Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Bakalářská diplomová práce

Monika Křižánková 2014

2014 Monika Křižánková

Hřbet

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Monika Křižánková

Pacific War Experience of E.B. Sledge and R. Leckie: US Marines, Suffering Heroes, and Brave Victims Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Dušan Kolcún

2014

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

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I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Dušan Kolcún; for his insightful comments, suggestions, and advice that were guiding my every step, thought, and word. But the greatest and the deepest gratitude is dedicated to my father who introduced me to the compelling stories hidden behind names such as Guadalcanal or Midway. Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 5 1 The Second World War in American Literature ...... 8 1.1 War Memoirs ...... 10 1.2 With the Old Breed and Helmet for My Pillow ...... 14 2 Beyond the U.S. Marine Corps ...... 21 2.1 Robert Leckie ...... 21 2.2 Eugene Sledge ...... 23 2.3 The Link between Leckie and Sledge ...... 25 3 Guadalcanal ...... 29 3.1 Swallowed by the Jungle ...... 32 3.2 'Turkey Shoot' ...... 36 3.3 Expendables ...... 39 3.4 December 14, 1942 ...... 41 4 Cape Gloucester ...... 43 4.1 Mutual Enemy ...... 44 5 Pavuvu ...... 47 6 Peleliu ...... 50 6.1 Island in the Enemy´s Service ...... 51 7 Okinawa ...... 55 8. Suffering Heroes and Brave Victims ...... 59 8.1 Concept of Contradiction and Ambiguity ...... 59 8.2 Brave Victims ...... 62 8.3 Suffering Heroes ...... 64 8.4 Heroes ...... 65 Conclusion ...... 67 Works Cited and Used ...... 69 Resumé ...... 73 Appendices ...... 75

Introduction

“Tora! Tora! Tora!ˮ, the infamous words that started it all. This popularized Japanese order to attack the U.S. base in Hawaii on 7 December 1941 not only officially launched the unexpectedly devastating raid on Pearl Harbor but it also locked two nations in a deadly military conflict in the Pacific that lasted four tiring years. Starting on 8

December, everyday many men across the United States went to enlist into one of the

U.S. services to personally answer to the threat that the Empire of Japan so openly expressed. Amongst these men were also two future U.S. Marines, Robert Leckie and

Eugene B. Sledge.

For those who at least once heard about the Pacific Theatre of the Second World

War, these men represent without a doubt the surviving heroes of what is mostly well- known as the hell in the Pacific. However, to those men such as Leckie and Sledge, this label would evoke rather ambiguous and puzzling feelings. There is no simple answer to this dubious view. The objective descriptions of the campaign in the Pacific representing simple facts such as details about actions and numbers of casualties are known to some people or easily accessible to most. But the subjective experience could be only found in the memoirs of those who had enough presence of mind to be able to go through it again and write it down in a coherent fashion.

War memoirs constitute a very valuable source for the understanding of the

Pacific war in particular because there was not only one grand and fierce conflict between two opposing sides, U.S. and Japan, but the Pacific witnessed as many battles as there were soldiers who fought in the Pacific theatre. Not only personal physical fights but above all mental struggles are of a great importance. They portray efforts to make any possible sense of things happening around them but most of all they represent

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compelling endeavours to find and define themselves in this new world, surroundings or

“hell” as they call it.

The need for the identity hunt was forced upon them by the nature of the Pacific itself. Apart from the serious fighting that awaited them all together there they had to seperately and on their own accounts face the debilitating natural environment. Every island offered them many direct physical discomforts such as rain, capricious jungles, and creepy animals. All this had further consequences on their mental state. Moreover, the battles took place on the tiny specks of land surrounded only by the ocean. The simple geographical remoteness of these tiny islands increased their feeling of complete discontinuity with the rest of the world and home above all. This also disrupted the evolving definitions of their single personalities.

Therefore the aim of this thesis is to explore the two ambiguous images of U.S.

Marines as they tried to define themselves in the Pacific while under a constant impression of being a victim as well as a hero. Robert Leckie (1920-2001) was a professionel writer and he started his line of almost forty books with his recollections of the war in Helmet for My Pillow in 1957. Eugene B. Sledge (1923-2001) was also trying to make sense of past events in his memoir With the Old Breed in 1981. They both participated in some of the most prominent battles which took place in the Pacific, even though together they fought only in one of them. Leckie enlisted a day after Pearl

Harbor and went from Guadalcanal to Peleliu. Sledge finally enlisted a year later and joined the Marines for Peleliu campaign and Okinawa. Thus for Sledge, Leckie was one of the “Old Breedˮ, Marines who went through grinder and were changed by the fighting.

The first section of the thesis is devoted to placing and describing the memoirs in the broader context of war literature. Moreover, it also explores the genre features of

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military memoirs. Because these books derive many parts from the events that happened to living persons the following part presents Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge as authors, U.S.Marines, and moreover as personalities outside the combat area.

The second section composes the main body of the thesis. This part unwinds the personal quests of these two Marines by following their physical advance on the individual Pacific islands where these single islands provide framework for the structure of this thesis. The exploration of these factors should provide supporting evidence for the prominent concept of the thesis.

The final section is designated to that concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims” explaining its creation, structure and purpose.

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1 The Second World War in American Literature

“The literature of war brings forth a people’s 'storyfying of experience': acts of

literary sensemaking performed in response to particular historical situations.”

Walter Hölbling, "The Second World War: American Writing", p. 212

Even though, the intention of the thesis is to enhance the personal war experience in the two essential sources, Helmet for My Pillow and With the Old Breed, they are embedded into a systematic body of literature as well. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a literary background and to identify how these books are included in this framework. The following part provides a concise overview of literature that is concerned with the topic of the Second World War, identifying the most common themes and genres.

The Second World War became a common topic for literature, since this literature provided the means to confront the horrific events brought about by the war.

Hölbling calls this “sensemaking”. It includes those who directly participated but also those who were further away but still influenced by the war. The aim of the authors was to share “the experience of the most massive and chronic global war to date with their readers” (Hölbling 224).

In many ways the literary production derives from the experience of writing about the First World War. Nevertheless, some alterations were brought about by the general changes of warfare and by the response to the wartime atmosphere. New weapons influenced the strategies used and also meant that more mobile battles replaced the static warfare of the previous war. Also the general feeling of heroism, romanticism, and following disillusionment of the Great War diminished and a strict sense of duty replaced it.

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The types of genres used varied but most of the written works are classified as fictional novels. A substantial part of them was published between 1945 and 1958.

Poetry was also important and other genres, such as memoirs, diaries, or personal letters, are common as well.

The same themes with certain variations were generally employed across the genre spectrum. Deriving from the fictional field, the styles of employing the themes could be divided into two categories. The first style was concerned mostly with combat descriptions and actions focused “on telling a story whose chronology more or less corresponds to the historical sequence of events” (Hölbling 213). These portrayals employ the essential themes of “comradeship, courage, cowardice, endurance, the experience of death and danger” (213). Even though combat related themes occupy a prominent place in many works, other already established and regularly occurring themes emerged such as the collision of different cultures, gender issues, or race-related problems.

The second style abandoned the timeline structure of specific events and close combat description. Therefore war is “no longer historical event limited in space and time” (Hölbling 218). Nevertheless, the same themes were maintained as in the first style but they became “a complex metaphor for (our) contemporary industrialized society in which … war threatens to become way of life” (218). Thus, the current issues are highlighted through the tense atmosphere of war.

The specific genre of memoir emerged immediately after 1945 as well, following the stories which were published as reportage during the war years. It introduced the topic of war to “carefully imagined nonfiction writing from everyday life” (Toutonghi). Memoirs mostly employed the style of the combat novel, using description presented in chronological order. But on top of that, these parts were

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intertwined with the passages containing the reality-based war experience. A great number of memoirs was published because the “war has convinced thousands of writers of the noteworthy nature of their lives” (Toutonghi).

The preceding brief overview concludes the overall “search for words which adequately present the war experience” (Hölbling 224) having focused on the styles, genres, and themes. Having established a generalized framework of the Second World

War in literature, the next part is solely devoted to the specificities of war or military memoir.

1.1 War Memoirs

“….the individual journey from innocence through violence to experience,

the serial discovery of what had before been unimaginable, the reality of war…”

Samuel Hynes, "The Man Who Was There", p. 395

The primary basis for this thesis is composed of two books, Helmet for My Pillow and

With the Old Breed, which are generally considered a part of literature concerned with topics connected with war or happening during the time of war. Identifying this genre more closely, they can be categorized as military/war memoirs. However, the characterization and the deduction of a precise definition of this specific genre is

“problematic” (Harari 290). The reasons for this could be seen in the fact that war memoirs do not entail any established “critical tradition” (Hynes 399). Neither does this genre occupy any certain space in “university curricula” (399). This common exclusion is potentially caused by the specificities of this genre which are compelling only to its narrow audience.

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According to Harari, the term memoir itself was used for the first time in the 15th century designating any kind of unique type of historical work. Despite the fact that this particular genre has existed for quite a long time, military memoirs are considered “a genre without tradition” (Hynes 399). This absence constitutes one of its interesting specific features. It could be argued that many wars and battles which occurred in the past created backgrounds for their own narratives, descriptions, and experiences. The descriptions of events and particular actions of various wars and battles could potentially relate to each other if the periods, styles of fighting, and weapon technique could be compared. But the unrepeatable element is incoded in the intimate personal experience itself. The experience presents personal accounts of individual reflections and thoughts about the actions. These cannot be copied from or related to previous memoirs. Eugene Sledge and Sid Phillips, his lifelong friend from Mobile, Alabama, were both deeply interested in the Civil War, searching for old ammunition or participating in re-enactments. But they were never able to mention or relate their knowledge of the Civil War while contemplating their own war experience. This inability to build upon previous experiences in this genre disrupts its supposed literary tradition.

Another matter leading to the indeterminate definition of this specific genre is its closeness to many other genres, copying or borrowing from them many of their features but never fully belonging to any of them. As nonfictional prose, war memoirs are

“something like travel writing, something like autobiography, something like history”

(Hynes 400).

Any war introduces its participants to an array of places and environments previously completely unknown to them. Moreover, fights and battles occurring in a certain place always derive their names from it. The places and the nature of these

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places play a significant role in conveying the whole war experience. Regarding the

Pacific war experience, the nature and a charismatic atmosphere of every single island occupy a very prominent position in the war experience and in the memoirs of the combatants. But the biggest difference between travel writing and travel descriptive parts in the memoirs lies in a drastic change that war inflicts on these places. Thus, there is no sign of willingly getting to know their true character. The memoirs borrow only the literary tools to describe new surroundings.

Another closely related genre is autobiography. Many similarities between these two genres of writing about one´s own life are immediately noticeable. The main difference lies in the scope it portrayed. War memoirs are only concerned with a relatively short period of time when the man is plugged out of his continuous previous life and placed into a completely different environment. The notion of time is also completely distorted by the factors around him. As far as autobiography goes, the memoir could be considered only as one of its many chapters.

