventually, LeBlanc was relieved and replaced by Murdoch, who's ideal. A Boston Irishman, Murdoch was very funny and very tough. a superb combat, a superb combat commander, and a bit wild too, all traits that his younger

charge is greatly appreciated. One manifestation of his toughness, apart from his courage and coolness under fire, was his disdain for medals and commendations. Very few men who had him as their CEO, including me, received decorations. Murdoch explained, I didn't recommend many people. I didn't care if a machine gunner killed 50 men. That's what he was supposed to do. That's what he's getting paid for.

That was my attitude. Once in Hawaii, we had a big formation with the division, and they decorated all these guys. One company would give 40 medals out. I'd give one. My attitude was, hey, killing Japs is our job. We're not doing it for medals. Yeah. And here you start to talk about just the brutality of what's going on over there.

One of the themes running through the preceding anecdotes is the murdering. merciless nature of the Pacific War. The Marine Corps had tried to prepare us for this in our training. Bayonet drills were especially important. In reality, in combat, there were... To be aggressive, you see? Right, right.

Yeah. In reality in combat, there were a few instances when men used bayonets in the traditional manner fixed to their rifles. Bayonet drills were performed for their psychological effect so that men would learn the psychology of the bayonet, namely to kill brutally,

quickly, and unthinkingly without compunction or moral qualms. But unrealistic as far as application. Right. But our training merely paved the way for our transformation into hardened killers. Exposure to actual combat

accomplished and completed the process. You got hard or you died. It was that simple. Kill or be killed, you know. And the Japanese made it simple. They were notoriously unsparing. Their reputation for ruthlessness and savagery was widespread and well-founded. We knew all the stories, the rape of Nan King, the Badon death march, atrocities committed far and wide and often against prisoners.

We believed correctly that we could expect no pity if we fell into their hands. They neither asked for quarter nor gave any, and we responded in kind. If they had set rules as we believed, we were damn sure going to play by them. What other choice do we have? They simply would not surrender. They would not stop coming at us until we killed them. Very quickly we learned that trying to take prisoners was a waste of time and dangerous. Even the wounded if we went to treat them would try and kill us,

usually by blowing up everyone themselves and the corpsmen who had stopped to help them with a grenade. The dead had a nasty habit of rising up from the ground and attacking us. So we made sure the dead were truly dead. No sense in taking chances. This killer be killed approach to war was as brutalizing as it was brutal and affected everyone to some degree. Murdoch recalled a Corman who came up to me and said, Hey, Lieutenant, I've got a live one. Can I shoot him? I said, sure, go ahead.

Corman weren't supposed to have weapons, and we shouldn't have shot that wounded guy, but I let him do it. We all did it all the time, because if we took a prisoner, it would take two men at least to send him back to the rear. and we were so thin, our lines were really thin because we had a lot of guys sick. Our units were very much depleted. Thus, we became a nerd to the horrors of war. And not surprisingly, we did horrible things. Not without reason. When your enemy behaves in a bestial fashion, it is only natural to look on them as beasts,

natural and to some extent justified. Consider as animals, really. But we were not without sin in this regard. Far from it. Murdoch, for example, never took any prisoners. And here's Murdoch. I wasn't nice. I did bad things.

Looking back over the years, I can say we probably committed as many atrocities against the dead bodies of the Japanese as they did to ours. Pulling teeth. For example. Gold. For example, we'd heard Japs wanted to die

looking at the sun. So we'd roll them over and stick their faces in the dirt so they couldn't see the sun. Our guys would cut off fingers and make fobs, which, believe it or not, with the finger of the Japs finger hanging down. And they'd go out there with the knives and pliers trying to pull out gold teeth. But if some of us truly relished, but if some of the men truly relished battle,

embraced and enjoyed it, enjoyed the killing, the brutality, the horror, all of it, it is important to establish that on the continuum of brutal human behavior, the rest of us were not all that far removed from them. and we tended to move closer as the war went on. Some men are more capable than others when it comes to killing, but all men are capable. One way we improved on this capability, such improvement being vital to our effectiveness as Marines, not to mention our very survival, was to look on our enemy as hateful creatures less than human. From a psychological standpoint, it became easy to kill them.

We were killing animals, not men. And after killing them, we would look upon their dead bodies and feel nothing. No remorse, no guilt, no horror, pity, or whatever. From there, it was just a small step to place in the geography of the mind where pulling gold teeth out of corpses was not all that outrageous. But now many were doing that. There's just a few crazy guys doing it. I had one of my sergeants that did that, and he had a whole pocketful, and for some reason rather something, something happy to change his pants or something, and they were all lost, oh, I'll get some. more.

Yeah, I like the fact that you said basically that, I mean, somebody asked me about dehumanizing the enemy and when we were fighting in Iraq and I said that the enemy dehumanizes themselves with their, what their actions that they would take. And that's the same situation here. You know, in Iraq, the insurgents would behead people and skin people alive and just do absolutely horrible things. I don't know what the Turks seem to be doing. right now it seems like i don't know yes any cleansing yeah there's definitely some uh wow

it's it's hard to figure out what's going on over there right now um i've saw some fresh reports of what going on and absolutely yeah it does not look good um you also had some people that couldn't that didn't adopt that mentality and here's murdoch talking about it talking about people that couldn't adopt that kill or be killed mentality he said they'd have to go back Because they were no good to us. They'd just disappear. They'd be sent back to the states. It was a self-weeding process. The guys who remained were the guys you could depend on. When I became company commander in New Zealand, that was an awful thing I had to do. We could send 3% of our personnel home every so often so they could start new outfits back in the States.

But you never wanted to send the good guys home. You send the shitheads and the screw-ups. I wanted the best men with me. I didn't want any of my good men to go. In New Zealand, just before we sailed for Tarawa, Murdoch told our company, now listen, I'm going to send some of you guys home. If you fuck up, you're going to go. But he told me later, these kids were so good, they just wouldn't do that.

They wouldn't fuck up on purpose. They would do their job and do it well. They didn't want to become known as a fuck up. And a lot of those kids were killed on Tarwa that I could have sent home. But that's what happened because I wanted to keep the good guys with me. Man, that's a powerful statement. All these guys have to do is be slackers and they'll get sent home to the states, but they wouldn't do it.

That's the Marine Corps right there. The thing is, this isn't a general average opinion, I don't think. He was a little bit overboard in all this discussion. He's not typical, in other words. But he was well-liked because of the way he looked at life. Yeah. He talks about one guy here. He says, I had one guy, a lieutenant platoon leader, we'll call him Mack.

Not his real name. That's the one I took over from. and then where I almost got killed. He says he was a Yale graduate, came from Connecticut, very well brought up, had money, nice guy too, and handsome, a rugged, good-looking Marine.

But on Guadalcanal, he'd go on patrol, he just could not handle it. Wally Godineas was his platoon sergeant, and he'd have to take over Mack's patrols all the time. Mac tried, but he couldn't do it. I respected him for that. He was trying. The kids were calling him yellow,

and they'd say to me, we don't want that guy, he's yellow. And I'd say, wait just a minute. That guy is not yellow. He tried to do the job, but he's just not, he just couldn't do it. Just couldn't do it. A yellow man doesn't go out and try. He quits.

Mac won't quit. No, Descodynus, he became an officer. He married a New Zealand girl. I knew him pretty well. All right, so continuing on here by December our long sojournard in the front line and taking a big toll. We were wasted by illness, multiple illnesses. We were malnourished and looked it. We went about shirtless, showing scrawny bodies with protruding ribs and vertebrae.

and sallow skin stretched over, stretched tautly over them. Our faces were drawn and angular beneath scraggly beards and our eyes were recessed in their orbits. We didn't have a change of clothes during that period. And we became unimaginably filthy.

We looked scary and menacing and pitiful. See, a lot of us came down with yellow janus. See, that would deliberate. That would do you in, too, you know? The constant threat of enemy attack punctuated by intermittent bounce of actual fighting was tremendously stressful. It seemed that much of the time we were either waiting to be attacked or being attacked or attacking the enemy ourselves.

Or we were just sitting around trying to get some rest but feeling crudy because we were sick and we always were tensed up thinking and worrying about our next combat action. Depending on how your day was going, such concerns might be in the forefront of your thoughts, incessant and acute, making you all edgy and fretful. Or they might be buried deep. Usually they were somewhere in between. But they were always present in your head and on your mind. You could never fully let go or get rid of them. the unrelenting mental strain, not to do, not to mention the physical dangers that caused it, made us twitcher each passing day.

You know, during the times that we were back behind the front lines and nobody's shooting at you. Oh, my gosh, this is wonderful. Nobody's shooting at me. And all that's stress, you know. Yeah. Now you don't have to worry about it. Now, what about the fact that even though no one's shooting at you right now, you have time to sit there and think about the fact that you're going to go again and the enemy's going to attack you? You know, somebody pulled it. It was a stupid thing.

Through a hand grenade dummy into a tent. Everybody just took off. Why would a guy do that? I don't understand. He thought it was funny. I'll tell you why I'm laughing when you tell that story because one of my friends, what am I good? friends, a guy by the name of Leif Babin, who I work with and wrote a book with, wrote two books with him, actually. He did that to a couple of his guys. Took a grenade. We were in Ramadi, and he took a grenade. The pin was in. It was still taped up, but it was a real grenade. And there was a couple guys sitting in a room talking, and he just opened the door and rolled the grenade in there.

We were just talking about the other day. Stupid. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were just talking about it. The reason I remember we were just talking about it yesterday, and he goes, yeah, that wasn't smart. It wasn't smart because who knows what's going to happen. I mean, those guys, if they had guns, they might have shot. I mean, there's all kinds of crazy things that could happen. You may get me later on get in here, but also in our last drive on Guadalcanal, I had an enemy grenade fell right dark by my legs, and I tried to kick it away and it hit something, came right on back.

It was a dud. Here's Murdoch talking about Guadalcanal. and why what made it what made it guadal canal he said each campaign was different each with different problems taro was the worst in terms of fighting but the battle lasted only three days right after it we right after it ended we were taking off basio and sent back to hawaii but on guadal canal we were on godal canal for three months for the amount of time we were there we didn't do all that much fighting but there were other things the sickness and the heat especially the living conditions were the worst on Guadalcanal.

And then you say, as bad as it was, it was worse for the Japanese, much worse. Their condition was no mystery for us. As December gave way to January, there was a noticeable drop-off in enemy activity that we correctly ascribe to their deteriorating health. Their nocturnal probes dwindled and in time virtually ceased altogether.

They simply lacked the energy to come at us in the night. They eventually took 10,000 troops off. We didn't know they'd had they done that. After a while, they didn't even bother to yell at us. They rarely achieved success when they did attack. In battle, we found, as we had been told on Samoa, the Japanese made the same mistakes over and over. For instance, they would commit their units to battle as they became available

instead of holding them back and massing them for a single powerful blow. And they would keep coming at us until they were killed, primarily by our artillery. The carnage was sickening even to us. And we couldn't understand why they never seemed to learn from their experience. and make the necessary adjustments. One thing that was wrong with their strategy, that they would attack,

and there was no command to change, he's going to go out of a flank or something like that, to just keep coming, keep coming to them, they're all killed. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lack of leadership and maneuver warfare, right? Yeah, no maneuver at all. No maneuver, just, hey, we're going forward, we're going to do a frontal assault,

and they would just get killed, get mowed down. And that happened time and time again. And here we are, though, coming into Tarawa, the same situation. We had no way to maneuver or anything. They just keep going in facing heavy machine gun fire, just like the Japanese did. The Japanese thought their indomitable will would provide them with a margin for victory. It did not occur to them, or they could not acknowledge that the Marines and soldiers they were battling were equally indomitable and in the end victorious. They had so easy on moving all down through the East Indies and all that.

And everything just faded away and they just kept going, no problem at all. And then they met American forces. So this is the turning point, Guadalcanal where they, that's where we turn the tables. Now we're in the offensive. Yeah, so January 10th you begin going on offense. There you go. There you go. Eighth Marines,

including the 1-8, the 1-8, the 2-8, and the 3-8. I worked with the 3-8, a bunch of Ramadi. They were outstanding. Oh, you did, huh? Yeah.

Yeah. Our mission orders issued by General Patch were to attack and destroy the Japanese forces remaining on Guadalcanal. Yeah. We moved up, and I'm just reading, and I always have to mention this,

I'm obviously not reading this whole book. I could read this whole book. I want to read this whole book, because the book is outstanding. But I'm jumping around. So if it seems a little bit scattered, it's because I'm jumping from, I'm skipping over big chunks that you're telling

with great detail. And this is one of the most outstanding accounts that exists of these campaigns. So just know that. You have to buy the book. The book is called Faithful Warriors. So here we go. We moved, we pushed on.

We moved up in over Hill 82. The hill and jungle draws below were infested with Japanese. My men saw a single Japanese soldier and open fire, killing him instantly. I collected some personal effects from his body, a diary, a lock of hair, a first aid kit, a photograph of a group of soldiers,

and a thousand stitch belt, which was a piece of cloth embroidered with a thousand stitches by well-wishers that he carried for good luck. Now, I send a lot of this stuff that we took off of the dead home to Japan to their families. Eventually. Eventually, I mean, we'll probably get into a little bit. But I received a letter from the brother of one of these soldiers,

just beautifully done calligraphy, you know. Yeah, yeah. So you held onto this stuff and eventually figured out who this guy was. And I did that because we were asked to talk to a Japanese in Los Angeles. There's a Japanese area there. And the priest there suggested I do that. He couldn't speak any English. But through the translation, I knew that that's what he had to do.

and so we sent it to the relatives of Phil Dyer worked with at North American Aviation and his wife's family were Honda, which is the Honda car. And so we sent her to one of her cousins. And when they came to pay baseball in this country after the war, and they lost.

So they had lost face, so to speak. So they wanted to go back with something. So they took all of these. these items that I'd taken off of these soldiers that were talking about here. And they put it in a white box strung around their neck. As they got, as they landed in Hawaii, a lot of Buddhist priests were there to meet the plane. When they got to Tokyo, oh, a big thing. Always picked up. And my name got all over, all over Japan about over that. Wow. It's incredible. What were you thinking about at the time? I mean, at the time, you couldn't have been thinking about that, all that was going to

happened. You know, and also, you know, where we, we were asked to attend this Buddhist ceremony, and my family had made three daughters with me, and here were the first ones in line, and you were supposed to, you're supposed to, you had to carry these incense, and there's a gong and goes on, and a whole bunch of stuff. We led that procession as it went by. Then after that, we had a get-together They're sukiaki and beer in the parsonage. Yeah. And I'd be real careful what I said. You know, I had my friend as a translator be real careful.

They didn't call them Japs and all that. Yeah. And I said, how come they're so interested in what happened? You said, well, these people from northern part of Japan, and they had no clue of what had happened to their soldiers way down south. Wow. See? Wow.

Yeah, because they didn't have enough witnesses living after the war to explain. And then on Sipan, and I was talking to Donnie Edwards, we were there at, you've been there, you know where this is called a suicide clip. Well, there's one monument there that were paid for by children raising the money. And one of them faces south kneeling a mother mourning over her loss, her sons lost in the South Pacific the other is facing the suicide cliff

mourning the children that were carried over the cliff to be killed and what is happening was they're just putting in a new monument they don't have the new captions yet and I was explaining to Donnie what that was all about

and it's on it's on Instagram go to Instagram and you go to Best Defense Foundation, and it'll tell about it. Okay. Yeah.

So even though you're gathering souvenirs, this is not over yet. And here you go. The fighting was constant, but not everywhere at the same time. One squad might be resting while nearby another was engaged with a sharp fight. Yeah, it's true. With a sniper or machine gun nest and all up and down the line, automatic weapons rattled, rifles cracked, grenades popped. The air carried the stringent smell of cordite in places where they're

been a lot of firing. The atmosphere was hazy with gun smoke and the smoke of burning foliage. There was a lot of shouting, someone screaming and the frequent cry, Corman, Corman, Stretcher bearers. Now, this is not a general atmosphere. This is certain locations that this is happening. It's not everywhere, you see. Yeah, and this is because the Japanese were really depleted at this point. Pretty much so, yeah, they were, yeah.

Stretcher bearers, many of them musicians in the division's band, yeah, right. Ran around the battlefield, picking up the wounded and carrying them back the battalion. aid station. True, true. So every Marines are riflemen is what they say. And so there's the band out there. But they get the band and there's stretch your bearers. Yeah. 14 January, we continue to advance. The action much the same as the day before, intermittent class with the Japanese diehard. Some of the Japanese we came upon booed themselves up in their holes or just sat there and let us kill them with the grenades. Yeah. My platoon made good progress.

you had a guy named... A hole in handguny right here hit it and kick it off and they were blowing itself up right over your heart. So would they try and take Marines with them? Well, yeah, they could, but when you get in a Saipan, I'll explain there how we saw 100, over 100 doing that as we advanced.

And they could have shot back at us. They didn't. Instead, they just, we got so close and they blown themselves up. Bang, bang, bang, bang. as we advanced. Incredible. One guy, you lost a guy named Gunner Lund. And you were,

and Gunner Lund had kind of a, had a kid that looked up to him named Herschel Wilski. And you were the one. And he wrote, he's the one that did some of these illustrations in this one here. Okay. So Wilski, you're the one that has to tell Wilski

that, you know, his. Yeah. He is no more. He's no more. And here we go. Shortly thereafter, it fell upon me to break the news of Lund's death to Corporal Herschel Wilski. Ski, as he was known, was a barman and a squad leader in Lund's platoon. Yeah.

He took Lund's death very hard. Gunner Lund was a popular figure, a B company, an old salt who was trusted and respected for his courage, competence, and common sense, battle wisdom, and loved for his tough, his rough humor and for the obvious and genuine affection and concern he felt for his young charges. Before the war, he had been sea-going Marines, serving on the beloved aircraft of Lexington. He'd always been smoking a cigar. How he was able to keep himself stocked with Stogey's on Guadalcanals is anyone's guess. Such are the talents of an hold salt.

