Bill Paull: CAMP TARAWA
We got marched off the transport and loaded aboard a narrow-gage railway
train. This route was usually only used to transport sugar cane to a mill
for conversion into sugar. We relished that ride on the slow moving
flatcars. It was great to get a smooth trip instead of a slogging on foot
or being jammed into the back of a hard-axle truck. We got dumped off at
Honakaa, herded into trucks and transported about twenty miles over a dusty
road to Kamuela, a tiny village in the saddle between the volcanoes
Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.
"Camp Tarawa" was just a name. We had to construct it from scratch with
the help of a SeaBee battalion. When we arrived, the navy's construction
battalion was still nailing together tent decks. We slept on the rough lava
beds until the lovely pyramidal tents were erected. Moving into a tent with
a wooden floor, overhead shelter, and canvas cots was sheer bliss. We
had established a deep respect for the SeaBees during the campaign on
Guadalcanal where they shared the shelling and bombing with us as they
worked on Henderson Field. Now we forged a lasting love affair with them.
They kept a hot kitchen open and welcomed us into their mess halls. Our
mess was still dishing out "C" rations and Spam. They had access to Naval
stores. Their menu wasn't especially superb but they shared what they had
with us. I guess we were like wistful ragged orphans with our runny noses
pressed up against the candy store window. A fried bacon and egg sandwich
or a piece of apple pie was a memorable treat.
The SeaBees consisted mostly of older men with special building
skills. Now when I write "older", I realize how relative age is--- my
Marine companions were mostly in their early twenties. Now we were getting
new replacements of seventeen and eighteen year olds who were still trying
to learn how to cope with a razor. I was twenty-five, so I often got called
"Pops", and I did feel paternal towards these eager, young kids. By now, I
had discovered that war isn't a glorious adventure. The campaign in the
Solomons was bad enough, but the bloody carnage and terror of Tarawa erased
any lingering ideas I had about the glamour and gallantry involved in the
killing of other human beings.
The civilians of Hawaii didn't greet us with flower leis and smiling
Aloha's. They were apprehensive and wary of these notorious, vicious,
Marine killers. It was weeks before they realized that we were not
monsters, and began to treat us with friendship and tolerance rather than
dread. The Corps took a lot of criticism in the American press about
"reckless expenditure of lives" in the assault on Tarawa. It was reported
that one salty old "China Marine" remarked, "Hell! If we can stand the
bleeding, those safe civilians should be able to stand reading about it!"
Soon after our camp was set up we were informed that our Battalion
was to be split. Half of the personnel would form the nucleus of a new
outfit, the 2nd 155mm Howitzer Battalion. Along with five others of our
twelve-man H & S Instrument Section, I got assigned to this new outfit. I
had to say goodbye to some of my old comrades but all my closest friends
were transferred too: Marty Petersen, Phil Anderson, Bill Evans, Jimmy
Francavilla and Max Jasso. We became the core of the new section. The new
2nd 155 became part of the Fleet Marine Force. This meant that we could be
attached to any outfit that needed additional artillery support. Our
section got new members fresh out of boot camp sent from a Replacement
Battalion. As our section's senior corporal, I was delegated to pick them
up in Hilo and bring them back to our camp. I remembered how forlorn and
apprehensive I had felt months ago back in San Diego when I was escorted
into a new outfit, so I tried to be friendly and gentle as I herded them
around like a benevolent mother hen. I brought them to our camp, checked
them in with the First Sergeant, took them to the quartermaster to get
their folding cots and blankets, gave them a tour of our camp area, and
introduced them to our section members. I remember the names of four of
those new members: Stan Fillion, a cheerful eternal optimist; Doug
Morrison, a really smart little guy who was great with math computations;
Jim McNamer, a good carpenter and general fix-it-up guy; and John Jassunas,
an older recruit, a naturalized American citizen from Estonia who was so
neat and precise that he was soon made our number one draftsman. I am proud
of how our section welcomed the new recruits and made them feel part of
our team. Of course, we told them lurid tales of our past glorious
accomplishments, and we impressed upon them the fact that they had lucked
out by being assigned to the finest outfit in the whole Marine Corps.
I was surprised when Lieutenant Brown was made the new Battalions's Junior
Intelligence Officer and put in command of the FDC and the Instrument
Section. My old buddy, Red Brown, had been commissioned while we were in
New Zealand and transferred into another outfit. Now he was back, and it
was a great reunion. Service protocol forbids fraternization between
Officers and enlisted men, but our friendship didn't stop just because
Red now had a bar on his shoulder and I only had two chevrons on my sleeve.
We had shared too many battle experiences and had made to many memorable
liberties together to let some Marine regulation strain our relationship.
It took some acting on our parts when we were together in the presence of
other troops and I had to come up to my old comrade, stand at attention,
salute, and give a report. I was supposed to be solemn and respectful.
Red and I always avoided direct eye contact because we had trouble
repressing grins at the absurdity of the charade.
Our battalion now had twelve weapons with real clout. The basic
rules of surveying gun positions and plotting target areas still applied,
but suddenly we were dealing with distances measured in miles rather than
yards. We got transits, new measuring chains, and plotting gear. There were
intensive training sessions as we struggled to learn how to handle all this
new equipment. Our firing range was in the saddle between Maura Kea and
Mauna Loa, a desolate stretch of cactus and lava beds. Artillery rounds
had pulverized the smooth lava flows into a sharp, abrasive rubble. We
could completely destroy our boon-dockers after only a few days of
surveying exercises in the area. It seemed as if I was forever
"breaking-in" a new pair of shoes.