Concerning the closeness of war memoirs to historical writing, there is no doubt that memoirs include and build upon historical facts and occurrences. Single battles and wars constitute a background for the prominent personal narrative. But the mutual relations between memoirs and history are more ambiguous. Studies devoted to history untill the end of the first half of the 20th century tended to dismiss and “minimize the importance of military memoirs” (Harari 304). They were primarily blindly focused only on strict facts and administrative information. This narrow process resulted from the definition of history. History was mostly and in some ways still is an “unemotional

(scientific) wish to penetrate into the past” (Remenyi 143) leaving no space for the human factor. However, Remenyi alters the notion of history by stating that “man is history” (143), pointing to the fact that people are not only a part of this great

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construction called history, but they create it. Consequently, now “military memoirs are among the most important sources” (Harari 304) for studying historical events. War memoirs could be generally considered the basis for understanding the war events, not merely its peripheral parts.

Listing all these shared features there is also one that could be recognized in other genres but in the war memoirs it evolves into and constitutes a more specific and prominent feature which is intensified here. It is an "experience". Experience is a very wide term which can cover not only perceptions of battles and direct actions but also the perceptions of everyday things or even the tiniest, seemingly unimportant details. Hynes explains this by comparing a state of being at war to a culture where most ordinary acts and feelings occur in a different manner. This distinctness of the war experience is embodied also in the general dissimilarity from ordinary life in relative peace and safety by the fact that war can be seen as “life in the grip of death” (Remenyi 140) which this author considers to be the real issue of war literature.

The feature of experience also entails another partial aspect of the war experience that this thesis uses as its main field of exploration. This part could be titled a “conversion” (Hynes 400) meaning a profound change in the narrator. The conversion could be seen as an analogy to the actual war going on around the combatants - as an inner private war with its deep damaging mental effects and its struggle to live through them and lessen their harmful outcomes. “War smashes apart and rearranges its human participants” (McLoughlin 26) and their “very essence is forged in the crucible of combat” (25).

Thus men in war memoirs devote their narratives to two principal storylines.

The first line narrates and describes “things men do” (Hynes 398) meaning the actions of war, and the second line closely follows the things that are “being done to” (398)

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them. Hynes comprises these things under a title of “powerful transforming force”

(398). The first strictly active part is embedded in the passages describing the advances, the fights, and the skirmishes involving the actual shooting or killing. The second line is basically passive and represents the reflections that the combatants personally recreate in their minds and which constitute the ability to form and influence their personal feelings, thinking or general views. This line derives not only from the observation of things happening and taking place around but from personal actions as well. Sledge says that “combat leaves an inedible mark on those who are forced to endure it and none came out unscathed” (XIII-XXIII), pointing to the fact the war culture possesses the inseparable feature of the “transforming force”.

Every feature listed above contributes to an overall effect and a function of war memoirs. “They bring forth information in a manner of factual authenticity” (Remenyi

143) with their role “to move and to enlighten the reader” (143) and also to leave him

“disenchanted” (Hynes 413). Having discussed the style of war memoir in general, the next subchapter turns its focus to the particular two war memoirs and their specific features.

1.2 With the Old Breed and Helmet for My Pillow

“…write down some of my experiences,

recall certain events that happened to me

without fictional embellishment…”

Sid Phillips, You'll Be Sor-ree!, Preface

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This particular part is devoted to the two memoirs essential for the thesis. The focus here is set on emphasizing their styles and themes. Also it stresses many issues which are specifically dealt with in these memoirs. And on top of that the author’s approaches to the matter of war writing are compared and the text highlights the differences.

Sid Phillips concisely captured the essence of his war memoir and of his two fellow marines. They are all remembering certain events happening during the battles as well as in times of relative rest and quiet. These they intertwine with winding strings of their inner mirrored reactions and development of corresponding experience. And apart from these, there is not and should not be any space for fiction whatsoever.

With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge as a war memoir reached a “status of military classic” (Hanson XVII). “Most of the men who have written war-narratives have not been writers” (Hynes 397), and neither was Sledge. He puts himself again to the middle of the hostile environment of the Pacific islands and to the middle of the war campaigns creating history as the lowest positioned and closest-to-the-action player, an enlisted marine. He unfolds his personal storyline in the setting of meticulously recreated surroundings and characters of the islands. His description of the immediate surroundings and nature of these tiny bits of land somewhere in the Pacific are done systematically and with great focus on relevant details. These are his first impressions of the Pavuvu Island:

Pavuvu looked picturesque. But once ashore, one found the extensive coconut

groves choked with rotting coconuts. The apparently solid ground was soft and

turned quickly to mud when subjected to foot or vehicular traffic (Sledge 31)

Also the battles that he participated in are presented with the same great attention to the crucial details to convey in words as realistically as possible what he truly endured, therefore “the vivid and drastic scenes of combat are among the most

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notable in print” (Goldfarb 53). Sledge’s first participation in combat started with the advance on the Peleliu beaches:

I got up. Crouching low, I raced up the sloping beach in to a defilade. Reaching

the inland edge of the sand just beyond the high-water mark, I glanced down and

saw the nose of a huge black and yellow bomb protruding from the sand. A

metal plate attached to the top served as a pressure trigger. My foot had missed it

by only inches. (Sledge 60)

His storyline of the inner experience derives not only directly from the combat events but also from a simple passive endurance of the harsh and debilitating surroundings. He devotes an equaled detailed focus to express his impressions and feelings. In this manner, he describes the sensation of an incoming missile:

…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… (Sledge 72)

Moreover, he also draws the reader’s attention to the everyday ordinary routine which was distorted by the always-present atmosphere of war. The performance of basic human needs and habits was repeatedly significantly restricted or even non-existent. For combatants these issues were of the same importance as capturing a designated objective. In many situations, they had to improvise strongly:

Shaving each morning with a helmet full of water was simple enough, but a bath

was another matter. Each afternoon when the inevitable tropical downpour

commenced, we stripped and dashed into the company street, soap in hand.

(Sledge 32)

Apart from the depiction of the issues listed above, he also inserts into the narrative notes with military facts. He highlights the inability of the participants to

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encompass their fight in a wider context of the whole battle signifying that “no man will see much of the battle he’s in” (Hynes 404). Even though Sledge evokes the image of the whole setting, he himself almost never knew what was really happening around him, for how long or with whom. But by making these factual interventions in his narrative he can provide the reader with the wider context of his own actions and experience as well as he could himself understand more of his position in all of these events.

Robert Leckie in his Helmet for My Pillow, to evoke the same set of arresting images of his private war experience, employs different literary tools and approaches.

Their various attitudes towards writing memoirs could be assumed from their personal skills later exercised in their occupations. Sledge being a scholar, his systematic attitude to the matter is not very surprising. On the other hand, Leckie had begun his career as a journalist before the war, where he had already acquired various narrative skills.

Consequently, Leckie´s war memoir is attired in a simple story-telling cover.

Even though, he devotes his story to the similarly constructed events and issues as

Sledge, he does not have a systematic approach to the portrayal of the circumstances.

His preciseness is completed only to the level of conveying necessary details to evoke the impression needed. His narrative style can be compared to a style of a man walking through a new surrounding, describing things in the order he notices them, immediately followed by his personal thoughts and reflections. The varieties in the portrayals can be noticed in their first impression of Pavuvu:

“We marched ashore in the rain and inched up a mud-slicked slope into a coconut grove, and there we sat down to contemplate our misery.” (Leckie, Helmet 256)

Where Leckie describes what is immediately around him followed by the instant corresponding impression, Sledge is starting with the prompt full systematic description of one single item creating exhausting depiction. In order to fully comprehend Leckie´s

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recreation sometimes the whole chapter has to be read because the descriptions are scattered as he gradually notices them.

But despite the differences in their techniques, Leckie devotes his recreating images to the same set of issues and also emphasizes the always-present basic human routine which is sometimes preceded in previous memoirs by more appealing combat sequences:

There was no water except what was caught in our helmets during the night. We

bathed by dashing naked into the rain, soaping ourselves madly in a race against the

probability of the rain´s ceasing and being left streaked with sticky soap… . (Leckie,

Helmet 257)

The meticulous recreations of the war experience are in both cases results of a simple remembering, as Sid Phillips interprets only the things that he remembered.

Sledge and Leckie recorded their observations literally when they were still in their fox holes, even though they employed different means of note-taking and both did this despite the fact that it was forbidden to carry written documents into a combat zone for fear of leaving any information to the enemy. Sledge was scribbling his notes and accounts of days spent in combat between the lines of his New Testament. Immediately after the war he widened these notes in order not to forget any other relevant details. On the other hand, Leckie as a writer was not much interested in preserving details but rather his impressions. The proof of this is a poem opening his book titled "The Battle of the Tenaru River", written days after the battle to preserve the sense of disillusionment and hell provided by the this particular battle experience.

Another difference between their employed styles can be seen in their attitudes towards the use of clichés in the descriptions. In many war-related narratives, there is a general inclination to surrender to the “temptation to repeat outworn” clichés

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(McLoughlin 22). But Sledge even for the really unimaginable horrors uses simple words, “modest language” (Hanson XVIII), which carries the message more truthfully and with greater impact. Above all, these words are able to convey “Sledge’s honesty”

(XXI) about his experience. Impersonal misused phrases would not be able to do that.

On the other hand, Leckie does not completely dismiss them but he is aware of their distorting impact on the vivacity of the impression that they should signify. He includes this issue in the description of his first horrific night battle, seeing the Japanese banzai technique for the first time:

A man says of the eruption of battle: 'All hell broke loose.' The first time he says

it, it is true – wonderfully descriptive. The millionth time it is said, it has been

worn out into meaninglessness: it has gone the way of all good phrasing, it has

become cliché. (Leckie, Helmet 78)

For that reason, even though he employs the clichés into his descriptive passages, he never stops or limits his describtions by their boundaries. He treats clichés as a basis for a potentially more accurate image. Continuing with the depiction of the already mentioned place, other additional impressions follow: “… battlefield in unearthly greenish light … every weapon was sounding voice; but this was no orchestration, … here was hell” (Leckie, Helmet 78).

Another issue that Leckie emphasizes is connected with “conveying the magnitude” of the war as “not finding words for war” (McLoughlin 22). He does not only mention that in the context of writing about the war experience as a past reminiscence but he also points it out as an issue happening during the course of war.

The combatants struggled with a completely new environment and experiences derived from it which were so contradictory to the usual state of things that the original names or words would not be appropriate there, it would sound bizarre to use them. Mostly

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because the new experience was negative, say the least. So the combatants replace it with one word:

…there was that four-letter ugly sound that men in uniform have expanded into

the single substance of the linguistic world. It was a handle, a hyphen, a

hyperbole; verb, noun, modifier; yes, even conjunction. It described food,

fatigue, metaphysics. It stood for everything and meant nothing; an insulting

word, it was never used to insult… (Leckie, Helmet 17)

Sledge’s prominent systematic and detailed approach and simple honesty enable the reader to “see the war as he himself saw … recounted accurately“ (McIlhenny XII).

