Hero of the Pacific by James Brady Page A

diseases.” As is often the case in war, illness took more lives than combat.
    Speaking of which, as early as October General Alexander Vandegrift at the Noumea conference was already lobbying to get the 1st Marine Division “to a healthier climate” as soon as possible. The Japanese offensive of October 23 and the following days rendered consideration of that a purely academic exercise; the Marines couldn’t be spared. But now that the Army had arrived and the Japanese were trying to leave, where the division would go next had become a concern. Phyllis Basilone gives us some insight into her brother’s state of mind toward the end there on the ’Canal. Basilone, for all his heroics, was now having nightmares.
    During the firefight on the long night of October 24, a lone Japanese soldier somehow broke through their position. Someone shouted, “Look out, Sarge,” and Basilone saw the man disemboweled by a Marine’s machete and Basilone and his gun were splattered with the man’s red blood “and blue guts.” Despite all he’d seen and experienced already, this particular incident seemed to have shaken Basilone. According to his sister, he threw up and was trembling uncontrollably. The machete killing was but a single event during a night of such horrors. But this one shocking moment among so many had its impact, coming back to haunt his dreams. The previously imperturbable sergeant was shaken, having trouble sleeping, and haunted by wild dreams of combat, drenched with night sweats and shivering. Was this malaria or what they call battle fatigue? Phyllis tells us that Basilone himself wondered.
    The scuttlebutt was that the division was headed for Australia, which, with its “people like us,” the girls, the cold beer, and especially the temperate climate, sounded to the Marines like Eden, and especially to Manila John with his tour in the Philippines and memorable R&R in neighboring New Zealand, where the young Americans fell in love with the people and the land. As Basilone waited to ship out, away from the ’Canal and its horrors, he sounded pensive, waxing philosophic, which would be something new for him, a facet of his makeup not previously remarked on at Raritan, the Philippines, or in his Marine experience. Combat can do that.
    Listen to Basilone in his sister’s account as the troopship carried him and his unit out of the war zone and toward what they expected to be a period of rest, refitting, and getting well: “Looking about me during the long voyage to Australia was heart-rending. Where only a few short months ago they were only boys in their teens, now they appeared old, far beyond their years. Their sunken eyes reflected the pain and misery they had been subjected to. I was no different. My family on seeing me at this moment wouldn’t even recognize me. The only thing that kept us from just collapsing on the deck and going into a shell was the gratifying thought we had met the feared enemy, defeated him on his own ground, and poured the flower of his troops back into the earth and sea.”
    This sounds a bit poetic for Basilone, but his sister goes on with his description: “After a long trip during which we soaked up the sunshine and fresh sea air, with nary a Jap sub to bother us, we dropped anchor off Brisbane, Australia, the city we had been told would be our rest camp.” Located on the northeast coast of the continent, it was hundreds of miles closer to the tropics than the other big Aussie cities of Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne, with their more moderate climate in the country’s south. It was hardly the cooler, healthier “temperate” rest camp area Vandegrift had requested.
    Some rest. Some camp.

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    Down Under, the Marines might have expected to go “Waltzing Matilda,” but Australia turned out to be a shock to men you’d think were beyond shock.
    â€œNone of us realized the weakened condition