The Death of Manila John Basilone
by Charles "Chuck" Tatum
...Looking back at the beach, I can tell we are in trouble. The third and fourth waves are really catching hell. Everyone is hugging the deck as if his survival depends on how close he can get to the ground.

Among all of the prone figures, there is a lone Marine walking straight up. He’s kicking butts. "Get off the beach! Move out!" He turns and gives the hand wave that signals "follow me," and they do just that.

That lone Marine is Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, Medal of Honor winner from Guadalcanal. This guy has guts. The forward surge of Basilone’s group carries to where Cliff and I are. The only other figure walking around is Lieutenant Colonel Louis C. Plain, the first battalion executive officer. He and Baslione must have come in on the fourth wave. On the way in, they’d have had a chance to see what was happening on the beach, and that we are pinned down.

The Japs have done it again. Another shell in the same spot, hitting about 75 feet in front of Cliff and me. It showers everyone in the a cloud of choking black dust. It’s in my eyes and in my mouth. I just hope it’s not getting into our weapons.

Basilone runs up to Cliff and me. He whacks me on my helmet and points ahead to where the shells have been hitting. As the sand dust clears away, and by looking down Basilone’s arm, I see he is pointing at an aperture of a pillbox, firing down the beach into the Fourth Division’s sector. Basilone hollers in my ear to go into action on that target. I erect the tripod. Cliff places the machine gun and clicks it into place. I throw the breach open. Cliff hands me the ammo belt. I slam the breach down and pull the bolt back. It slams forward. I try to fire. Nothing happens. The breach if full of sand.

Our protective rag didn’t work. I throw the breach open again and roll over on my side. Cliff opens my pack and gets the cleaning gear out. I use a toothbrush to clean away the sand. The belt is back in. The breach is closed. I pull the bolt back; it slams forward. This time it fires, and I see tracers hitting the wall of the pillbox.

The rounds are just ricocheting off the protective steel walls. This is no good. Basilone tells me, through signals, to move the machine gun over to the right. Cliff and I grab the gun, complete with tripod, and move it about 35 feet to the right. Now our field of fire is oblique to the aperture of the pillbox. We open fire again.

The tracer rounds tell me I am right on target. I must remember to fire in small bursts. I am tempted to run out the belt. Basilone found a demolition team, and directed a member of the team to advance up the line of machine gun fire toward the pillbox. I continued to fire on the opening of the gun emplacement.

Basilone slaps me on the back. I quit firing. The demolition man makes it up the last few feet to the pillbox. He tosses a 10-pound charge of composition C-2 explosive into the mouth of the pillbox. The demolition man turns and runs. We all duck for cover. This is going to be a big blast. Ten pounds of composition C-2 plastic explosive can blow a hole in hell.

Basilone signals me to commence firing again. This time he sends up the demolition man that operates the flamethrower. Basilone hits me on the helmet again. He wants me to cease firing. I don’t want to quit. I can see the machine gun’s tracer rounds going into the opening the C-2 has blown in the pillbox. I feel good; we are fighting back.

I cease firing. The flamethrower man sticks the barrel of the flamethrower into the mouth of the pillbox. He gives a couple of blasts and turns it into hell. The Rising Sun just set on some of the Japanese defenders, Under Manila John Basilone, the operation has gone by the book; just as we practiced back in the states.

The next thing I know Sgt. Basilone is standing astride my back. He unlocks the tripod and grabs my machine gun and screams for me to get the belt. I grab it in my arms and we take off on a run up the slopes that lead up to the pillbox. At the top of the pillbox, there is a low area about 30 feet around. As the defenders run out of the inferno that the flamethrower has created, Sgt. Basilone cuts them down, firing the machine gun from the hip.

Sgt. Basilone is using the famous "Basilone bail." (The Basilone bail, while not standard issue, is a device Basilone invented on Guadalcanal. It’s a heavy-duty version of a bail, like on a point bucket, that’s attached to the front part of a machine gun barrel. It helps you move a hot gun intact, without gloves on the run. This is the only way to fire a machine gun from the hip.)

I am thinking, "It’s Medal of Honor time again for John Basilone." I have just been a partner to history. A rifleman and Cliff put some defenders out of their misery. Nine Japanese are dead, not counting the ones inside the pillbox. So far, we have no casualties. Basilone hands me back my machine gun. He turns and gives the hand wave that signals "follow me," and we do. There are about 20 Marines in this area. We follow Sgt. Basilone on a sweep that’s to carry this group off the beach and onto a flat plateau, just before the approach to the airfield runways of Motoyama Number One.

I look at my wristwatch; it’s 1033. We landed at 0903. We have been on Iwo for one hour and thirty minutes.

It seems like a lifetime...