He used to say that after the war, he was going to buy himself a big, shiny Cadillac convertible and ride it around smoking his cigars. Instead of that, I visited his family after the war, he had a sister that had been to a dance and they couldn't find her anywhere. she was dead in the trunk. They found her body in the trunk of the car, been murdered, and they got this same time as hit as when the family found out about Lund.

Yeah, you said that that was a simple dream for a simple, very good man, a dream never realized. All the kids looked up to Lund, Wilski in particular, ski idolized Lund, the gun was everything to him, a hero, mentor, father figure, older brother, and best friend. At first he refused to believe that Lund had been killed.

I was just talking to him a few minutes ago, he said. But then the truth sank in, and he became distraught and threw his weapon on the ground. This damn war, he exclaimed. Ski then announced he was quitting the Marine Corps and quitting the war. Ski meant what he said. He was about to head back to the rear when Murdoch arrived on the scene. Murdoch's calmski down and told him that he just couldn't up and quit, that it would be desertion in the face of the enemy and that he would get in a lot of trouble for it.

Murdoch spoke softly with him for several minutes in this vein. until Ski came to his senses. Ski picked up his weapon and rejoined third platoon, and Murdoch assumed command of that unit. But Ski was a changed man. Exchanging one madness for another, he went from being a Marine who did his job and did it well to being a Marine who did his job

with a singular passion. From that day forward, he hated the Japanese with a savage intensity and took it on himself to personally avenge Lund's death, often going off by himself to hunt the enemy. If you were a compassionate man, you might say a prayer for any Japanese, any soldiers who crossed his path.

He always returned eventually, but with little to say about his exploits. He was the quiet type. Guys like him usually are. Yeah. He was an epitome. Epitome of a combat Marine. And so this continues on, and then you say this, and so to the end. My memory of the final days of January offensive is blurry,

and I find it difficult to remember the details. At reunions, we reminisce about our very limited personal perspective, of the offense and the countless little battles that were fought as we went forward. At that perilous time, we focused primarily on our own concerns about adequate cover for incoming artillery and other life-threatening events in our immediate area. We advance on a broad front but never in an even line. Some units always move faster than others, depending on the terrain and the resistance they encountered. We went up and down and down, up and down, sometimes fighting and killing the Japanese, sometimes just killing them. end of January or last week on Guadalcanal B Company was bivouaced by Henderson Field

awaiting transport off the island while there I came down with jaundice and I lost a lot of weight I would be getting off the island just in time in the meantime there were no duties to perform some of them very on there's on the meantime there were still duties to perform and some of them very unpleasant one of Murdoch's responsibility was to record the location of the battle site graves on an overlay it troubled him that the locations couldn't always be specifically pinpointed So there could be no assurance that the bodies would later be found for relocation to permanent cemeteries. Now, regarding those bodies, a year or so ago, the organization that locates bodies and gets them buried, they're in Hawaii and on Little.

And they ran out of money, but they were going to pay for me to go down and help them locate these bodies we're talking about. but the guy that he was a doctorate and he says I just I just ran out of Wiggle Room money-wise couldn't do it so finally this was last year wow

well maybe we can raise some money for him so this was called J-PAC and then it's now the new name the problem was they were they were miss miss they were miss handling money they're spending money where they shouldn't been. So a lot of that was going on.

You probably heard about when the new secretary of fans came in, he just changed the whole thing around. So we wrap this up this section on January on 31 January, the 1-8 and the entire second regiment

boarded the troop transport Crescent City. And then during the first week of February, the Japanese managed to evacuate more than 11,000 troops, a minor triumph that did little to offset the magnitude of their defeat. They lost upward of 25,000 men in Guadalcanal campaign. Of these, maybe a thousand were taken prisoner.

Our losses were comparatively small. Yeah. According to Army historians, about 1,600 were killed, and 4,245 were wounded. On 9 February, the rest of the 8th Marines left Guadalcanal on board the troops ship, Hunter Liggett and American Legion. That same day, Guadalcanal was declared secure. One way or another, for the living and the dead. the fighting on Guadalcanal was over forever. So your next chapter here is called heaven.

Yeah. Because from the hell of Guadalcanal, you went to a place called New Zealand. And this was quite the change for you all, going from Guadalcanal to New Zealand. Wow. No longer sweating jungles. You highlight some of the good things about New Zealand

And then you get to what apparently is the biggest highlight in New Zealand It says this there were girls Yeah Holy smokes were there ever girls And knowing that their men are all gone Boy they were They were welcoming us open arms Because their men were overfighting

Because they were in North Africa Young girls Pretty girls smiling girls They were everywhere lots of them My girlfriend was 19 and out here I was approaching 23, 22. She's still alive. She's 95 now.

Wow. Can you imagine? They stared at us and we stared at them and they smiled at us and we smiled at them and in many instances we greet each other and exchange pleasantries and actually converse with them. Even the Casanova's among us had a hard go of it at first.

It had been a long time since we had spoken with girls. We were out of practice. We were also gazing. This is the term you used, staring inward, a thousand yards back into our heads, flashing on our thoughts and visions of Guadalcanal had put in there. Our face isn't...

What do you laugh at? Oh, just being in New Zealand? Yeah, just remembering, yeah. The contrast was immediately apparent and profoundly jarring. We had learned how to handle hell, but heaven would take some getting used to. A board ship, we hadn't been aware

of our gazing conditioned. We all seem normal to each other. But here in this beautiful city, among these wonderful civilized people, among all those pretty girls, it was possible to see how far from normal we were. What would they think of us? They loved us, and we loved them right back. So you guys, I mean, you talk about some of the things that happened there

and some of those adjustments getting into it and then the kind of, I guess the kind of mayhem and chaos that you create. Murdoch himself. There's one story about where he combargeing, barging into the owner of the woman owner of the hotel where our where our officers mess or the get-together was and it tells about it in there. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, he comes, he crawled out, he was drunk, no clothes on, I guess,

and crawl along an edge and then wrapped on the window and she opened it up, let him in, he ended up, and the next morning woke up, here's with this older woman, and oh my gosh yeah she said something like you know good morning he says did I have a good time or something like that and she said yes you did it sounded like he he was avoiding her for the rest of the time yeah yeah he was

all right to get back to the military side of this after a few weeks in New Zealand we started training in earnest we needed a lot of training both to get ourselves back to shape and incorporate replacements who are streaming in from the states. Our experience on Guadal Canal provided the template for our training. We built positions on the Japanese model and practiced attacking them. We advanced through wooded areas against simulated sniper attacks. We worked on the use of supporting fires and we worked with tanks. One of the most important changes overall was

to give the squad leaders more freedom of action to make decisions in combat. Let them decide on their own how to maneuver their men and move around to envelop an enemy position. But on terror, which is like that to come. There was no room for maneuver. No chance to use tanks to speak of. But it's interesting. You know, we talk a lot about kind of the principles of combat leadership and one of the most important principles of combat leadership is decentralized command.

And that is allowing your subordinate leaders to lead. And that right there. Even the privacy, even a private would say, come on, guys, let's go. and he pulled them together, let's go. Yeah. And that's obviously you're taking that lesson. That's, that you say that's a change overall. So you guys, even you all realized, hey,

we need our frontline troops to be able to lead. Yeah. Make decisions. I mentioned that. When I spoke into Marine Corps League, you know, the Marine Corps birthday balls and all that, and I mentioned that leadership aspect. Now, you've written books about it too, I know. I have.

It's one of the things I talk about all the time. Oh, yeah. And when I taught leadership inside the SEAL teams, That's one of the main things I needed, the young troopers to do. We would have failed. It would have been a disaster if that hadn't happened. Yeah. So, fast forward a bit through the, you talk some more about that training and what it's like in New Zealand and the,

continues on. And then finally, we get to this. I'm not going to say that we knew we were leaving for good, but many sense this might be the case. So did everyone in Wellington, the girls especially. Just before our ships cast off again for Hawks Bay, a number of girls, some here. hugely pregnant came down to the docks to find out what was going on. Nobody could or would tell them anything. But many had dire premonitions.

Nobody knew. So you guys didn't even know. We didn't have a clue. We thought we were going to another landing exercise. Our ship steamed north past Hawks Bay and continued on a northerly heading. Keep going, yeah. After a few days at sea, it was announced that we were going to invade the Tarawa toll in the Gilbert Islands. Maps and sand tables were brought out.

One square mile. One square mile. Our sudden and permanent disappearance from New Zealand was very hard on our Kiwi girlfriends and wives. One day they woke up to find us gone and knew we were headed into battle. Then towards the end of November, they started hearing rumors that a lot of us had been killed. The rumors proved to be true. Yeah, we lost over 1,100 killed and 2,500 wounded in three days, most of in two days. So you get to Tarawa.

And here we are. The Navy promised us a preliminary bombardment that would blow the Japanese and their defenses to kingdom come, leaving the Marines to carry out what would amount to little more than a mopping up operation. During a pre-invasion staff briefing, an Admiral announced that it was not the Navy's intention merely to neutralize, Maseo Island. Gentlemen, he told in the assemblage, we will obliterate it. This statement was passed on to rank and file, and we believed it. At the same briefing of battleship, captain declared,

we are going to bombard at 6,000 yards. We've got so much armor, we're not afraid of anything the Japs can throw back at us. The commander of the 2nd Marine Division, Major General Julian C. Smith was incensed by the captain's brave words. Gentlemen, he retorted, remember one thing. When the Marines land and meet the enemy at bayonet point, the only armor a Marine will have is his captain. shirt. It is unbelievable though when you see the bombardment because you can see film of the

bombardment of Taro. I mean they just oh yeah it looked like it was just obliterated. It was right. And I had I had a situation where my guys in the Battle of Ramadi got caught in a friendly fire situation. Yeah. Yeah. You were there huh at Ramadi? Yep. And an army unit that we had called for QRF came in and put about 150 rounds of 50. 50 caliber machine gun fire into the building that my guys were in at a range of about 25 meters, 150 rounds. And you would think anybody that's seen a 50 caliber machine gun, you'd think everyone in that building would be dead.

But I had one guy get wounded and it wasn't actually all that bad. And so when you see the, that's why you can never trust that, you know, big bombs are going to actually solve the problem. it doesn't always happen. And this is a classic example of that. And the main reason that naval gunfire wasn't all that effective is that we're just only, you know, the land was only about six foot above sea level. So things, most of it was just going over.

If it hit there, it's just such a narrow target. Yeah. And what he should have done is landed on a Jason Island and pounded it with mortars or, you know, short-wain artillery thing. In direct fire. And that's what they did, and that's what they did in the marshals. They made all difference in the world. Lesson learned.

And a month later. So you say this. It's tough going right from the start. The Japanese are heavily armed, firmly, and deeply entrenched. And as always, they resist fiercely inflicting heavy casualties on our assault teams. The radio reports start coming in. They're spotty and intermittent. But we get the picture.

Encountering heavy resistance. Heavy machine gun fire. Boats destroyed. Units scattered. Many casualties. The voices on the loudspeakers enumerate these calamities in measured tone. They sound calm, almost attached. If you didn't know better, you'd think the situation wasn't too terrible.

But we knew better. We were all looking at each other thinking some version of, oh boy, this is bad. This is really bad. The tides, which were supposed to cover the reef to an adequate depth, proved uncooperative. The water is too shallow, just inches deep in some spots, and always less than needed for the three-foot draft of the landing craft. See, the problem was that it was just barely three feet, what we require for an LCVP to clear the reef. But we got hung up with their big guns,

their big naval guns shooting on our transports. So our transports had to move further out. That means all our landings craft took a lot longer to get in. In the meantime, the tide was going out. Now we didn't have three feet. Not only that, it was a kind of a tide that was extra low. So you were actually part of the reserve element. Is that the right thing to call it what you were doing?

The battalion on the end was supposed to land on the next island up. Instead, hey, oh, we need to right down here. We land on down right in the middle where the worst of it was. Here we had our guys on the beach. And here the enemy was shooting over their head right at us out there. We couldn't do anything about it. Yeah, terrible. So just for folks, they don't understand what you just said,

you've got Marines on the beach. On the beach, looking at us, watching us being mowed down. And you're at sea. And we can't shoot back. You can't shoot because there's friendly forces in between you two. And like you said, the sea level is only, or the altitude is only six feet. And not only that, there was one beached British transport. and it was beached it had been run before we landed there sometime before about time of Pearl Harbor

he had run up on the on the reef and was still there while the Japanese swam up to it with with the machine guns they fired flanking fire right on us so all this is happening and you're in the reserves and finally you guys are told all right load your boats which means you guys now know you're going in and you say here we don't know where the brass is sending us yet but we don't but we expect to go where the fighting is hottest and we expect to go soon. We circle and circle in the lagoon. We're standing in the boat either leaning against the sides

or holding on them for balance. In general, we have a soft ride because the water is mostly still, except for the turbulence caused by all the boats. The turbulence buffets the LCVPs and this movement combined with the stench of the engine and the nervous tension, we all feel, makes many of us sick.

Some of the sick men stick their heads over the sides to wretch while others puke into the wooden deck. The men standing next to them just step aside like it's no big deal to get sick because it really isn't a big deal. When the sick men finish retching, they straighten up as if nothing had happened. No one thinks the worst of them for it. After a while, depending on how long we're out there in a boat, the deck might be slippery with puk, but that's no big deal either. You can't smell the vomit or anything else for that matter because the exhaust fumes overpower every other smell. Diesel engine, help. The minutes go by, lengthening into hours.

The hours go by, but we're going nowhere. We're just going around and around. The sounds of battle are muted this far out. We can hear artillery explosions, but not small arms fire. We're all peering over the sides, looking at Bezio, looking at the fires and the smoke and the explosions. It's an awesome sight, a massive smoke and flames. Holy Moses, look at that, we say.

Not for the last time we ask ourselves how many of the defenders, how the defenders could survive in a place so torn up. It's an irrelevant question, really. Many Japanese have survived and they're killing a lot of Marines. About half of them survived. We know that a lot of our men were killed going in and we know that the men who did make it assure are fighting for their lives. We expect we'll have a tough go of it too. We're apprehensive who wouldn't be.

And we're wondering how we'll behave in combat. I know the new guys are especially concerned with how they'll behave. The great fear, the greatest of fear is you won't be able to handle it, that you'll turn yellow, that you'll let your buddies down. We fear this much more than we fear getting killed or wounded. One reason for that is no one really thinks he'll be killed or wounded. You never think it's going to happen to you. Never. You acknowledge that it could happen to you, that it might happen to you.

But the rational part of your brain makes you understand this. But in such circumstances as we now find ourselves emotion trumps rationality every time. We know we're too young to die. And somehow in a kind of strange and protective twist of logic and feeling, We figure that because we're too young to die, we certainly won't die. You've got to do a lot of hard thinking to reach this conclusion. However, and because we're all thinking so hard, we're not talking that much. Just as well, the engine is so loud you can't talk or hear anyone except the guy standing next to you.

We wait for the word to begin the assault, but it doesn't come. We continue circling beneath the hot sun, beneath breathing exhaust fumes, staring at the island. We want to know what, for Pete's sake, is happening. We wonder when they're going to send us in and where they're going to send us. We wonder, gosh, how much longer can it go on like this? A lot longer, it turns out. Nightfall. One moment in the sun, one moment the sun is above the horizon and the sky is bright,

then the sun drops below the horizon in the dark. That's how night comes in the tropics, no twilight. This is on the equator, you see. Yeah, boom, it's gone. It's bright one moment, dark the next. Beggio isn't dark, however. Bejillo is on fire. and the sky above it glowing red.

Suddenly it's morning. See, the problem is that the top command thought we'd already landed. And really, there was just a lack. All communications were disrupted. So you guys are out there for... So they didn't know we're out there still circling. Didn't know it. How much fuel did those things have?

Because you were out there for 20 hours. Well, 20 hours, yeah. Amazing. That horrible? Jeez. Yeah, that's what you say. Suddenly it's morning. The sun pops over the horizon and then there was light.

We're still circling, waiting for orders. Baccio is still burning. I was wondering how our boat can carry enough fuel to circle. How long is it? 12, 14, 16 hours? Answer, we float. We were afloat for about 20 hours. Our mouths dry.

Our muscle stiff. We feel haggard and cruddy. Some guys are sipping from their canteens or nibbling on their rations, although there's not much eating because we just aren't hungry. About 0.530, the LCVB8, LCVP carrying our battalion commander Major Lawrence Hayes chugs along up next to our boat cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting to make himself

heard above the noise of the boat engines he says we're going in at Red Beach 2 oh no and why was that why was that a bad thing because we knew that that some way we knew that that was where they had the hardest time was on that beach still shouting Major Hayes assures us that Red 2 won't be a problem

the Japanese positions on the beach have been eliminated he tells us and our landing will be unopposed you'll probably go in standing up he actually said that's what you said in the book he actually said I guess we were completely surprised thinking back we were none of us really believed we'd go in standing up now not that we think major Hayes is feeding us a line he's a good man he wouldn't do that but it could be that he has been misinformed uninformed is more likely more like it totally uninformed. Communications with the units ashore are disarray and several instances functionally non-existent. The same goes for communications with General Smith and his staff on the Battleship Maryland, the invasion's fleet flagship. This is due in large-measured of our radios, which are too fragile to withstand the rigors of amphibious assault. I've got a walkie-talkie strapped over my shoulder and it's a hunk-a-joke-junk. I can't even communicate with the other boats, which is why Major Hayes had to come by in boat and shout orders to us.

