II. Stand By, Saint Christopher One More Time

It was March 28th, 1945 in the Palau Islands. I was standing on the flight line of the Peleliu Island airstrip, orders to proceed to the Naval Receiving Hospital in San Francisco in my hand. It was a long anticipated happening.

In my case there was an unmistakable element of relief: my combat tour was ending and I was still alive wounded, to be sure, but very much alive and headed back to friendlier shores. For the first time in a long time, I had the feeling of being very relaxed.

Ten days earlier, a Japanese gunner who was very, very good or, very, very lucky, had shot and wounded me probably because I was firing six .50 caliber machine guns at some of this friends. The enemy was becoming very touchy.

I managed to get my aircraft back to this same strip just before I lost consciousness my Corsair, other than the one bullet hole in the cockpit canopy, was undamaged. I'm fairly sure that I still hold the air speed record from the top of Babelthuap south to our strip on Peleliu. I sensed then that my greatest danger was losing consciousness before I could land my plane.

Those good Navy doctors cleaned and debrided the wound, then decided it was best to send me back to the states as soon as I could walk, for a tissue graft because of the width of the wound.

Our squadron Flight Surgeon had guessed this might happen just as soon as I could walk. Although walking was still sore and painful, ten days later I convinced him that I was ready.

He jeeped me to the air strip, carefully set my parachute bag with all my earthly possessions in it beside me, shook my hand and wished me Bon Voyage. Only a few of my buddies were in the camp area to bid me good bye. Eight were temporarily flying Combat Air Patrol over the deep-sea anchorage at Ulithi Island where more of our navy's newest large ships were now anchored more than any of us had even imagined we possessed. It was clear evidence that the war was winding down and tilting even more in our favor.

I thought about my friends who had been killed in the long six months we had spent on Peleliu: Bob Spain, our bristling warrior with the waxed spike mustache when his plane was hit in a strike on Yap, he was Mister Cool. He radioed his wing-man that he had been hit, his plane afire, he seemed to take his time getting out of the cockpit, stepped off the wind and pulled his rip-cord. He was a bit too late, his chute streamed, but the canopy did not have time to billow. He went into the water feet-first and never surfaced.

Our much-admired skipper, Major Robert F. (Cowboy) Stout: He survived the lethal dogfights over Guadalcanal and downed six zeroes. He was killed over Koror in an ill-advised strike on targets we had been told just weeks before had no value worth losing a Corsair over.

We were all aware that this brave man had experienced the strongest premonition that he would not return from that strike. In spite of a long, diligent search, we were never able to determine exactly where his plane went in. After the war, the crash was found. Cowboy's remains were untouched in the cockpit. Col. Jack Conger escorted the body back to Wyoming to his bereaved mother and father. His younger brother, a Marine cadet was earlier killed in a training crash. At that time, Cowboy wiped away a tear and opined that flying was a hazardous profession.

The other names of fallen friends flashed through my mind like headlines: Tad Gage in an emergency landing near Ewa; Notre Dame star basketball forward, Robert Rags Smith, failed to pull out of an overhead run on the gunnery sleeve; Bob Meynes, victim of a mid-air collision in operation training; Bill Hobbs and James Parmalee both lost on a night flight in the worst weather I have flown in, before or since. Walter Telep flew into a mountain in the vicinity of Rabaul. Lt. Giles Smith was shot down by ground fire in the Rabaul area. Robert Y. Brown, who looked about 16 years old, was fated to never grow older. He lost his life in a landing accident on Green Island. It was one instance where we had a funeral. He was buried on a most beautiful point of the island, looking south over the Pacific Ocean.

Lt. Stu Wessman died when his Corsair wing folded on takeoff at Turtle Bay. He was an excellent pilot, victim of a saltwater corroded stainless steel locking pin, which failed.

Tall, valiant, taciturn Ken Wallace, the Scot who suffered target fixation strafing a machine gun position, flew into the target and traded his life for six Japanese gunners.

I stood there. The blinding sun aglare on the pristine white coral runway, I wondered how many other friend I might lose before we would meet again.

We had talked about all of us returning to San Francisco together and what a party we'd have. A writer named Frederick Wakeman had just written a book titled: Shore Leave. It was a graphic depiction of a Navy Fighter Squadron just returning to San Francisco. Wakeman's descriptions of the partying were an obvious challenge to us and we were convinced we could exceed their daring deeds.