Leckie’s smooth narrative skills and detailed insides create an “extraordinary first hand account“ (Ambrose XIV) of a participation in an uncompromising theatre of war. Even though, the writing style and the attitudes are only a simple package containing the particular message, they constitute a solid ground for rightly and fully conveying the comprised matter. Consequently, the subsequent chapters are completely devoted to the specific content of the U.S. Marines’ descriptions and reflections but the immediate part deals with the authors’ profiles and highlights their connection to each other.

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2 Beyond the U.S. Marine Corps

“If we had only known what lay ahead of us!”

Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed, p. 6

This thesis focuses solely on Leckie and Sledge as the authors of war memoirs and the representatives of the U.S. Marine Corps. These personal images are explored within the boundaries of a tangible literary recreation, and thus are mere mirrored reflections of existing persons. Giving the reality-derived element of war memoirs and the overall personal attribute of the particular experience, they both also deserve to be introduced beyond the context of war.

Thus, this chapter more closely explores Leckie and Sledge as real-world characters, as actual people. Moreover, the third part of this chapter is designated to illuminate their mutual connection not only in terms of the elementary structure of the thesis but also in the tangible reality of the war.

2.1 Robert Leckie “Everybody called him Lucky.”

Sid Phillips, interview

Robert Leckie spent almost all his life living in Rutherford, New Jersey, being born on

18 December 1920. He was the youngest of eight children, his mother being almost seventy when he enlisted. Despite not having a deep personal relationship with his parents, he was influenced by the intellectual atmosphere of his home and by the big library of his father. This foreshadowed his lifelong profession. Leckie pointed out: “I always wanted to be a writer since I can remember” (R.Leckie, “Profiles of the Pacific).

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At the age of sixteen he was working for the Bergen Evening Record as a sports writer and he obtained the same job immediately on the second day he got back from the

Marine Corps.

He officially enlisted on 5 January 1942 and was assigned to H Company, 2nd

Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. During his service he rose to the rank of Private First

Class. Even though he was honorably discharged in 1945, he “devoted to his Marine

Corps all of his life” (Keller Leckie) and he did this not only in his books depicting the factual history of the war in the Pacific. He dedicated a park near his house to commemorate his fellow marines. He called it the Tenaru Park, named after the battle on Guadalcanal he was part of.

His family described him as being mischievous and gregarious before the war.

But due to these character traits he got into many precarious situations being a Marine and defying some of their rules. This resulted in demotions and re-promotions: “I’ve made private four times. The last time they gave me PFC stripes they said don’t lose it this time. I said then why did you put a zipper on it” (R.Leckie, “Profiles of the Pacific)

But after coming back from the Pacific he became “nervous, tense, difficult to get along with, had terrible nightmares” (Keller Leckie). His wife also pointed out that “he felt he was fine but actually he wasn´t… he knew that the war had an impact on him”.

Leckie never spoke about his experiences to his family. They learnt about them with the rest of his readers when his first book was published in 1957. It was Helmet for

My Pillow. Then almost forty other books followed ranging in subject from French and

Indian Wars to Desert Storm and countless journal articles. Leckie himself evaluated his lifetime work in field of literature: “I think I´ve made a contribution and I am pleased with it”. Moreover, he was awarded the Purple Heart for his service and the Marine

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Corps Combat Correspondents Association award for the publications of his combat memories.

That the Pacific war had an immense impact on him and his memories clearly appeared later in his life when he suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease. His son David

Leckie remembers: “he had forgotten all of us, he never forgot being in the Pacific”.

Leckie lost his battle to Alzheimer on 24 December 2001 leaving his wife, three children and six grandchildren. His daughter summarized his life in this way: “he wanted to make an impression, no matter good impression, bad impression made no difference to him, he made an impression” (Leckie Salvas).

2.2 Eugene Sledge

“…the experiences have haunted me…”

Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed, Preface

Eugene Bondurant Sledge spent most of his life in his home state, Alabama, where he was born in Mobile on 4 November 1923, and practiced most of his teaching profession in Montevallo. His family roots were strongly southern and intellectual. He and his friend Sid Phillips were greatly interested in the Civil War visiting memorable places and even listening to the accounts of the few remaining participants. The intellectual background was provided by his father who, being a doctor, practiced his profession during the Great War.

Sledge was greatly disappointed by not being able to enlist with his longtime friend and was “so anxious to go” (Jeanne Sledge). This letter to his friend expresses

Sledge’s feelings: “you’re the lucky one Sid, you´ll never have that nagging thought

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that you let your family, your friends and your country down” ("Guadalcanal/Leckie").

Not being of age, he needed consent from his parents to enlist which was denied to him by his father due to Eugene’s medical condition, heart murmur. Instead he at least enrolled into an officer educational program. But after a year of lectures, he dropped out and enlisted into the Marine Corps in the regular way. All despite the advice of his parents, his father being aware of the damaging power of war: “they had had their souls torn out … I don’t want to look into your eyes and see no life…” ("Basilone"). In addition, also Sid Phillips who had already been on Guadalcanal advised Sledge: “I warned him to join nothing, not even the Boy Scouts or Salvation Army, and he went and joined the Marine Corps, proving he was demented.” (Phillips 118).

Sledge was assigned to K Company, 1st Marine Division and was able to choose his preferred weapon. He chose a 60mm mortar as Sid did. In the Pacific he went through the rest camp on Pavuvu, campaign on Peleliu and later on Okinawa. Since the standard length of the enlistment was three years, after the Japanese surrender he was sent to China. He wrote about the aftermath events in his second memoir called China

Marine (2002).

Finally he managed to get back home to Alabama in 1947 after all the victory celebrations were completely over. He did not have a specific plan for his life after war having observed in the Pacific that his fellow Marines who shared their after-war goals and plans were mostly quickly killed. Nevertheless, his first necessary objective was to be able to cope with the things that he went through overseas because Sledge seemed to be haunted by the war: “that´s not a day go by that I don´t think about and when I do think about it I´m trying to force myself to think about the good buddies I had but then you also remember the dead”.

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However, Sledge’s surrounding offered him means to successfully cope with the memories. He learned how to manage living with his past experiences: “what you have to do is to try to focus your mind on other things”. Next to the talks with his father, he

“found that classical music and his studies for his PhD in biology helped heal the mental wounds of war” (Goldfarb 54). His wife Jeanne said that he found his calling in biology.

He devoted his life to the study of biology and above all ornithology and also found his interest in teaching at the University of Montevallo. Later he married Jeanne and had two sons. On 3 March 2001 Sledge lost his fight to stomach cancer.

Eugene Sledge was a person who went through horrific experience, survived, and was able to coherently write his accounts. Even though he could not forget the event, he always managed to direct his mind towards, at least for some time, a hobby which later turned into profession. Moreover, he was able to acquire “a great feeling of serenity, he had already been through the worst that life would through at him and he knew that he was able to stand up to it” (Jeanne Sledge).

2.3 The Link between Leckie and Sledge

“They differed in where and when the authors had served…”

Hugh Ambrose, The Pacific, p. XII

Following the separate introductory profiles of Leckie and Sledge, this subchapter illuminates the reasons why they possess the quality to constitute a united pair for the purposes of this thesis. Therefore, it explores the relationship between them. Moreover, added to the thesis-related link, there is possible physical or geographical connection.

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At first glance their relationship seems to be lacking any possible link. Their enlistments were a year apart, both went through different training camps. Leckie became a machine gunner and Sledge chose to be a mortarman. But despite these obvious differences, they present “a way to connect the first battle in the war with the last battle” (Ambrose XII). Leckie having enlisted in 1942 belonged to the First Marines who endured Guadalcanal which was one of the first campaigns set to stop further advance of the Japanese in the Pacific. After the Marines rested in Australia, Leckie was sent back to combat on Cape Gloucester followed by his last amphibious assault onto

Peleliu where he was wounded and finally evacuated from the front line. But concerning Sledge, he was subjected to the combat experience for the first time during the landing on Peleliu. His company endured a very lenghty campaign being one of the last units stepping down from the lines. His second campaign was Okinawa in 1945.

This island represents one of the last battles on these “tiny specks of turf” (Hughes 245) being considered already originally the Japanese soil.

Therefore Leckie and Sledge went through four significant campaigns and together the scope of the campaigns nicely covers the whole Pacific war theatre. The single islands and the battles can show representative and various natural conditions that the U.S. Marines had to face there. Moreover, they copy the gradation of the fight and show many changes in the Japanese tactics and U.S. alterations in proceedings in response. So Leckie and Sledge can provide overall general representative sample of the

Pacific, campaigns and of being a Marine there.

In addition, this "scope" connection is supported by an actual link which is in person of Sid Phillips. He “had served in the same company with Robert Leckie and was one of Sledge’s best friends” (Ambrose XII). Phillips wrote his own memoir You'll

Be Sor-ree!, not officially published until 2011. Phillips admits that even though he did

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not know Leckie well, as the rest of the company they always recognized him only as

Lucky being all aware of his mischievous personality. Phillips mentions him briefly in his recollections: “As we went by close to Alcatraz, some comedian waved to a man on dock and shouted 'Hey, Lucky, want to trade places?' ” (Phillips 46).

On the other hand, he kept exchanging letters with Sledge, “another faithful correspondent” (Phillips 118). They even personally met in the Pacific briefly when

Sledge arrived as one of the replacements and Phillips was being sent home on rotation:

“I recognized Ugin about three tents away and ran out into the company street, screaming "Ugin" as loudly as I could … we hugged and pounded on each other”

(Phillips 204).

As to their real-world personal connection, there is actually no direct reliable evidence whatsoever that they have ever met in person or that they were at least aware of one another. The circumstances suggest high probability that their paths crossed during their residence on Pavuvu before the Peleliu landing. Possible situations of their meeting are very openly explored in the ten-part HBO miniserie The Pacific (2010).

Even though, the scene of Leckie and Sledge´s meeting is devised to stress and emphasize the continuity and cohesion of the show, the accompanying circumstances of their encounter are very well founded and supported by evidence. Their personal meeting occurs on Pavuvu during a relative quiet and rest before the next campaign.

Leckie and Sledge both coming from intellectual background, they developed quiet a positive attitude towards books and reading. Leckie managed to establish himself as a sort of a company librarian having books sent by his father and lending them to men:

“The books belonging to the Scholar and me – most especially, the almanac and the dictionary – made our tent a meeting place for the battalion literati” (Leckie 274). The episode "Peleliu Landing" portrays a possible scene when Sledge comes to Leckie to

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borrow a book to read and they shortly converse on the topic of religion in the war atmosphere.

Another episode, "Guadalcanal/Leckie", presents a different scenerion. Marines many times asked their fellows to read their letters outloud for fun and curiosity. In this context also Leckie asked Phillips to read him his letter which was from Sledge. There is the possibility that Leckie got to know Sledge through these shared letters.

The thesis copies the choice of combining these two memoirs by The Pacific miniseries for their ability to provide a great scope enclosing the whole Pacific war theatre and also offering a representative experience of the U.S. Marines. And this is the task of the next chapter to solely focus on Leckie´s personal experience under the influential nature of Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester.