Those walkie-talkies weren't doing any good. Now, the officer in charge of Red 2 at that time was Colonel Schupe, Lieutenant Colonel Schupe. He became the combatant later on, years later. Wow. In any event, we're relieved. The waiting is almost over. The business of riding around in boats is for the birds. We want to get ashore and throw some punches.

I'm standing in the bow of our LCVP. Behind me are 32 Marines of my platoon, most of them teenagers, most of them new to combat. I look at them and they look at me. I see fresh, boyish faces and wide, worried eyes staring out from beneath their brain, their helmet brims. Their helmets all seem a size too big, accentuating. They're boyish, making them look young as well. Most of them really are. Their helmets jammed down on their heads, the straps pulled tight under their chin.

You can wear helmets this way so they don't fall off. while you're clamoring down the cargo nets of the troop transport into your boat. The helmet is nothing more than a steel pot heavy and getting heavier the longer you wear it. If it falls off while you're on that net it could hit somebody beneath you. Somebody could get hurt and that's when and that's not when Marines are supposed to get hurt. Not during the boating phase as it's called the phase of the operation when the emphasis is on safety. The getting hurt part the part where safety is one might say beside the point comes later. For us, for me and the men in my boat that part

comes now. Did I say men? Well, I suppose they are. We call them men. We treat them as men. We expect them to act like men. They are, after all, United States Marines. But really, they're kids just out of high school. Or not even that. Kids with rifles true. Kids trained to kill also true. But kids nevertheless. Just turn 17, many of them. To use a term like that as long since fallen into general disuse, their youths. A state of being. between childhood and adulthood. Today's American male exercising a lifestyle choice can often can and often does loiter for many years in that state but in the mid-1940s in a world at war the state of youth tends to pass swiftly and do I need to say it violently. The youths the kids on my boat have got a lot of growing up to do unfortunately they'll be doing a hefty portion of that growing up in the coming minutes and hours. In that period

far too many will undergrow all the growing up they will ever experience. These are the men that went in, and I have a W.R.K. written on all the casualties in this picture, and roughly half, half our casualties going in. In that period, the youths, the kids on my boat have got a lot of growing up to do. Unfortunately, they'll be doing a hefty portion of that growing up in the coming up, in the coming minutes and hours. In that period, many, far too many, will undergo all the growing up

they will ever experience. They will transition with almost obscene dispatch from youth to adulthood to the grave. Ebeggio, youth won't be served. It'll be served up and consumed literally in fire. These youths will be men only briefly. And then they will be just a memory forever. All of this sounds as if I'm a grizzled veteran.

I am a combat veteran. I fought on Guadalcanal earlier this year, but the fact is I'm just 23 years old, still young, and not all that grizzled in appearance or temperament. Practically speaking, though, I'm the gray beard of this bunch. Same goes for the platoon sergeant who's about my age. We're the tribal elders, the warrior chiefs. I'll lead my boys off the boat,

and the platoon sergeant standing in the back will make sure they follow, urging them and conjoling them, yelling at them, maybe throwing a few choice cuss words, whatever it takes to get them moving. I'm watching my boys as they watch me. Things begin to happen fast. With the majors LZVP leading the way, our boats break formation one after the other and file off to our departure line. This is an invisible line about 6,000 yards offshore that runs parallel to the landing beaches.

When we get there, our boats form up in line abreast, a raid like. like a cavalry squadron waiting for the bugle to sound charge. The coxins rev and gun the engines in neutral gear, and the boats are rearing and lurching, charping at the bit. It's as if the coxins are struggling to rain in warhorses that can't contain their eagerness for battle. Our boat's engine is blasting,

the noise almost painful to the ears. We're pumped up. My men, I and I, we're really pumped up. The adrenaline is flowing, surging through us, clutching our weapons, looking over the side of the boat at the island, breathing hard, thinking fast,

focused on the tasked hand, stealing ourselves, getting ready, ready, ready, here we go. The signal is given. Our coxswifts out of neutral, pushes the throttle wide open. That's the charge of the light brigade, thinking right there. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And repeating, repeating verbs as well, you see? Oh, I see. Ready, ready, ready, ready. A little literary. Yeah.

A little, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, so that's the thinking behind it. Tip of the hat. Yeah. Here we go. The signal is given. Our coxswifts out of neutral, pushes the throttle wide open. The engine bellows, belches smoke, the stern dips.

The men in the boat rocked back slightly as the boat leaps forward. Now we're barreling toward the island. Our boat, all the boats, 600 men, more or less of the first battalion, eighth Marines, water churning, boiling behind the boat. We're bucking and bouncing, bullying ahead with our square. off bow muscling the water aside the boat is throwing spray soaking us and we're getting closer closer to the island we're about 800 yards from the shore when zip zip zip we hear tiny objects flying past and those aren't hornets boys they're bullets we're in the range of the japanese machine

guns and good gosh they're shooting at us we find this interesting bullets zipping by splating on the water surface splash splat here splat there splats to the left and right splice splats in front of us. Look, by golly, there's some enemy fire hitting right over there. Look over there. That's me talking. That's all of us talking. Talking and pointing at the impact circles in the water.

Little splats, little dots where bullets hit. People shooting at us. Fascinating. Realizing that we could get our head shot off, we ducked down into the boat. The more bullets splatting into the water, but none hit our LCVP. We tell ourselves that most are 7.7 millimeter slugs, which is what your basic like Japanese machine gun fires and are nothing really much to worry about because they're too small to pierce even the thin-skinned Higgins boat. That's what we tell ourselves all right, but we really

don't believe it. We know good and well that the Japanese are also shooting at us with heavier automatic weapons. Big 13-millimeter machine guns and the even bigger dual-purpose anti-boat, anti-aircraft guns, which range in size from 37-millimeter to 77-millimeter, and they're lobbying shells from 70-millimeter Mountain howitzers. These weapons can and do inflict considerable damage on our assault teams, killing and wounded hundreds of them, disabling or destroying many Amtraks and LCVPs. They're not my chief concern, however,

and never mind that they might at any second blow us to eternity. What really bugs me is being hunkered down in this boat where I can't see anything. I can't see where we are, where we're going, where we should be. I can't observe the enemy fire, engage resistance. we're likely to encounter. I feel as if I'm going into battle blindfolded. This really stinks. How can I do my job if I can't see anything?

How can I be sure the coxswain is taking us to the right place? My men. What are they thinking? They're watching me, watching to see how I'm bearing up. Well, I'm watching them too. And for the same reason. They look okay. Check that.

They look grim and resigned, but that's good. Grim and resigned look means they've more or less accepted the situation, which is also good because the situation isn't going to change unless it changes for the worse. This whole thing is on the rails. It's a runaway train and there's nothing going to stop it now. If you know this, if you accept it, you can keep your fear under control. And if you can keep your fear under control, you'll do your job. You won't let your buddies down.

So we're doing fine, relatively speaking. The boat is racing toward the shore when, quang, scraping bottom, metal grinding on coral. abruptly stops. We're thrown forward, cursing. We've run aground. All along the reef, it's the same. Boats grinding to a halt on Basio's fringing reef. I think, what the heck? The tide is supposed to be up. The water deep enough to allow the LCVPs to clear the reef. We're 600 yards from the shore. 600 long yards. This just cannot be. Wrong. It can be. It is. though we're not aware of it. We're victims of the same disagreeable title conditions that fouled up yesterday's landings.

This is as far as we go. Our Coxon yells. We're going to unload. His passengers are not happy. There are exclamations of astonishment and protest. Oh shit, you've got to be kidding. But he's not kidding. Yeah, this is as far as we go, he repeats.

We're hung up. We've hit the reef. You got to get out here. Then he works the controls that release the cables that hold the ramp up. the cables which are still strung along the sides of the hall unwind with a metallic rasp the ramp screeches

as it opens drops splashes into the water and there before us is basio in all its hideous glory not to exaggerate or over dramatize but it is a scene from hell I mean one second

we're looking at this slab of a metal ramp then the ramp drops and we're looking at an inferno fire and smoke fill our frame of vision framed by the sides of the bottom and the bottom of the boat. Orange fire, red fire and black, black smoke. The fire is shooting up. The smoke is roiling, curling, curling, climbing is fast and high.

The sky isn't high enough to contain it. You'd think we were looking at a volcano being born. You wonder what could produce so much smoke. Surely by now, everything on Baccio that can burned has burned. So where is all that smoke coming from? From the bowels of the earth, it would seem. somewhere deep underground under the ocean from the ever-blazing furnaces of the world. And let's not forget the explosions.

There are a lot of them. Explosions here, there, everywhere. Fire and fireballs, tongues of flame, crimson and yellow flashes in the smoke. The time is 0.615 and some 600 Marines are about to be launched, or rather launch themselves at Beggio, codenamed Helen. I'm at the front of the boat, the lieutenant, the platoon leader. time for me to lead a few seconds go by I was a few seconds ago I was deploying the limited protection offered by the thin metal ramp now I'm deploring the lack of that limited protection it was after all better than nothing which is what I've got now I kind of feel sick and I'm thinking God why am I in this mess what am I doing here but I'm resigned to the situation I've got to ride it out no matter what happens no turning back now So the ramp hits the water and I run down the ramp clutching my M1 carbine, waving my guys forward

shouting, let's go. I sense that my men are hesitating, but I pay no attention to them. I jump into the water, not knowing how deep it'll be, thinking that I might jump into a shell hole and go all the way under. But I land on coral and sand, solid footing that's only thigh deep. What a relief. And the water feels good. That incredibly is my first thought.

The water feels good. It's calm and warm like bathwater, almost soothing. A pleasant contrast to the still cool morning. air. It's murky, though. Sand and coral all stirred up beneath the surface. None of that crystalline purity that comes to mind when you picture a tropical lagoon. War comes to paradise and literally fowls it up. I look shoreward, only 600 yards to go. Now, the fellow that reached down and pulled me up over the ramp. Here a few months ago,

we ran across a photograph of him, what he looked like, and a little bit of reference to his family, but we never made any contact. Now this is as of within six months or so ago. Wow. So this is... And nobody else I talked to really knew who this guy was.

He was new to the outfit. He was a sergeant. He was new. But nobody knew him. It was unions and didn't know him. Yeah. So you look out, there's 600 yards to go. And then as he and I were being lifted up by the transport,

side by the side and a basket. And I remember, it says, just as we were, okay, we just brought up from the landing boat in this basket, taken, risen up to the transport itself. And I made a comment, says, it looks like we made it. His comment was, you've made it. You've made it.

And then he died. So you look down, going back to this point when the ramp actually opens and you see you've got 600 yards to go and just nothing but machine gun fire. And as you said earlier, the Japanese, you'd watch them storm forward. without any ability to maneuver

just only thing to do with the salt and now here you are in the exact same situation. Yep. We're in the receiving in completely at their mercy. You say here 600 yards, six football fields just under a third of a mile.

If you run that distance on dry land unencumbered and unimposed you'll be gasping at the finish line. I don't care what kind of shape you're in. We're in water and we're wearing and carrying 60 pounds or more of gear and the Japanese are ripping us apart. They've got an absolutely clear field of fire,

and we have to walk straight into it. When I returned and I looked, I went clear out there where I was hit and walked in, and I sell remains of old carbines and so on, down in the sand. We've got to walk, not run, because we're in the water. Remember? Walk slowly because we can't run.

We can't even walk fast. The Marines are the world's experts in amphibious. warfare. The Corps has been training for the past two decades to assault and establish a beachhead on a hostile shore. It has developed complex doctrines to guide us in such endeavors. At Beggio, on 21 November, 1943, all that training and doctrine has come to this. We step out of our LCVPs into shallow water and walk slowly across 600 yards with absolutely no cover whatsoever to make a frontal assault on heavily fortified and defended enemy positions. On my website, you just go to it by my name,

just Dean Ladd. There is a poem in there called Curtains of Fire. And it goes in a great detail, similar kind of words, but done a little differently. And it's so that's where it's all spelled out.

You say some training and some doctrine that they've been working out. That's your quote. We cannot believe the volume of fire that's coming from the island. The air is just filled with bullets We can't see them But we can see where they hit Splat splat splat like raim drops

Dotting the water Dot pattern sweeping back and forth Across our line Curtains a curtain of fire It's called curtain of fire Passing over us through us Yeah I realize oh my God

The Japanese have got this reef Zeroed in Which means they don't even have to aim Their machine guns They just lock the guns To a predetermined setting And traverse the barrel Left and right

Left and right Just along the reef. Like shooting a fish in a barrel. Yeah. Major Hayes was right. He said we'd be going in standing up, and that's what we're doing. Not that we want to. There's no other way.

No place to run. No place to high. Some men crouch in the water. They watch the bullet patterns, the curtains, trying to figure out when the curtain will sweep over them. It's all a matter of timing. They'll duck underwater at the right moment to avoid getting shot. It would be a good plan if only there were two,

if only there were one or two machine guns firing at them. but there are many, many machine guns firing, creating multiple curtains that meet and intermingle and overlap and crisscross. Bullets are flying every which way. Worse, the guns are aimed to fire just inches above the surface. So if you crouch with your head just above the water, you're likely to get your head drilled.

Might as well stand up. That way you'll get shot in the chest or stomach, which is usually fatal instead of to the head, which is almost always fatal. Also, if you're crouching in the water, you're not moving. And if you're not moving, you're a stationary target and you're easier to shoot. You have to keep moving. You have to get to shore. Get ashore or die. And the whole thing, orders were, don't stop to help anybody. Everybody's going to get killed.

Just you get yourself in. My men that stopped to help me violated those orders. And I told them, don't wait for me. Go on. No, they stuck around. Walking straight into curtains of machine gun fire is not something that comes naturally. Your instincts oppose it. Every fiber of your being seems screams in protest, resisting, telling you no way in hell am I going to do that. That's why when I glance over my shoulder to see how my men are doing, I see that many haven't left the boat. A few, most likely those that are just next to me in the boat are in the water, but the others are bunched up at the top of the ramp, all tensed up to take the plunge, but hesitating,

unable to make themselves move. I can't blame themselves for hanging back, but I can't allow it. For one thing, they make a big, fat target standing. They're crowded together at the front of the boat. They've got to get into the water and disperse before the Japanese machine guns,

find them and wipe them out with a couple well-placed bursts. But more important, they've got a job to do. They've got to get off the boat, get ashore, and fight and kill Japanese. I gesture at them and shout, come on, guys, let's go, get moving, move out. They obey me.

They get moving. They're good men, the best. They charge down the ramp, jump feet first in the water, start wading toward the shore. And that's when the slaughter really begins. Right away, the men around me, my men are taking hits and falling.

I'm very aware of this. I'm hearing cries for help, cries for Corman. The wounded are calling out, Corman, Corman, I'm hit. I'm hit over here. They're calling out as loud as they can. I see men going under, often for the last time. What do I do? I keep moving forward. That's what. Cries for help everywhere and I ignore them. I have to. You get hot you get hit. You just have to keep going. You have to cope with it yourself. Do the best you can. Hope for the best. The sounds of battle are everywhere. There are those sweeping, slashing curtains of fire, dozens of machine guns rattling, a cacophon of staccato hammering. Artillery shells exploding in the water, splashing, throwing up, wishing guys,

of water and human body parts and most especially most memorably the shouts and screams of the wounded and the dying oh god i'm hit corman over here corman help me help me please men are dropping everywhere to the left and right of me falling and sinking into the water going under some men don't cry out hardly make a sound when they're hit the bullet or bullets thump into them they grunt and they're gone we're not permitted to help them the cormon can come to their aid but But not the rest of us. Our orders are to move on to get to shore as fast as we can. If we stop to help the wounded, we'll get shot too.

And we won't make it to the beach where we're needed. So we keep waiting forward. My men, the men from other boats, the entire battalion, what's left of it, struggling through the water, holding the rifles over their heads, pushing through toward the beach and into the teeth of all that inflating gunfire. Their courage is incredible. That word only begins to describe it. Inflating from that beach to British transport or ship. Crossfire, you guys are in.

Yeah. Shells exploding, wushing geysers, machine guns rattling. Splat, splat, splat, splat, those little dots in the water, thousands of them moving this way and that. A bullet hits four feet to my right. Splat, splat, splat, then bullets hit three feet, two foot, one foot to my right. Sure do hope they skip over me, and they do this time. Splat, they begin hitting. to my left, one foot, two foot, three foot, and so on. I got lucky. I literally dodged a bullet,

several bullets. How long will my luck hold? I can't see any muzzle flashes from the enemy guns. The Japanese are invisible, just like they're bullets. We're being slaughtered by an invisible force, nothing to see, nothing to shoot at. Not that we would be shooting if we could see them. You don't stand in open water shooting at the enemy. You get yourself to the beach, you take cover, and then you start shooting. Anyway, my weapon isn't good for shooting at long and medium range. For that matter, it's not much good at close range either. It's an M1 carbine, a pathetic excuse for a firearm, a weakling with a weakling's punch. I'm holding it at port arms across my chest as I wade through the water.

Maybe it will stop a bullet that would otherwise kill me. That's about all the good it can do me. I walk on, pushing forward, straining to move faster. The water dragging at my thighs, no one ever set a speed rock record running in thigh deep water. water I've gone about 100 yards only 500 yards to go we're taking fire from the front from both flanks from the rear the rear what the hell and that's what you talk about that's the that's the that's the sunken ship that's out there and there's well no there our planes are coming in and strafing and we wonder what

is going on to this when they were they were strafing that ship I return to the task at hand keep moving to the shore how long is this been going on how long I've been out here in the water I can't say I have no sense of time everything is moving in slow motion second seems to last minutes minutes seem to last hours it just keeps going on and on every moment is intense filled with intense thoughts emotions actions I'm thinking how can I protect myself how can I protect my men someone screams another one of my men is hit and another and another help Corman some are killed outright some are wounded some are well it's hard to say some go

quietly, some noisely, they fall back in the water, they slip under the water, some flail in the water, and their pain and panic, howling and shouting. I keep moving. My adrenaline is flowing like an electric current through me, allowing me to do things I wouldn't normally and shouldn't normally do. If I stopped to think about what I'm doing, I'd freeze up. I'd try to track the bullets, the movement and patterns of the enemy's traversing fire. The bullets impact start to my left, to my right, the bullet's sweeping back and forth. I see no pattern, or rather I see too many patterns, Splat, splat, splat everywhere. It's like the enemy throwing thousands and thousands of stones at us.