Alas, it was not to be. I decided that I would do my best, as a returning party of one, to represent the Corps to the best of my ability.

But, to the business at hand: The parking area for ambulance planes was just behind where we parked our Corsairs. The first plane I contacted had just started its engines. I had introduced myself to the two young army pilots and asked for a ride to Guam. Their DC-3 was loaded with litters, Army wounded from the Philippines bound for the large hospital in Guam.

They seemed happy to oblige me. At least I was ambulatory. I couldn't believe how young they seemed. They looked about sixteen. Had they shaved yet? Could I trust them with my life?

I had to grin it was a bit late for me to worry about safety. First Lt. Leavitt was my pilot and 2nd Lt. Mattingly was his copilot. Their Army flight nurse was to care for all these litter-patients. Some were slightly wounded, others gravely wounded. She seemed too young for so much responsibility. Or, had I grown older quickly in the eighteen months I had spent in the South Pacific and the Western Pacific?

Before I threw my parachute bag into the cargo hold of the venerable DC-3 and climbed aboard, I took one last look at the wide coral runway. In one way, it seemed an eternity since I made my first landing here on the 26th of September, 1944. Actually, it was almost six months to the day. During those six months, I had flown many strikes against our enemy. It was a rare and exceptional day when I was not shot at.

Our landing instructions for that first landing were to buzz the strip at 50 altitude. This was not to show off. The 1st Marine Division's artillery was set up on the East Side of the strip, firing directly into the Umurbrogol Hills on the wet side. We had to stay low to avoid the trajectory of those 105mm shells.

Although our ground crew were not specialists in aircraft maintenance, most of them had landed two years earlier on Guadalcanal as infantrymen. Those who survived those trying days were sent back for aircraft specialists training. They felt right at home carrying ammo, stretcher bearing and grave digging for the infantry.

As I taxied into the parking area, my plane captain was guiding me. I was relieved to know he had not been wounded in the invasion. S/Sgt. Frank Samuels took care of my plane as if it were his own. I never worried about anything going wrong with my Corsair for Frank knew his business. Had you asked him his business, he might have told you it was to get me back alive and whole after each strike.

When my propeller slowly stopped, I popped my safety belt and literally jumped from the plane to get a warm handshake and a grin from Frank. I could tell that the pleasure of our reunion was mutual. It was impressive to me that grown men could demonstrate such warmth for their comrades in arms. Maybe that's why the Marine Corps is often called a splendid band of brothers.

In one sense, it seemed I had been here a lifetime. For a few of my friends, it had turned out to be exactly that: a lifetime.

I looked around at those now familiar surroundings, I wondered if I would ever see them again. And, as the sturdy old Douglas transport struggled upward in a climbing turn, I looked back and down.

Distance helped. From a thousand feet, you really couldn't see the shattered palm trees, the desolate shell-pocked hills and caves of Bloody Nose Ridge. Now, as I try to remember these details, pictures of today's savaged Afghanistan landscape crowd into my mind. In 1944- 45, Marines learned what excellent defensive positions interlocking caves can be and they will never forget how bloody was the victory they earned there.

The promise of seeing, close-up, all the Japanese strong points we had strafed and bombed so long ago from the new perspective of walking over the ground, was exciting. I hoped I might get to visit with some of the Palauan natives who were there when I was.

Strangely, from the air, I never saw a native on those islands. I assumed the Japanese troops had moved them to another island. Long after the war ended, I learned that they were moved into remote areas of the jungle under that dense canopy, they went unseen.

Just three years ago, I was invited to speak at the Marine Cops Birthday Ball in Springfield. There, I met a young woman who was a student at Drury University. She was also a native of Palau and to top off her credentials, she was a PFC in the Marine Corps Reserve Rifle Company in Springfield. After WWII, I had been commanding officer of that unit for several years.

Of course, she hadn't been born then, but her grandparents had told her about how the Japanese military had sorely abused the natives they were, in fact, slave labor.

Well, I had hitchhiked home in 1945 it seems appropriate that Mary Alice and I had hitchhiked back to Palau in 2002 through the space-available travel of the military, which is, indeed, today's version of hitchhiking.