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3 Guadalcanal

“Finally, we were told our destination was an island held by the Japanese called

'Guadalcanar'… even our intelligence knew very little about the place, not even how to

spell the name.”

Sid Phillips, You'll Be Sor-ree!, p. 70

A purpose of this introductory part is to provide a brief overview of the Battle of

Guadalcanal. Firstly it includes a simple characterization of the island’s conditions of the environment. Later the focus shifts to the prominent events taking place during the

Marines’ presence on the island. Moreover, the military and historical significance is also mentioned.

Guadalcanal is a 90 miles long island belonging to the group of Solomons

Islands. The whole length is lined with sandy beaches followed by the coconut groves.

A mountain range cuts through the island’s central part with low knolls, hills, and ridges entwined with open areas covered with thick kunai grass (Rottman). This general overview comes close to the description of a tropical paradise, “it was beautiful, seen from the sea” (Leckie, Delivered 412). But this was only a disguise of the true nature of the island:

…but beneath the loveliness, within the necklace of sand and palm, under the

coiffure of the sun-kissed treetops with its tiara of jeweled birds, Guadalcanal

was a mass of slops and stinks and pestilence; of scum-crusted lagoons and vile

swamps inhabited by giant crocodiles; a place of spiders … of lizards … of ants

… of tree leeches … of scorpions, of centipedes … of land crabs, rats and bats

and carrion birds and of a myriad of stinging insects. (Leckie, Delivered 413)

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Thus, doing justice to its name, Guadalcanal means “swampy canal” (Rottman

101). The marines themselves after an unopposed landing quickly recognized that “this was not a tropical paradise, but a hot, humid hell-hole” (Jersey 139).

The 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942 and they remained there till 9 February 1943, exactly 6 months and 2 days. Their main objective was capturing an airfield which was still under construction: “the Japs were building an airport there that was almost complete. If completed, the Japs could bomb the sea lanes between the USA and Australia” (Phillips 70). The Henderson Field, as it was later called, had a status of a crucial objective in this campaign because “whoever held the airfield held Guadalcanal” (Leckie, Delivered 426). Therefore the majority of the operations were directed to maintain the control over this airfield. This objective was reached immediately the day after the landing without significant difficulties.

The smooth advance was abruptly disrupted by the result of the Battle of Savo

Island where Japanese imperial navy unfortunately defeated the U.S. and forced the

American naval force to completely withdraw from the Guadalcanal’s coast. The

Marines already ashore lost their connection with the rest of the Corps forces and they stayed abandoned almost for a month. Their grievance was that they did not manage to unload the supplies from the withdrawing ships so overall they “lacked air cover and sufficient supplies, rations, ammunition, and engineering equipment” (Miller 194). In these conditions they had to withstand the Japanese banzai attacks, almost suicidal horrific offensives. And therefore “marines were confined to a small area around the airfield, while Japanese air, naval, and ground forces were free to operate outside the airfield perimeter” (Miller 194). Two major and horrific Japanese attacks took place in that month being defeated by the resilient U.S. defensives. These were later known as the Battle of the Tenaru River and Bloody Nose Ridge.

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Moreover, the harsh battle conditions were worsened by the debilitating influence of the jungle and “the horrific living conditions imposed by combat in such environment only inflicted more suffering” (Rottman 10). In the Pacific not only

Japanese were deathly but also “the island became killer on its own” (The Lost Evidence

– Guadalcanal).

Even though the securing of the whole island took another five months, the first month was considered the worst and the pivotal point in the effort. Despite their low supplies, they managed to finish the airfield to get the air support and later the sea access was regained meaning open supply lines and new replacements.

At the end, the whole Guadalcanal campaign, also comprising fights on the nearest smaller islands around, involved 60,000 men from which 7,000 died in combat or from some tropical disease, mostly malaria. In light of these statistics, Guadalcanal was a “deadly dress rehearsal for the island-hopping American offensive to come”

(Lane 266). For the common Marine, the place signified “death, struggle, and disease”

(266) but at the same time the protection of the Henderson Field demonstrated that

“they could defend a vitally important position both resolutely and effectively” (Miller

212). But more significantly and historically, Guadalcanal represented an end for the

Japanese expansion and above all it “was the place at which the tide in the Pacific War turned against Japan” (Leckie, Challenge, Preface).

Establishing the general background of the Guadalcanal campaign, the subsequent subchapter follows Robert Leckie’s footsteps through this historical event.

The text focuses on events that Leckie participated in, observed or endured.

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3.1 Swallowed by the Jungle

“The Marines cursed and hated Guadalcanal, a pesthole that reeked with death,

struggle, and disease.”

Kerry L. Lane, Guadalcanal Marine. p. 266

This part is an inquiry into the everyday reality of the Guadalcanal Marine. The major focus is directed towards three prominent themes/issues which are the factors that influence the Marines’ physical and mental state. Significant events as well as the smallest factors constitute these three categories. The following two themes present a common influence reoccurring on every island. The jungle environment includes the debilitating harshness of the tropical surrounding and combining it with the distorted daily routine of the Marines such as hygiene, meals or sleeping. These influences of the environment vary in additional specifics according to the particular island. The second reoccurring theme is apparently the enemy himself, the Japanese forces. On

Guadalcanal, the banzai technique is important, later the significance shifts to the changes that the Japanese command included into their style of combat. The last theme that is specific on Guadalcanal is the abandonment. It mirrors the actual situation of necessary U.S. Navy withdrawal from the island´s shores.

“The landing was easy, nothing else was” (Lane 79). Immediately after Marines’ arrival, they started facing one of the inseparable “triune foe: the dark, the jungle and the Jap” (Leckie, Helmet 99). The jungle represents every possible discomfort deriving from the long stay in a tropical surrounding. Guadalcanal not only introduced the

Marines to combat itself, moreover they for the first time encountered these strange and harsh conditions of a tropical environment. “The war was on” (60) beginning with first steps ventured towards the embrace of the natural enemy: “we plodded through the

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heat-bathed patches of kunai grass. We crossed rivers. … We climbed hills. We got into the jungle. We cut our passage with machetes or followed narrow, winding trails.” (60)

“The jungle of the Solomons was a rainforest. No air stirred there, and the humidity was beyond the imagination of anyone who had not lived in it.” (Lane 111).

An enormous heat was the first prominent sensation of the island: “the jungle became dense … the heat was oppressive” (Phillips 76). Profuse perspiration only from the high temperature enhanced by the physical effort of the march in the Marines’ full gear and with heavy weapons lead to a “dehydration situation” (78). Moreover, an intelligence map was not precise contributing to their tiresome wandering through the unknown jungle followed by the inability to find a source of water and thus “experiencing real thirst” (Leckie, Helmet 62). In light of that, Leckie summarized their first day only with words such as heat, sweat, thirst, and frustration. (61)

On the other hand, the Marines could have experience a quick shift from the unbearable heat to a chilly cold feeling. The feeling of cold was then mostly connected with the unstoppable rain, no matter if they were positioned in the jungle or in uncovered foxholes. Leckie remembers that they were “days of downpour when I lay drenched and shivering, gazing blankly out of my hole … man´s brain seems to cease to function … it went right to the bone … only he in the world knows of the warmth within a wet blanket” (Leckie, Helmet 119). There was literally no option to avoid it or get under any kind of shelter: “there was nothing to do except lie there, take it and shiver with cold” (Phillips 91). Getting any kind of shelter in the pits was almost impossible because they caught rain water like “sewer receivers” and above all “any dry place in the pit was reserved for ammunition” (Leckie 118).

The ensuing problem from these changes was reflected in the worsened health conditions of the Marines because the rain and the cold intensified any kind of tropical

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disease they caught during the extreme heat. These constant alterations of temperatures were always reflected in the state of the Marines’ uniforms. After the heat wave the dungarees (term for the type of uniform) were “sweat-darkened” (Leckie, Helmet 61), drenched in the rain or drying and leaving white sweat lines. Until they would be relieved from the lines to any of the rest places they could not and have no possibility to change their clothes. Moreover, men had to endure the same conditions as the uniforms they were wearing.

Furthermore, “a tropical environment by nature tends to be a breeding ground for disease and the hot, wet, humid conditions only enhanced the health risks” (Rottman

11). There was an array of diseases such as dysentery, yaws, blackwater fever, leprosy or hookworm but malaria was the most widely spread amongst the Marines. Despite the fact that the Marines became sick they could not step down from the lines and get cured.

They had to get through on their positions and only with the basic medical care:

Runner (one of the Leckie’s best fellow Marines) came down with malaria. …

there was nothing they could do for him. He lay in his hole, unable to eat. When

the chills came, we piled our blankets on top of him. When the fever broke and

the sweat began pouring off him, he lay back and grinned. He could barely

talk… (Leckie, Helmet 119-120).

Moreover, every Marine suffered from tropical ulcers. They devised this term for “any running or festering sore” and those who “ate into the outer covering of the bone”. Their legs were “dappled with these red-and-white rosettes of pain; red with blood, white with pus and often ringed with the black of feeding flies” (Leckie, Helmet 99). The military doctors did not have the time to treat everybody separately. As a result the so called chains of men treating one another only under the medical instructions were commonly employed.

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Apart from the tropical diseases, the Marines battled diarrhea on a daily basis.

First few days they sustained on classical K rations with horrible taste but providing enough sustenance. However, after few days and originally low supplies they “were low on provisions that they were reduced to two skimpy meals a day” (Lane 120). These daily rations mostly consisted of rice that they confiscated from the Japanese: “it was a wormy paste, which nauseated some of the daintier palates until they realized that they would have to swallow it – fresh meat and all – or starve” (Leckie, Delivered 417). The captured rice was full of worms but later “nobody bothered to separate them” (Phillips

87). The diarrhea was also worsened by the consummation of coconuts and biscuits from the First World War which Marines with strong teeth were able to bite in.

Majority of the diseases were enhanced by the immense heat but transmitted by the hordes of flies and mosquitoes on the island: “malaria-bearing mosquitoes, as well as dengue and a dozen lesser-known fevers threatened from the broad deep swamps…”

(Lane 111). Leaving the nets on the ships, there was no way to cover themselves in the pits. Moreover, the corpses left after a fight were perfect breeding ground for the immense new generation of the insects: “the flies were in possession of the field; the tropics had won; her minions were everywhere, smacking their lips over this bounty of rotting flesh” (Leckie, Helmet 86). But more ghostly was the idea that the flies flying from the dead bodies were landing on the Marines and moreover in their meals and water: “we soon learned to eat at dusk and not have the flies compete for every spoonful” (Phillips 77).

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3.2 'Turkey Shoot'

“Lousy diet or not, we had a job to do.”

Kerry L. Lane, Guadalcanal Marine, p. 108

Apart from the jungle environment, Japanese soldiers were another kind of enemy.