A pattern of splats in the water comes towards me from the right, sweeps past me, continues to the left. I don't hear the crack of the bullets as they zip by at supersonic speed. That's the problem. They're not zipping past us. They're hitting us. They've got our range. I'm in the impact zone.

I have to get through it or die. I turn to look back at my men. Let's go, I call out for the umpteenth time. I turn facing the shore. Then finally, it happens. A sickening splat Like an inner tube Being snapped across my abdomen

Slapping my bare stomach A sharp stinging sensation I'm hit I hear myself say A bullet has struck me Nearly dead center below the navel Piercing me above the water line I'm gutshot One of the worst wounds of all

Oh God I've probably been hit by small caliber Machine gun bullet fired from straight ahead on the beach It didn't make much of an impact Not long enough to knock me off my feet or even stagger me. Later I would learn it tore right through my body, piercing my intestines,

bladder and sacrum. Thank goodness it didn't hit a bone. Zena didn't. Yeah, so it pierced your intestines, bladder, and sacrum just before exes. And it exited missing my spinal nerve by a quarter of an inch. As it is,

I'll probably die in a few minutes. I'm scared. I think, my gosh, this is it. If it happens that you get shot and you don't know how bad the wound, it often happens that you get shot

you don't know how bad the wound is. But when you're hit where I was hit, you know it's bad. It's a gut wound. And you know it's a pretty sure thing you're not going to make it. Very few people survive gut wounds, even in the best of circumstances. I'm in what are arguably the worst of circumstances. If I had been shot on dry land, I might be able to crawl to an aid station. Or my buddies might have patched me up.

But I'm in a lagoon. So there can be no crawling. And my buddies are forbidden to help me. It goes without saying that, There are no aid stations close by. I can try to reach our LCVPs on the reef 100 yards behind me, but I probably won't make it. I'm dying is why.

I dump my gear into the water. Off goes my pack, my helmet, my webbing, the walkie-talkie slung over my shoulder. Goodbye M1 carbine. Into the drink you go, never a shot fired in anger. It takes just seconds for me to shuck my equipment. In those seconds, I lose most of my strength. After a few more seconds, I'm almost too weak to stand. It happens that fast.

The energy is draining out of me. I'm going into shock. The weakness doesn't paralyze me, and it doesn't come from any place in particular. It's an overall sort of feeling that makes me go heavy and limp. I'm in pain, but it's not too bad. Not yet. And I'm not bleeding very much either, but I'm slipping away, no doubt about it. My biggest worry now is that I'll collapse, sink beneath the surface, and drown.

All I want to do is keep my head above water, so I won't drown before I die from the bullet that reamed through me. I know this isn't rational. What difference does it make how I die? Drowning or dying from getting my innards scrambled by a bullet. Either way, I'm a goner and soon. But I'm not thinking rationally. I'm thinking I've got to keep my head above water, period. Maybe 10 seconds have passed since I got shot.

That is all. In that time, the man closest to me, PFC Thomas F. Sullivan has hastened to my side. Lieutenant, where are you hit? He asks, I tell him. He pulls up my dungary jacket, checks my wound. Solomon is the platoon's eight ball. A nice guy, just a teenager, but he's got a wild streak. He's always getting into trouble.

You can bet dollars to donuts when he goes on Liberty. He'll raise the dickens, get arrested, and afterwards spend a few days in the brig as punishment. This happened in New Zealand before we left for Tarawa. This happens everywhere we go. It's standard operating procedure for Sullivan. You can count on him to kick up a row to break the rules. I never did locate him at first.

I tried to. I never could. I know he survived the war. Oh, he definitely survived? Yeah. And you're happy that right now he's the kind of guy that's rebellious because he's disobeying the orders, which the orders are, you keep going.

And he looks at you and says, no, I'm not saying. You know, I thought it was that goner, so why have somebody else die trying to help me? Another guy joins him, PFC Duffy, also a member of my platoon, and also would seem a kid who doesn't know how to follow the orders. When I returned this last time, I found out where he was buried. Duffy? Yeah. Yeah.

You even say you'd think you'd be happy that these guys were staying with you, but you're actually thinking, which is what you just said. They were disciplining orders and they were going to lose their lives too. And finally they say we're staying with you. Where do you want us to take you? To the beach or to the boat? And you opt for the boat. Yeah.

It takes about 10 minutes to reach the nearest LCVP. The boats crowded with other wounded Marines. Other wounded men are being dragged to the boat. by their buddies. Evidently, Sullivan and Duffy weren't the only ones who ignored the order to ignore the wounded. The wounded men and the rescuers are clustered in front of the ramp, which is about three quarters raised. One by one, the wounded men are half pushed, half flung over the top of the ramp, after which they roll down onto the deck. My turn comes. The man next to me is that big fellow with a ravaged face. His wound is terrible, worse than mine.

I motion for him to go before me. He is boosted up to the top of the ramp. Sullivan lifts me up. I'm groaning like mad. The pain is getting worse. I'm really hurting really bad now. My helpers can't quite get me over the top. I'm limp and heavy, a bulky sack of flesh and bone with a hole in it. And they just can't manage to raise me high enough.

That's when the Marine with a ravaged face performs his life-saving deed, a one-arming me into the boat. How did he do that? He must be in torment from his wound, but that didn't stop him from helping me. I tumble groaning down onto the dock alongside the man with the ravaged face. The deck is covered with the main and wounded men. Their bodies bandages and bloody, many writhing in pain, many just groaning just like me.

Another wounded man is taken aboard. The ramp is then closed and the boat begins to move. A coxswain, aware that our lives are hanging in the balance, opens the throttle wide. And soon we're going full tilt, racing through the channel in the barrier reef toward the Sheridan. This description, I think, is the best description I've ever heard of, of that kind of combat?

Well, yeah, you take, Steve's a small wine, your vineberger, he's incredible. He does a lot of writing. See, he worked with, the guy headed up to Chicago Tribune. He worked with them regarding the army unit that was in World War II.

And then he wrote, and then he wrote this about the Polish woman that was in the Jewish woman. That was, that was survived. the time that they were almost killed. It's incredible. So that's your, that's your, that's the end of Tarawa battle for you. Lasted what, 20 minutes?

Well, I guess 20 hours in 20 minutes, because you did the first 20 hours circle around. Yeah. And you give a great account from all the people that, you know, that were there that got interviewed. Dick Stein, he's pushing in the fighting at Tarawa. It's really all taking place at this seawall. Later on, later on, he was in the motorcycle officer in L.A.

And he'd been in accidents and shot at, hospitalized 20 times. gosh Oh my gosh Yeah These guys Getting ashore A few seconds later

Dick stepped ashore This is what This now you're being You're being You know You're being loaded down The Sheraton Momentarily elated

He said to himself Well they ain't gonna get me now Then he looked Around and his elation evaporated Nearby Lay a dead Marine With a Japanese bayonet protruding from his chest

And three dead Japanese Soldiers sprawled around him Dead bodies were everywhere floating in the water, piling up at the waterline, strewn about the beach, guys from the second Marines who had landed the day before, guys from the 8th Marines, too, and many Japanese. The beach was strewn with rifles as well as bodies, and he took one off of a dead Marine and took the man's ammo clips as well.

Now he could fight back. And then another guy named Hester. Hester collected his men and led them back to the seawall. They found murder. He's a perfect example of taking leadership as Hester. Hester? Called Big Hester. Yeah.

What happened with him? Well, he's able to gather people together, and hey, let's go, you know. Yeah. So that's the guy is now. How much more do I say about him? I mean, you... There were two brothers. One brother was killed.

His younger brother was killed on Guadalcanal about the time when I almost got killed. Well, you start talking here about him and Hester and then Murdoch. Yeah. And you say, he said, Hester, they found Murdoch near a wrecked Amtrak in the mad rush to reach. to reach the seawall and jump over it. Duffy somehow got separated from the group, and they never saw him again. He was killed.

The guy that saved your life. Sitting with his back to the wall, taking a breather, Dick looked over toward the shore, immediately behind Murdoch. The incoming waves, watched the dead Marines onto the shore and pushed them into small piles. It looked like a little mound.

And at the top of that mound facing the sky was Anthony Boyle. His helmet was off in the top of his head was shot away when he wasn't gone. A number of years ago, Murdoch, I, and another one or two, went to a big memorial for him in New York,

New York, overlooking the Hudson. And we had one Lieutenant General, Boomer was with us, and he was one of the spokesmen for the fighting that you were involved in. He was the main guy. So he was there with us. But we had a big ceremony

in a big Catholic church. We had a parade downtown. To the downtown, it was a big event. Big event. And this is what happened to him. That's what happened to him. Is only seconds before O'Boyle had been standing next to Murdoch, peering over the wall,

then a Japanese bullet took off the top of his head, and he fell back into John's arm. John cradled O'Boyle in his arms for a long moment before laying him gently aside. Someone else must have hauled him up to the pile of bodies at the water's edge to get him away from the way. the wall. During this time, someone from the company passed Dick's position and informed that Duffy

had been killed. Duffy was a very quiet person, never talked to much, but a really nice guy. No, he didn't. Dick remembered. He was a little older than the most of us in his earlier mid-20s, which made him an old man in our outfit. He was O'Boyle's best buddy. Now they were both dead, killed within minutes of each other.

For everyone involved, Americans and Japanese, there was a peculiar, peculiar, nexus, nasty way to fight a war. The situation favored the defenders, but only to a point. Battles are won not by staying in fortifications. They are won by attacking. And on Beggio, the Marines were the attackers. And you never saw, they ever saw the enemy because they were in their shooting at you from a from a hole out of a hole somewhere. See? They had to assault each and every Japanese position making short rushes across open ground through murderous fire. Heavy casualties were the result. But ultimately, Japanese casualties were heavier. In fact, almost total. The Japanese would not use.

because their military ethos forbade it. To beat them, you had to kill them. But the Marines would not quit, and they could not be stopped. Against a foe, such as the Marines, with their absolute determination and capability to win, the initial advantage is enjoyed by defenders fighting from a concealment could have but one outcome. Annihilation.

Now, I have a book here written by one of the Japanese defenders. And I wondered to meet him when I went there. and met two other Japanese officers. But we never, we never met, we never actually able to get together. We were on the phone. But the name, the name was called,

see, what they called, called heavenly, something or other. They believe they went to a heaven too. There's a different kind of heaven. And they died. Continuing on here. Yes, that's a Kuni shrine for one place.

Oh, okay. You know, the officers especially. We will meet again in the Asakuni Shrine. And this one officer that I met on Guadalcanal in who I got to know real well, we corresponded for about 15 years. And I talked a lot about the, I learned a lot about their whole background of their Bushido Code and all that stuff. I've read on this podcast, I've read some of letters that the Kamikaze pilot

would write because they would write a letter before they would go and die. Yeah. And there's also talk of how, like, they would write these letters, but some of them were not writing from the heart. In other words, you know. And as they, when they, when they die, sometimes they would cut off their fingernails, and that would be sent back. Now, this one, this one fellow who had just been killed, he was in a gopher, like, hole.

We were just starting our final drive. And that's where I want to do. I got the diary from him and the thousand whole stitch belt and all that kind of stuff. And anyway, I had the, I had a little piece of part of a hair that had belonged to, I think it belonged to his girlfriend or something. Anyway, I was going to send all that back. and that when the when a soldier was killed

the wife, and that would have been his wife, the wife is supposed to take care of his family. Instead, she had remarried. She felt bad about it. When she saw this, saw what he had written, but wanted her to remarry, what a difference that made? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Again, jumping ahead a little bit because people need to get the book so they can read it for themselves, but the casualty toll was nothing less than catastrophic. In New Zealand, the company had been beefed up with a little more than 200 men to give it an extra punch in the assault.

90 were lost, killed, or wounded in the Beasio Lagoon. In other words, nearly half the company was out of action before anyone stepped ashore. The men Murdoch found on the beach were all exhausted and with a terrible look on their face. That's according to Murdoch. But their shock and exhausted did not, could not concern him. What I was more interested in was who was alive

and who have I got? What have I got? To make that assessment, he continued rounding up the guys on the beach and taking them back to his area. All the while, the enemy fire was flailing on the beach. John ignored it. When Anthony O'Boyle was shot and fell into his arms, he wasn't phased. And once he had laid O'Boyle's twitching body aside, he didn't think about him anymore that day. He didn't have time, much less the inclination to grieve for O'Boyle or to feel horror for the slow, hideous way O'Boyle died.

At that point of time, our battalion, our company led by Murdoch were we're wiping out the last resistance. It was a hard, it was really a real determined group fighting there. And that's where we lost right now. One of the people that's in this picture here, he got shot by a fellow down in a hole, like a little spider hole, what do you call it, and up in his gut and killed him instantly. He died thinking that, he died thinking that I'd just been killed. I went, I visit his family in, in Tennessee afterwards, and they were still so sad that they didn't even want to hear more about it.

Didn't he want to talk to me about it, you know? Progress is eventually made toward the middle of the day. Bill noticed that Sims things seemed to be going a little bit better for the Marines. They seemed to be making some progress. Bulldozers had landed by then. And they pushed up against the pillbox entrances, sealing them and entoming the Japanese inside. but the flamethrowers really did the trick. A flamethrower operator.

So one of those that was inside, I ran into the first I returned, the first time I returned to Tarawa. And he had been in the Navy for many, many years, probably well over 20 years. And he was in charge of the mess area. And then he had been transferred from there to New Guinea just before we landed. That's how he survived. Oh, so just before he landed, he had been transferred. Yeah, he'd been, well, you know, maybe a month before or some period of time.

Right, right. And that's the only reason. So he wrote that. So now here he is. He returned at the same time I did, and I met him, you know, and I showed him the picture of the one, the one Japanese soldier that, what they do, they put their toe in the, and pull the trigger of the rifle and pointed right up their mouth. and he was doing that and he saw that

and the reaction probably it was really something it was really something when he saw that picture says yeah yeah that was done a lot here's what here's what Murdoch says

as the as the fighting kind of comes to an end as they get to the end all of a sudden things began to move we were moving but very very slowly like a snail my guys would go out ahead of me then they'd be moving

and I'd run up with my gang and get behind them. We were all very close to the enemy a matter of feet, not yards. It was small, very slow progress, but it was progress nonetheless. For the first time since they had landed the day before, the men of B Company were advancing

and not falling back after each forward push. The Japanese meant to fight to the last man, and they were coming ever closer to realizing that goal. Marine assault teams, mostly ad hoc assemblages, destroyed the enemy bunkers one after another, killing the Japanese while they were inside or when they ran out. The Japanese were literally slain in here.

Heaps as their numbers were reduced, so was the volume and intensity of their fire. Finally, when John and his men had advanced as far as they could, the battle just sort of petered out. The shooting stopped, bringing silence to their sector of the battlefield, and leaving everyone stunned by the abrupt end to the fighting. They didn't know quite what to do. We just kind of sat there and did nothing. The next day, First Battalion marched over to the pier where the LCVB waited to take them back to the Sheridan. On their way, they witnessed a dual flag-raising ceremony for the Stars and Stripes and the British Union Jack with a representative from His Majesty's government presiding. The Stars and Stripes went up first, but the Union Jack was given the place of pride and honor on a higher pole and acknowledgement of the British sovereignty over the Tarawa atoll.

There were some muttered complaints for the men of the 1-8, but not much. Most just smiled grimly and shook their heads. Great Britain may have held the title to Beggio. But the Marine Corps truly owned it now and forever. When I returned the first time in 82, and I stayed with missionaries there for a couple, for three or four days or more. And then during that time, we all decided to, okay, there was a breakaway, a split in that church group.

So part of them is going to another church, just that's type of a place, walking, had to walk through some kind of a jungle area to get there. And so they had it. We sat down and I spoke and asked them to sing, and they just love to sing, you know. And then it's now, now you got to sing the main hymn. So, and then, so then what happened? was I didn't really really sing it. I said, now we'll sing it the words.

I mean, we'll sing the tune of it. And it was a love song based on a hymn. So it was kind of two iterations, apparently. And then I had to, then I told them a little bit about, well, you know, that's interesting. And I said, now these words, and I went through the words to a certain extent. And that was so interesting that they hear they sang that song that was a love song like

same as I ran him. Oh then after that I invited him over to the other shirts that they'd spread off from and I had got a hold of the film that was it was done by a guy by Norm Hatch who recently died away. He's one took all these pictures. Combat photos. This is in Florida by the way and anyway I played that for them. And it showed that flag rising.

And these kids, they all clap in the American flag, and they were real quiet on the British flag. Just like it was described in here. Here's the results. The battle for Beggio lasted 76 hours. Some 4,690 Japanese troops. About 97% of the garrison died. a mere 17 Japanese were taken prisoner

as were 129 laborers. The second Marine... Most of these were Korean laborers. The Korean laborers, yeah. The second Marine Division suffered 3,407 casualties of these 1,115 Marines and sailors were killed and another 2,292 were wounded. The assault units lost 41% of their men dead and wounded.

The 1st Battalion 8th Marines lost more than 30% of its men just getting to the beach. There's probably, it could be as many as 400 still there, three or 400 still there. Because they're under homes, under parking lots, and so on. Overall, the battalion suffered 343 casualties. When I was there to the third, about the third time, and here the, the archaeologist was brushing off the bones.

And on this one person, no, on two of the, two of them, they found wedding rings on their, and something, huh? Wow. And I saw that as they were doing it. Yeah. Casualties in my platoon were 12 killed and 15 wounded, including myself, 75% of its original strength.