I was unabashedly thrilled and excited by the opportunity to return to the scenes of my most exciting days. It is an opportunity few folks ever get and we vowed to make the most of it. When I looked out our hotel window in Koror, across a narrow street, about twenty feet above street level, in a limestone bluff with a vertical face, I could see a concrete machine gun emplacement, facing east out to sea.

Before our new hotel was built, that gunner would have looked over his sights straight out to sea at our approach route. I felt a slight chill, for I knew that gunner had seen me in his sights more than once. He could have been the gunner who shot down Major Stout. It truly is a small world.

I remember seeing Peleliu for the first time. After ferrying our Corsairs in a multilegged, long-distance ferry hop from Espiritu Santo, we landed there on Sept. 26, 1944.

My frame of mind in 1945 was a confused jumble. Again, we had been disappointed in not encountering aerial opposition: Fighter pilots are proud folks, trained to beat our foe in the fabled and romantic maneuver we called dog-fighting.

It was demoralizing we could not seem to move forward as fast as the Nips were retreating. The new fast carriers were taking our pilots to the Japanese home islands where, in lightning strikes, they were shooting down the enemy a privilege we felt should have been ours, if only by virtue of our being the senior squadron and the one with we were here first rights. It was a potent argument for Marine senior officers who had been proponents of putting Marine squadrons on carriers.

That was just now occurring and it was because those Marine pilots were flying Corsairs, faster than the Hellcat, and more able to intercept the Kamikazes and protect our ships.

We were overdue for relief and return to the states. Our skipper, Cowboy Stout, was contacted by General Moore. Moore said, Good news! I've got a slot for your squadron on a new carrier!

And Cowboy, ever mindful of the greater good, replied that we'd just get aboard that new carrier and, long overdue for relief, soon would need to be replaced by fresh pilots. With that in mind, he said Give it to another squadron. He had pronounced his own death sentence.

The day I was wounded and balls-to-the wall, desperate to get on the ground before I passed out, as I carefully landed my plane, there was a fleeting moment when I wondered if I would survive to continue this great adventure...or, if this desolate equatorial fly-speck might, indeed, prove to be my final destination.

Now, I had survived. I was leaving, I felt fairly certain there was a lot of war left. Would I ever see Peleliu again? How many more of my friends might stay here forever.

Then, when Pat did get me back to Palau, I stood on Peleliu in the center of the Marine Corps cemetery: two thousand young Marines had been buried here. Later, all were exhumed and re-interred in Arlington National Cemetery. As I stood there I was heavily conscious of the importance of 2,000 young lives and what their sacrifice meant to me to those bereaved family members who lost a precious son, a father or a brother and what those lives would have produced had they been fortunate enough to survive.

I remembered that great morning on September 28, 1944 when we flew air cover for K company, Third Battalion of the 1st Marine Division as they made an unusual amphibious landing on the tiny island of Ngesebus, 800 yards not the north shore of Peleliu. These brave young men killed 500 Japanese crack troops without the loss of one life. Our low, very low, close air support became the bible and the primer for the later development of air support doctrines that proved of inestimable value.

There was precious little of real importance in the balance of our tour not nearly enough to justify the enervating effect of dysentery, the tedium of daily vital risk for dubious reward the loss of precious friends who will never know the joys of fatherhood, contributions to our society never made it still can bring tears to my eyes.

Last month, the Palau senate of Koror, asked me to stand in their gallery, that banner day in April 2002, and they thanked me! It was more than I deserved, more than I ever expected. It is truly of awesome import. That simple thank you came close to making it all worthwhile.

And now I know the force that drives Pat Scannon and his group of great young people to the arduous task of finding evidence of and identifying those missing heroes. The thank you from grateful families makes healing balm for the blisters and bites of the jungle and the hazards presented by those beautiful waters more than enough to compensate these noble volunteers.

Pat Scannon, a sincere Thank You! For the opportunity to return to a part of my life that truly marked me and, which I now have good reason to remember forever proudly.

Palau: where I came of age Palau, where I was blooded Palau, where I was sincerely thanked by kind people Palau, where I could finally show my wife the strong forces that had shaped my attitude and philosophy of existence.