OCR Text |
Show Ernie Pyle in the Pacific: U. S. Builds Up Strength For Knockout in Pacific Okinmva Landing Like Putting Foot in Enemy's Kitchen Door By Ernie Pyle (EDITOR'S NOTE: Ernie Pyle' a columns will continue to appear in this newspaper jor a jew weeks. Dispatches for these releases have been cleared by the censors and some may be en route from le island where the famous war correspondent met his death.) OKINAWA. Our war with Japan has gone well in the last few weeks. We are firmly on Okinawa, which is like having your foot in the kitchen door. s Our wonderful carrier pilots have whittled down the Jap air force daily. Our anti- aircraft from ,,m- ships and from shore batteries i has plugged Jap -J fliers for the high- , est ratio I've ever known from ack- - f& J ack. ' i f f , Our task forces ' j have absolutely 4L butchered the on- -J"!U-t- ly Jap task force Ernie Pyle to put to sea in many months. B-29s are hitting Japan Ja-pan with fighter escort from Iwo Jima. Airfields are springing up on Okinawa. We all say we sure are glad we are not in the Japs' shoes. One main question asked over here now is, "How long will the Japs hold out?" There are all kinds of opinions, opin-ions, but actually nobody knows. We don't know, because no one in his right mind can pretend to understand un-derstand the Oriental manner of thinking. They are unpredictable. They are inconsistent. As one officer of-ficer said, "They are uncannily smart one day, and dumb as hell the next." Their values are so different from ours. The news broadcasts from Tokyo and Shanghai are an example. exam-ple. These broadcasts are utterly ridiculous. During our first week on Okinawa they constantly told of savage counterattacks coun-terattacks when there weren't any. They told of driving a large part of our landing forces back to the boats and far out to sea, when actually they fired only a few shots onto the beaches. On D-Day plus four, they broadcast that despite their counterattacks we finaUy succeeded in landing 6,000 troops. The truth is that by sun-set sun-set of the first evening we had an incredible number of scores of thousands thou-sands of Americans on Okinawa! The crippled Jap air force cannot do us anything but spasmodic harm from now on. And their navy needn't ever be considered. If you could see the colossal naval power we have here you could hardly believe be-lieve your eyes. It's one of the most impressive things I've seen in this war. We have plenty of troops in reserve, re-serve, and new convoys of supplies have already begun to arrive just as we finished unloading the original origi-nal massive supply fleet. Converting Island Into Big Base On Okinawa the majority of the Japs are on the southern tip, and in considerable strength. The northern north-ern area is being combed and a few - scattered ones mopped up. There is tough fighting in the south and it will remain tough to the end. I've heard some officers say the south end of Okinawa may turn into another Iwo Jima. That will mean heavy casualties on our side, but the end of Okinawa is inevitable. in-evitable. And while the army's 24th corps of infantry is doing that job, the rest of the island apparently is wide open for us to develop and we are doing it with our usual speed. This island has everything we could want in such an island. There is plenty of room for more airfields, room for roads and vast supply dumps and anchorages for ships. And the civilians from whom we had expected trouble are docile and harmless. Of course, Japan's vast land armies are still almost intact. But if it does come to the great mass land warfare of continental Europe, we now are able to build up strength for that warfare right on the scene. There is a fighting spirit among us. People are conjecturing about the possibility of the Pacific war ending sooner than we had ever allowed al-lowed ourselves to think. for years it looked endless, but now you hear people talk about being be-ing home by Christmas. Some really real-ly believe they will. Others have their fingers crossed, but they are more hopeful than ever before. Instead of a war weariness, there seems to be a new eagerness among . our forces to sweep on and on, and wind the thing up in a hurry. The bulk of the battle of Okinawa is being fought by the army my old friends, the doughfoots. This time the marines had it easy, and by the turn of circumstance the army is the one that has the job to do. But my self-assignment on the Okinawa blitz was to write about the marines and that's what I continue con-tinue to do. I landed with the marines, ma-rines, crossed the island with them, and have been living with them amidst fleas, mosquitoes, goats and a few Japs, hiding under bushes. So naturally I want to . tell you about them. Marine corps blitzes out here have all been so bitter and the marines have performed so magnificently that I had conjured up a mental picture pic-ture of a marine that bore a close resemblance to a man from Mars. I was almost afraid of them myself. Finds Marines Human, After All I did find the marines confident, but neither cocky nor smart-alecky. I found they have fears, and qualms, and hatred for war the same as anybody else. They want to go home just as badly as any soldiers I've ever met. I found them good, human Americans. They are proud to be marines. They wouldn't be in any other branch of the service. Yet they are not arrogant about it. And I found they have a healthy respect for the infantry. One day we were sitting on a hillside hill-side talking about the infantry. One marine spoke of a certain army division di-vision a division they had fought beside and was singing its praises. "It's as good as any marine division," di-vision," he said. "What was that you said?" a listener lis-tener cut in. The marine repeated it and emphasized em-phasized it a little. Another marine ma-rine stood up and called out, loudly: "Did you hear what he said? This guy says there's an army division as good as any marine division. He must be crazy. Haw, haw, haw!" And yet other boys chimed in, arguing ar-guing very soberly, and sided with the one who had praised the army division. Before I came into the field, several sev-eral marine officers asked me to try to sense just what the marine spirit is, just what causes it, and keeps it alive. In peacetime when the marine corps was a small outfit, with its campaigns highlighted, and everybody every-body was a volunteer, you could understand un-derstand why marines felt so superior. su-perior. But since the war the marine corps has grown into hundreds of thousands of men. It has been diluted, di-luted, so to speak. Today it is an outfit of ordinary people some big, some little, some even draftees. It has changed, in fact, until marines look exactly like a company of soldiers sol-diers in Europe. Yet that marine corps spirit still remains. I never did find out what perpetuates it. They're not necessarily neces-sarily better trained. They're no better equipped and often not as well supplied as other troops. But a marine still considers himself a better soldier than anybody else, even though nine-tenths of them don't want to be soldiers at all. The marines are very cognizant of the terrible casualties they've taken in this Pacific war. They're even proud of that too, in a way. Any argument among marine units is settled by which has had the greatest casualties. Many of them even envisioned the end of the marine corps at Okinawa. If the marine divisions had been beaten up here as they were on Iwo Jima, the boys felt it would have been difficult to find enough men of marine corps caliber to reconstitute all the divisions. They even had a sadly sardonic song about their approach to Okinawa, Oki-nawa, the theme of which was, "Good-by, Marines!" |