Most were hit while waiting to shore. Yeah. Yeah. And you can look at the faces of all these that were killed. True. And it's one photograph. And you talk about the news clippings or the news stories that were reported about Tarawa. Yeah.

Okay. And part of it, I always was told that they released some of these. It was the first time that they really released a lot of images. If you are, one of the general public realized, you know, this is not going to be easy. This is what it's really like. Just terrific combat photos. Oh, incredible.

Yeah, and those were the first ones showing mass casualties of Americans. You've probably seen that one. Oh, yeah, I've seen. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Norm Hatch. It's one that did.

Oh, so that is him. Okay. That's Nirm Hatch. Oh, yeah. I got to know him real well. Yeah. All right. And the reason, reading this book got published was there's a Colonel Alexander, Joseph

Alexander, died in the last year or four years. And anyway, he was the, he was the prime historian for the Marine Corps. And then he was very well thought of, but the neighborless to oppress. So when it came to making a proposal to enable us to a press, it had to go through their, through their Board of Review. And then after that, no, see, no, it had to go through, they had to go through your, what's the word for it, somebody has the same amount as you do, I forget it.

Anyway, this, Joseph Alexander was one of the prime ones that did the, did it when my peer review. Okay. when that went when that got to the to the review board oh he says fine so I just sailing on through you know and then now and then my book was on the first ones to go on as an e-book first one for the press yeah and I said I have the ads there in some of the the they the proceedings magazine yeah that shows shows that they're displayed one him is with Papua going to is on that same page with him well yeah this is available on

e-book for those of you that want to get it and can't wait to get it you can get immediately just go straight to e-book not only that yeah that too and not only that when they go through and it goes up going through email I read to what is it amazon.com it'll be delivery in a matter of about three days or less and and no no shipping costs Yeah, that's the way Amazon works. Oh, how they do it? I do not understand. Yeah, and I don't know if this one there's, but that's where I got my copies.

So, yeah, you can get, I have the hard cover and the soft cover. You have both. Yes. I don't play around when you get your books. When you get the e-books, it costs three quarters as much as one of those. Yeah. It's, the publishing world is very strange. taking it now to where you get onto the Sheridan.

So now this is no sooner had my stretcher touched down on the Sheridan's deck that I was whisked away into the operating room. I was one of the first wounded Marines to be treated and the medical team was fresh and rested and ready to go to work on me. I guess that qualifies as a stroke of good luck. Even better fortune awaited me in the operating room in the form of lieutenant commander Lloyd Sussex, formerly an abdominal specialist at the Mayo Clinic. Now the key member of three-man team, two doctors in a Corman that would say

your life. How lucky is that? You had a guy that's unbelievable. And aboard a ship. And that's all there was. And if I'd gone on shore, I would have died. And most other places, you wouldn't have an abdominal specialist. And then it says the operation lasted about an hour.

I was conscious the whole time and didn't feel any pain. Well, they didn't want to dare put me out because I die. I was in shock. The doctor spent most of that hour bent over my lower body, and although I could not see what they were doing, I could hear a little clicking and snipping sounds made by their instruments as they worked. They repaired my bladder and removed a portion of my large intestine and gave me a blood transfusion. Then they closed my wound, and that was that.

Yeah, and then he had to wear a bag afterwards. I had made it through surgery, but it had been a close call. Dr. Sussex told me that I could not have survived another two hours. because of the toxins that were building up inside. And right after the operation, I was kept in a hot cupboard tent. And it was miserable. I kept trying to shove it off.

They had a corpsman sitting there with me all night long to keep me even throwing it off. And then another couple of days, I was able to walk in to watch a movie where people couldn't be here. I was walking in there to see the movie. They couldn't believe it. I mean, you were as good as dead, gut shot.

Unbelievable. Not even to the beach yet. And usually very people survive, period. I got you. Very few. Because he told me, he said, I'd talk to him later and says, yeah, you know, the poisons in your system, you wouldn't have lasted another couple more. Another hour or two, that was it. And here it was operating, about an hour or a little over after I was hit.

It was just unbelievable. That is unbelievable. Oh, wow. You say a few days later, I was just a few days later, I was just. checked over by a younger doctor, a gloomy fellow with a bedside manner to match. He told me dolefully that my wound was very serious and that I wouldn't live much past my 50s. What sort of doctor says such a thing to his patients? I reported his words to Dr. Sussex, who's appalled.

He shouldn't have told you that. Sussex said, and there's no truth to it anyways. And I guess we're proving that right now since we're saying you're talking about it. Well, now, what happened to him? A year later, he was operating on a guy at Ferrigat and Naval Training Association. This is Sussex? Yes, and here he's about 55 years old. He died of a heart attack as he's operating on that guy.

And I've talked to the Mayo Clinic about that. And then there's people that have written up a lot of history about that. And they've written a little bit about Sussex. And I gave a lot of information too. So anyway, that's the end of the story with him. And like you said, you come walking up. They're playing a movie on the Mestex. You come walking them up.

My buddies can hardly believe their eyes. Oh, my God. look here's lad they exclaimed first they thought I was dead then they were told I was grievously wounded all tore up a basket case and now here I was walking into the movie theater how many days it had been it couldn't have been more three days

oh man while I was recovering you know they always in a hospital they want you up around as fast as possible anyway okay yeah while I was recovering from my surgery John Murdoch dropped by to give me a samurai sword he had survived he had souvenir on Bezio yeah hold it for me

until I return, he said. He assumed that I had gotten a million dollar wound and would be sent home. I fought the same. Left unspoken, but implicit. And what he said was that he didn't think he would be coming home. The sword was probably mine to keep. Yeah. His was a common sentiment.

I would venture to say that after Tarawa, most second division Marines didn't believe they would make it through the war. Yeah. Because you're looking at the entire rest of the island campaigns and then you've got to go into mainland Japan. And it's going to be a bloody fight the whole way. Oh, wow. Boy, if that bomb hadn't had dropped. It's a horrible thing, but, geez. Murdoch took a headcount of B Company using a pre-battle roster for reference,

checking off one name after the other from the list. He had known that the toll would be large, but even he was shocked by the final count. My God, he thought. Now, the casualtyers are listed, are they listed in there? If not, they're listed in here, all the casualties. what's his name the guy that they're not fully listed in here what's his name I wrote the book the story of them

story of battle what is it anyway I got that whole thing they're all listed in here one's wounded ones that killed outright now this is his book by the way right here this one right here you heard that one sure what okay Sherrod okay now you know all the names are all

back here. See, here they are. They're all back in here. See this? Got it. See that? So that's where they all are. And I talked to him in person and it's getting okay, you know, to quote them. And I said, well, I had a little difficulty with the publisher. Just don't pay attention to them. Says, I'm gay to the okay. All right. now you guys sail to Hawaii. So you go from this hell, how long does it take to get to Hawaii? Like a week, 10 days?

About a week. So then you guys get to Hawaii, you guys are Peerside, you're all sitting up there looking Peerside and a car pulls up and here we go, back to the book, outstepped Admiral Chester, W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief, Pacific Fleet

and Pacific Ocean. areas. He began to ascend the gangway accompanied by an aide. His friends called him Chet. So did the Marines. They figured their experiences had given them the right. Hey, Chet, they shouted, when we going back to the States, Chet, we can't

wait for the Golden Gate. Does our skipper know the way to Daego? How about some liberty, Chet? We got to get off this tub and do some Christmas shopping. And perhaps most tellingly, hey, Admiral, get us someone who knows the reefs for our next landing.

So that's a classic. Then his driver. Then the remarks at his driver, see. Oh, yeah, I guess he looked like some Hollywood guy. He looked like Hollywood guy. Yeah, so that's choice of remarks about him. Yeah, you guys must have been pretty hard to control coming off of Tarawa. So anyway, he was so glad.

So these guys are, they're just full of it. Great, that's good. Yeah. Then he, so here we go. Shortly after Nimitz departure, the PA announced that Desherden would be proceeding directly to the Big Island. In other words, no liberty on Oahu. This didn't set well with the Marines, and they went wild hooting and yelling and whistling, throwing all manner of junk down on the dock, pelting the band and the Shore Patrol. The bandsmen lowered their instruments and accompanied by the shore patrols fled to a nearby shed.

the 8th Marines achieved nothing with their show of angry emotions except perhaps to blow off a lot of steam and confirm to all concerned parties that they should not have been given liberty. The brass was not about to turn these barbarians loose on the civilian populace of Oahu. The civilized world wasn't ready for us and to be honest we weren't ready for the civilized world. And Hawaii was concerned. Oh, I bet they were. After fighting with Japanese. What are we going to do? And there was a lot of Japanese.

It was just as well. The brass had plans for us. The second division as a whole and these did not involve. a return to the United States. First, we would go to the Big Island to rest, rebuild, and then train for the next operation. We had to put up the tents. There was no place of sleep.

So they sent you guys out in the middle of Oahu. No, no, no. This is a big island. They sent you the Big Island. But they sent you out to the middle of it where you guys had to establish your own base camp. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

We had to start for tents. And start training. Oh, yeah. You get here, our training, so you get the stuff to up. And then after that, the camp was used by the others that eventually took Iwo Jima, you see, the fifth. Okay. You say here, you get the camp set up, you get a little bit of downtime, and then they get you guys right into training. Our training stress, the combined arms approach to warfare.

For veterans of Beggio and Guadalcanal, many aspects of this training were old hat, but the replacements in the division was receiving almost daily. they needed all of it. Replacements were pouring in. Now we knew we were going to go be in the sugar cane area, and we knew we were going to use the tanks. And we knew that we were going to have to have communication by a phone on the back of the tank.

Okay. Yeah, this was a new modification. All new. Yeah, whole new. And how to maneuver around the strong points and all. You say that most of the replacements, most were fresh-phrased teenagers straight out of boot camp. Now we're starting to get draftees.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you say here, eager kids with no combat experience and no idea what they've gotten themselves into. The rest of us just looked at them and shook our heads. We did know what they had gotten themselves into and we wondered how they would survive in the battles to come. Never forgetting that our own survival thus far was due in large measure to the vagaries of chance and circumstance and maybe just a little bit to the grace of God as well.

Luck and God's grace were desperately slim reeds on which to hang our hopes. slimmer still for the replacements because they're inexperienced. We expected that many would die. The odds were against them because they had seen no action. But we also expected to die. The odds were against us because we had seen too much action. Either way you did the math, it came out bad. And if the war went on for another two or three years...

He'd reached a hundred percent figure, you know? Your chances. Your chances are 100%. Yeah. We respect... Oh, here you talk about the draftees. We were especially skeptical of... skeptical about the draftees of which there were a significant number.

These were selective service Marines, were something new to, which was previously an all-volunteer force, new and unwanted, and a matter of grave concern for the rest of us. Would the draftees measure up to Marine Corps standards? Would we be able to depend on them in battle? We had our doubts. We were wrong to doubt them in battle. When the chips were down, they proved that. Like volunteers, they were worthy to be called.

Marines. So you eventually take over a as a 60 millimeter mortar section. Yeah, because I was still weak. Because you were still hurt. Yeah, and so I didn't have to get out and do a lot of moving around, you see. And then, and again, you cover some of this stuff in good detail in the book, but then soon enough, it's, you're hitting SIP. I learned how to, you know, load the ship and be a court recorder and all that kind of stuff. you know, light duty, light duty stuff. How long were you guys in Hawaii for?

Let me think. About six months, five months. Yeah. So you get five. Did you get any liberty in that time? Oh, yeah. Okay. So they let you go away.

Yeah, we went down to Hilo a lot. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. All right. So now you get done with that and then boom, morning 15 June, 1944. Shells rained down on our assault waves.

This is Saipan. Yeah, but now, before we left Hawaii, We had RELSTs all lined up side by side, and one of them blew up a mortar shell or something. They were doing some welding or something. Anyway, a mortar shell blew up. And then fire just spread from ship to ship. And we lost, I don't know, maybe over 400 men lost their lives in that whole line up there. And then we lost a lot of equipment because of that.

Did that set back the operation? Yeah, I did. It did put a, yeah, yeah, it did. So that was at a place called Westlock. Yeah. You probably heard about that one, haven't you? Yeah, no, and you've got it written. I did, I've heard of it because they made changes to the way that they did business.

Yeah. With regards to handling. Now, this happened. This happened when we were at landing exercises on Maui. And I think we had some complications in landing due to the weather or something it was. and so that was part of it. That was part of it. But the main thing, they don't know exactly what caused the explosion,

but they think it probably was what I just mentioned. But guys got blew up, blew up and just kept flying out. And one of my friends, he happened to him, and here he's able to swim, no, he was picked up, a boat came by, and had a, they pulled the lines, So grab on. And they then just dragged them over to the beach, you know. That's incredible.

It's crazy. These vets from Guadalcanal and Tarawa and then to perish in that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. But you push it back, I guess, and then you guys head to Saipan, and here we go. June 15, 1944. Shells rained down on our salt waves, kicking up tall columns of water.

Now, can you imagine landing on Saipan, they had all their artillery set on the worst side of the mountain, fire over at us, all zeroed in on the reef and along the beach. All they had to do is just rake back and forth. And you couldn't even shoot. And we lost so many, all of wounded. Our wounded were all going back and then here they got hit by all this artillery fire. And our battalion, a lot of battalion commanders were wounded and killed. Because there, they were, our CPs were wrecked along the beach.

And then our ships couldn't fire back at them from that angle. They had to go clear around the other side of the island and hit them from their rear. That's what happened. Yeah. You say here are... Not only that, they had a spotter on a smokestack at a sugar refinery. And all that was called in. Just perfect.

Perfect, yeah. Two of my friends were killed right there in a beach. One led to death. the other one the same way basically it yeah yeah this is what this is what Murdoch said about it

our Amtraks were in line abreast and we were taking artillery fire the heaviest we ever encountered yeah you could see the shells hitting the water exploding and making the water splash way up just off to my right shell scored a direct hit on one of my boats and pow it just went to pieces there was a flash and a big explosion and I could see pieces of men

flying out of it I thought oh shit but I also thought, thank God, it wasn't my boat, but I was mostly thinking, who was it that got hit, and how many guys am I going to be without? Man, Murdoch was a serious, like, marine combat leader. Yeah, he got there too, hit there too. This is your, this is you say. This is your experience. When my Amtrak reached the reef, we were all crouched low below the sides. There was too much metal flying around the air to risk popping up for a look.

around. The guys had their heads pulled down between their shoulders and they stared at each other with eyes with big eyes and said nothing. The veterans of Tarwa had been through this before and were probably having a harder time of it precisely because of their prior experience because they knew how bad things could get. The new kids were mostly better off because they didn't have a clue. Certainly they were scared, but they were also fascinated and awestruck by all the noise and commotion. And these emotions blunted their fear. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for this. The live fire exercises in Hawaii were puny by comparison. And so they did not realize that our situation was terrible and likely to get worse.

You can be sure that I was scared, but fortunately, I had the concerns of an officer to distract me. What wave were you in? What group were you in? There was somebody ahead of us on the beach that I landed on. We were way on the northern end of the landing beach. and what happened is the tide or whatever it was forces further way to the left. And we had to realign a couple hundred yards further back to right again. Now, the thing is, we didn't have a lot of problem getting in to the beach.

But once we got to the beach, there was nobody on the beach. So they didn't defend themselves at the beach. instead it was a heavy artillery fire so they let us basically let us through but where I was we had to cross a fighter strip that they had so we had across and that was kind of scary going across that exposed from the people

shooting on us on the other side but then as we as we maneuvered kept moving to the right further to get back where we were supposed to be then the heavy artillery fire just all over the place it was just pandemonium

horrible Yeah. You said so many good men were killed that day. One of them was First Lieutenant Newell T. Berg of B Company. Former school teacher. Former school teacher. He and I went on Liberty together a lot in New Zealand. Yeah.

Shell fragment sliced off one of his legs. No corner could be found to help him. Yeah, he just died. No order any eight stations. Around the same time. Oh, yeah, that's his femoral artery pumped the last of his blood. down to the sand, he looked up at those gathered around him and whispered, get the men off the beach.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, boy, the fire was coming in. Around the same time, John Murdoch. Hey, we saw these guns, by the way, when we were returned up there, and those guns are still up there, two of them were. And now it's a Japanese memorial. And this is a part of the memorial up there. Yeah, I mentioned to you that I went to Saipan.

You'll probably see them, too. This is right above a face called Sanban City, Bin Sini. Yeah. It's right up there. I don't know if we I don't know specifically because no but I know that we went and looked at all the different. On top of that hill as you get in there was a nightclub I might have been there. Now it'd be just in the north towards chapitza.

Yeah. It's just that that's where the that's where these these are this artillery is. However, and then then down to the left there's their monsters. Monsters dig out of where they they got the coral the coral gravel or sand to make the airport with. Now, that all got filled in with Japanese tanks and amphibian tractors. They're all buried right in there. You probably didn't see it because they've all been buried. But I got a picture, in one book here, what it looked like before they were covered up. So I was here when your friend Newell, was it Newell?

Newell. Yeah, Nealberg. You said around the same time, John Murdoch, John Murdoch, who was running up the beach after disembarking from his Amtrak, came across Gus Kreger. Kreeger, of one of B Company's veteran, first lieutenants, and a close friend. Krieger was lying on the ground with no one around. His body perforated by shrapnel. He was alive but just barely. John knelt beside his friend.

I looked at him to see what I could do for him, John recalled. But he was bleeding in so many places. I knew I couldn't do anything. He wanted a cigarette, so I gave him one. I lit that for him. And I said, Gus, You'll be okay. I got to go. I had to go. There was too much to do. I had to get the company organized, and I left him there. So he died there.

