With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

by Eugene B. Sledge

He asked me lots of questions and filled out numerous official papers. When he asked, “Any scars, birthmarks, or other unusual features?” I described an inch-long scar on my right knee. I asked why such a question. He replied, “So they can identify you on some Pacific beach after the Japs blast off your dog tags.”

As the fiendish whistle grew louder, my teeth ground against each other, my heart pounded, my mouth dried, my eyes narrowed, sweat poured over me, my breath came in short irregular gasps, and I was afraid to swallow lest I choke. I always prayed, sometimes out loud.

The conversation with Hillbilly reassured me. When the sergeant came over and joined in after getting coffee, I felt almost lighthearted. As conversation trailed off, we sipped our joe in silence. Suddenly, I heard a loud voice say clearly and distinctly, “You will survive the war!” I looked first at Hillbilly and then at the sergeant. Each returned my glance with a quizzical expression on his face in the gathering darkness. Obviously they hadn’t said anything. “Did y’all hear that?” I asked. “Hear what?” they both inquired. “Someone said something,” I said. “I didn’t hear anything. How about you?” said Hillbilly, turning to the sergeant. “No, just that machine gun off to the left.”

we talked, I noticed a fellow mortarman sitting next to me. He held a handful of coral pebbles in his left hand. With his right hand he idly tossed them into the open skull of the Japanese machine gunner. Each time his pitch was true I heard a little splash of rainwater in the ghastly receptacle.

My guess is that the 1st Tank Battalion was relieved not because the men were “badly depleted and debilitated”—the official reason given—but because the machines were. Machines wore out or needed overhauling and maintenance, but men were expected to keep going. Tanks, amtracs, trucks, aircraft, and ships were considered valuable and difficult to replace way out in the Pacific. They were maintained carefully and not exposed needlessly to wear or destruction. Men, infantrymen in particular, were simply expected to keep going beyond the limits of human endurance until they got killed or wounded or dropped from exhaustion.

knew most of them well, although some of the new men not as well as the veterans. They all wore wild-eyed, shocked expressions that showed only too vividly they were men who had barely escaped chance’s strange arithmetic.

We were unable to understand their attitudes until we ourselves returned home and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.

“I am the harvest of man’s stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can’t forget.”

Corporal Lambert was a great favorite in Company K. Any of us who had fought on Peleliu’s Bloody Nose Ridge had seen him numerous times standing above some Japanese cave, swinging a satchel charge of explosives on a rope until he got it just right, then releasing the rope and yelling, “Fire in the hole”—just before the muffled explosion. He would grin, then climb down and rejoin us wringing wet with sweat from his face to his boondockers. He would relight his cigar (which served in turn as a lighter for his satchel-charge fuses) and discuss the damage done to the cave.

Ugly rumors circulated that we would hit Japan next, with an expected casualty figure of one million Americans. No one wanted to talk about that.