Even though defeating the Japanese was the purpose of the battles, the Marines had to tackle both the enemies equally. Together they created a deadly duo because

“malnutrition, malaria and other crippling jungle diseases had done what the enemy had failed to do” (Lane 259). The following part explores the impact left by the direct battle experience when the Marines are in the position of attackers, defenders or observers.

Moreover, it also addresses the issues arising as a result of the fight and from a simple hostile position of the two opponents.

During the first month on the island, the Marines acquired the role of the defenders setting the perimeter around the airfield “on its eastern and right flank by the

Tenaru River and on the west by a high ridge” (Lane 110). For Leckie the battle of

Tenaru River being his first introduced him to the complex experience of the first-hand fight with the Japanese and its consequences:

On August 21, green flares rose from the opposite bank, throwing a ghostly light

over the sand spit as about 200 Japanese came charging through the surf with

outthrust bayonets silhouetted against the sea by the eerie swaying light of the

flares. The Marines were now face to face with the enemy. (Lane 134).

They at last are confronted by their primary enemy. Before the actual combat action began, the Marines were mostly “waiting and wondering if (they) are going to survive” (Lane 79). But with the Japanese attack, the other side of this issue arises and that is being capable of killing. As for Leckie, he learnt that “the jungle holds both

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beauty and terror in its depths, most terrible of which is man. We have met the enemy and I have learned nothing more about him. I have, however, learned some things about myself. There are things men can do to one another that are sobering to the soul”

(Guadalcanal/Leckie). Despite the fact that killing another person was very unhuman and morally difficult for Leckie, he learnt how to do it and had to do it many times.

Every Marine dealt with his killing differently, some feeling more guilty than the others.

But on the Tenaru River, they all “learned to throw away the rule-book. It became a war of 'kill or be killed'” (Lane 141). This was the result of the Japanese banzai combat technique which basically meant that Japanese were “a tough and fanatical foe who often displayed a total disregard for his safety in battle. When defeat was certain, he invariably fought to the end, preferring death to surrender.”(Lane 140).

Killing is an inseparable part of war and the Japanese attitude made it at the same time easier as well as harder. It was easier after many episodes when Japanese suicidal attempts only to take U.S. Marine with him or leaving the death mutilated and humiliated. Evidently, this only led to thinking of killing first. On the other hand, they made it harder because fighting off massive banzai frontal attacks turned the Marines into simple killing machines. In that case, the defensive fire could be described as a

“turkey shoot” ("Guadalcanal/Leckie)" or compared to a “spraying (my) shots as though

(I) were handling a hose” (Leckie 82).

Greatly debilitating are also periods of time between the actual fighting actions.

These can be categorized as waiting, waiting for an attack, for a hit and a wound or for a bomb to drop. The fights include the physical dangers of being killing or ripped by a bomb but the situations of waiting afflict devastating mental wounds where the minds and souls are repeatedly torn. The Marines on Guadalcanal regularly heard bombers coming and their shells falling which only signified “the apprehension of waiting for

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each one to hit, one after another, day in and day out” and as a result “broke many men”

(Miller 55). For them “the throb of motors was more fearsome than the thump of his bombs. Once the bombs were dropped, (they) would be relieved.” (Leckie, Helmet 89)

This effect can be compared to “the fear of the other shoe dropping” (Miller 206).

Basically they are in the state of anxiety which is “usually thought to indicate a generalised unfocused fear whose object is unknown” (206). This means that being on the front line or off they did not get any quality rest. Also the regular Japanese bombing was designed not only to cause physical damage but also created a psychological pressure at all times. Leckie describes it as “trial and tedium … In between every trial there would stretch out the tedium that sucks a man dry, drawing off the juice from body and soul… the first, shaking a man as the wind in the treetops; the second, eroding him as the flood at the roots” (Leckie, Helmet 88).

Furthermore, this apprehension of waiting for an unknown is also derived from darkness. Night patrols brought the feeling of nervousness and unsettled mood for the

Marines. Staring at “the black void… emptiness” left their imaginations to run wild and presumably see “terrible formless things” and making them hear almost every “specks of life” (Leckie, Helmet 72-73). Marines learnt that staying on guard during the night was very tricky and that the night and its shadows could very well play their eyes and minds. Moreover, they sometimes feared the patrols due to the incidents when their own friends were killed because the guard was not sure, nervous and triger-happy, mistook him for an enemy. Overall, “the anxiety of that vigil could be almost as wearing as the actual fight” (Leckie, Helmet 94).

Surprisingly, also the light did not make it easier for the Marines. Japanese were intentionally using light beams in the night not only to locate U.S. positions but also to exhaust the Marines more by depriving them of sleep. They would “turn on their

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searchlights just off shore and light up our area so that you could have read a newspaper even in your hole” (Phillips 85). The regular bombing and the light “did not kill many people, but, like Macbeth murdered sleep” (Leckie, Helmet 89).

Later, the aftermaths of the battles further deepened the impact left on the

Marines. The smell was the most significant and long lasting effect where “rot lay just under the exotic lushness. The ground was porous with decaying vegetation, emitting a sour, unpleasant odor” (Lane 111). The main cause of the rot and its smell was the dead bodies. Even when Marines did their best with burying them as quickly as possible, the tropics were always faster and also the Japanese did not always bury their dead.

Moreover, the smell was something that the Marine could not avoid in any possible way: “The smell kept us awake … overpowered us… it will give you no rest … we could not escape this smell” (Leckie, Helmet 87). There was no place to hide from it.

Furthermore, “for weeks the whole area was permeated with the stench of death as the burial pits would crack open and more sand would have to be piled on top” (Phillips

109).

3.3 Expendables

“We really and truly figured none of us will survive, we were expendable.”

"Basilone", The Pacific, interviews

The Battle of Guadalcanal differed from the following campaigns by enhanced strength of one influential factor accompanying the jungle and the battles. It was a mixture of interconnected feelings of loneliness, abandonment, and expendability.

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These together appeared primarily as the result of the U.S. Navy retreat from

Guadalcanal: “the Navy had taken off and left us, the feeling of expendability became a factor in the battle” (Lane 107). Even though, the Navy did not have a choice, “the

Marines ashore felt like they were being abandoned” (106). Firstly the Marines realized that their defensive position would be hard to maintain with low ammunition and supplies. Secondly the security of having a whole body of Marine Corps behind them, this safety feeling of having a huge family support, was totally lost.

Furthermore, the abandonment increased the feeling of loneliness. The Marines in the Pacific generally experienced many degrees of seclusion by merely being enclosed on the particular islands surrounded by the vast ocean, already being cut off from their lives at home by joining the Marines. Moreover, this was enhanced by the obvious dissonance between events in the Pacific and at home. The mail the Marines received is a great example of this issue. This happened when Leckie finally got mail on

Guadalcanal: “I read the letter squatting on the hillside, my buttocks just above the wet ground. A torrential rain had fallen … and so it was that I was careful not to soil my freshly washed pants in either mud or the myriad of dead insects. 'Robert (my father wrote), your blue uniform is ready. Shall I send it to you?'” (Leckie, Helmet 132-3).

This question shows total lack of information at home what it is like in the Pacific.

During their one month seclusion, they literally felt like “orphans … no one cared, we thought … all of this was going on without a single thought of us” (Leckie, Helmet 98).

The last issue that the loneliness and the abandonment led to was the sense of expendability. The expendability “is loneliness … it is the feeling of being abandoned.

It is something more, too. It is as if events over which you have no control have put a ridiculous low price tag on your life” (Lane 106). This felt that dying during the military effort would not have any significant meaning because another one would replace him.

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They began to think about themselves as “a part or unit, the destruction of which will not be fatal to the whole” (Leckie, Helmet 96). Moreover, considering this issue “when it came to combat, the average soldier was just another piece of expendable equipment”

(Bruscino 128).

This overall mental pressure made it much more difficult to endure the jungle and the combat together.

3.4 December 14, 1942

“Guadalcanal was over. We had won.”

Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow, p.135

On that day, Leckie’s battalion was the last one to step down from the lines and was preparing for the evacuation. The aftermath of the battle was victorious, capturing the whole island, securing the airfield and opening the way to Tokyo. However, the

Marines became wrecks: “Runner had malaria, Brick barely stirred from the pit …

Hoosier and Oakstump were subjects to long periods of depression … I had dysentery;

Chuckler was irritable” (Leckie, Helmet 134), thus Leckie described the condition of his closest fellow Marines. Their physical appearance was shabby and neglected: “our tattered clothes and worn-out shoes… cut-off pants because the knees had worn through

… skinny as starved cattle” (Phillips 137).

But what really differentiated Guadalcanal Marines from the rest were their hollow eyes absently staring into the distance. Leckie described one of his fellow

Marines: “The skin around his eyes was drawn tight with strain and with shock. His

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eyes had already taken that aspect peculiar to Guadalcanal, that constant stare of pupils that seemed darker, larger, rounder, more absolute” (Leckie, Helmet 83).

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4 Cape Gloucester

“We had no notion where we might be going, except to be sure that we were headed

north and therefore back to war.”

Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow, p. 197

After Guadalcanal’s tiresome experience, Leckie with his battalion was sent to recuperate in Melbourne, Australia. There they should have got a well-deserved rest and build a new physique. Despite the exuberating time out of combat, they all became anxious knowing that it would not last: “Once the division had recovered from the ordeal of the Solomon Islands fighting, it gave MacArthur a trained amphibious unit that he desperately needed to fulfill his ambitions for the capture of Rabaul.” (Nalty 4).

Therefore this following part is designated to explore Leckie´s second mission continuing with the frog-hopping strategy in the Pacific, Battle of Cape Gloucester. This introductory part is devoted to the general facts about this campaign mentioning the character of the island, the objectives needed to be capturee there and their significance for the progress in the war.

Rabaul was an enormous Japanese military base on the eastern cost of the island of New Britain. Since the Japanese seized it, they were “converting it into a major installation … and bringing in hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who either passed through the base enroute to operations elsewhere or stayed there to defend it” (Nalty 2). For the U.S. military, destroying this base would mean breaking

“the back of Japanese resistance in the region” (4). In order to execute this plan, they firstly decided to capture two airfields still under construction in the western part of the island near Cape Gloucester. These airfields would provide them with necessary basis for the full-fleged attack on Rabaul. Moreover, this island under their management

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leaves them with “the cape´s location as the midway point in the Rabaul-New Guinea barge traffic” (Leckie, Delivered, 594).

The natural character of Cape Gloucester’s surrounding provided “patches of scattered grasslands” (Rottman 185) which were suitable for the construction of an airfield. However, the mere Cape Gloucester offered swamp forests with high trees and their roots buttressed, enormous mangrove trees and completely flooded areas. (Nalty 9)

Even though, the military leadership decided to “bypass Rabaul” (4) itself the

Marines were sent to seized the western part of the island. After the long four months

(26 December 1943 to 23 April 1944), they “overwhelmed a determined and resolute enemy, capturing the Cape Gloucester airfields and driving the Japanese from western

New Britain” (Nalty 32).