I visited his wife afterwards years later. Thus, within the span of a few minutes, John had lost two of his seasoned to platoon leaders, also wounded and put out of action with a second and third battalion commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Henry P. Jim Crowe. You heard him in. Jim Crow? Oh, yeah. Legendary. Oh, yeah. And he was the former commander of the scout sniper school that you attended.

That's right. And also lieutenant John Miller, Lieutenant Colonel John Miller. So both the battalion commanders out of action. Yeah. From that artillery. Yeah. Man.

Yeah. You're, again, you know. It looks sort of hopeless at that stage. It just seemed to hopeless. Here we're catching heavy artillery fire, and we couldn't do anything about it. You know, it's, I like bringing up these points in the book where you talk about things like this,

while that's all that's happening, you say, meanwhile, I lay in the brush with my men and tried to free myself from the despair that suddenly gripped me. The situation seemed hopeless. It was Tarawa all over again. How?

I wondered, are we going to get out of this mess? Exactly, my feelings at that time. And then you say the feelings soon passed. I just didn't have time for it. At my command, we moved out. Everyone rose from their shell holes and craters and went forward. No hesitation.

Emerging from the bushy strip, we lumbered about 10 feet to the airstrip. Keep going. Keep going. I heard myself shouting. Don't stop. It's good.

I like to bring those points up because there's several times where you talk about you as a leader have to kind of get yourself together. And I think what that's helpful for is young leaders in the military that are going to feel that same thing

if they get into a tough situation. Okay, you've got to recognize it and then you've got to take action. Young 23-year-old with all that responsibility. Oh, my God. So then, next day I got strapped off of my own mortars

hit the leaves up above us and went off I didn't report it I got entered entered up in here still there as far as that goes still there I didn't report it

yeah you guys are pushing forward and then you guys get a you guys get kind of a skirmish line and then the Japanese counterattacked several points along our line. Don Mains, he recalled this. They

bonsai to cross the gosh dang swamp, and we just shot him up. The swamp was marshy water up to the arrakees. You remember. You remember it's a place called Susupi Lake Susupi. I don't remember it. It's a swampy area. And what happened is one of the other officers in our battalion, he was like a soldier of fortune type

of a guy. And he'd been with the British 8th Army as an ambulance driver in North Africa. And we just figured, well, he's either going to be a hero, he's going to get killed, one of the other. He got killed. What happened was that we were at that swamp, and there are a lot of Japanese on the other side not expose himself yet.

But he's trying to get it. He walked out ahead and tried to get him to expose himself. He thought that he'd give him to surrender. And instead, this one guy bent over, he had a machine guns strapped his back, killed him. Yeah. A lot of guys, a lot of casualties. and actually at this point there's another casualty

and it's a guy by the name of John Murdoch and this story is about as good of a story as I've ever heard about the military as a whole so here we go this is around this time John Murdoch also became a casualty hit while landing B Company hit while leading B Company on a sweep west of the landing strip

down toward Sharon Connoa. Yeah, Sharon Canoa. Sharon Canoa. Sharon Canoa. So this is John Murdoch. Now it's called, it's really a Shallan, Shalon Canoa. Okay. See, they couldn't, you know, they couldn't pronounce.

The Ars. They couldn't fence their R. So we call Sharon Cano. Yeah. Yeah. So here's John Murdoch talking. In fact, all of our, all of our past signs had a lot of ours in her seat

and that's where Roger comes from right yeah like when we say Roger that could be I was told that that's possible I had thought it that is possible yeah that's the original usage was that we knew if someone says Roger you knew it was in America on Guadalcanal Murdoch was in there was

taken a fist and here a Japanese come come in and oh my God it turned out it was in one of our interpreters oh he really had a second take I don't know he mentioned that

and there yeah no you did much you read about it in here but yeah oh gosh so here's Murdoch talking about when he gets wounded

yeah opposition was very light on the other side of the strip and when we got down to the end of it we stopped and a Sherman tank came up to help us

the tank had a phone in the back and I was on the phone and I'm trying to tell the guy inside where I wanted him to shoot at the big smokestack in the sugar cane factory

I figured a Jap was up there spotting for artillery which was very accurate. Then all of a sudden, boom, Shell started falling all around the tank, and I knew the spotter in the smoke stop was telling his guns to fire at us. So I ordered the tank commander,

get that smoke stack. Then I put the phone back on, and I'm running back to the safety in a hole, and that's when I got hit by shrapnel on the left leg and the right elbow. So I'm sitting there, and the corpsman comes over and starts bandaging my arm,

and I look down at him down, and my pants are all wet. And I said, holy shit, I pissed my pants. And the Corman said, that's not pissed, that's blood. That's when I found out I'd been hitting the leg. So I dropped my pants in my drawers, and now the Cormons bandaging up my lead, leg, and the Japs start to shell us again. So I jumped and ran to a nearby hole, which wasn't easy you know because my pants and my drawers were down around my ankles.

And so, see, because I haven't read the entire book, you know, you talk about Murdoch. And I've mentioned that he was a character. And, you know, obviously you mentioned that he liked to drink. And one of the people... Yeah, he was an alcoholic one time. He finally got over. Yeah. Well, one of the people that I would say, what's that word, aided him in being an alcoholic

and somebody that he apparently become good friends with because he was a Catholic was the Catholic priest, Father Joe Kehan. So they were really good friends and they spent a lot of time together. And so as he's starting to move towards being, leaving the area, there's a guy, John's executive, John's ex-o Jim Westerman appeared on the scene and told, and John told Westerman, take over. Here, Westie, congratulations. You just made company commander. I'm getting out of here. Now, Westerman got hit by the same artillery that I almost got hit. I almost got clobbered with. And he was out of the service after that. He got badly wounded.

Wow. We had 50 casualties, and Westerman was one of them. Well, and I was too. So this is Murdoch continuing how it goes for him. So I head down for the beach, looking for looking for the evacuation team. I wasn't bleeding all that badly, but I was a mess. I could walk, sure, and I walked. I was looking for one particular doctor, Sol Casol, a dentist.

Earlier I had seen him on the beach there, and now I found him, and I said, Solomon, my friend, a ticket, please. Because you couldn't get evacuated without a ticket. They had to put a ticket on you. He looked me over. My right hand wasn't any good. I couldn't use it, so Solomon ticketed me.

A little while later, I was evacuated in a small boat, and I said to the Navy kid who was driving it. Hey, find me APA 51, will you? And he said, sure. We found the ship. And by then I was lying down and the guys on the deck called down to me. We'll pick you up in a boom on a stretcher. And I came up in the basket and I'm all dirty and bloody. And I see our chaplain, Father Joe Keahan, who I'd become very friendly with. So when they took me out of the basket and put me on the stretcher on the deck, I closed my eyes and pretended I was dead. Father Joe came over and started giving me my last right in the church.

Last right of the church in Latin. But I can't keep a straight face, so I opened my eyes and smile at him. And he goes, you son of a bitch. He goes right from speaking Latin to calling me a son of a bitch. Then he took me down to the infirmary and they patched me up a bit. Then he took me to his stateroom and put me in his bed. I must have slept all day and all night. I didn't hear a thing.

I wasn't feeling any pain. My right hand and arm were numb. When I came to, I didn't know where I was at first. Then I took a shower, changed the bandages, and got cleaned up. That was the end of my war there. My second day on Saipan. My right arm was no good, really. My hand, even today, is no good.

Here's the thing. Even afterwards, when you quote a sleut, there's this thumb would be done here. It was a million-dollar wound. I don't have any feeling of the right side of my hand. The nerve was cut. It was a million-dollar wound, really, because my thumb and two fingers are good, still good. And the next to the last finger, the little finger, we're dead. They're still dead.

So I thought that was about as good of a story as I've ever heard. Oh, geez. Character. Character. You know, you know, when he, what happened to him there when he walked, barreds into this hotel window, and he was drunk, drunk as all get out, of course. Well, anyway, the Italian commander talked to him the next day about it. And he said, you know, you should be more like an officer.

You shouldn't be doing that. Then he went on to say then, the battalion commander says, well, who am I? So I'm kind of like that myself. Yeah, you've got a whole story about him in Hawaii. And then this same battalion commander, he was killed on Woganville as they landed. They called him, they called him, well, he took over one of the,

what he called it, one of the battalions, where he call him, can't name anywhere now. They had a name for them, the equivalent of the, in England, they had the equivalent of it. Huh? I don't know. I don't know. What was the name for it? You know, that's kind of like the...

A reconnaissance battalion? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There'd be a unit that would be the ones that are, just like you, a seal. Oh, a raider. A raider. A raider. He took over the raider battalion that landed on Bougainville. Okay.

And he was killed there. And then his comments As he died, said, well, it's been a short war for me. There's actually another one of these big situations that happens where there's a battle at sea. Oh, yeah. Philippine Sea, yeah.

Marianas Turkey shoot. Yeah. You know that it's coming. You'd seen this before, and he said, we were right. A few days later, we learned that a great battle had indeed been fought in the waters off west of Saipan resulting in the decisive victory for the U.S. name.

Yeah, oh, yeah. With their defeat in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese lost all hope of relieving their forces on Saipan. Now it was up to us, the Marines and the Army, to win the land battle. Did I call it the Marianas Turkish shoot? Yeah. I did right there? I don't think you use those words. Well, okay.

That's traditionally what it's called. Yeah, that is. That's the same one. Now, that's the reason that this guy, he held on because he thought the Navy could come back. take it back. Now, because he surrendered, even after the war, he was not promoted to major. And it's terrible. And the other thing was, even the other officer that I visited at the same time that had fired at us from his artillery in Guadalcanal, named by name of Tanny, Hacchio Tani, even he badmouthed this guy says, well, he should have been even committed hair care even now.

Wow. That's the third sight. That's a hard core attitude. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now you guys are kind of pressing through the rest of the island. You say here, my mortar section was always about 200 yards behind our lead elements. An outbreak of small arms, fire in front of us was a signal to stop and set up our weapons.

Now, you see now, in that movie about Pacific. You mean the series? the Pacific. The series, yeah. Here they had a six millimeter perils right up in the front. I don't know why the advisor does, hey, you don't do that.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. And also the whole script was all screwed up. It was all about a guy that was going through going through some kind of a psychological thing. And he's talking, he's talking to the colonel

in charge of the sick, of the hospital that he's at. You don't do that. You're talking The Corman, you know? Stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Hollywood, they don't... Oh, it's terrible because, you know, they have to... In the real world, everything all spread out. So, you know, that they take a picture of it. So they had take a picture of something real concentrated, you see? And it's not like that at all. Yeah. Still one of my favorite war movies, The Pacific.

Yeah. What did you think of it? Well, this sets were incredible. They were. Incredible. I've been to Palo Lou. And good, wonderful. It was wonderful.

Wonderful set. And let's see, what was it there? What was the other place that they were in? Well, they did Guadalcanal. So on Guadalcanal. Yeah, well, all the landings were, they were great. They were great. But that one of, let's see, no.

Yeah, what other one did they cover? Which size those two? Okay, I'm thinking primarily I want to Palo-Du, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I just, the first time I ever watched it, I was riding on an airplane. I had it on my computer.

I had headphones in. I was watching it really close, and I thought that the tension... Oh, the script was horrible. Oh, the script might be horrible. The combat scenes for me were unbelievable. They were unbelievable. Unbelievable.

And actually reading your book, I was saying, well, they did a great job because one thing that I always said to myself, you know, it's, you know, some of the firefighters, the night fire fights, it just flashes and they're like,

oh yeah, that's what it's like, there you go. And you captured it in your book. You can't really tell what's going on, but it's bad. Yeah.

And they did a great job of capturing that. Now, hopefully this deal will die. We'll pick up on this. Yeah. You'll see the potential there. Well, absolutely. Hopefully, we'll see. So now you guys are,

as you guys are pushing through, you say casualties overall, were relatively light. Yes, they were at that time. Well, the thing is, you know, this ran for, well, almost a month. So, yeah, it's dragged out, but casualties were kept coming in, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you say, meanwhile, off to a right on the other side of the mountain,

the 27th division had run into a meat grinder. The army was attacking on a plateau, a plateau bordered on its left by a sheer cliff that formed the east face of the mountain. Yeah. Called Purple Heart Ridge, yeah. Yeah. And they were held up. And so Holland Matt Smith, he just got rid of their general.

And the Army and National Guard troops, they never really got over. That was unfair. You shouldn't have done that. Well, they did run there some terrible things down there. They were catching them from the flank, you know, real bad. And here, I was up way inland further, and I could look down and I see what they're up against. Here, speaking of friendly forces or friendly fire incidents, here you were. I was resting on one knee next to a tree holding my carbine upright with a buttplate to the ground

when suddenly wham, wham, wham, three big shells exploded over our position. Yeah, 155 millimeter. Long term, long tombs, long range. The shells came not from Japanese artillery, but from a battery of Army 155s. Our battalion exact didn't believe that we were that far forward. So he did it. I found out like Le Westerman told me about it. He's the one that called it in short.

And it was horrible. Oh, it was awful. It was devastating. Oh, my gosh. So many guys were just pulverized. We didn't know what it hit us. Most of us did not hear the shells coming. No one shouted warnings.

No one ducked for cover. No. One of the shells burst in the tree above me, deflecting the forces of the blast. And most of the shrapnel outward and set us straight down. That's what saved my life. A single piece of metal pierced my elbow. The wound was larger than a bullet hole.

About an inch in dynamite, it hurt like hell, but it didn't look serious. Yeah. It hardly bled. And the bone didn't seem damage. Didn't hit the bone. That's the main thing. Yeah. Still, the wound needed treatment.

A few minutes later, several hospital jeeps converged on the scene, and I talked over one of them. On the way, just 50 yards from me, I passed a large crater containing the remains of several men from weapons platoon, who had been playing blackjack when the shell hit their position. They had literally been blown to bits. Several of those men had been, my friends, since Samoa. I had served in their unit before being commended. missioned. I could identify only one of them and only by the glasses. Yeah. Yeah.

Your name was Costinson. In fact, I have a picture of him, too, somewhere here. A few yards further on, a dead Marine lay in a hole beneath a coral outcropping where I had spent the previous night. He too had been killed by the Army's

misdirected salvo. The same shell that killed the Blackjack. Yeah, he was. Yeah. The same shell that killed the Blackjack player's wounded Dick Stein, then a member of weapons platoon. He doesn't remember the explosion or anything else about the day. One moment I'm standing on the ground with the guys in a weapon platoon and the next thing you're going to know, I'm waking up in a tent there in the field hospital and it's around midnight. It's just a concussion in his case. He just, why am I here?

So he just takes off. He could still be alive. I think he's in arrest home now, I think. All in all, the shells from the 155s killed or wounded more than 50s. He could still be alive. Marines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the fellow wrote a book, we came to win or be killed or to die. And he got hit. He was he retired as a colonel, by the way. And anyway, he got hit by the same same rounds. And it put him out. He got he got medical, medical disability, uh, uh, retirement. Devastating. Not only that. Uh, he had one of his very, closest friends, turns out he was my company commander at this particular time. And Seltzer, his name

is Seltzer. He'd been a professional dancer, and he got, he got hit by a large round on Tinnian, and then I took over, took over, I was an exec, took over, and he went to the hospital in Guadalcanal. He killed himself because he didn't want to live without one leg. Because he's a professional dancer. And I don't think that this fellow wrote the book. Realized he writes in the book, he was despondent. He never mentioned he killed himself. I talked to the guy that wrote the book.

He didn't really know any other. Well, he did. I know. What a coincidence. I dated a gal one time. She was a receptionist for William Morris Agency. And they represent a lot of the big people, and all of those.

Well, anyway, she, I was invited to their Christmas party, and this was in 44, William Morris Agency, and as they came in, she told me who was, so on, Monty Woolley and so on,

as they all came in, and then I ended up, I dated her a couple of times, and one time, we were in this this big place, well-known place, can't think a name now,

But anyway, others had just returned, it's about a month after I had from Mariana's. I said, how did he, how did so-and-so make out? And they said, oh, you didn't know, he killed himself. My girlfriend says, I knew that. We were close fans where his family would be used to play bridge together. What a small world. That's crazy.

Isn't that incredible? Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. So at this point, you're wounded. Yeah, yeah. And you go back to the aid station. Yeah. And then late on the 7th of July, my third day in the field hospital,

doctors and Corman went through the wards, yeah, wards telling all the walking wounded to return to the units. Because we had to mop up and they were thousands, thousands of, there were still thousands of there, hiding, ready, ready to either kill them ourselves or make one last bonsai charge and her I had walked right through where 40 were killed that that that that that the last night of the mopup can you imagine and then this guy he was in these were his men and I when I I found out his track his track and my track crossed okay I found out on that and so when I

wanted to talk to him sure enough she says yeah I was there so you're the one who was saying bonzo and all that no that was another guy so here and then then he and then the guy wrote a book about him I have the copy of the book it's called the called the last samurai by by Jones and I helped I helped the review of the book before he published it well so ended up He was invited by the author to attend our reunion in Florida. And when he came, he and his wife came, and some of our guys treated him terribly.

They could not believe this guy could have done what he did as far as giving him such a bad time, being up there right up until after the war. And I tried to calm things down at a half time. There's an article, there's an article, look at this article right here, tell us about it, look at this, look at this article. I think I have it in here. Let me think.

No, I guess I don't have it here. Let me think. Yeah, here's the article. No, I guess I don't have it. Wait a minute. No, that's not yet either. Darn it. By the way, here's a picture of this guy.

