E. B. Sledge

Excerpt from With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa

First published in 1981

On September 15, 1944, U.S. Marines invaded Peleliu (pronounced "PELL-eh-loo" or "PEH-lell-you"), one of the Palau Islands in the western Pacific Ocean. The Palau Islands campaign was viewed originally as a crucial stepping-stone in the liberation of the Philippines from Japan. (See box on Douglas MacArthur on p. 218-219.) The entire area was heavily defended by Japanese troops.

Peleliu was only 6 miles long and 2 miles wide, but its rugged terrain and unbearably hot climate made for a slow and miserable battle. Approximately twenty-eight thousand Americans—a combined force of marine and army divisions—participated in the brutal, bloody struggle for the island. More than eleven hundred marines were killed or wounded on the first day of fighting alone.

U.S. forces captured the island of Peleliu on October 21, 1944. The casualties suffered on both sides were staggering. When the fighting was all over, more than sixty-five hundred marines and thirty-two hundred army soldiers were dead or wounded. About eleven thousand Japanese soldiers were killed.

Things to remember while reading excerpts from With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa:

• With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa began as a series of notes E.B. Sledge took while he was serving in the Pacific. He later pieced together his memoir to help his family understand his World War II experiences. It was Sledge's wife, Jeanne, who convinced him that his work should be published.
• Sledge was a member of Company K, Third Battalion, Fifth Regiment of the First Marine Division-K/3/5 for short. The Fifth Marine Regiment is known as the "Old Breed" because it fought in all of the nation's major wars in the twentieth century.
• In the preface to With the Old Breed, Sledge noted that the marines "suffered and … did their duty so a sheltered homeland [could] enjoy the peace that was purchased at such a high cost." The following excerpt is taken from Part I of Sledge's book, subtitled "Peleliu: A Neglected Battle" because it remains "one of the lesser known and poorly understood battles of World War II."
• Throughout With the Old Breed, Sledge repeatedly refers to war in general (and, in particular, fighting on the front lines) as a terrible waste—a waste of time, of effort, of human life. His moving account of the death of Company K's commander, Captain A.A. Haldane, exemplifies this theme. For his own part, Sledge feels that he beat "the law of averages" by never getting wounded.
• Note the horrible conditions the marines were forced to endure in the Pacific. Sledge enumerates with stunning clarity the physical and psychological stresses that reduced the men to virtual savages.
• Sledge's memoir shows how difficult it was to maintain faith, decency, honor, and compassion in the midst of a vicious war.

Excerpt from With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa

[Sergeant] Johnny Marmet came striding down the incline of the valley to meet us as we started up. Even before I could see his face clearly, I knew from the way he was walking that something was dreadfullyamiss . He lurched up to us, nervously clutching the web strap of the submachine gun slung over his shoulder. I had never seen Johnny nervous before, even under the thickest fire, which he seemed to regard as a nuisance that interfered with his carrying out his job.…

My first thought was that the Japanese had slipped in thousands of troops from the northernPalaus and that we would never get off the island… My imagination went wild, but none of us was prepared for what we were about to hear.

"Howdy, Johnny," someone said as he came up to us.

… "OK, you guys, OK, you guys," he repeated, obviously flustered. A couple of men exchanged quizzical glances. "Theskipper is dead. Ack Ack has been killed," Johnny finally blurted out.…

I was stunned and sickened. Throwing myammo bag down, I turned away from the others, sat on my helmet, and sobbed quietly …

Never in my wildest imagination had I contemplated Captain [Andrew A.] Haldane's death. We had a steady stream of killed and wounded leaving us, but somehow I assumed Ack Ack wasimmortal . Ourcompany commander represented stability and direction in a world of violence, death, and destruction. Now his life had been snuffed out. We feltforlorn and lost. It was the worst grief I endured during the entire war. The intervening years have not lessened it any.

… Johnny pulled himself together and said, "OK, you guys, let's move out." We picked up mortars and ammo bags. Feeling as though our crazy world had fallen apart completely, we trudged slowly and silently in single file up the rubble-strewn valley to rejoin Company K.…

The Stench of Battle

Johnny led us on up through a jumble of rocks on Hill 140… From the rim of [the hill] the rock contours dropped away in a sheer cliff to a canyon below. No one could raise his head above the rim rock without immediately drawing heavy rifle and machine-gun fire.

