A Marine From Boston
A first person story of a US Marine in World War II - Boot Camp-Samoa-Guadalcanal-Bougainville
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Aboard the USS Jackson October 28, 1943 0730 I sat on the deck, at the railing all alone, deep in thought and just watching the sea. We seemed to be all alone, the only ship on this big ocean, and I’m not making a joke when I say it gave us a sinking feeling. We had left Guadalcanal and were sailing up the "slot" between the major islands in the Solomons chain. There was no way to communicate with anyone off the ship and we had just had a briefing in the ships mess hall by our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hector deZayas. I kept thinking of what he said. "Before we land, the area will be shelled by the big guns from our fleet, and bombed from the air, and just before we land our fighters will strafe the area to soften it up for us. We have the honor of being the first landing under fire in the war in the Pacific." I really didn’t give a damn about the honor, but I wondered if they would really soften the beachhead up, and if all those bomb and shell didn’t explode, would it leaver a lot of duds or hangfires that will go off after we get ashore...that is "IF" we get ashore? I should have asked him if those big ship and bombers could stick around for a few days and do their thing with the "40,000 Japanese troops a day’s march away." I admit, I wished I was back in Boston. Looking around, I could see that most of the guys wanted to be alone like I am. Here I am, sitting at the rail with my feet dangling over the side and I know it’s a court martial offense and I didn’t give a damn. If they locked me up for six months or more, they would be doing me a favor. I kept hearing the damn voice in the mess hall saying, "There’s no turning back now, the chips are down." A new chaplain, who I never saw before, was walking around the deck saying, "Hello, and how ya doing?" to everyone I was tempted to ask if he was making the landing, but I was afraid I’d break up and someone would see me crying, and that was my only real fear. I was afraid of being a coward and not able to do my job. I looked the other way and ignored him. Finally another guy came over and asked if the space beside me was taken. I told him no and he sat down. After a short bit of bullshit about what we were going to do the Japs, he told me he was "scared-shitless" and I agreed with him. He said that he talked to Gunny Brown who said we were to days from the target and as we get closer everything will speed up and we’ll be ashore before we know it. I wondered how the Gunny knew, this was the first landing for him and everyone else. As we watched the water the waves were a hell of a lot bigger that the ones we had seen during practices and we both visualized being crushed between our ship and landing craft. We were told that starting tomorrow we would be saddled up with helmets, packs, and have our weapons with us at all times and be ready to disembark at a moment’s notice. That order really agitated me because all I could see was a big ocean with nobody to help us and with all this weight we would sink right to the bottom, and the sharks would lunch on us. For the first time I was asking myself, how did an eighteen-year-old kid get into this mess? A year ago I was a dumb but happy teenager, and now I might be as old as I will ever be. He proudly describes himself as a Green Marine: young men who enlisted in the Marine Corps reserve for the duration of the war-plus six months. The Green Marines were never issued the fancy dress blue uniforms. They had only dungarees, khakis for summer and greens for winter. They joined to help win the war and now that it was over they wanted to return to a life without blind obedience or excessive protocol. The Green Marines left the Marine Corps with their heads high and proud of the service they provided.
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About the Book
John Carey was brought up in a suburb of Boston. His knowledge of world events was influenced by the weekly newsreels he saw at the local movie house, showing the unrest in Europe, Asia, and labor/management strikes in his own country as the Depression ended. He was a junior in high school when Pearl Harbor was bombed and part of a group of teenagers, not yet of enlistment age, who feared the war would end before they had a chance to "get even" with those who attacked the USA. His education in the real world started with Boot Camp in ’42 where he learned to exist, in a platoon of recruits from every walk of life, under the direction of uncompromising Marine Corps drill instructors. He witnessed the segregation in the South, and was trained as a scout sniper in still primitive American Samoa. He joined the Third Marine Division on Guadalcanal and was in the assault wave on Cape Torikina on Bougainville and spent the next two months when many men were wounded and died in a Hell on Earth. The purpose of this book is to put on record some of the events and attitudes as we entered the war. It then tells the story of many Marines, many of whom performed deeds in combat that were never recorded, never recognized, and quickly forgotten by all but a few. This is his effort to record those deeds for their children and grandchildren and report what he witnessed. He proudly describes himself as a Green Marine: young men who enlisted in the Marine Corps reserve for the duration of the war-plus six months. The Green Marines were never issued the fancy dress blue uniforms. They had only dungarees, khakis for summer and greens for winter. They joined to help win the war and now that it was over they wanted to return to a life without blind obedience or excessive protocol. The Green Marines left the Marine Corps with their heads high and proud of the service they provided.