I made a two-day liberty in Hilo with Ray Kehoe, a corporal in the
H&S FDC, Fire Direction Center. We visited the USO and listened to new
records. "Old Black Magic" was one of them. That tune always transports me
back to a peaceful, sunny afternoon in Hilo. We played miniature golf, went
to a movie, and then discovered an oriental bathhouse. This was a
memorable adventure. We soaked in a huge wooden tub of almost boiling
water, then got salt rub-downs from a huge summo-wrestler type who rinsed
off the salt by blasting us with hot water from a pressure hose. I recall
Ray and I cowering in a corner, trying to protect our eyes and other
tender parts from the stinging jets. When it was all over we felt great. I
guess we decided that our money was well spent on this mild torture. I
suppose this was an early example of the presently popular hot-tubs and
shower massages.
Mostly we spent our liberties on the northern tip of the island. Trucks
would run to Honakaa, Kona, Hilo, or Hawi. The little town of Hawi
attracted the fewest troops, so we usually opted to go there. Our small
instrument section group discovered a tiny village, Kohala, about three
miles away, and we tried to keep it a secret. We hiked out there to the
sugar refining plant and made friends with the workers. There wasn't much
to do but we hung around the little general store, ate ice cream, and went
skinny dipping in the surf at a tiny beach. Pretty tame stuff, but we had
more fun and ended our liberties in much better shape than the troops who
had spent all afternoon in Hawi's two bars drinking the awful rot-gut
whiskey made from sugar cane squeezings.
Lt. Brown had some clout in the battalion and I shamelessly exploited
my connection with him in order to keep our section off guard duty, garbage
details, and mess hall duty. Red always managed to schedule a priority
training exercise when our turn came to serve any of these distasteful
tasks. We often used his authorization to check out a truck and a rubber
boat from the motor pool and inform the First Sergeant that we were going
on a survey training mission to Hapuna Beach, about fifteen miles away. We
used the rubber boat like a surf board, paddling it out until we could
catch a wave and ride it in to the beach. The flexible boat would
invariably fold in the middle and dump us into the boiling surf. We thought
we were having a great time, and I suppose we were, but now I shudder to
think of the dangerous risks we were taking. Anyway, no one got drowned
before the First Sergeant caught on to what we were doing and put a sudden
end to our "training excursions."
The new 2nd 155 Howitzer Battalion was attached to a Provisional
Brigade. Then we were detached from the brigade and assigned to our old
outfit, the 2nd Division, for an invasion of some unnamed island. By now,
we were getting paranoid and distressed by all these reassignments. It
seemed as if no one knew what the hell to do with us. It was about this
time that we began to think of ourselves as orphans. The Leatherneck
Magazine dubbed us "The Forgotten Battalion" and this name has stuck with us.
About the middle of May we loaded aboard an LST, Landing Ship Tank, and
sailed northwest. We anchored off the island of Maui and spent several days
making practice landings on the beaches. These rehearsal exercises were
much easier than our previous landings from the big troop transports. LSTs
are about one third the size of the dear old President Jackson. They had a
ramp on the bow that lowered to the waterline and this allowed us to jump
directly from the ramp into a landing boat. I never had to climb down one
of those damn treacherous landing nets again. The LSTs did have a
disadvantage though. Since they were so much smaller than a transport they
pitched and rolled nauseatingly even in smooth seas. During the first few
days at sea I always spent most of my time hanging over the rail puking,
before I managed to acquire sea-legs. Unfortunately, I had to suffer with
this sickening indoctrination every time I sailed off on an LST.
After about a week at Maui, we sailed northwest to Oahu and anchored at a
pier in Pearl Harbor. Every day we were sent ashore for close-order drill
and calisthenics, which we called "Organized Grab-Ass". One afternoon a
new, not-too-bright, 2nd Lieutenant had us march back aboard ship in
cadence. Those twenty pairs of big feet encased in boon-dockers
striking the gang-plank in rhythm was too much for those old timbers. The
plank broke and dumped us into the narrow stretch of murky water between
the ship and the dock. We were deposited near where the ship's bilges
emptied into the
harbor. I clung to the floating remains of the gang-plank and tried to
ignore the garbage floating by. Amidst the potato peelings, cabbage leaves,
egg shells, and soggy paper where items I resolutely refused to identify.
We all finally made it to the pier and another plank was run up to the
deck. This time we straggled aboard without marking time.
I was one of the walking wounded. My hand had been squashed between two
braces. I thought my fingers were broken but they were only torn and
bruised. The medics had to saw off my ring, a ruby birthstone my parents
had given me when I graduated from high school. Until now it had never been
off
my finger and it was a treasured talisman... my link to home. I tied it on
the chain with my dog-tags and wore it around my neck until I was able to
get it fixed in Honolulu about five months later. I've worn it ever since.
I kept telling the corpsmen that they should write me up for a Purple Heart
but they just ignored my suggestion, but I did get to sleep one night in
the sick-bay between clean sheets after a luxurious, hot, fresh water
shower. This made my impromptu frolic in the sewage almost worthwhile.
One night, soon after this, we were awakened by the General Quarters
horns going off. Our ship upped anchor and pulled away from the docks. When
we were allowed to go up on deck we could see and hear explosions at a pier
about a mile away. Several LSTs were exploding and burning. Sabotage was
suspected but never proven. Guard details were doubled and security was
extreme throughout the balance of our stay at Pearl.
About the 1st of June, we sailed southwest from Hawaii and
rendezvoused with a big convoy at Eniwetok. Now we were told where we were
headed. Our battalion of artillery was assigned as support for the 2nd,
3rd, and 4th Marine Divisions and the 27th Army Division who were to invade
the Marianas
Islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.
HILO, HAWI, KOHALA
December 1943 - June 1944