Brotherhood of Heroes The Marines at Peleliu, 1944 -- the Bloodiest Battle of the Pacific War

Prologue Approaching Orange Beach 2Peleliu Island, Palaus Group8:30 a.m., September 15, 1944 His heart pounding in his throat, Private First Class William J. Leyden raised his head above the side of the amphibious tractor and got his first glimpse of the beach ahead. It was anything but reassuring.Enemy mortar shells and high-explosive artillery rounds were blasting the shoreline as far as Leyden could see in both directions, sending up huge water spouts in the surf. Further inland, the big guns of Navy ships, firing since dawn from several miles out to sea, raised towering clouds of coral and rock, fire and smoke, as they hammered at Japanese targets still invisible behind walls of flame. Carrier-based Hellcat fighter planes roared low over the beach, their wing guns spitting .50-caliber tracers at enemy pillboxes and gun pits.All of it was dead ahead and alarmingly close now -- only a couple of minutes away, Leyden figured. He shuddered and tried to steady himself on rubbery knees, feeling as if the jaws of hell were opening to swallow the amphibious tractor and everyone in it.Leyden was in the first wave of Marines about to storm ashore on an obscure speck of an island called Peleliu 600 miles west of Mindanao in the Philippines. Until a few days ago, he and his comrades had never heard of the place, but the brass said it had to be taken to protect the flank of Army General Douglas MacArthur's forces when MacArthur made good on his promise to liberate the Philippines from two and a half years of brutal Japanese occupation.Leyden was supposed to be the first of a dozen men to exit the right side of the amtrack while another dozen went out the left side. But the skinny rifleman-scout from New York was only eighteen, untested in combat, and jittery as hell. The thought of leaving the protective confines of the tractor and exposing himself to hostile fire for the first time filled him with anticipation and dread. This was the moment he'd been training for, and anticipating with a mixture of excitement and forboding, ever since he'd joined the Marines on his seventeenth birthday. Still, he couldn't shake the thought that maybe he didn't have what it took to get through the next few minutes.Would he live up to his own -- and his buddies' -- high expectations, or would he freeze up? Even worse, would he turn and run?Leyden squeezed his eyes shut and called on his faith for strength. He pictured his devout Irish Catholic mother saying a novena for him at this very moment.Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .Opening his eyes, Leyden found Corporal Leonard Ahner, his friend and fire team leader, staring at him from inches away. Ahner, a lanky Hoosier from Huntington, Indiana, had been through the landing at New Britain the year before, so he had a good idea of what to expect."You scared, Bill?" Ahner asked. There was no condemnation in the veteran's question."Nah, I'm okay," Leyden said, fighting the butterflies in his stomach. He could hardly hear his own voice for the explosive roar around him."Well, if you ain't scared, you're the only guy here who ain't," Ahner said with a crooked grin. "I'll go out first if you want me to."Leyden shook his head. "No, I'm ready. I'm okay."He glanced at the faces of his squad mates lined up behind him, a grim-visaged cross section of young America: PFC Marion Vermeer from Washington state, PFC Roy Baumann from Upper Wisconsin, PFC Ray Rottinghaus from Iowa, Corporal Ted Barrow from Texas. Leyden couldn't imagine a greater disgrace than letting these guys down. He'd rather die than let somebody else do his job for him. Yet he knew that Ahner was right -- that every man around him was gripped by the same conflicting feelings. Each was lost in his own thoughts, imagining the best and worst of himself and what the Japanese would throw at them. Each knew what waSloan, Bill is the author of 'Brotherhood of Heroes The Marines at Peleliu, 1944 -- the Bloodiest Battle of the Pacific War', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743260107 and ISBN 0743260104.