After 50 Years, It’s Time to Forgive

My wife and I drove down to Camp Pendleton the weekend of Feb. 18-19 for the 50th anniversary of the Marine Corps landing on Iwo Jima, the bloodiest battle of World War II.

As a survivor of that battle, I had been asked to say a few words at the commemorative banquet, along with a couple of major generals. We spent the previous night at the Ramada Inn in Carlsbad as guests of the Marine Corps and the next morning attended an Iwo Jima survivors breakfast.

I was surprised--though I shouldn’t have been--that most of the men had white hair. Not gray--white. Including me. We did little reminiscing, but we felt glad to be alive, as we always had.

Iwo Jima is an eight-square-mile speck in the western Pacific, between Guam and Tokyo. Our high command had decreed that its conquest was necessary to provide a base for our B-29s, which were bombing Tokyo.

I landed in the third wave. At that time our casualties were 75%. When the island was secured 36 days later, there had been 25,381 American casualties, including 6,851 dead.

I found that most of the survivors felt some guilt, as I did. On D-day, I had been caught in a shell hole, under heavy fire, with two other men. I said we should get out of the shell hole and move forward. The other men agreed. They went first. Both were killed.

After 50 years, though, it was time for forgiveness, of the enemy and ourselves.

In the late afternoon, there was a memorial service on the Camp Pendleton South Mesa, overlooking the Pacific. A battery of four howitzers fired a 21-gun salute, a bugler and a bagpiper played taps and a helicopter took off to drop a memorial wreath in the Pacific.

The banquet was held in the NCO Club dining hall. The Corps had provided me with a wheelchair and seated us near the podium. My script noted that I would have five minutes to speak. Before I was called, my wife said: “Don’t forget--nobody eats until after you finish.”

I had just enough time to tell the story of John Barberio, which I believe I have told here before. I was a combat correspondent in the Fourth Division and John was my opposite number in the Fifth. Our function was to land with the troops, fight, if necessary, and then write stories about the heroics of individual Marines for their home-town newspapers and for the use of civilian correspondents. We each were to carry our rifles and our portable typewriters ashore. Marines first.

Barberio was a big, hearty fellow. High spirited. Everybody’s friend. More than anything else he loved to eat. He was a sincere trencherman.

Before we landed, I had been thinking about my instructions to carry my portable in on the landing. I didn’t see how I could manage a portable typewriter and a rifle at the same time. Before Iwo, we had had a practice landing on Maui. I was sitting there on the beach, typing away, when a Navy officer came by and, laughing, said, “Hey, Marine. You going to win the war with a typewriter?”

That rankled. So I went to my colonel on board our landing ship and told him I had orders to take my typewriter ashore in the third wave. He said “You will not.”

Instead he had the typewriter lashed to his Jeep. “That’ll get in,” he said.

The landing craft carrying the colonel’s Jeep was sunk, along with my typewriter. On D plus 1 some Marines found me on the beach and told me Barberio had been killed. They had found his typewriter case near his body. They asked me if I wanted the typewriter. Feeling guilty that I had shirked my duty while Barberio had followed his orders to take the typewriter and paid with his life, I said yes, I’d take it. It was the tool of my trade. My weapon.

They led me to the typewriter. The case was locked. One of the Marines broke the lock with his combat knife. The lid sprang open. Inside there was no typewriter. The case was filled with canned goods.

Many years ago, in the old Los Angeles Press Club, a member introduced me to a Marine general, then Corps commandant, saying, “Smith’s an ex-Marine, general.”

The general said, “There’s no such thing as an ex-Marine, is there Smith?’

I said, “General, you’re looking at one.”

I was brash and cocky, fresh out of the Corps and glad to be a civilian again.

After that day at Pendleton, starting with the white-haired men and ending with the Marine Corps Hymn, I realized the general was right.

There is no such thing as an ex-Marine.

Semper fidelis.

* Jack Smith’s column is published Mondays.