 Those wahinis, if you got lucky. Of course, there were guys who'd rather go swimming. That's us. July 1944. Sleeping in the hot sun after all those rugged months of jungle training. Fat, sassy, and shaved. We thought then we knew all the answers. This came under the heading of morale building. Of course, some characters needed more than others. The Quarters was doing its job. General Richardson, commanding general Pacific Ocean area and his staff were cooking up a different kind of party for us. It began the day we started on the boat ride, wondering where the hell we were going and how we were going to do when we got there. Two solid years of training in back of you, but training and climbing through the ropes on fight night are two different things. There were more than a couple of guys climbing that gang plank who were giving that subject their private attention. And we shoved off on our little excursion of about 6,000 miles over water. We're going down under. That's all we knew. We'd have even been glad to see a capu sign if it were standing on dry land. Every man with a cabin to himself, picture of a guy getting fixed up to go to a concert, but it never made you stop wondering where you were going. Time on our hands, so we figured out ways to spend it. With a few bucks thrown in for a side bet. One wave getting tired enough to climb into your bunk. Back to loser, Bob. On number three hatch port side, the admirers of lower Basin Street Chamber Music got it their way. Remember, Curly Miller, the boy can really go to town. The day we crossed the equator and the shellbacks got their crack at the polywogs. And there's still some of us in the outfit who take off at the sight of a curved stick. No, brother, that is not beer. It's goose, slugged, and half drowned, but no beefs. The collar merchants fitted the general for size. The local barbers gave him a once-over lightly. Dental inspection, rubbed down at the club. The treatment's finished, and the general's a shellback. When you look back now, you can remember a lot of laughs on that boat ride, but mostly it was just plowing along through that ocean, under that sky tent, and waiting, watching for Jap subs or carrier planes. There was plenty of time for thinking, 30 days for it, thinking about a lot of things you remembered, sometimes about what was ahead. That was a special kind of thinking. When you looked around, you saw you weren't the only one doing it. Somehow it made you feel a lot closer. It was the end of August when we dropped anchor off Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to go ashore for our dry run on the beach. But when you hit it, you got that quick flash about the guys who were here ahead of us at Guadalcanal, and the job they did. To look at it, you couldn't believe that beach had ever felt the bite of live ammo. They said we did OK on the canal dry run. We left the Solomon's. We still didn't know where our next stop was, but it was getting closer. And when we got there, somebody was going to be shooting at us. Ceiling off of the important Jap strongholds to the general MacArthur. Back to the Philippines? But what was our job going to be exactly? Angkor. That's our job. Southern most of the Palau group. About three square miles of limestone and coral. Japs got a lot of their phosphate here. OK, what do we do? The 322nd hits Red Beach in the Northeast. The 321st will land on Blue Beach. 323rd stands offshore in reserve. General Miller and Admiral Blandy knew that the Japs were expecting us in the South. We were going ashore through the choppy surf under the narrow beaches in the North. Fan out fast until the two beach heads joined up, then moved down the island. This was finally it. But the last two years had been for. We had the training and we had the weapons. Up in caves and pillboxes with a tough Jap regiment with plenty of experience in China back of them. This was our first time. How were we going to do? Remember the morning of September 17th? The carriers opened the show by machine gun fire and mortars. They helped to see other guys looking like you felt. But they were taking it too. Machine gun fire wasn't so bad. Our planes knocked out their mortars. There's no place to get caught with your pants down. Defense line, they melted right into the ground. We had to blast or burn every damn last one of them out. There's so much hell with blue beach, the Amtrakts had a tough time making it. Red beach thinks it got better. We were able to move in off the beach, which was also nicely torn up with satchel charges. Had a combat intelligence center operating, but we couldn't locate anybody for intelligence to talk to. They wouldn't come out alive. The beach head, guys came in. As soon as we had a good toehold, landing craft started delivering in back of us building up an ammo dump. The Japs were still on high ground to the northwest with mortars. They hit the dump, and like this, they came ashore the next morning to get a firsthand look at the scoreboard. It was no setup. Inland, the Japs were acting tough. We had snipers and mortars on us all that first night. Plus they're trying to infiltrate through the lines for some quiet knife work. That second morning, we were behind schedule. Blue beach heads still weren't joined up. But we kept slugging until we did join up. All the time moving inland, got to Shrine Hill. Remember? Caves 15 feet deep dug out of solid coral. Entrances barricaded with coconut logs, leaving firing slits only a couple of inches wide. They were tough monkeys. There'd still be some of them in there firing even after you'd put a 25-pound satchel charge under them. But they could be had. So we took Shrine Hill, one place where they wouldn't prey to their ancestors anymore. Then we got to Saipan town. What was left of it? The ancestors shot 600 of the little apes and had what we came for, including the phosphate plant. These phosphate diggings, about the best in all the Jap-mandated islands, were out of business at this stand permanently. We weren't taking chances. They know how to hide like the murdering weasels they are. We heard that some of them were still on high ground up to the north. But by the end of the third day, we shoved them back into the northwest corner in the southern tip of the island. The first chance to let down in three days. While you clowned around, there were a couple of things rattling around in the back of your head. These guys, you'd been with a couple of years. You realized you hadn't really known them until the morning you hit the beach together. You had a different angle on them now and wondered if they were thinking about that too. Our 321st pulled out for Pella Lou Island, six miles to the northeast. The first marines were finding it heavy going up there. The 321st went up to give them a hand. The rest of us who stayed on Angar had our own job to finish. The jungle was still lousy with Jap snipers, but we couldn't wait to clean them out to get the airstrip in. With a rifle covering every couple of axes, the aviation engineer started hacking out the strip. The sooner it's in, the sooner we can use it as a base to plaster the rest of the Pellaous. Quite right for a B-29 yet. But recon planes could start to use it and did. The 321st was battling Japs. Angar was ours, but not quite. Up in the northwest corner, there's a piece of high ground we were starting to call Suicide Hill. To get to it, we had to move up the narrow gauge, leading from the phosphate works, into the defile that for good reason got the name of Bloody Gulch. There were plenty of Jap machine guns and snipers up there too. A Jap 75 mounted on rails, kept poking out, firing, and pulling back into a cave. We couldn't see what the hell was going on up ahead, but the tanks could. They were checking with each other over the radio. Then send. Repeat your last transmission. I did not hear. We're going to be Suicide Hill for the Japs now. We called back for mortars and won 55s. It had been no cinch. They'd poured everything they'd had on us from 75s down. But we'd won our first battle. And we had a right now to call ourselves the 81st Wildcats. Once those guys come out, you realize something you hadn't known. How mad you got when the bastards hit the guy next to you. Colonel Venable, our regimental commander, was hit by that 75. With the rest of our officers, he'd been right up there with us. From the top down, the 81st had gone in and come out all right. These are the faces of men who fight. These are the tired faces of men who have seen death. These are the faces of men from your own hometown who carried the flag of America a step nearer to Tokyo. Look at these faces. Here's the boy who sold you gasoline on a Sunday afternoon. Here is an American boy. Looks tired, doesn't he? He is. Here's the boy who came calling on Saturday evening and took your daughter to a movie. Here's the boy that everyone predicted would make all American when he went to the state university. But he didn't go. These men don't like war. But the enemy must be met and destroyed wherever he can be found. They know that. And so do you. Are you doing everything you can to help them? Are you buying war bonds? Bonds that pay for the weapons with which they fight? Bonds that provide places for them to rest? And hospitals in which their wounds may heal? Are you buying war bonds to the limit of your ability to ensure that a strong and worthwhile America will be waiting when these men return?