Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – The bulk of the battle of Okinawa is being fought by the Army – my old friend, the doughfoots. This time the Marine had it easy, and by the turn of circumstance the Army is the one that has the job to do.
But my self-assignment on the Okinawa blitz was to write about the Marines and that’s what I continue to do. I landed with the Marines, crossed the island with them, and have been living with them amidst fleas, mosquitoes, goats and a few Japs, hiding under bushes. So naturally I want to tell you about them.
Marine Corps blitzes out here have all been so bitter and the Marines have performed so magnificently that I had conjured in a mental picture of a Marine that bore a close resemblance to a man from Mars. I was almost afraid of them myself.
I did find the Marines confident, but neither cocky nor smart-alecky. I found they have fears, and qualms, and hatred for war the same as anybody else. They want to go home just as badly as any soldiers I’ve ever met. I found them good, human Americans.
They are proud to be Marmes. They wouldn’t be in any other branch of the service. Yet they are not arrogant about it. And I found they have a healthy respect for the infantry.
One day we were sitting on a hillside talking about the infantry. One Marine spoke of a certain Army division – a division they had fought beside – and was singing 15 praises.
In peacetime, when the Marine Corps was a small outfit, with its campaigns highlighted, and everybody was a volunteer you could understand why Marines felt so superior.
But since the war the Marine Corps has grown into hundreds of thousands of men. It has been diluted, so to speak. Today it is an outfit of ordinary people – some big, some little, some even draftees. It has changed, in fact, until Marines look exactly like a company of soldiers in Europe.
Yet that Marine Corps spirit still remains. I never did find out what perpetuates it. They’re not necessarily better trained. They’re no better equipped and often not as well supplied as other troops. But a Marine still considers himself a better soldier than anybody else, even though nine-tenths of them don’t want to be soldiers at all.
The Marines are very cognizant of the terrible casualties they’ve taken in this Pacific War. They’re even proud of that too, in a way. Any argument among Marine units is settled by which has had the greatest casualties.
Many of them even envisioned the end of the Marine Corps at Okinawa. If the Marine divisions had been beaten up here as they were on Iwo Jima, the boys felt it would have been difficult to find enough men of Marine Corps caliber to reconstitute all the divisions.
They even had a sadly sardonic song about their approach to Okinawa, the theme of which was “Goodbye, Marines!”
So, you see, Marines don’t thirst for battles.
I’ve read and heard enough about Marines to have no doubts whatever about the things they can do when they have to. No Marine need ever apologize for anything.
The Marines are O.K. for my money, in battle or out.