Voices of the Pacific by Adam Makos & Marcus Brotherton

Author:Adam Makos & Marcus Brotherton [Makos, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101622193
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE DAYS OF HEAT AND FURY

Peleliu

The second day on Peleliu, September 16, 1944…

STERLING MACE

The next morning you see shapes of guys walking around. You hear “Corpsman! Corpsman!” and think, “Geez, the Japs are already up and around at the crack of dawn.”

There was sort of a mist in the morning between the heat and the ground. A foggy mist. That added to the spookiness.

That’s how it was that next day. Then somebody would say, “Okay, K Company, we’re moving up!”

JIM ANDERSON

Captain Haldane treated a private just like a lieutenant. He would call us by first name if he knew us. He always called me “Andy.”

As a runner, sometimes Captain Haldane would give me a message, like “Andy, go over there and tell the Third Platoon to move up.” So I’d go over there and tell the Third Platoon commander that Captain Haldane wanted such and such a thing. Then I’d go back to company headquarters, to where the captain was. And he’d say, “Good work, now go back and tell the mortars to go over here.” So I would. I was only a PFC and he treated me like a gentleman. Captain Haldane was 100 percent professional.* He was there to defeat the Japanese, and he did it in the most efficient manner he could.

R. V. BURGIN

I had a guy named Sam who was a screwup in our outfit. He was a slacker. He was our bazooka man. We were marching in single file, then stopped for a little bit. When we moved out again, I looked down and there was a bazooka laying there. Hell, I knew whose bazooka it was. I picked the bazooka up and gave it to Sam. I had a few choice words for him. Being a bazooka man was a dangerous job, but so was carrying a rifle or a mortar.

The Marines prepared to launch a sweeping attack across the airfield with H Company on the far left of the attack and K Company on the far right.

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