I showed you that. There's a picture of this guy that I'm interviewed. And this is the other guy that fired, was known as Pistol Pete. He's the one that did most of the shooting at us. He had a 105 long range. rifled at four of them. And two, and one was on Guadalcanal, and we went to it. I have a picture in my book with him standing at it. And he became a major. His father had been a general

in a kind of like our like West Point, but for senior officers to come to. And one of these officers was the prince. He was a lieutenant general, became a lieutenant general, and he was one of the ones standing on the Missouri at this render. That was one of his students, his father's students. Wow. Amazing, huh? Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, this is what the bonsai look like here. You see that? Here we buried those bodies. We dragged them into the ditch. And we buried probably 4,000 bodies like that. Wow And now they're homes all through here So they're still there

They're still there only about four feet down And then there's Then there's a Beautiful new hotels right along the beach Just across the road from that And you were probably told about that When you were there, I don't know It's a place called Tanapeg

Tannapag And also a place called San Rookie Yeah So for people that are just listening these are just images of this massive attack. What it happened was we fired in our 11th Marines, our Tirmary, fired in at them as they were charging. And so their bodies are all chewed up. All shoot up.

You go into some pretty good detail about that bonsai attack, about this, about the H battery and all that stuff. Yeah, you do a great job. That is the best you'll find anywhere. And in fact, that's the reason I had to review it in detail because I had some doubt about it. And I said, well, it looks like in general, he's okay. He's said it right. There's nobody else can talk about it to that detail. Nobody can't.

Yeah, no, it's a great account. No, first hand. Yeah. Now, I did go to a reunion of those people in that battalion back in Iowa. And so this guy was there, and he was one of the ones that we interviewed, of course, for this. Yeah. And then, yeah, so if you want some account of just incredible fortitude, you've got to read this book. And then it picks up where what you were just talking about, this is when you go now to do sort of the cleanup.

And you say this, many of the bodies were unrecognizable. Yeah. And one of the guys, Sandy and the. Sandy and the others had to reach the bloody remains for dog tags that would identify their friends, discovering which one of their friends each charred in naked courts. There were 700 of our own people were killed. Most of them soldiers. They went right through them.

You say that this bonsai resulted in, as near as I can determine from what I saw in what I've read, the Japanese lost upward of 4,000 men. Some 500 Americans were killed. Most of them from the army, the two battalions that were overrun and nearly white. wiped out. H battery suffered 152 casualties in the attack, 75 killed and 76 wounded. They got completely overrun. It's estimated that some 600 Japanese were killed on the open ground directly in front of the batteries guns. Yeah, yeah.

You're pushing up, again, this is another, another thing that you passed through. We passed through their positions and deployed to skirmish lines, extending the water's edge and the railroad tracks, the six Marines advancing along the, on, along the shoreings. On the shore on the eighth along the right we were along the road Yeah, thus arrayed we picked our way slowly through the battle zone our weapons at the ready all around the dead We're thick on the ground in numbers that defied comprehension Bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere Artillery had pounded the area and chopped up the bodies turning the battlefield into an immense open-air Abattoir

Strews with torsos and limbs and heads and chunks of unodignifiable flesh burned black by fire I could recreate the flow I could recreate the flow I could recreate the flow and ferocity of the battle the patterns of the fight and flight by the numbers and positioning of the dead there would be places pockets of resistance where bodies were piled on top of bodies dead japanese entangled with dead americans frozen in attitudes of hand-to-hand combat clutching each other plunging bayonets into each other locked in their death struggles our machine gun positions were tabloes of butchery with bodies of the japanese heaped in front of positions and bodies of american soldiers slumped over their guns for men who didn't want to be there the u.s. army

soldiers had put up a hell of a lot of draftees there too not all the Japanese were dead of course as usual some were sham shamming yeah we knew this would be the case and we very quickly and we're very quick on our triggers if we saw any movement if one of those bodies so much as twitch we pour

fire we'd pour fire into it even if we didn't see movement if a body or group of bodies look suspicious we shot it through and through bush is big enough to provide concealment were preemptively blasted into wood chips and leaf bits now and then as we We advanced across the battlefield, a dead body rose suddenly to throw a grenade or shoot at us.

Some Japanese jumped to their feet and tried to run away. We shot them all, just shot them all right down. No prisoners were taken. We moved forward at a steady pace, hardly breaking a stride, rarely halting. We just kept walking through the killing ground, looking around, scrutinizing the bodies, firing at the Japanese at the living and the dead. Probably at least 100. And we had only a couple of wounds all we had.

in that process. Yeah. That was the largest of the war. That was what? That was the largest bonsai counterattack of the war. See, they were given no objective to keep going, keep going, kill as many of us as possible

until they themselves lost their life. And the two commanders, they committed Harry Carey before it started, and one was the one, the one that led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Man. Nagumo. And then we finally get to the last campaign.

A little over three miles south of Saipan, Santinian, 12 miles long, six miles across at its widest point. And this was your... Oh, this is something too. That first night. 1-8 landed late that afternoon. Yeah. The second division unit involved, the only second division unit involved in the J-Day

operations the regiment quickly established a reserve position behind the beach has perimeter digging in and stringing barbed wire in anticipation of enemy counterattack all moving around the perimeter ceased. Only a 200 mile, 200 foot, no 200 yard wide beach. They had no idea they were going to be up there. They thought we're going to land down near the main town, which was called, well, now it's called San Jose. You guys fainted.

There was a fake. We did a fake, but we had a battleshit hit. It was a lot of damage and lost lives. from counter fire, countervattery fire. This was for me and many other second division Marines, the fourth combat operation in just 18 months. The three previous, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan, had all been difficult, each in its own way,

taking an enormous physical and emotional toll on all the survivors. Most of us have been wounded at least once. All of us had been sick. Now, somewhere you're going to get to the point where we had to, at night, go over and, and head off the Japanese that were attacking our artillery in the rear. You don't see, and I'll tell you about it if you don't see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right. The thing that's interesting about this is, I mean, just you guys, having been through everything that you'd been through at this point, I mean, the mentality going into this, you know, you say here, the Air Force could have dropped bushels of purple hearts on our front line units and every maroon who grabbed one would have deserved it. Okay, now the napalm was dropped. The first time they were on Tinium before we landed.

Yeah, you said the aircraft used napalm bombs, something new to us. We watched an amazement as the bombs fell earthward tumbling end over end and exploded on a ridge that instantly erupted in flames and oily smoke along its entire length. About 10 seconds later, a gust of hot air from the ledge blew us over. Next day, First Battalion elements moved up on the ridge and poked around the scorched landscape. Most of the undergrowth had been burned away. The ground was black and reeked of gasoline. and the foxholes were filled with the corpses of Japanese soldiers blackened and shriveled by the incinerating fires.

Yeah, first use of napalm. What was the other section that you were talking about? Okay, right that tailed in the day the island was secure. August 2nd, here I'm a company commander. We reached the next, the last, the beach, you know, looking down over the cliff. and when we returned there when they're in March of this year, we looked from the south side of that beach where the civilians all jumped and killed themselves

and looked up across, and my company was spread from about halfway up, clear to that point. And we had boats go out with a bullhorn to affirm to surrender and gave an ultimatum. So then we fired a machine guns or mortars at them, and they all jumped off, off the point, this side of it. And hundreds of them jumped off there it is. And then that night, we were spread out so long, so thinly,

we decided, I talked to my company exec of that time, and what should we do it? Well, because we're going to have strong points, figure whether or they're likely to come through. That's what we did. And we lucked out. They tried to come through, right, a strong point, So, but anyway, these, the, then we had to send people down and try to get them out of the caves down below us.

There are a lot of civilians in there. So were the civilians that were there? Were they staying with the, were they? No, they were by themselves. Families of the soldiers, though? Yeah, they were in the same cave, some soldiers with them. Yeah. Yeah, and eventually you could say here the Japanese, I mean, and again,

this, we're jumping through all kinds of, you know, just crazy combat. And then you get to a point where the Japanese had no more fight left in them. They were ready to die. Yeah. If not yet, call it quits. For the most part, they went over. Okay. Then what happened? You see when I, when I told you, right after we landed the first night. And here we got, here we got, we got a, we got a message that our artillery was being, being overrun by our Japanese. And so we had, years after dark and probably around midnight and here we uh here as a battalion i was a company exec and i took up two or maybe two platoons and we went single file to form a line of skirmish scrimmersers in front of the artillery well that's very dangerous because anybody walking around

is going to get going to get enemy you know right well then when morning came here there were all kinds of shell holes out there and there was japanese them. And here we had a line of scrimmards had to go forward. Oh, this is going to be horrible. They're in Foxville, they're in holes and we're not. Not a one-um shot at us as we came up very close within less than a hundred feet or so. They just put a hand grenade. She'll kill themselves. Bang, bang, a hundred of them killed themselves as we walked forward. And we only had a couple of men wounded. It's all we had. And why they didn't shoot back? I don't understand. All they were given orders

Non-Satian committee here Wow What a relief What a relief So going back to the book here And again I'm jumping through some Incredible stories But Tinian was declared secure on

1 August First Battalion pulled back About a mile from the coast And set up camp The end of the fighting was very abrupt Suddenly we didn't have anything to do There was no enemy activity in the immediate area No danger, no shooting

I just sat back and tried to enjoy the situation. This wasn't as easy as you might think. I was exhausted and filled with a lingering dread, a sense that I'd used up all my lives. I had been become conditioned to wondering whether I was going to survive another day. And then all of a sudden, all the causes for concern had vanished,

as though I had been given a reprieve from a death sentence. I could hardly believe it, a strange feeling. I didn't have long to dwell on it. A few days later, I received orders to return to the states. 32 months after leaving San Diego, I was going home. Yeah.

Yeah. Three weeks later at Pearl Harbor, where I'd been marking time in the transit center, I'd boarded a giant Martin Mars flying boat for the final leg in the journey. That was?

Oh, my gosh. Wow. Landon and what do you call that place? I can't think of one now. In Berkeley. What is it like Alameda or something? Alameda. Alameda.

Alameda, Naval Air Station. Everyone on board servicemen from every branch returning home watched an utter silence as the Golden Gate Bridge passed beneath us. I reported to a marine facility

and was granted 32-day furlough one for every month of overseas duty. Later that day I visited a barbershop while I was sitting in the chair one of the patrons began bitching about the terrible

state of things in the country. I listened to him for a while and then I exploded. You don't know what terrible is, I told him. He shut up after that. You didn't I talk about the wolf I and ran into?

the what? The woman who ran into? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Got picked up. That was your first time seeing a female Marine? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, because they brought the women in, now they could form a sixth division. Wow. But taking all them in, they had clerical type

works, take them out. Right. Put them in combat. Right. This is, the thing that's crazy for me to think about here is, you know, you just have one line that says the war wasn't over, right? And this is 1944, the war wasn't over. And as you talked about earlier, the thought was that, you know, America was going to have to invade every island until you got right into Tokyo.

Oh, yeah. And since you had seen the, how steadfast the Japanese were, you all just thought, yeah, I might be home for a year, but I'll be back over there as a battalion executive officer and a battalion officer or whatever. Yeah, all my friends that came back and they ended up preparing for that. So about a year you spend at Quantico at the basic school teaching the young Marines. And the first what's called PCS, Patoon Commander's School. I went through the first as a captain.

And then I went through orientation class because I became an instructor, you see. Okay. So they sent you through a school to be a platoon commander, even though you'd already been a company commander in combat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I had to learn the academics of it, basically. Wow. And then now as company commander, then the next time company commander at the basic school.

And here I have a platoon of a second lieutenant's, just recent graduates from Naval Academy, and a platoon is senior NCOs, and none of them wanted to continue. They just wanted to retire at their rank, you know. They weren't going to be back to a second lieutenant. And I never forget. when the first things I had to do was give me a lecture on formal guard mount and I'd never been to a former guard mount and I told them I told these guys I said I never I've been in combat almost of this time I never been a formal guard mount since I had a felt presentation and move the felt around you know they didn't give me a bad time they'd all they'd all been through it you know but I never never had been through it you know and I told the major about it and said he told me you figure it out you figure it out you figure it out Here we go on August 15th, after night of devastating bombing raids

on eight Japanese cities, the Japanese announced their intention for surrender. Yeah. For Americans and most of the... And this is after, obviously, the bomb. Yeah. You know. For Americans and the rest of the world,

the announcement signaled the end of World War II, even though the formal surrender didn't take place until 2nd of September. A few weeks later, our classes were terminated and orders were cut by thousands to release men from active duty. I was asked whether I wanted to stay on and take a regular commission in the Marine Corps. I was tempted.

I had started as a private and made it all the way up to captain at age 24. No small achievement. And there was the potential for further advancement in the post-war corps. At first I said yes and signed the requisite papers. But after sleeping on, I changed my mind the next day I withdrew my papers. Shortly thereafter I was released from active duty. I bought a 1940 crisis convertible. and in October I drove across country to Spokane.

Yeah, yeah. A five-day journey. Yeah. Then I went to work after going through college. I went to work for North American Aviation, and I was there for six years. And then Lockheed, I was there for 23 years. And I was on primarily on the exploration of space, you know.

I was involved with the first flights to Mars. and first fly by it was a failure we provided the we provided the vehicle that did the injection took it to it and it was going to as it flow by and then take pictures of it as flew by well and also provided the shroud that protected it getting out of the atmosphere well this shroud outgassed and blew up and here i had to take a technician down to jp.l who would provide the spacecraft and and they and then and I had to take down a half of a shroud, and they put it in Tempshire altitude chamber, it did blow up.

And I had to go back and tell our engineering people, hey, it did blow up. And they said, oh, no, it couldn't have. They're just convinced you it did. No, it did blow up. So then we had to work like the next launch window was just a matter a couple months later. So we built a different kind of odd,

different construction. And it made it. From then on, I was involved in all kinds. I was involved with the, with the tech pictures of the moon, where the Boeing provided a space gap, we provided the means of getting there. And then astronauts, when they prepare to land the moon, well, they're practiced mating with our space scrap.

That kind of stuff. Yeah. And then I became the president of the Management Association, about 3,000 members. And one time we had, what's his name, the first on the moon, Armstrong, Neil Armstrong. He spoke to us. And I asked him a question. We had about 700 people in attendance.

I asked him a question and says, sometimes you look up there at nighttime and they have to kind of pinch yourself. I was really there. Can you imagine what his answer was? I have no idea. His answer was I've learned to live with it. That just brought down the house. Oh, gee. And then what, when did you get married?

When did you have kids along the way? That was in, that was in, just a minute here. 40, 47. Nice. Yeah. And, I mean, this, this book is just, like I said, I've read a fraction of it, probably read less than 10% of it tonight. The amount of information, the amount of detail, the stories are just unbelievable. Okay, now this other one, you get that one, and it's entirely

a difference. This is based on interviews, primarily. And this is based on some talking to people, but mostly I'm talking to the natives, I'm talking to the Japanese, I'm describing what what it's like now, what the landscape is like, all the debris lying around. So it's almost like this book should have been written first and that one should have been written second? Well, I don't know.

You see the same thing is, this is too broad, whereas this is getting done detail and detailed with the people, you see. And that's mentioned in the prologue. Yeah, or the forward. In the forward. In the forward, yeah.

In the forward, that's where it's mentioned. That's the reason it's different, entirely different. And I didn't even tend to write this, but I got, you know, here had all of these all these tapes and not only that a little little tape recorder and the one japanese ran to acutian and he was doing the same thing so anything i sent he was recording and i'm saying and so that's when decided okay that was 82 then 85 well in 83 i took a group out as a tour guide

then 85 i went i went to japan and went on space a and so here i interviewed him and that was that was really interesting I'll tell you this guy this guy tanny he drove me all over the place with a Yasakuni Shrine and the you know the impurts phallis and all that kind of stuff and just a lot and then went went into a TV studio and all that kind of stuff is incredible and then he pointed out you know I think was so firebombed you know and well this is all new all new but then everybody's so friendly to me You know, I just couldn't believe it. Yeah.

And then he built, he built a, he built a battleship. That was the Japanese battleship that had, that shelled Guadalcanal. And he made it, and it would, it was radio-controlled, and it would fire from the guns with a photo flash. Flash out. And he had it in his garage, and it was eight-foot long, is the same size as the actual drawings of the, of the, of the, of the battles. So he made it the same size.

Okay. And now he came down with cancer. We corresponded for about 15 years. And so then he wondered, here he had this thing. What should I do? It says, well, you know, there's a museum back in Kalamazoo, Godalcanal veterans, and he did. He sent it back there, and it's in the museum now.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I have a picture of it in my book here somewhere. And then here, I have a lot of little cartoons he drew. I said, what happened here? And so he drew it out. This is what happened. Or he'd send me something about here he is just starving there.

And now here he's dreaming of a meal that later on he had. Stuff like that. It was just incredible. Well, this stuff is amazing. This book is like a. said this book is amazing. Well, that's thanks to my co-author. He know he knew how to craft it. All I did was, hey, yeah, this is correct. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but there's more of this. There's a little more here and this and that. The main one's on Saipan. I just, I had some doubts because

he had, he did believe in some conspiracy theories about other things. That's the reason I'm a little concerned. But overall it was okay. It was good. Well, it's a, like I said, it's an incredible book to read. I know I've had you here for just about four. hours talking to but I wanted to I wanted to kind of close out with one last thing one last section of the book and you already kind of mentioned it a little bit but the way it's written is just

such a fitting close to this. Well this is not the guy that lost his life. Yeah. So it says this. On October, on 22 November 1993, the 50th anniversary of the Battle for Tarawa, I attended a ceremony in Yonkers

New York to redicate Anthony O'Boyle Memorial Park in the name of the fallen private from my platoon. He was well known there in that town. Also attending were Anthony's good friends and foxhole buddies. Yeah. Bill Crumpacker. Say that right?

Yeah, he was with us. And Dick Stein. Yeah. Our company commander, John Murdoch. John Murdoch, yeah. And several other Tarwell veterans. Yeah. As well as a number of high ranking Marines, including Lieutenant John General, John

J. Sheehan. You probably heard of him, am I, Jim? Yep. Then a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yeah. It was a cold, gray day with an icy wind blowing off the Hudson River. Yeah. Quite a contrast to the tropical heat and brilliant sunlight on Beggio when Anthony had met his shed.

