Marine Corps Sargent R.V. Burgin fought in three horrific battles in the Pacific. Hear him tell of he battle at Cape Gloucester New Britain in the Solomon Islands. R V was a company mortar man in K co 3rd Battalion 5th regiment of the First Marine Division. He would have about 30 yards behind the front lines though as a spotter for the mortars he was often on the front line. R V said that Cape Gloucester was so wet during the monsoons that about a dozen Marines were killed by falling trees. He said the Marine joke about all of the mosquitoes was that the big ones would hold you down and the little ones would suck you dry.
R V next fought at a battle many historians thought was completely unnecessary, that was Peleliu. He says that was his worst battle because the entire Island was coral so that the Marines and Army soldiers who came in after the first month of fighting could not dig a foxhole which left them completely exposed to Japanese fire. The temperature reached 115 degrees. In the beginning the water that they had was sent up to the front in 55 gallon drums that had had some sort of oil in them and the Marines joked that if you drank it you better not light a cigarette or you would blow your self up from igniting the fumes. Many Marines drank out of mud holes with bugs in them.
The 1st Marine Div. next battle was the largest and last battle of the Pacific War. He landed on the first day at Okinawa. He fought a little less than three months. The death toll was over 12,000 dead American, 100,000 Japanese, and 100,000 Okinawan’s. RV was wounded by artillery and hospitalized for twenty days. The rains and filth were beyond imagination.
Some of you may have read the great WW II book “With the Old Breed” by Eugene Sledge. R. V. Burgin was Sledge’s Sargent on Peleliu.