Tales of the Pacific

THE OLD BREED--George McMillan--Infantry Journal Press ($6.50).

"The remembered war," says George McMillan, onetime technical sergeant in the 1st Marine Division, "is sometimes very different from the fought war." In The Old Breed, his division's remembrance book, Author McMillan lets his facts about fighting fall where they may, gives the full treatment to the asides. In the process he achieves one of the most readable of the 100-odd unit histories of World War II already published.

The 1st U.S. Marine Division was the first U.S. division to take the offensive in War II. It went into the boondocks as a brigade in the fall of 1940 and did not come out until it licked the Japanese at Guadalcanal two years later. Between times the division learned to take it--from Solomons Island (Md.) to the Solomon Islands (Pacific), an 8,600-mile jump.

During its four months on Guadalcanal the division was almost written off several times. When asked whether the hard-pressed leathernecks could hold the first beachhead in the Pacific war, Navy Secretary Knox said: "I don't want to make any predictions, but every man out there, ashore or afloat, will give a good account of himself." When this word came to Guadalcanal one sergeant mused: "Ya know, they're kicking up a stink about us back in the States." Said a private first class: "That's nice."

Between crises on Guadalcanal the division amused itself with a parody (to the tune of Bless 'em All):

Oh, we asked for the Army to come to Tulagi,

But Douglas MacArthur said "No!"

He gave as his reason,

"This isn't the season.

Besides, there is no U.S.O."

But the Army came and so did the best thing that ever happened to the division: a long rest in Australia, where people get false teeth early. Australian girls couldn't believe the marines' molars were their own. "Finally, this babe with me reached over," said one marine, "and took hold of my teeth and tried to yank 'em and I let her. She was sure surprised when nothing gave." Before the division left Melbourne most of the men "were in some stage of a serious love affair with an Australian girl."

Rocks for Charles Boyer. From Australia, General MacArthur sent the1st Division to Cape Gloucester, which was so miserable one sergeant swore: "In the next war I ain't even gonna plant a victory garden." The Japs weren't too numerous, but Hill 660 was steep and slippery and it rained all the time. "The wells of fountain pens clogged; pencils came apart at the seams in less than a week, blades of pocket knives rusted together," McMillan remembers. Shellfire caused giant, rotten trees to tremble and fall; 25 men died as victims of such odd accidents of jungle fighting.

Stern as the battle proved to be, Gloucester was not as bad as the next "rest camp," Pavuvu, and neither--in some ways--was Peleliu, where the division again caught the full fury of war in the Pacific. Pavuvu is a stinking, rat-infested little island in the Solomons, fit neither for marine nor Gook. Some men went "Asiatic" (regular Marine lingo for rock-happy). A sentry walked his muddy post for four hours, stopped at the last tent as his relief reported, put his rifle to his mouth and blew the top of his head off. This seemed so reasonably symptomatic of the division's island sickness that a marine in a nearby tent only growled: "Now I gotta find the padre. It's getting so they won't even let a guy outa here that way without a pass."

The movies kept almost everybody on Pavuvu from going rock-happy. A well-rounded starlet's appearance on the screen brought cries of "Back it up!" Then the operator would oblige by rewinding it and showing the female again. When any heroine displayed signs of falling in love the audience implored: "Don't run off with that bum! Wait till I get home!" One night, men of Headquarters Battalion got so mad at Charles Boyer they threw coral rocks at the screen.

Manners for White Women. Finally, on Pavuvu, part of the division was marked for rotation. Hints on good manners were printed (anonymously) for those going home after two years in the South Seas: "Say 'Please pass the butter.' You DO NOT say, 'Throw down the grease ...' If, while dining at a friend's house you wish more dessert, merely stare at your empty plate until someone catches on. DO NOT say, 'How about seconds on the slop?' " Author McMillan refrains from printing "Personal Manners" instructions on addressing live young white women.

By the time the division had won its 19th Medal of Honor and its 18,337th Purple Heart after Okinawa, it was ready to take on more replacements and train for the invasion of Japan. But soon the war was over and all hands were on their way to China.

Unlike men of many other U.S. outfits from Manila to Berlin, the marines took the peace in their stride: no mass meetings, no whimperings to be sent home. Proud Author McMillan tells what made "the old breed" different: "The men of the 1st Marine Division stood steady at their tasks, welded together in what seemed then a dignified silence by the same pervasive sense of discipline and of duty that had been the division's most evident characteristic in 1940."

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