After a brief interlude at the home of Eugene Sledge’s parents in Mobile, Ala., ‘The Pacific’ Episode 6 ‘Peleliu Airfield’ takes us back to the fetid Pacific island of Peleliu and a group of very unhappy Marines indeed.
Spoilers surely follow.
The 1st Marines, including Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge, are pinned down on one end of the island, under constant artillery barrage from Japanese positions in the hills on the other end of the island. They are short of food and water and are wilting away under triple digit heat.
The worst is to come. In order to extricate themselves from their situation, the Marines must cross the air field in the middle of Peleliu under heavy fire to get into the hills and at their Japanese tormentors. If the Marines stay where they are, they will die by inches. But crossing that air field means that many of the Marines will die more immediately.
The Marines, including Sledge and Leckie, begin the advance, running, To stop is to die. To go back is to die. Going forward is the only chance of life. But death still comes, zipping out from Japanese positions in the wrecked buildings and fortified pill boxes of the air field, raining down from the artillery positions in the hills beyond. The battle is a chaos of explosions, men screaming, the whistle of bullets from anywhere and everywhere.
Somehow, the Marines break through, and move to the hills beyond. But there is a cost. Robert Leckie is hit and must be evacuated to a hospital ship offshore of the island. Leckie finds himself in place with a soft bunk, eating peaches in comfort, still within ear shot of the fighting still going on Peleliu. One imagines he is glad to be out of it, but feeling guilt at the same time for his buddies still in the fire.
Eugene Sledge is now with the Marines in the hills. He witnesses the death of one of his fellow Marines, who has been driven insane by what he has been through, who is killed by his own to prevent his screaming from altering the enemy to their position.
The real fighting has begun, for the Japanese, more numerous than the attacking Marines, are dug into caves and fortified positions throughout the hills on that end of Peleliu. The Japanese were not surrender; the code of Bushido forbids it. So the Marines, with some help from dive bombers and off shore naval artillery, must dig the Japanese out one strong point at a time. A battle that was to take place over two or three days will last about a month of hard fighting and dying.
Source: The Pacific, Peleliu Airfield, TV.Com