The fighting around the pocket was as deadly as ever, but of a dif ferent type from the early days of the campaign. The Japanese firedfewartillery or mortar barrages, just a few rounds at a time when assured of inflicting maximum casualties. That they usually did, and then secured the guns to escape detection. Sometimes there was an eerie quiet. We knew they were everywhere in the caves andpillboxes . But there was no firing in our area, only the sound of firing elsewhere. The silence added an element of unreality to the valleys.…

The sun bore down on us like a giant heat lamp. Once I saw a misplaced phosphorous grenade explode on the coral from the sun's intense heat. We always shaded our stackedmortar shells with a piece of ammo box to prevent this.

Occasional rains that fell on the hot coral merely evaporated like steam off hot pavement. The air hung heavy and muggy. Everywhere we went on the ridges the hot humid air reeked with the stench of death. A strong wind was no relief; it simply brought the horrid odor from anadjacent area. Japanese corpses lay where they fell among the rocks and on the slopes. It was impossible to cover them. Usually there was no soil that could be spaded over them, just the hard, jagged coral. The enemy dead simply rotted where they had fallen.…

It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not experienced it the ghastly horror of having your sense of smell saturated constantly with the putrid odor of rotting human flesh day after day, night after night. This was something the men of aninfantry battalion got a horrifying dose of during a long, protracted battle such as Peleliu. In the tropics the dead became bloated and gave off a terrific stench within a few hours after death.…

Each time we moved into a different position I could determine the areas occupied by each rifle company… Behind each company position lay a pile of ammo and supplies and the inevitable rows of dead under theirponchos . We could determine how bad that sector of the line was by the number of dead. To see them so always filled me with anger at the war and the realization of senseless waste. It depressed me far more than my own fear.

Added to the awful stench of the dead of both sides was the repulsive odor of human excrement everywhere. It was all but impossible to practice simple, elemental field sanitation on most areas of Peleliu because of the rocky surface… Under normal conditions, [each man] covered his own waste with a scoop of soil. At night when he didn't dare venture out of his foxhole, he simply used an empty grenade canister or ration can, threw it out of his hole, and scooped dirt over it [the] next day if he wasn't under heavy enemy fire.

But on Peleliu, except along the beach areas and in the swamps, digging into the coral rock was nearly impossible. Consequently, thousands of men— … fighting for weeks on an island two miles by six miles—couldn't practice basic field sanitation. This fundamental neglect caused an already putrid tropical atmosphere to becomeinconceivably vile …

With human corpses, … excrement, and rotting rations scattered across Peleliu's ridges, [the blowflies on the island] were solarge, soglutted, and so lazy that some could scarcely fly… Frequently they tumbled off the side of my canteen cup into my coffee. We actually had to shake the food to dislodge the flies, and even then they sometimes refused to move. I usually had to balance my can of stew on my knee, spooning it up with my right hand while I picked the sluggish creatures off the stew with my left… It was revolting, to say the least, to watch big fat blowflies leave a corpse and swarm into ourC rations .

Even though none of us had much appetite, we still had to eat. A way to solve the fly problem was to eat after sunset or before sunrise when the insects were inactive. Chow had to be unheated then, because nosterno tablets or other form of light could be used after dark. It was sure to draw enemy sniper fire.…

I still see clearly the landscape around one particular position we occupied for several days. It was a scene of destruction anddesolation that no fiction could invent. The area was along the southwestern border of the pocket where ferocious fighting had gone on since the second day of battle (16 September). The 1st Marines, the 7th Marines, and now the 5th Marines, all in their turn, had fought against this same section of ridges. Our exhausted battalion, 3/5, moved into the line to relieve another slightly more exhausted battalion. It was the same old weary shuffling of one tired, depleted outfit into the line to relieve another whose sweating men trudged out of their positions, hollow-eyed, stooped, grimy, bearded zombies.

The Company K riflemen and machine gunners climbed up the steep ridge and into the crevices and holes of the company we relieved. Orders were given that no one must look over the crest of the ridge, because enemy rifle and machine-gun fire would kill instantly anyone who did.

As usual the troops pulling out gave our men "the dope " on the local conditions: what type fire to expect, particular danger spots and possibleinfiltration routes at night.

… When … we came closer to the gun pit to set up our mortar, I saw [that the pit's] white coral sides and bottom were spattered and smeared with the dark red blood of … two comrades.

After we got our gunemplaced, I collected up some large scraps of cardboard from ration and ammo boxes and used them to cover the bottom of the pit as well as I could. Fat, lazy blowflies were reluctant to leave the blood-smeared rock.

