R. Burgin - Islands of the Damned

There were a lot of questions. How did I like the Marines? I said I liked the Marines just fine. They asked about my combat experience, and what did I feel about ordering men into action, where they might be killed? I said I was okay with that. I had done it before when I’d sent men out to be stretcher bearers.

One of them asked if I planned to make the Marine Corps my career.

I said, “No, sir, I’m not making the Marine Corps a career.”

“Why not?”

“Well, sir, I joined the Marine Corps to fight the Japs. And whenever we whup their butts, I’m going home.”

Another officer was looking over some papers. “Have you been saving any money since you joined the Marine Corps?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“And you’ve been sending money home?”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

He repeated the question. “And you’re sending money home?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“How much money have you sent home?”

I knew the exact figure. “Over two thousand dollars, sir.”

“Two thousand dollars?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmmm.” He tapped his finger on the table. “You’ve been a private, a private first class, a corporal and a sergeant. You were making fifty-five dollars and you’re now drawing sixty-five dollars a month. And you’ve sent two thousand dollars home?”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “Sergeant Burgin, do you shoot crap?”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“You have that kind of money going home. You sure you don’t shoot crap?”

I said, “No, sir.”

He didn’t ask if I played poker.

The truth of it was, I was sending ten dollars a month home, plus whatever money I won in poker. I was far from a skillful poker player compared to some of them in the company. We had about five or six guys that were the real poker players. And they didn’t even start until about a week or ten days after we got our paychecks. They’d hold back and let these little games like I was in run their course, letting the money gather. Then they’d play poker. Big fish eating the little fish.

Maurice Darsey, our first sergeant, and Snafu were our regulars, the real players. For a time I was company clerk. Mo would give me $1,000 and tell me to go to the post office and buy money orders. I had to buy ten because you couldn’t get a money order for more than $100 at the time. So I’d buy ten money orders and bring them back and Mo would put them in an envelope and mail it home. He’d say, “Ah, that’s another mule on the farm.”

We played poker mostly evenings in the tents. And it was a rare tent that didn’t have a coffee can of jungle juice brewing somewhere out in back. We’d take any kind of dried fruit we could get our hands on, usually raisins, prunes or apricots. Put a little sugar and water in, partly seal it and let it ferment. Some of the guys would hang their can in a palm tree. In a week or so it would be ready.

Jungle juice was pretty bad stuff, but it would do the job. I remember the first time T. L. Hudson, a private and ammo carrier, got drunk on that stuff, maybe the first time he got drunk in his life. Some Marines had a can of jungle juice they’d made with dried peaches. They’d already drunk all the juice, and there was nothing left in the can except the fruit at the bottom. Hudson kept sticking his hand in there, pulling out those alcohol-soaked peaches and eating them. We called him “Peaches” for a long time after that.

Four times a year, the Marine Corps would lay out a feast for the men—Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and November 10, the anniversary of the creation of the Corps. We had refrigeration units on Pavuvu now, so we had fresh meat a couple times a week, plus a kind of mutton stew we called “corn-willie.”

For Christmas they brought over turkeys from Banika and roasted them, with dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pea soup, cranberry sauce, apple pie and coffee. While we ate, the loudspeakers played Bing Crosby Christmas carols and big-band music by Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

Tommy Dorsey brought up old memories. Back at Camp Elliott near San Diego, whenever we got weekend liberty a buddy and I would hitchhike up to Los Angeles. In those days anybody would pick you up if you were in uniform. On Saturday nights we would go to the Hollywood Palladium. They had all the big-name bands there. I remember Tommy Dorsey played two nights, and one of the nights Betty Grable was in the club. I was just another lowly Marine, rubbing shoulders with all that Hollywood glamour.

For New Year’s Eve, the Corps repeated the turkey feast. Someone decided we were going to get at least one of those turkeys, maybe two, and bring them back to K Company. I don’t remember everyone who was in on that scheme, but I know Peter Fouts and Howard Nease were involved, both corporals. Fouts had been wounded in the arm by a machine gun on the beach at Peleliu, but he had recovered and was back with us. Nease would soon be killed by shrapnel on Okinawa.

We finished dinner and were back in our tents when we heard cries of “Fire! Fire!” We looked out and saw a bunch of people running around the battalion mess hall. A pretty good fire was going in a brush pile near the entrance.

Later that night somebody shook my shoulder, waking me up. “Psst, Burgin! You want some turkey?”

I said, “Yeah, yeah.”

“Well, come on!” I hopped off my cot and followed him to a nearby tent, where everybody was sitting around eating turkey and drinking beer. Nease carved off a couple slices with his KA-BAR and handed them to me while they told and retold the whole story.

It seems somebody had carelessly left a can of gasoline in that brush pile. While the mess crew was cleaning up after supper, the brush had mysteriously burst into flame. The sentry on duty yelled “Fire!” and while everybody was running around trying to put it out, two leftover turkeys vanished from the galley.

We finished our midnight snack.

“Make damn sure you don’t leave any of this stuff lying around,” somebody reminded us. We took the bones and carcasses over to I Company’s bivouac and dumped them in their trash can.

Guess who got the blame the next day for stealing the turkeys.

As the new year began the rumor mill kicked into high gear. There were the usual stories that somebody had shot himself. For a time there was speculation that the Marines were about to be absorbed into the Army. That one had popped up again and again over the years. There was a tale they were putting saltpeter into our food to cool down our sex drive. I don’t know what they thought we might do, with only a handful of Red Cross girls on the island, safe behind barbed wire most of the time. Our tents were about three-quarters of a mile from the beach, and I didn’t bother to go down to the USO canteen just to be hanging out there. From time to time I’d go to company headquarters to visit a friend of mine I’d gone to school with. Whenever I went down there I’d see the Navajo code talkers hanging around, but I never got acquainted with any of them.

Mostly the rumors were about where we were going next.

Our training now emphasized street fighting and mutual support between tanks and infantry. That led some of us to think that we were headed for Formosa or mainland China, or even to Japan itself. There was a map of a long, narrow island in circulation, but none of us recognized it.

In late January the whole division shipped out to Guadalcanal for amphibious maneuvers in LCIs—Landing Craft, Infantry. These were a newer and smaller version of the LSTs we’d taken to Peleliu, but with ramps running down the side instead of bow doors. They could carry an infantry company plus a couple of jeeps. We’d go out and make a run for the beach. When we got on shore we’d bail out and move in a few dozen yards. Then we’d get back on the LCIs, go out and do it all over again, eight or ten times a day. The mortar platoon also practiced setting up with three guns until we could do it in our sleep.