4.1 Mutual Enemy

“Due to the gloomy weather, almost everything about the campaign of Cape

Gloucester is recorded in my memory bank in black and white. “

Sid Phillips, You'll Be Sor-ree!, p. 179

Establishing broader context of events on Cape Gloucester, the focus of this part shifts to the everyday reality of the Marines. It describes the style of combat against the

Japanese used here. Surprisingly, both sides found a mutual enemy from whom they suffered equally and who could not be tamed by either of them.

Compared to Guadalcanal, the Marines came much closer to the Japanese in the combat. The density of the jungle did not allow angry straight banzai attacks. This condition suggested ambush-style fights which could have resembled a hide and seek

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game: “another person could be a few feet away and entirely hidden” (Phillips 187).

The progress was very slow due to swamps, tree roots or muddy soil and full of nervousness: “fear of ambush produces the most extreme caution, which reduces speed to a crawl” (Leckie, Helmet 219). Many times in this green blur it was “impossible to know more than what the sounds might tell” (231) which was mostly obstructed by the thumping of their hearts that “would betray” them (219). Furthermore, in some cases the only sign of the Japanese ahead would be the dropping-dead of the first Marine of the patrol.

But U.S. Marines found “a greater enemy than their human foes” (Leckie,

Delivered, 596). They called him “green hell” (Leckie 242). It comprised of the impenetrable jungle and the constant falling rain. The dense rains started immediately after the Marines’ arrival and persisted most of their stay there: “Everyone on western

New Britain – Japanese defenders, American invaders – was soaking wet within minutes, and they would remain that way for weeks. During the next thirty days there would be twenty-seven hours of sunlight.” (Leckie, Delivered, 595). Therefore “it was the jungle and not the Jap that was now the adversary … nothing could stand against it”

(Leckie 241).

The discomforts that the rain brought were devastating to the Marines’ physical as well as mental state. Rain “seemed to fall with the velocity of a fire hose” (Nalty 7)

The battle transformed into “a slow, sodden, slugging match” (Leckie, Delivered, 595) which drained their physical strength in enormous amounts and quickly. But the mental effects were equally hard, sometimes even more terrible. The problem was that

“everyone was soaked all day every day” (Phillips 192) and their uniforms did not have a chance to fully dry. Moreover, when it did not accidentally rained everything became

“sodden and worthless … rain made garbage of the food, pencils swelled and burst

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apart, rifles turned blue with mold” (Leckie, Delivered, 596). Furthermore, due to the always-present wetness men were subjected to many infections which they called

“jungle rot” and to them already known malaria (Nalty 10). Leckie suffered from an enuresis (inability to control urination). The corpsman advised him to “stay dry” with a pleasing remark “it´s not raining today” followed by the response: “not yet”

("Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika"). This unchangeable state of downpour and wetness created a constant state of discomfort and everlasting challenge to the Marines’ scale of endurance. Some of them felt heavy despair seeing “sky darkened and the rain fell again” (Leckie, Helmet 238). Leckie´s friend pleaded: “Why’nt somebody be a good guy and shoot me?” (238) because there was no other way out of this green hell.

Cape Gloucester welcomed the Marines with “the most brutal physical environment” and left them “physically and mentally exhausted”

("Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika"). The jungle and the rain did not spare them or even the

Japanese and thus the Cape Gloucester battle transformed into a struggle “for existence itself” (Leckie, Helmet 242).

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5 Pavuvu

“They murdered sleep … on Guadalcanal, the Japs would send a bomber in every night. It was mostly just to keep us awake. On Gloucester, it was the rain. On Pavuvu, it

was just the fucking fact I was on Pavuvu.”

"Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika"

Despite the fact that the island of Pavuvu did not see any battle fought with the

Japanese, it witnessed more debilitating everyday struggle of the Marines with everything that the island had to offer. Pavuvu was situated quite near to Guadalcanal and “was employed as a rest and retraining base for the 1st Marine Division” (Rottman

119). There was a possibility to station the base on Guadalcanal itself but the remnants of the previous battle and the need for working parties would not provide the Marines with the needed rest. However, there is a question if the chosen Pavuvu fulfilled that task. Anyway, the Pavuvu “climate is similar to Guadalcanal’s, but the islands are free of malaria, an oddity in the Solomons” (118). Only difference between them was that

Pavuvu had much more extended coconut plantations than Guadalcanal.

Even though, it was officially designated as a rest camp, place free from combat, it was “another massive, monstrous, mud hole” (Phillips 196). The Marines encountered their natural enemies immediately after their arrival: “We marched ashore in the rain and inched up a mud-slicked slope into a coconut grove, and there sat down to contemplate our misery.” (Leckie, Helmet 256). Marines were again in the tropical capricious paradise with its rains and consequent mud where “the native habitat of trillions and trillions of rats and land crabs were equaled in number by the mosquitoes”

(Phillips 196). When it stopped rainning “the stench of the rotting coconuts permeated air” (Sledge 31). Their movement through the camp looked like “slipping and sliding

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under the downpour” (Sledge 38). The Marines fought constantly against these conditions. They were extinguishing crabs which were hidden in their boots and blankets every morning or trying to remove the rotting coconuts. Despite these efforts,

“Pavuvu was the only Pacific island the First Marine Division could not conquer”

(Phillips 206).

Moreover, Pavuvu was not supposed to be only a rest camp. It was also a meeting place of the Old Breed with the replacements. The Old Breed comprised of those who acquire combat experience before the Pacific war as well as during it. These were mostly officers leading their platoons. The Old Breed included also the common enlisted Marines who already had gone though one campaign at least. Most of the Old

Breed on Pavuvu were veterans of Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. The newly arrived

Eugene Sledge described them as follows: “veterans were in poor physical condition …

I was appalled at their condition: most were thin, some emaciated, with jungle rot in their armpits” (Sledge 32). Furthermore, most of them were Asiatic, too. Asiatic were those who spent too much time in the tropics and they stood out by a “singular type of eccentric behavior” (31). Leckie would be considered for the veteran and sometimes

Asiatic too: “I clothed myself in a pair of moccasins and a khaki towel around my waist” (Leckie, Helmet 274). On the other hand, the new replacements were observed by the veterans certain detachment: “Their faces were still heavy with flesh, their ribs padded, their eyes innocent.” (Leckie, Helmet 106).

The island affected the two groups differently. The replacements were getting rather nervous and anxious: “coupled with the constant discomforts and harsh, living conditions … it drove us all into a state of intense exasperation” (Sledge 40). However, the veterans were on the verge of despair bordering with insensibility to whatever would

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happen: “there were even a few suicides to suggest how despairing some could find the situation” (Leckie, Helmet 257).

Pavuvu supposed to be a rest camp for those who came from Cape Gloucester.

For the new arrivals it was a place to assimilate with the Old Breed. Both groups differed in their mental and physical strengths but they together would be part of the surprising landing on Peleliu.

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6 Peleliu

“It’s unfortunate to the memory of the men who fought and died on Peleliu that

it remains one of the lesser known and poorly understood battles of World War II.”

Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed, p.21

The strategy of island hopping continued with the next stop on Peleliu. This island belonged to the new “Absolute National Defense Zone” (Moran 21) created by the

Japanese, signifying that the U.S. was steadily advancing towards the Japanese mainland. Moreover, this island introduces the Marines to many unexpected changes in the natural features offered by the island, in the Japanese strategy and in the ferocity of the fights.

Peleliu is a part of the Palau Islands. It is “shaped like a lobster’s claw extending two arms of land. The southern arm reaches northeastward from flat ground to form a jumble of coral islets and tidal flats overgrown thickly with mangroves. The longer northern arm is dominated by the parallel coral ridges of Umurbrogol Mountain”

(Sledge 45). Coral ground presents a shift from the soft soil so quickly transforming into slime and mud under heavy rains.

As the most islands subjected to the U.S. strategy, Peliliu supposed to be another stepping stone on the way to Tokyo. Again the airfield was the vital objective there which would provide future air support for further advance. Even though, the island was captured and believed to be secure, it never became the vital component in the advance as it was supposed. Thus it ended as “the most controversial campaign of the Pacific

War” (Moran 13) because the island took enormous amounts of casualties and cost the

Marines many fierce days and nights of fighting. Furthermore, the leadership was expecting “a considerable number of casualties” but stubbornly believed that the

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campaign would be “quickie” (Moran 22). Consequently, the fact influenced the presence of the correspondents on the island who left after few days convinced by the opinion of the generals and thinking it not worthy of bigger coverage. Thus till recently

Peleliu was not much wrote about or talked about.

The next part focuses on the changes offered by the island and the alterations in the style of Japanese combat technique and what bloody result it was for the Marines.

6.1 Island in the Enemy´s Service

“deathly coral maze of Peleliu”

The Lost Evidence – Peleliu

The first surprise for the Marines awaited them immediately on the beaches. Both the veterans and the new replacements for the first time had to go through the landing which was fully opposed. This time the whole Japanese force was not hidden in the jungle but formed “defense of the beaches as well as a defense in depth” (Moran 22).

The Marines were pinned down by the Japanese heavy fire from the beach fortifications and higher grounds. The inexperienced Marines were struck by the whole sensation of the war reality:

The world was a nightmare of flashes, violent explosions, and snapping

bullets… a strong smell of chemicals and exploding shells filled the air … giant

shells roaring like locomotive … men trapped… sight of helpless comrades

being slaughtered… (Sledge 55-61).

Since the Japanese acquired higher ground, the shelling continued most of time on the

Peleliu which make the combat experience even worse: “shelling simply magnified all

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the terrible physical and emotional effects … not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one´s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity” (Sledge 74). The time the

Marines were spending pinned down on the beaches and slowly advancing further into the island is considered to be “possibly the most fierce fighting of the Pacific War”

(Moran 50).

When the Marines finally managed to capture the positions behind the beaches they encountered a landscape not seen before in the Pacific and so different from the green hellish humid jungle of the previous campaigns: “It was a scene of destruction and desolation that no fiction could invent….It was an alien, unearthly, surrealistic nightmare like the surface of another planet” (Sledge 144-147). All this was done by the bombing which “destroyed most of the scrub vegetation, leaving a moonscape of jagged coral, wood debris, and very little in the way of cover” (Hatfield 171). Moreover, it was

“impossible to dig into the hard coral rock” (Sledge 69) which made the Japanese defense much easier.

Even though, the Marines were slowly pouring further inland their advance was hampered by the rise of the immense heat and no sources of fresh drinkable water. The temperature increased into the astronomical degrees and they saw “the heat rose from the crushed-coral surface of the runways in visible, shimmering waves” (Leckie,

Delivered, 778). The lack of the water natural resources was challenged by the military attempts to supply it which ended in a fiasco: “some incompetent cretin of a supply officer had floated water ashore in drums from which the residual oil had not been cleansed” (779). But Sledge could not have been angry on the supply officer because he with most of the newly arrivals were assigned to the cleaning detail on Pavuvu: “oil drum steam-cleaning detail on Pavuvu … I´m a sonofabitch … I’ll never goof off on another work party as long as I live” (Sledge 76). Also the combination of heat and hard

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coral ground did not offer possibility to bury the dead and the “dead became bloated and gave off a terrific stench within a few hours after death” (Sledge 142).

