The Shake Davis Series: Laos File, Peleliu File, Chosin File, Beirut File, Contra File, Havana File, Aztec File, and Bangkok File

by Dale A. Dye

The view from atop Mt. Suribachi was… Well, sobering might work. An observer who did not have his historical sensitivity and combat experience might call it awe-inspiring or even spectacular. But Shake Davis saw too many blasted, broken and bullet-riddled specters on the black sand beaches below his perch to be impressed by Iwo Jima’s desolate beauty.

There were a lot of unsung and under-appreciated heroes of the fighting on Iwo Jima, but Bill Genaust, a Marine Corps motion picture photographer attached to the V Amphibious Corps for the assault, was unique. It was Joe Rosenthal, a civilian photographer for Associated Press that captured the hearts of Americans with his photo of the second and most impactful flag-raising on Iwo—one of the most iconic images in history. But what few Americans know about the flag-raising is that the entire sequence was captured in 198 frames of Kodachrome motion picture film shot by Genaust, who was standing near Rosenthal and cranking away with his 16mm Bell & Howell. Genaust would not live to realize it, but his color foot-age was shown in movie houses across America and appeared daily for years as an overnight signoff segment on TV stations. Practically everyone has seen that sequence but only a few know who shot it.

so when he finally left active duty he was determined to permanently retire Marine Gunner Sheldon Davis and find a good-old-boy name of Shake Davis spending his days somewhere between a barstool and a bass boat.

Jolo—like all the other islands strung out along the Sulu Archipelago in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao—was a primary focus of Philippine military activity these days. That was understandable. Abu Sayyaf jihadis had been on a rampage of killings and kidnappings lately in an effort to raise money and sustain their fight with the government in Manila and any other handy infidels. With these believers, if you weren’t willing to tolerate or propagate Islam worldwide, you were the enemy and there were no affordable holds barred.

Sergeant First Class Dave Martinez scratched viciously at his crotch and wondered whether his promotion would come through before the chiggers finally chewed the balls completely off his body.

It could be a routine patrol. Could be a ration detail checking fish-traps along the beach. In that case, they could go back to scratching chiggers. Or it could be the HVT they’d been looking for heading for some kind of meet with AS elements who regularly came ashore from other islands in this area. If that was the case, they were most definitely interested. That terrorist piece of shit had a rap-sheet longer than a dinosaur’s dick and he was the reason they were on Jolo in the first place. Seems whatever Colonel Ibrahim did was of great and abiding interest to the higher-ups in their chain-of-command. Ibrahim was a senior military commander of AS forces in the southern PI. He was also harder to find than a PFC in the Pentagon.

The most insightful thing the Filipinos had contributed was that Ibrahim was “presumed to have some military tactical and technical expertise.” That was like saying the man was a dangerous asshole: True, but not very helpful.

Fresh beer in hand, Shake ambled through the ramshackle interior of the Drifters Reef. Everywhere he looked there were marks of passage from visitors of one ilk or another. Walls, tables, chairs, stools, stanchions and nearly every other kind of flat surface were festooned with unit stickers, decals and patches from all branches of the military, foreign and domestic. There were bills of worldwide denominations, usually signed by the people who left them behind. There were hats of all descriptions—usually bearing a military logo—tacked or stapled all over the bar’s sagging ceiling. It was a quasi-tradition in the Drifters Reef that anyone who entered wearing a hat bought the house a round of drinks and sacrificed the offending cover to enshrinement on the ceiling. He knew the feeling and the philosophy behind the symbols. When you find yourself in a rare and esoteric place, there’s an impulse to leave a mark for posterity, knowing you are so far off any beaten track that your mark will likely be there forever, appreciated only by those few who make a similar trek. It was something like a dog finding the fire hydrant at the farthest edge of his world and pissing on it to let the rest of the pack know an intrepid explorer had passed that way.

Playtime was over in the next minute. When the crowd of sailors, Marines and scientists exploded into the Drifters Reef the serious party machine kicked into overdrive. Survivors swear that Dr. Janis Fielding’s rendition of the Dance of the Flaming Asshole on the teak bar was the capstone of a memorable night. Others claim that RAdm. Ault’s mandatory abandon ship drills requiring all hands to leap from the roof into Wake’s lagoon was the highlight. And there are those who swear that Gunner Davis demonstrating the shrapnel effect of an 81mm mortar round by dropping his body on a proper trajectory into a four-foot stack of empty beer cans marked the acme of the evening. No one can say for certain.