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chapter 7 June 11 to August 14, 1945 War’s end: the last days of the campaign; farewells to the Eleventh Marines; sailing home on the aircraft carrier USS Card As Battery Exec for the next few days, I fired from a semirecumbent position , having little reserve after four days of “trots.” On June 14, the Battalion displaced forward to a position in sugar cane fields just back of Zawa. Our principal activity now was that of stopping Jap soldiers who were trying to escape from the pocket in the south by coming through our lines. Acting as Exec in charge of the battery’s security, I established gun posts and spent most of the nights on the telephone. Our battery killed at least four the first night in the position, and several more each night for the next five nights. The Nips would not allow themselves to be taken prisoner, using grenades and revolvers against our automatic weapons. We had no casualties. Tremendous numbers of civilians gave themselves up. Old women emerged from three weeks’ concealment beneath flattened houses in Zawa. General Buckner was killed in the front lines.1 Units of the Eighth Marines of the Second Division relieved the Seventh Marines and took over our artillery missions. Huff and Gunnigle, both looking like the wrath of God, dropped in to see me and enjoyed their first galley-cooked meal in a month. Huff had become a company commander, one of the few officers in his battalion to escape being hit. They summarized the fate of the company with which I had come ashore. Only ten men had escaped being casualties. Mason, Warren, and two officer replacements had been killed. O’Mahoney, Janick, and Smith received serious wounds that caused their evacuation from Okinawa. We now had a pool betting on the final day of the campaign. Williams won the $25 stake when the last Japanese resistance surrendered on June 21 at 4:00 p.m. There were immediately a lot more smiles and light 111 Donner text.indb 111 3/28/12 10:35 AM 112  pacific time on target remarks going about than I had seen for some time. A naval officer friend of Miller donated a side of beef to the battery from the ship’s locker, and we dined on fresh meat for the first time in two months. Four other officers and I, having had a small drink from a bottle just out of the States and a cigar apiece, took our jeep bounding over a beat-up mountain road toward Iwa to a motor transport outfit in the rear which was showing a movie, “Song of the Open Road.” The entertainment was at least amusing , and our good spirits there in the large garden of an old house made it an occasion. The ride back through burnt-out villages, across wide areas without visible humans, and our way so illuminated by star shells that we did not use headlights, was really weird. Machine guns and sniper rifles were constantly firing nervously, and we had our carbines ready for any suspicious activity along the deserted roadside or in the wreckage of villages because our painfully slow speed made us a good target for a grenade. It was a swell evening. We occupied that position until the end of June, playing volleyball and catching up on sleep and food. About the first of July, I moved with the advance echelon of the Battalion far north on Okinawa to a point on the northwestern shore of Motobu Peninsula. Here, the entire First Division was to encamp, rest, and reorganize. The countryside was clean, open, pine-wooded, and really attractive, though too hot for comfort at this season. The land rose steeply in coral cliffs to a ridge, then sloped gradually through a broad, fertile plain to rather steep mountains. In the next month, we were busily building a hurricane-proof camp of “strongbacked” tents. Our minds were concentrated, above all else, on the question of home. This was an outfit with long duty overseas. How many could expect replacements, how soon? All sorts of theories were rife, and rumors, “straight dope,” began to run freely. When would the release of troops from fighting in Europe affect the part played by the Army out here? Would we leave on a point system? The next campaign must be Kyushu. Would we have to be back for it, if we went stateside? So it went. And, with the...

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