Enduring the night with the constant Japanese shelling, the second day was designated to capture the Peleliu´s airfield. Sledge remembers that “the attack across

Peleliu´s airfield was the worst combat experience I had during the entire war” (80).

The trouble was caused by the flat open space of the airfield with no other option to bypass it. The Japanese were covering the field with fire from the higher positions and from the remnants of the concrete airport buildings and a warehouse. Finally, they seized the airfield on the second day with great losses.

The following and more horrific Japanese defenses were built in the ridges of

Umurbrogol Mountains. These ridges were “honeycombed” (Moran 12) with caves and hiding places: “The Japanes had enlarged and fortified the caves and equipped them with steel doors that slid open to allow artillery pieces to be rolled out on tracks and fired” (Hatfield 179). Moreover, these single outposts were interlocked in a mutual system where the defensive positions provided a mutual support and fire cover.

Henceforth, these ridge posts had to be taken one by one and yard by yard inflicting enormous casualties.

The last week of the fight was “concentrated on what was known as the

Umubrogol Pocket, the centre of the remaining Japanese resistance” (Westwell 47). The style of the slow and tiresome fighting continued also there and resulted in “a constant movement of one weary, depleted Marine company being relieved by another slightly less weary, depleted company” (Sledge 142). After conquering the Pocket, the island was believed to be secure. But due to the cave system, many Japanese soldiers were able to avoid U.S. forces and even stay there until 1960s.

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Starting 15 September 1944, on the 27 November Peleliu left the Marines

“armed, helmeted, unshaven, filthy, tired, and haggard” (Sledge 103). Japanese demonstrated here that they reformed their warfare technique by transforming it into a more coherent form, building proper beach and inland defenses. They used the ridges for the deadly system of passages and posts and together with “prolonged heavy combat, the loss of sleep because of nightly infiltration and raids, the vigorous physical demands forced on by the rugged terrain, and unrelenting, suffocating heat, the Marines were drained physically and emotionally acquiring the “hollow-eyed vacant look peculiar to men under extreme stress for days and nights on end” (Sledge 125).

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7 Okinawa

“And the rain on Okinawa made Okinawa mud.”

Robert Leckie, Okinawa, chapter XX

Capturing Okinawa supposed to be the last stepping-stone on the way to Japan providing the U.S. army with airfields for staging their final advance. On the other hand, Japanese were convinced that this battle would completely stop the U.S. closing on their empire and that it would be “the anvil upon which the hammer of a Divine

Wind was to destroy the U.S. Navy” (Leckie, Delivered, 874). But later expecting their defeat, they planned to be killed taking down as many enemies as possible. Even though, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not allow the U.S. to use

Okinawa as the base for the invasion, the casualties afflicted there helped “to spur his

(Truman´s) decision to bomb” (Tzeng 95).

Despite these supposed intentions and unexpected results, Okinawa was “the biggest single battle of the Pacific and also history’s greatest amphibious assault”

(Leckie, Delivered, 878). The campaign lasted from 1 April to 21 June 1945. Peleliu battle had provided them with the things they could expect on Okinawa but they also encountered few alterations and new factors.

Civilians created one of these factors. They were local primitive farmers, mostly

“poor and docile people” (Leckie, Delivered 881). The problem was that they were persuaded by the Japanese soldiers that when they are caught by the Americans they would be definitely tortured. The U.S. Marines had to use a lot of persuading to convince them otherwise. Mostly the little kids were the first to break the hostile atmosphere between these two sides. A great example would be a situation when Sledge and his friends encountered mothers with children. The bold dealings of the mother to

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the child made them laugh which eased all the mothers a bit and erased the image of the

Marines as brutal enemy. (Sledge 193).

As it was on Peleliu, the landscape on Okinawa resembled surface of the moon with number of craters when all the greenery and a possibility to take cover vanished with the severe bombing of the positions. But the difference was hidden in the quality of the ground. Peleliu´s coral changed here to a soft soil that the Marines can finally dig in and create some foxholes along the frontline. Marines even joked about the digging here being so easy: “if you dig that hole much deeper they´ll get you for desertion” (Sledge

209). However, also the rain is a quite regular occupant of the island: “No place in the world is more humid than Okinawa, from whose skies as much as eleven inches of rain pour in a single day” (Leckie, Delivered, 877). The rains here were far more intense than what the Marines experienced previously. Moreover, “the dryness gives way to mud” (Miller 222). When the rain started, “the soil became muddy and slippery wherever we hurried around the gun pit” (Sledge 210). With the rain Okinawa turned into one big mud pool:

the downpour brought battle to a standstill and it also made the notorious

Okinawa mud. It was everywhere, in the ears, under the nails, inside leggings or

squeezed coarse and cold between the toes. It got into a man´s weapons, it was

in his food and sometimes he could feel it grinding like emery grains between

his teeth(Leckie, Delivered, 887).

As from the rain there was no escaping from mud. Marines were whining about this sloppy battle but always sarcastically added that “Okinawa had an excellent network of bad roads.” (Leckie, Okinawa, chapter 1). However, when the combat combined with the muddy condition the sarcasm quickly shifted to the despair: “mud in combat was more detestable than I ever imagined. Mud in camp on Pavuvu was a nuisance. Mud on

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maneuvers was an inconvenience. But mud on the battlefield was misery beyond description.” (Sledge 215).

Despite these conditions, Marines’ first encounter with the island was very surprising. After the fierce landing on Peleliu, the landing here was unopposed:

“opposition and casualties were almost nonexistent” (Tzeng 98). They renamed the D- day into L-day meaning Love day. Without further opposition “it soon stretched into

Honeymoon week”. “In three weeks the U.S. had captured four-fifths of the island”

(Hatfield 267). But the Marines had a feeling that this comfortably lead war would not last:

Soon, however, our idyllic stroll on that perfect April morning was broken by an

element of the horrid reality of the war that I knew lurked in wait for us

somewhere on that beautiful island. (Sledge 196)

Marines advancing from the north of the island, which the Japanese surrendered without much of a fight, they approached a line of the ridges stretched from cost to cost called the Shuri line: “Ugly rumors began to increase about the difficulties the army troops were having down on southern Okinawa. From high ground on clear nights I could see lights flickering and glowing on the southern skyline.” (Sledge 200-201).

The Japanese once again utilized the opportunities that the island provided them.

They created there the strongest fortifications because “so long as Shuri remained unconquered, so did Okinawa” (Leckie, Okinawa, chapter 1). Shuri line presented the

“whole system of interlocking defences” (Westwell 55). Moreover, the U.S. intelligence supposed the Japanese forces to be much smaller than 100, 000 troops who awaited them in the maze of the caves. The Marines were well aware that the fights would be for every yard by yard. Many positions were constantly assaulted with small or no result:

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“one division assaulted a single position about eleven times, losing twice the number of men” (Tzeng 98).

Fighting on the ridges full of interlocking positions, collecting the dead from them was very dangerous and unrealistic. Further there was no place to bury them on the ridge. Japanese mostly left their dead when they dropped which caused immense smell. Some were buried but with the advancing Marines the graves were mostly uncovered by them digging their own foxholes: “on Okinawa death literally shares your foxhole. Sledge digs one hole right through a rotting Japanese corpse before he gets permission to angle the hole a bit to the side of the rotting remains” (Miller 222).

The slow conquer of the last Japanese fortress on Shuri line resulted almost in the same number of casualties as the whole Peleliu campaign. For the Americans, it created an immense decision factor in approving the atomic bombing, coming into a conclusion that “the war is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste” (Sledge 315). For the Japanese, it was the last stand not fighting for their lives but to take down with them as many Marines as possible.

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8. Suffering Heroes and Brave Victims

“Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it.”

Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed, p. 315

Having introduced and explored the existing affecting factors – the varieties of the specific islands’ environments, the direct battle involvement, the endurance of the constantly present war culture - this chapter is designed to utilize all of these mounting issues to construct and explain the concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims.

First, the text focuses on the structure of this unusual concept and explains the reasons for its designed contradictory effect and its ambiguity. Following the purpose of the structural composition, the focus shifts to demonstrate how the effects of the factors discussed above conclude into these covering the concepts. The last part of this chapter is devoted to the purpose of creating and exploring the concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims”.

8.1 Concept of Contradiction and Ambiguity

“It is one thing to reconcile these things with God but another to square it with

yourself.”

"Guadalcanal/Leckie"

The aim of this part is to explore the structure of the “suffering heroes” and “brave victims”. It states the intentions for this arrangement and the subsequent effects deriving from this composition.

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The ideas of heroes, victims, suffering, and bravery are very commonly used in the connection with any war topic. As solitary notions, there is no doubt about their expressed meaning in connection with the military context. But being paired together in a “crossed manner”, their unusual combination distorts their unquestionable primary meaning. This distorting compilation is intentionally constructed to illuminate the ambiguity and complexity of a possible definition of the Marines who have been forged in the atmosphere of war.

The definition designates the way a Marine would place himself in the whole concept of war. Simplistically it can mean that some would define themselves as complete victims of the warfare or other would stir totally towards being described as a hero. Considering the two specific Marines, Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge, their thinking is in no way so simply polarized either towards being a hero or towards being a victim. Even though, Leckie found himself in one situation openly uttering that he is “in the role of victim” (Leckie, Helmet 96), his overall definition would not be so clear-cut.

The concept of “brave victims” and “suffering heroes” can be divided into two categories grouped as follows: “suffering” and “victims”; “heroes” and “brave”. These groupings in many ways copy and follow the two main structural storylines occurring in the military memoirs. The first line describes “the things men do” meaning deeds done personally by the Marines and the second line follows the things “being done to” them

(Hynes 398).

The first category comprising the themes of “suffering” and “victims” copies the second line in the military memoirs. These themes are an overall result of the influences to which the Marines have been subjected in the Pacific. They are being put into the positions of the victims due to the various debilitating impacts of the environment on the islands. The suffering is caused by the issues surrounding the direct combat

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experience, such as fears and dangers of being killed, seeing others die, loosing close combat friends or being compelled to personally kill.

On the contrary, the second category consists of the themes of “heroes” and

“brave”. These copy the first storyline in the memoirs which follows the things done by the Marines. In this category more suitable term for their personal actions would be response. The themes basically present ways the Marines were able to defy and cope with the factors surrounding them. The “brave” theme is a corresponding response to the influence of the environment presented by their unbelievable endurance. “Heroes” as a theme respond to the suffering by compelling them to protect their lives and the lives of their fellow Marines by battling the enemy and by risking their lives in the attacks.

Thus these two thematic categories create a concept covering various experiences deriving from the war atmosphere and combat in the Pacific and not focusing on one particular influential aspect with its singular result. Putting together these categories and cross-matching the well-known themes, the concept’s contradictory notion seems to result in a complex picture trying to introduce as many variables as possible. Moreover, the original ambiguity of the concept highlights the overall impression of the Marines´ definition as presented by Leckie and Sledge. They would not accept the full polarized terms of “heroes” and “victims” due to the complexity they themselves are presenting in their works. The ambiguity nicely portrays the difficulty and the perplexity of their attempts to cooperate with the overwhelming and always- present war reality.

