The Old Breed

Chapter 28

Bloody Nose Ridge, Peleliu

September 17th, 1944

We descended the hill the same way we had ascended, a shower of mortars and volleys of fire. More men were hit, more falling, the cries of the wounded. We had to stop or slow multiple times to pick up the wounded or wait for the intensity of the fire to slow. Hammer got hit halfway down, the corporal going down in a stream of curses. A bullet had entered from behind, ripping a hole through his pack and entering his back. Fortunately, the bullet had hit off his second canteen, metal, which slowed down the bullet enough not to do serious damage. Hammer would live, but it would hurt like hell. Bear and Rocky helped him down the hill, bullets impacting the ground just inches around them. I stayed near Lanky as per usual, the tall Marine bent over as we ran down the hill, still a big target no matter how much he crouched. But no bullets hit us. As we fell back into the relative safety of our own lines, though how much we really owned of that was still being decided in firefights with stringent defenders behind the lines, the fire finally settled down, the Japs insistent on having the last word on the fight, finished off their defense with a short mortar strike which caused an addition two casualties. In total, we had taken nearly fifty casualties taking a hill for nearly an hour before falling back to the same position we had been in before. We were able to take down our wounded but the dead stayed on the hill. It hurt us to leave our fallen comrades behind. It went against every piece of humanity we had left. But humanity couldn't save all of us. To live, we had to give up some of of the important pieces that had made us who we were before the war. We changed. The war required it of us. And so, when the time came, we left our dead up there to rot in the sweltering heat among the Nips.

Counted among the wounded was Captain Hayes. The captain had been hit on the way down also, which, like Hammer, was grave enough to pull him off the line but not to cause permanent damage. I was saddened by this news. Although many had grumbled on Cape Gloucester and Pavuvu about the man, calling him a coward and bad leader, something had changed on the beach and heading into the ridges. The captain had been by our sides the whole time, personally leading the charge towards the enemy, risking his life time and time again to guide us onwards. He had earned our respect. I noticed several other Marines saddened by the news also. Lieutenant Egelhoff, the previous XO, executive officer, was chosen to lead the company for now. Parsons became the new XO in addition to commanding the consolidated first and second platoon.

Just because we had made it off the hill did not mean our job was finished however. Company C had made the most advancement of the day at a heavy price and, the Japs quickly trying to exploit the meager position, the remnants of our company, along with Company B and other replacement units, were moved to fill in the plug the gaps and bolster the number of men. This meant we could not reuse our positions from the previous night, requiring us to fortify new ones. We had found within the first two nights on Peleliu that the hard coral made it nearly impossible to dig in, hours spent trying to dig foxholes in vain, the ground unbreakable. We learned instead to use the craters from artillery as natural foxholes, taking fallen logs and other thick vegetation and piling them up as barricades around the holes.

Replacements had been brought up to the front, not combat veterans as we had hoped, but more men like Cook. Headquarters personnel, cooks, supply troops, truck drivers. Many of whom who had not fired rifles since basic, had never been so close to the front that death really was zipping right over their heads. I watched one man down the line standing upright, staring ahead at the looming ridgeline, rolling in smoke, darkening in the fading light. He was obviously very green. Any veteran knew never stick his head out for more than a few seconds. The replacement quickly figured out why as a sniper hit the left side of his face, crushing the bones in his cheeks, ruining the eye, blood pouring down his face. Surprisingly, he survived the initial bullet impact, though his mouth was ruined enough that he couldn't make a sound, his panicked writhing the telltale sign that he was still alive. The corpsman reacted accordingly, going to work instantly, another corpsman running over to help him, the two rushing to stifle the blood before he could bleed out, bandages packed onto the wound layer after layer, the blood flow finally slowing. They quickly got hm onto a stretcher and heading back behind the lines from where he'd come from. There they would probably get him to a field hospital near the beach before shipping him out onto a hospital ship. Someone said he'd lost sight in both eyes. He'd gotten his view of the ridge. Now it was probably the last thing he'd ever see.