Free With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge

naked in the grove, and painted each other's sores. So many of them needed attention that they had to treat each other under a doctor's supervision. Some had to cut their boondockers into sandals, because their feet were so infected with rot they could hardly walk. Needless to say, Pavuvu's hot, humid climate prolonged the healing process.
    “I think the Marine Corps has forgotten where Pavuvu is,” one man said.
    “I think God has forgotten where Pavuvu is,” came a reply.
    “God couldn't forget because he made everything.”
    “Then I bet he wishes he could forget he made Pavuvu.”
    This exchange indicates the feeling of remoteness and desolation we felt on Pavuvu. On the big island bases, men had the feeling of activity around their units and contact through air and sea traffic with other bases and with the States. On Pavuvu we felt as though we were a million miles from not only home but from anything else that bespoke of civilization.
    I believe we took in stride all of Pavuvu's discomforts and frustrations for two reasons. First, the division was an elite combat unit. Discipline was stern. Our esprit de corps ran high. Each man knew what to do and what was expected of him. All did their duty well, even while grumbling.
    NCOs answered our complaining with, “Beat your gums. It's healthy.” Or, “Whatta ya griping for? You volunteered for the Marine Corps, didn't ya? You're just gettin’ what ya asked for.”
    No matter how irritating or uncomfortable things were on Pavuvu, things could always be worse. After all, there were no Japanese, no bursting shells, no snapping and whining bullets. And we slept on cots. Second, makeup of the division was young: about 80 percent were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five; about half were under twenty-one when they came overseas. Well-disciplined young men can put up with a lot even though they don't like it; and we were a bunch of high-spirited boys proud of our unit.
    But we had another motivating factor, as well: a passionate hatred for the Japanese burned through all Marines I knew. The fate of the Goettge patrol was the sort of thing that spawned such hatred. * One day as we piled stinking coconuts, a veteran Marine walked past and exchanged greetings with a couple of our “old men.” One of our group asked us if we knew who he was.
    “No, I never saw him,” someone said.
    “He's one of the three guys who escaped when the Goettge patrol got wiped out on Guadalcanal. He was lucky as hell.”
    “Why did the Japs ambush that patrol?” I asked naively.
    A veteran looked at me with unbelief and said slowly and emphatically, “Because they're the meanest sonsabitches that ever lived.”
    The Goettge patrol incident plus such Japanese tactics as playing dead and then throwing a grenade—or playing wounded, calling for a corpsman, and then knifing the medic when he came—plus the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, caused Marines to hate the Japanese intensely and to be reluctant to take prisoners.
    The attitudes held toward the Japanese by noncombatants or even sailors or airmen often did not reflect the deep personal resentment felt by Marine infantrymen. Official histories and memoirs of Marine infantrymen written after the war rarely reflect that hatred. But at the time of battle, Marines felt it deeply, bitterly, and as certainly as danger itself. To deny this hatred or make light of it would be as much a lie as to deny or make light of the esprit de corps or the intense patriotism felt by the Marines with whom I served in the Pacific.
    My experiences on Peleliu and Okinawa made me believe that the Japanese held mutual feelings for us. They were a fanatical enemy; that is to say, they believed in their cause with an intensity little understood by many postwar Americans— and possibly many Japanese, as well.
    This collective attitude, Marine and Japanese, resulted in savage, ferocious fighting with no holds barred. This was not the dispassionate killing seen