I had long since become used to the sight of blood, but the idea of sitting in that bloodstained gun pit was a bit too much for me. It seemed almost like leaving our dead unburied to sit on the blood of a fellow Marine spilled out on the coral… As I looked at the stains … I recalled some of theeloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how "gallant " it is for a man to "shed his blood for his country," and "to give his life's blood as a sacrifice," and so on. The words seemed so ridiculous. Only the flies benefited. (Sledge, pp. 140-46)

What happened next …

U.S. troops landed on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, and on Okinawa on April 1, 1945. Both islands were seen as critical locations that would serve as key launching points for the Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands. (The Allies were the countries fighting against Germany, Italy and Japan. They included the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, the Soviet Union, and China.)

Sledge and the rest of K/3/5 fought in the costly battle for Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu (pronounced "ree-YOU-kyew") Islands, located about 350 miles south of the Japanese main islands. All together, about 186,000 U.S. troops engaged in the 82 days of fighting, which was heaviest on the southern part of the island. To Sledge, Okinawa was "the most ghastly corner of hell" he had ever seen. More than one hundred thousand Japanese were determined to defend it to the death.

U.S. naval ships shelled a long stretch of beach on the southwestern part of the island in preparation for the landing of marine and army troops on April 1. Japanese forces remained hidden for days before beginning their counterattack. Then, thousands of heavily armed troops emerged from their underground hiding places to fight off the advancing Americans. Later, kamikazes (pronounced "kahm-ih-KAH-zeez"; translated as "divine winds") blasted the U.S. fleet in Okinawa's coastal waters. (Kamikazes were suicide bombers— Japanese pilots who purposely crashed their planes into Allied ships, knowing that the planes would explode in the attack and they would surely die.)

The battle continued for almost three months. One in three marines who fought on Okinawa died or was wounded. Nearly seventy-seven hundred men of the First Marine Division were killed, wounded, or listed as missing. Thousands of soldiers suffered psychological as well as physical wounds. The fighting continued until the third week in June, when Japanese troops began to surrender.

U.S. landings on Kyushu (one of the four main Japanese islands) were scheduled for November of 1945, but the war ended in September after atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (See Harry S. Truman excerpt concerning the Manhattan Project and the Rodney Barker excerpt from The Hiroshima Maidens: A Story of Courage, Compassion, and Survival in chapter three for more information concerning the atomic bomb.)

Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8, 1945. Sledge was still on Okinawa at the time. "We were told this momentous news, but considering our own peril and misery, no one cared much," admitted Sledge in With the Old Breed. "Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon."

Japan followed suit, surrendering on August 14, 1945. This move, according to Sledge, made "the seizure of Peleliu … of questionable necessity."

Did you know …

• Of the 235 marines of K/3/5 who fought on Peleliu, only 85 made it through the battle without physical injury.
• The battle for Peleliu marked a turning point for the Japanese military. Japanese fighting tactics changed radically during this campaign. Instead of concentrating all their power on the defense of Peleliu's beaches, the soldiers spread out and fought from fortified positions in caves throughout the island. The Japanese would use— and refine—these same methods in the fights for Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
• Between March 26 and June 22, 1945, approximately fifteen hundred kamikaze attacks were launched against American ships around Okinawa.

For More Information

Books

Astor, Gerald. Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II. New York: Dell, 1996.

Fahey, James J. Pacific War Diary: 1942-1945. New York: Macmillan, 1993.

Videos

Okinawa. Columbia, 1952.

The War Chronicles: World War II. Volume 6: Air War in the Pacific and The

Bloody Ridges of Peleliu. Volume 7: Okinawa … The Last Battle. Produced by Lou Reda Productions. A&E Home Video Presents History Channel Video/New Video, 1995.

Web Sites

World War II in the Pacific. [Online] http://www.cybertours.com/~awriter/wwii.htm (accessed on September 7, 1999).

Sources

Black, Wallace B., and Jean F. Blashfield. Iwo Jima and Okinawa. "World War II 50th Anniversary Series." New York: Crestwood House, 1993.

Dolan, Edward F. America in World War II: 1945. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1994.

Sledge, E.B. With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa.. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1981. Reprinted with a new introduction by Paul Fussell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

E.B. Sledge

Eugene Bondurant Sledge (1923-), who acquired the nickname "Sledgehammer" while in the Marine Corps, was born in Mobile, Alabama, and raised in a strict household. He joined the marines at the age of nineteen and by the time he was twenty-three had witnessed many horrible things during the war. After World War II's end, following brief stints in the business world, Sledge found his niche in the fields of biology and zoology. He later became a professor of biology—with special concentration in ornithology, the study of birds—at Alabama's University of Montevallo.