Table of Contents
Also by James Brady
The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea
Why Marines Fight
The Scariest Place in the World: A Marine Returns to North Korea
The Marines of Au tumn: A Novel of the Korean War
The Marine: A Novel of War from Guadalcanal to Korea
Warning of War: A Novel of the North China Marines
Designs
Nielsens Children
The Press Lord
Holy Wars
Fashion Show, or The Adventures of Bingo Marsh
Paris One
Superchic
The Hamptons Novels
Further Lane
Gin Lane
The House That Ate the Hamptons
A Hamptons Christmas
To all who put themselves in harms way, especially the men and women of the United States Marine Corpsthen, now, always.
To absent friends and family, who are loved so well.
And for Sarah, Joe, Nick, and Matthewyour Pop Pop loves you so much!
Acknowledgments
The day after completing this book, Jim Brady died, suddenly and unexpectedly. Because he had not yet written the acknowledgments, we, his daughters, have done so for him.
Near the end of this book, our dad describes himself as neither a scholar nor a historian, just another old newspaperman who once fought in a war. This is true enough, and yet the statement is not entirely genuine. Jim Brady was a man fiercely proud of his bond with the Marine Corps and of the extraordinary experiences and friendships that he amassed over those six decades. He was also unabashedly delighted at having made a success in journalism. He grew up wanting to write and was a working writer to the last. As difficult as his loss has been for those of us left behind, there is a true sense of joy in knowing that he was doing what he absolutely loved right up to the end.
While our dad did not have the opportunity to compose his own thank-you list, he left stacks of notes and references. Clearly, a great many people gave generously of their time, knowledge, and insights. Some are mentioned in the text, while others remain unsung. Among those we would especially like to recognize are Stephen S. Power of John Wiley & Sons, who first proposed the idea of doing the book; USMC historian Robert Aquilina, who provided what our dad called a Rosetta Stone of sorts in primary-source materials from within the Corps History Division at Quantico; Leatherneck magazines executive editor, Colonel Walt Ford, USMC (Ret.); Colonel John Keenan, USMC (Ret.), editor of the Marine Corps Gazette; Colonel Bill White, USMC (Ret.); Raritans John Pacifico, for his invaluable ad hoc reporting skills; the Newark Star-Ledgers Vinessa Ermino and Jeanette Rundquist; Marine Lou Piantadosi; and Marine Clinton Watters, John Basilones best man. Sincere thanks to all who contributed to the making of this book.
Fiona Brady and Susan Konig
Marine platoon sergeant Manila John Basilone of Raritan, New Jersey, proudly wears the Congressional Medal of Honor, May 21, 1943.
Prologue
Whatever the century, whatever the war, machine gunners have always been a different military breed, focused and lethal warriors armed with and operating a terrible weapon in a risky trade, very competent at killing en masse, pretty good at getting killed themselves.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, who came of age in the appalling slaughter that was then called the Great War, understood this, which may be why he made his iconic hero Jay Gatsby a machine gunner. We first learn about Gatsbys war as the mysterious but glamorous bootlegger reveals himself bit by tantalizing bit to narrator Nick Carraway while the two young men speed toward Manhattan in Gatsbys cream-colored roadster. Nick listens, fascinated, not sure just how to respond or what to believe, as Jay goes on in his strange, mannered style of speech:
Then came the war, old sport.
In the Argonne Forest I took two machine gun detachments so far forward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldnt advance.
We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men and sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead.
I was promoted to be major and every Allied government gave me a decorationeven Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea.
A generation and a world war later, in the 1940s, another young roughneck of a machine gunner, not a character in a book but an actual Marine from Raritan, New Jersey, was similarly piling up the dead of famous enemy divisions before his guns. He would be awarded the most illustrious decoration for gallantry that we havethe Congressional Medal of Honorfor what he did in the historic battle for Guadalcanal, and later, posthumously, the prized and nearly as rare Navy Cross, for his actions on the first day ashore at Iwo Jima. This man was Sergeant John Basilone.
Basilone was for several years during World War II one of the most recognizable celebrities in the country, a national hero and quite a famous manyoung, laughing and roistering, unmarried and, in contemporary terms, quite sexy. Yet today, except among the hard men of the Marine Corps, which so reveres tradition, and in blue-collar, Italo-American Raritan, where the people of his hometown still tend the flame, few Americans could tell you who Basilone was or what he did in our desperate war against the Japanese in the Pacific.
Basilones feats of arms became such lore that nowhere in the world is there a Marine base that does not boast a building or a street named for him. At huge, sprawling Camp Pendleton, California, where all Marines including Basilone received their final combat training before shipping out to Asian wars from World War II to Korea, Vietnam to Afghanistan, a two-lane stretch of macadam called Basilone Road starts at the commanding generals house and meanders for thirteen miles. Intersecting with Vandegrift Boulevard (generals are awarded boulevards; sergeants get roads), crossing the Santa Margarita River, and finally exiting the base near San Onofre to merge into and lose its identity amid the humming multiple lanes of Interstate 5, Basilones modest road disappears just as surely as the man himself has largely vanished from the American consciousness.
He appeared just as suddenly at a time when the Japanese, edging ever closer to our West Coast with each battle, had been, to be candid, beating the crap out of the United States of America in fight after fight, and we sorely needed heroes.
Nonetheless it took the Marines, understandably distracted by war, until May 1943 to award Basilone the first of his medals for what hed done seven months earlier on Guadalcanal. And it was late June before the vaunted Marine publicity machine even bothered to put out a press release. A story ran in the New York Times under the headline Slew 38 Japanese in One Battle; Jersey Marine Gets Honor Medal. It was a one-day story that without a little hype soon faded. Basilone returned to a pleasant obscurity and the routine of wartime garrison life near Melbourne, Australia, drilling the troops, going on wild liberty weekends, just another good, tough sergeant in a Corps full of them.
