Free Hell in the Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Journey From Guadalcanal to Peleliu by Bill Sloan, Jim McEnery Page B

my mom a letter.
    Even if the censors had let me get away with it, I wouldn’t have mentioned anything about what happened to Colonel Goettge and his party or anything else about the situation on Guadalcanal because it would’ve worried Mom and my sister, Lil, too much. Instead, I tried to make it sound as cheerful as I could.
    At the time, I really had my doubts that they’d ever get to read what I was writing, anyway. Our mail service wasn’t too reliable, to say the least.
    But after all these years, I still remember how I started the letter.
    “Well, here we are on this beautiful tropical island,” I wrote, “and everything’s just fine . . .”

BUSHIDO TAKES A BEATING
    V ERY FEW MARINES had ever heard the Japanese word “Bushido” at the time we landed on Guadalcanal. But no word in any language was more important to Japanese soldiers, from the highest-ranking officer on down to the lowliest private. It was a whole lot more than just a word. It was a way of life—and death.
    Bushido was an ancient warrior’s code that the Japs believed gave them greater physical power and spiritual strength than the “soft, spoiled” Americans they were fighting. It was based on the idea that the Japanese were a superior race. They called themselves the “sons of heaven” and thought they were divinely favored by the Sun God, whose symbol was splashed across their “flaming asshole” battle flags.
    In the Imperial Japanese Army, Bushido was the foundation for a military caste system based on sheer brutality, one that was practiced like a religion. Privates in that army were beaten and abused unmercifully by soldiers who outranked them. Then, after they were promoted to a higher rank, those former privates handed out the same cruel punishment they’d gotten to other new privates.
    In combat, Bushido emphasized using bayonets and swords instead of bullets whenever possible, especially when the Jap attacks came in the dark of night. The theory was that slashing blades were even scarier to their enemies than gunfire. Up until Guadalcanal, the Japs were always on the attack, and they’d had great success with their fanatic banzai charges, where hundreds of screaming troops threw themselves at enemy positions with swords and fixed bayonets.
    In the early going, these charges worked like a charm against Allied troops all over the Pacific. They scared the hell out of defenders and paralyzed them to the point they couldn’t fight back. When they saw the Japs coming at them that way, they usually either broke and ran or just gave up. This is how 80,000 British, Australian, and Indian troops ended up as prisoners of war after the fall of the “impregnable fortress” of Singapore.
    But on Guadalcanal, the Japs started finding out those banzai charges were like a double-edged sword. They could cut either way. If the troops they were attacking held their ground and kept firing, a charge like that could end up being mass suicide for the attackers.
    That’s one thing the Marines taught the Bushido bastards in August and September of 1942.
    W HOEVER CAME UP with that old saying about how it’s “always darkest before the dawn” could’ve been talking about what happened on Guadalcanal during the four weeks between August 20 and September 14.
    That’s when two of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history were fought on the island and our situation in general was looking bleak as hell.
    It just so happened that I wrote another letter to the folks at home on August 20. Mom saved it, and I still have it, as a matter of fact. In it, I was still trying hard not to let on how grim our situation was.
    “How are you all?” I wrote. “I’m fine myself, and I hope you are all the same. I’m on Guadalcanal Island now and in the best of health and feel fine as far as morale is concerned.”
    At the time, we actually felt like we had our backs to the wall, and it was hard to see any way out. Jap planes were bombing us around the