Yeah. Shot in the head while peering over the seawall on Red Beach, too. Anthony had fallen back into John Murdoch's arms, still alive but unconscious. His body twitching, his eyes open but empty. John held him for a brief time spoke to him and then set him aside on the beach among the bodies of other slain Marines

where he died a few minutes later all the solemn needs appropriate to the occasion were observed all the rites were performed the colors were trooped speeches were giving music was played prayers were offered

we sang the national anthem the Marine hymn and amazing grace. There was a presentation of military testimonials. Proclamations were made. John Murdoch gave a talk about Anthony. Then presented Anthony's brother

with the purple heart, a fitting gesture from a man who comforted Anthony in his final moments of his life. An honor guard fired a 21 gun salute. Taps was played. We all wept. Our tears were shed. in both sorrow and joy.

There was cause for both. Anthony's life had been short, his dying hard, his glory everlasting. There was no bitterness, no disillusionment, no anger. His life had mattered,

his death also. And we remembered both and knew that both had meaning and purpose. The biographical sketch in the program for the ceremony expressed the feelings well in this regard and serves as a fitting epitaph

for every Marine in the Second World War. And here's what it read. If the world had been different, if he had been born at another time, Anthony, with his sunshine smile, could have married,

raised a family, had grandchildren and lived a quiet, typically traditional American life. But the early 1940s were not normal times. A fascist dictator threatened to conquer Europe and forge an alliance with the militarists who controlled the Japanese government. In their distorted plan for world domination, an unprepared and unsuspecting United States became a primary target. The American people were.

shocked into action by the Sunday morning arrival of Japanese bombers over Oahu. Like hundreds of thousands of other young Americans, Anthony felt compelled to volunteer to serve his country. He simply could not stand aside while America was under attack. Anthony gave his life on Tarawa for his country, his Corps, and for his fellow Marines. He was not a famous hero mourned by millions extolled in the press immoralized in magazine articles or books he was no one special just another marine private first class the american people should thank god eternally for anthony and his fellow marines soldiers seamen and airmen who preserved and won a magnificent victory over a wickedly evil enemy. Semperfy, brother. You are not forgotten. And with that, Dean Ladd has left the

building. And actually, who has joined us in the building? Looks like Jason Gardner. Jason Gardner randomly. We are in Spokane, Washington. Spokane? Spokane. Spokane. And since you originally linked me up with Dean Ladd, on a, you on a random flight. somewhere. And you saw, what was he just wearing like a Marine Corps hat? Sure, he's wearing some Marine Corps hat sitting there and I struck up a conversation with him. And then the next thing you know, he's like, oh yeah, I was like, Guadalcanal. Yeah. Tarawa. And I was like, holy cow, and he goes, I wrote a book about it. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. It was awesome. Just so cool. Sending you text from the flight. Yeah. And it's so funny because you and I were just standing out

there talking to him. And you know how you get, you know, you and I are used to hearing all of our friends say like, oh, when I was in Baghdad or when I was in Marja, or when I was in wherever, where I was in Ramadi. And we were just sitting out there and he's like, well, you know when I was in Saipan? I was like, that's so much better. So much cooler than we are. Dang it.

And that is the most ridiculous. What those guys went through is completely ridiculous. And I know, I mean, I've since, you know, with the old breed is kind of the, the way that I learned, like what those guys went through. Sledge, Eugene Sledge, but this book is just right there with it, man. It's right there with it. And you're just getting gut shot while you're 500 meters from the beach at Tarawa.

Yep. There's no way you're going to live, and yet you live. And then guess what? You go to Hawaii for six months, and then you're hitting the beaches of Saipan. And then you barely survive that, and then guess what? you're hitting the beaches of Tinian. And by the way, all of this is after you were at Guadalcanal. Crazy.

It's completely insane. And by the way, when he got back, he got back in August of 44. When he gets back, he has like 32 days leave one day for every month that he was overseas. And then he's like, none of those guys thought the war was going to end. They just got done literally killing every single Japanese except for 17. on an island. They all fought to the death. And then they think, okay, there's however many millions left in Japan,

and we're going to have to go kill them all. We're going to have to kill every single one of those people. That's what they were thinking. So he was thinking, cool, I'm going to be on shore duty back here training Marines for a year, and then I'll be going back overseas as a company commander or as a battalion X or whatever. Totally nuts. They came up with a bomb that ruined a perfectly good war is what I heard somebody say on this body. Gaston.

Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was Jim Kunkle said that. Good. So anyways, it's so awesome that, first of all that you met him,

it's awesome that, I mean, it's just amazing to be able to sit here and talk to these guys. And one of the reasons that we're able to do this is because of the support that is given to us

from you, the listener. Sure. And what we've tried to do is set something up where you can support not only this podcast so that we can continue

to go around and talk to the dean lads of the world and capture their story. But also, while you're doing that, you can support yourself. Yes, while you're on the path. It's a mutually supporting scenario. Yes, sir. Which is a good thing. So on the path, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Obviously, in my opinion, jiu-jitsu.

So when you do jih Tiazzi, you need a ghee. You get an origin. Origin-gee. Yeah, 100%. That was a common question when we started this. Hey, I'm sorry, do jitsu. Good. Of course, that's good.

What geese should I get? Common question. Easy now. Answer is easy now. You know what? If it wasn't for that question, we wouldn't even be connected to origin. It was that question. Yeah.

And me telling people to buy origin geese, even though I didn't, wasn't connected with them yet. Yeah. Dang. So that's pretty cool to think about. So, geese, rash guards. Yeah. What are you wearing on your legs right now, by the way? Like right now.

Some American denim origin jeans. What are you, you two, Jason Gardner? Oh, we're three for three for three. Three right here. Things are awesome. Yeah. Every time I wash them, they get better. They get better.

They're so nice. And you know what is coming out right now? The Delta 68 genes, which are named after the May Kong Delta, which is where our forefathers served in Vietnam and where our forefathers and the SEAL teams wore blue jeans because they were tougher and way cooler. They're like lightweight, though. So anyways, genes. You can get those there too.

T-shirts, sweatshirts. Supplements. Yes. Keep you on your game and on the path. Big time. Mulk, extra protein in the form of a dessert. Joint warfare. Or is it dessert in the form of extra protein?

Because I'm kind of thinking it's dessert, the form of extra protein. Actually, I utilized that combo the other night. It was like, it was strange. Here's the thing. I had some pumpkin pie with it, though. I had a thing of pumpkin pie. Is that a violation?

It was a dessert for the pumpkin pie. It was like a dessert for the dessert. Somebody asked me if we're going to make pumpkin spice milk. What, like seasonal? For seasonal. Even if it's the whole idea that was wrong. No, man, do it. Because it reminds me of pumpkin spice latte, which I know is like a thing for people with like weird.

Hipsters. Hipsters. Yeah, yeah. Hipsters. Hey, man. Are you a pumpkin? You're giving me a look over there. No, I was just thinking about, you know, as long as there's enough fat with what you're eating at dessert, it's going to blunt your.

insulin response so you're okay fire it up Jason Garden is over here coming he's got me coming in being critical on my biochemistry over here all right cool man hey thank you I'm gonna talk to you more about that if you want to drink something for some energy we'll call it sure yeah if you want to drink some you can try some discipline some discipline go some discipline powder and right now I'm completely on this kick of the jaco Palmer which is The best thing I've ever made. So the discipline go, you know the energy drink the cans? Is that discipline go or just go?

It's like discipline. It says discipline in small hours. But it's go, I guess. Yeah, so it's discipline go, but it's the energy. This is where some big marketing person is going to be like, hey, you need to rethink your marketing plan. Because it's like, no, because I don't care. Stop. See him channeling BTF.

Yeah, I was going to say my, my marketing advisor is. Tony. Yeah, yeah. It makes sense. He's like, no. Either way, that in the form of energy drink, those I've been on,

I've been like, I don't want to say addicted. I'm not going to use that word. I won't use that word for you, but my wife the other day goes, hey, darling, how many is too many of those things to drink in a day?

And I'm like, probably four. And she's like, oh, okay. And I'm like, how many have you been drinking a day? And she goes, well, at least three every day. Yeah, she wants. Let it know if she meets the threshold. Right there. Joint warfare, don't forget about that.

Yes, that'll keep you in the game, big time. Mulk, we already did. Oh, and then Warrior Kid Mulk for the little kids. So instead of feeding your kid, actual poison? Yeah. Actual poison. Which is what normal chocolate milk and strawberry milk is. It's poison for your child.

You might as well just give them strict nine. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Just give them strict nine. Yeah. Well, okay. All right. So get the Warrior Kid, get some tea too.

Winter's coming. Get that little. Get that little. Jackal white tea. Get some. There it is. This is all at origin main. com.

Also, when you get faithful warriors, I got it on the website. No worries under books from the episode. I think I'm going to list the other books as well that he sort of mentioned. Okay. Yeah. You're going to have to dig through some of those. Yeah.

I'll make an attempt. Faithful warriors, 100% will be there, you know, so you can get that good support on. that one. Also, we have a store. Jocko is a store. Actually, we, it's all, it's everyone's store now. That's what it is. We're going to change the name to everyone's store. Maybe. Maybe I'm going to ask VTF Tony. He might, uh, just go communist on it and call it the people store. Maybe. It would fit, is what I'm saying. Anyway, it's called Jocko store. Currently, jocco store.com. This is where you can

get more rash guards. Rash guards more, how should I say, representative directly of the game. Mm-hmm. The path. More or less. We just took it for granted. We just talked about origin. We didn't say that it was made in America. After we just talked for four hours with someone that fought to keep America free.

And then we didn't mention the fact that everything at origin is made 100% without compromise in the United States of America. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Just saying. The cotton is grown. See, and that's the part too. Like you can say, yeah, look, 100% made. I took all these materials and I made them right here in America, 100%, which is.

even bad. I'm not even hating on that. That's good. But wait, wait, what about the materials though? You know, kind of, okay, I get it, man. Okay, all good either way. But what about those materials? In order, the origin materials, that's grown in America. So,

Jock store. Our rash guards are made in America as well from origin. So boom, you know, in the game. Truckers hats, beanies, hoodies, light and heavy, whatever you need, whatever you like. Oh, dig it.

Well, it depends on what you mean. They're heavy, technically, but you know, Jocco's work. He used 20 minutes from the Canadian border,

bro. You don't have heavy for him. We need heavy for him. You are right. So all that stuff is at jocco store.com. Represent. So there you go. Yes.

Also, subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already, contrary to what Jocco says, I'm not saying you don't. What do you keep saying? You don't think people subscribe to the podcast.

You keep needing to tell them. No. So kicking an open door. If I remember correctly, which I probably don't. But if I do, my initial contention was that we don't have to say to subscribe to the podcast. We don't have to say, hey, subscribe. Oh, what do we have to say then? Nothing.

Oh, okay. Why did you just say it? Oh, I'll just subscribe to this podcast if I like it kind of thing. That's, I think, I don't know. I think that was the whole contention. Nonetheless. Why is it even there then? Why are we saying it?

That's the whole reason I brought it up at that time. It's like, why are we even saying this, remember? Yeah, but then we did it, like, sent you a message that said, I haven't subscribed. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so it's like a good reminder. And then you're like, see, yeah, okay, it's all coming to see. Thanks, Jason. All right.

So, so subscribe to the podcast, if you want, how about that? There's also some other podcasts. One of them is called the Warrior Kid podcast, which you may or may not know about. It's for children. It's for parents. It's for everyone in the world. And then we have another podcast, oddly enough now, which is called the grounded podcast. Grounded podcast.

Yes. This, I guess it was formulated kind of with the offshoots of conversations about Jiu-Jitsu in life, right? Yeah, well, here's the thing. There's some things that we taught, that you and I talk about and then that you and I talk about with everyone that we know. Yeah. That doesn't quite fit in the purview of Jocko podcast, actual, right?

Like, the Jocco podcast is for Dean Ladd. Yes. It's not for Dean Lister. Not that Dean has, Dean's been. on it but like Dean's you know we we we covered the primary jockel podcast type stuff from him but Dean has other information for us other things that we talk about that that is the perfect way to put it back so there you go so subscribe to those podcasts and also if you want to get some some soap because you probably need soap in fact I'm going to go ahead and say you do need soap get it from

irishoaks ranch dot com from young aiden who's making soap on his farm from goats you're not allowed to sell goat milk in California because speaking of communists they look like to control everything out there. But you can sell goats milk soap. You can't sell the milk for consumption direct. Nope. Gotcha. So get some soap and stay clean.

Stay clean. Also, we have a YouTube channel if you interested in the video version of this podcast, we want to see what we look like. Maybe not me, maybe Jocko. Well, actually, we already know what Jocker. You want to know what Dean Ladd looks like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 98 years old.

Rolling here, just so cool. More energy than you go. Maybe. And he, we should have gone like on a, a full fitness diet like longevity protocol. What's he doing? Yeah. He's,

what's he doing? Give me on that path. Not to mention he took a round through his guts. That guy can't be killed, bro. He's the ultimate. He's still rolling. So yeah, and then we got psychological warfare.

If you need some little mental spot, you can get that. It's available on various MP3 platforms, me talking to you about your moment of weakness. If you need a visual version of that, go to flipside canvas.com. a little company run by Dakota Meyer. You can get art.

There, I said it. Sure. And then also books, you want to exercise your brain. So get this book. This book is epic, faithful warriors. Combat Marine remembers the Pacific War. Like I said, I read 10% of it at most on this podcast. I didn't touch.

There's huge pieces I didn't even touch in here. So order that book. Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual just got cleared by the DOD. So we are cleared hot. It's coming out January 14th. And you're probably thinking, oh, well, I'll wait a little while to order it. And if you think that, you're not getting that first dish.

And then I will look at you with shame when I meet you. So, no, seriously, leadership strategy and tactics. Pre-order it now so that the publisher knows how many to print. We all know that this has been a problem for some people in the past, be included. Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three. order those books immediately for your children and for every child that you know. Yeah. Get them.

I've been buying them for the kids' libraries. That's awesome. So I got the three Warrior Kids books and Mikey and the Dragons brought it down to the school library. Here you go. And I just realized I got to go get it for the little town libraries too. So more kids than just the ones that I know. That's awesome. And the teachers, have they been reading it in school with your kids?

The fifth grade teacher. Yeah, that's right. Because I got a bunch of letters from the kids. You did. Yeah. They read it. They're in the game. They are.

They have a pull-a-bar now. Yes. Yes. You know what? That right there, my mission in this world has been accomplished. That there is a classroom in America with a pull-up bar. Every classroom in America should have a pull-up bar and a couple copies that were a kid. So yeah, check out those books and Mikey and the Dragons.

I don't know. A lot of people. As I always say, a lot of people think that's the best kid's book ever written. It's pretty good. That's for sure. At least I do. Discipline equals freedom field manual. You can get that book

if you want to get after it. And what's interesting about that book is there's no book like it. And my publisher, I was like, is this the biggest risk you've ever took with publishing a book? And he's like, oh, absolutely not even close. There's no book like it.

It's totally outside of any other normal book. So, yes, this is a big risk. But it, what did it do? It outperformed every model of sales that they had created for it. Like even though they're like, well, if it really does great, it'll be here. It outdid all that.

So why? Word of mouth and you all spread the word. So thank you. Discipline equals freedom, film, man. And then, of course, there is extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership that I wrote with my brother Laif Babin about leadership, not just in combat, but everywhere.

And then you know, we have, of Eschalonfront, which is our leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems through leadership worldwide. That's what we do. Go to Eschalonfront.com for details. EF online. Since leadership training can't just be a shot in the arm and then you're good to go. You need to do more persistent training over a longer period of time.

That's EF Online. Go to EFonline.com. Check it out. We're doing new modules all the time. Sure. Muster 2019. The last muster that we are doing in 2019 is in Sydney, Australia. We are about to head down there.

So every muster we've done is sold out. If you want to come to the muster in Sydney, it is a two-day leadership conference instruction seminar that is guaranteed to up your leadership game. You will have pragmatic, actionable things to do that are going to make you a better leader when you leave. And what does that mean? That means you will do better in everything in your life, period. And then we have EF Overwatch where we are taking veterans from spec ops and combat aviation and we are placing them into companies in the civilian sector and be on the lookout for EF Legion where we are taking broad military troopers and placing them into the civilian sector

so they can use those military skills, take the principles that we know from the military that we know from extreme ownership and put them into your company so your company can win. And if you want to continue to interact with us virtually, then you can do it on the interwebs. Jason is at jason.d.n.n.d.gardener. Is that on Instagram? On Instagram? Yep. Twitter? Jason. Jason and Gardner on Twitter. Yeah, I knew there was a different somewhere in there. Facebook? Jason and Gardner on Facebook The Facebook

Which one is your most Used social media platform? I like Twitter the most No, excuse me. Instagram. Yeah, Twitter calls it the gram. The gram is the deal. Twitter's a bit clunky,

seeing who wrote what and stuff like that. It's interesting. But. All right, well, if you want to talk to Jason, that's him. Echo is at. Echo Charles. And I am at Jocka Willing.

That's Twitter, Instagram, and on the Fossimboken. And once again, thanks to Dean Ladd, Lieutenant Colonel Dean Ladd, United States Marine Corps for his service and sacrifice. And the same obviously goes out to all our servicemen and women out there. Thank you for protecting our freedoms and to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, Officional officers border patrol secret service all first responders. Thanks for what you do every day To keep us safe here in our homes and to everyone else out there never forget Never forget the price that has been paid for our freedom a price of blood and horror a price of sacrifice and suffering a price that we cannot fully repay but what we can do is live a life that honors every single sacrifice that has been made

for those that gave their lives go out there and live and until next time this is Jason and Echko and jaco out