The two subsequent parts shifts their focus to the particular concept of

“suffering heroes” and “brave victims”. The text provides concluding evidence taken

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from the previous explorations of the events and factors of the specific islands to support the concept.

8.2 Brave Victims

“In those foxholes, we would have rain storms and there was nothing to do except lie

there, take it and shiver with cold.”

Sid Phillips, You'll Be Sor-ree!, p. 91

The Marines were put into the roles of the victims on a daily basis. Fighting in the

Pacific, they were constantly subjected to the capricious and relentless tropical environment. Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Pavuvu, Peleliu, and Okinawa offer an array of environment-related influences such as jungle, rain, heat, different types of soil, various kinds of animals (mostly insects) and diseases. As Leckie and Sledge many times highlighted there was no possibility to avoid their influence. The inescapability from the environment robs them of “the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice” (Leckie,

Helmet 96). The Pacific stripped them off their possibility to make an honest choice of being a subject to this everlasting discomfort. As Blomberg points out the opposite character on the spectrum, hero in a strict sense, needs a clear choice which involves two options from which he could chose the action leading to heroism. But total lack of the possibilities leaves only the role of a victim.

However, what makes them brave victims is their 'choice' to endure the hostile situations bravely. The endurance of these conditions required far more spirit than sometimes the fights themselves. The environment did not cause simple discomforts which passed quickly but evolved them into a permanent state. The rain on Cape

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Gloucester is a great example of enduring a constant presence of wetness and cold, taking its physical and mental toll. Also the atmosphere on Pavuvu involved one great displeasing natural feature after another, and these had to be tolerated because as has been already pointed out conquering the nature was impossible. Also many Marines stationed on Pavuvu would describe the endurance of the conditions as being much harder since there was no motivation of the fight with the Japanese and having a goal in enduring the environment for some specific important reason. Many would even suggest that endurance of these conditions were sometimes far worse than enduring combat and much more tiresome when combined:

The strength of soul it took to face smells and filth rather than consciousness-

destroying pain meant enduring interminable, soul-destroying discomfort, with

interminability measured in weeks, months, and sometimes years: cold, damp,

and endless revolting assaults on the senses, unrelenting foulness, unavoidable,

and draining, very draining. (Miller 225)

Furthermore, many times the discomforts would slide into a total “insensibility – the absence of all affect” (Miller 201). This was mostly the result not of the physical displeasure but the mental effects of the discomfort. This bordered on the fear of losing sanity. Leckie and Sledge were afraid of it more than of being wounded or killed. Here the way to endure was mostly provided by their fellow Marines uttering their complaints and whining: “whining and niggling help shore up the soul against grand despair” and “the immediate annoyances serve as a coping mechanism that staves off despair and insensibility” (Miller 199). The complaining utterances were followed by unmerciful comments from the fellows mostly full of sarcasm and “no sympathy”

(Phillips 72) since “this was a means of ignoring and sweeping tension under the rug”

(237).

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Therefore, Marines being shipped out into the middle of the Pacific and its relentless tropical environment were at the same time put into the roles of brave victims enduring it with a dignity of a U.S. Marine with the rest of his military family.

8.3 Suffering Heroes

“Nearly all the men suffered from some form of combat fatigue at one time or

another.”

Thomas Bruscino, Legacies of War, p. 137

The Marines were subjected to many diverse combat situations and the styles of fighting; but they offered them the same fear of being killing or seeing their fellow combatants die and having to endure the anxiety of the incoming attack or a missile.

Again similarly to the endurance of the environment, the state of being afraid lengthens the time immensely creating hours from seconds. These long moments were fulfilled with horrific feelings which also got a new dimension: “If there had been such a thing as a meter to carry that measured from anxiety to concern to scare to fear to terror, many times mine would have been pinned beyond terror” (Phillips 91).

However, this submission to the dangers and fears can “lead to complete torpor and lassitude or, by stimulating other emotions, impel a berserk charge” (Miller 201).

Many Marines were capable to fully transforming this fear into an action which was undoubted heroic. Most of them used the fear as a mere driving force to focus on their orders and primary duties and carry them out exceptionally. Here the fellow Marines functioned as a great lead and a good example: “no influence can be more steadying than that he sees some other man near him who is retaining self-control and doing his

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duty” (Miller 209). The need of enduring the attacks or bombings for example spurred the so called “bunching phenomenon” when “the proximity of other bodies provides comfort” (Miller 214).

Thus, there is no surprise in hearing men talking about their respect for and friendship with fellow combatants. Getting through these horrific events and helping each other even by mere presence created “a new faith – a faith in one another … the war could make them feel utterly lonely, the presence of others provided some measure of comfort” (Bruscino 135).

“Courage is a virtue that depends on scarcity, danger, death, and pain” (Miller

204) and thus many Marines suffering from these products of warfare were in many situations compelled to compose their thoughts and strength for themselves as well for sake and lives of their fellow combatants and they had to fight despite seeing and feeling the effects of the war around. They were heroes born out of necessity.

8.4 Heroes

“The real heroes in war … they were the ones who did not come back and those who

were badly wounded, physically or mentally”

Sid Phillips, You'll Be Sor-ree!, p. 237

The concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims” presents a possible interpretation how to define the Marines’ position in the complex reality of war using already known ideas. Its creation derived from the many accounts of former combatants´ stories refusing a label of a hero: “there are no glorious living, but only glorious dead” (Leckie

305); “they were not heroes of World War II. The real heroes, they said, never came

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home.” (Bruscino 144). Thus detaching themselves from being heroes, there is a question of how they would construct their own definitions because there was no doubt that the Marines needed to find their position in the chaos of the Pacific war:

The war had changed the men. It had torn them from their homes, stripped them

of their individuality, reformed them into new groups, shipped them to distant

lands, and made them confront the most grand and terrible extremes of human

existence. (Bruscino 150)

Despite this need, the definition would not be easy anyway. The Pacific provided so many different influences at the same time that their combination almost arose into incomprehensibility.

Moreover, the concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims” was able to find the “missing” heroes of the war. The Marines always designated others as their heroes and never fully realized that by helping each other to cope with the environment and by sharing the courage to withstand the direct combat effect, they became heroes for the other Marines: “In the end, after all that they had gone through, after all they had seen and done, after all they had won and lost, comrades became the cause. And they would not forget” (Bruscino 150).

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Conclusion

The intention of the thesis was to introduce the concept of “suffering heroes” and

“brave victims” as found in the military memoirs of Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge.

The purpose also was to provide enough evidence derived primarily from Helmet for

My Pillow and With the Old Breed as well as from the wider context of the Pacific War theatre events.

Chapter one situated the two memoirs in the broader context of war literature.

Moreover, due to the specific genre features of the military memoirs one of the subchapters discussed these features. The basis for the thesis’ concept was created particularly by the structure of the storylines.

The following chapter introduced Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge as authors of the memoirs, the U.S. Marines and above as real personalities living beyond the war experience.

The chapters three to seven provide´d the textual evidence, situated it in the broader context of the Pacific and illustrated the basis on which the concept of the thesis is based on and from which it is derived.

The final chapter firstly explores the mere composition of the concept of

“suffering heroes” and “brave victims” leading to the intentional impression of ambiguity and contradiction. It explains this issue with the evidence of variety and complexity of the influences, presented in previous chapters. The concept is divided into parts. The division derives from the structural storyline of the memoir genre forming categories which sort the factors in the Pacific into two lines of influence and response. Thus these lines correspond to the themes in the concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims”. The final reconnaisance of the concept supported by the evidence

67

of the factors serves as a possible tool to be able to identify the way the Marines themselves would define their position in the vast reality of the Pacific War Theatre.

68

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Resumé

The purpose of this thesis is to introduce the concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims”. The concept’s two-part structure comprises the variety and the complexity of the influential factors occurring in the environment of the Pacific War theatre. The exploration of the individual factors supports the concept and concludes in discovering a possible way the Marines themselves would define their position in the Pacific war experience. The first section is devoted to the genre of war memoirs and its contextualization in the broader context of war literature. This also includes the profiles of Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge presenting themselves as authors, U.S. Marines and people. The subsequent part provides the evidence of the influences following

Leckie’s and Sledge’s steps through the Pacific islands of Guadalcanal, Cape

Gloucester, Pavuvu, Peleliu, and Okinawa. The final chapter is solely devoted to the concept of “suffering heroes” and “brave victims” particularly exploring its structure, its contradiction and ambiguity, and its specific purpose.

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Resumé

Cílem této bakalářské práce je představení konceptu „trpících hrdinů“ a „odvážných obětí“. Dvojdílná struktura konceptu zahrnuje rozmanitost a komplexnost vlivných faktorů, které se vyskytovaly v prostředí války v Tichomoří. Koncept se opírá o jednotlivé prozkoumané faktory a vede k objevení možného způsobu, kterým by sami

Mariňáci dokázali definovat svou roli v rámci nabytých zkušeností z Tichomoří. První

část se věnuje žánru válečných memoárů a jeho zařazení do širšího kontextu válečné literatury. V této sekci jsou také zahrnuty profily Roberta Leckieho a Eugena Sledge, které je přibližují jako autory, Mariňáky a především jako lidi. Následující část představuje jednotlivé vlivy prostřednictvím Leckieho a Sledgeovy cesty po

Tichomořských ostrovech jako Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Pavuvu, Peleliu a

Okinawa. Závěrečná kapitola je věnována konceptu „trpících hrdinů“ a „odvážných obětí“ a podrobně rozebírá jeho strukturu, protikladnost a dvojznačnost a jeho specifický účel.

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Appendices

Fig. 1. Robert Leckie, 1942 (Leckie, Helmet)

Fig. 2 Robert Leckie, 1947, office of the Associated Press, Buffalo, New York (Leckie,

Helmet)

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Fig. 3 Eugene B. Sledge, 1946

(Sledge, With the Old Breed)

Fig. 4 Eugene Sledge and Sid Phillips,

May 1942 (Phillips, You'll Be Sor-ree!)

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Fig. 5 Pacific Ocean: This map shows the positions of the particular islands in the scope of the whole Pacific. (Leckie, Delivered)

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Fig. 6 A siege area on Guadalcanal: the map shows where the Marines were holding their defensive positions with two prominent points – Tenaru and Blood Ridge.

(Westwell 19)

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Fig. 7 New Britain: This map locates the position of the Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain. The second mark points to the Japanese station in Rabaul. Captured

Cape Gloucester should have served as a stepping stone to defeat Rabaul. (Rottman

186)

Fig. 8 Peleliu: This map shows the prominent features on the island composed by the airfield and the Umurbrogol mountain range which provided difficult obstacles in the

Marines’ advance. (Sledge, 17)

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Fig. 9 Okinawa: This layout of the island highlights the shape which enabled the

Japanese to build their defensive lines such as Shuri. (Westwell 60)

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