PART TWO PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF ATTU FOREWORD By First Lieutenant Robert J. Mitchell, 32d Infantry These are the incidents of battle: the stories of the men who move and kill and die, over mountains and mud . . . who mark the ground with their bodies, while the maps behind them are being marked with pins and pencil lines. These are not the stories of heroes, though many heroes are mentioned here. They are simply the stories of guys who kill the enemy soldiers, with rifles and bayonets. They are the truth. They are the truth as it is remembered by the men who lived the stories . . . the truth, only so far as it can be represented by words on paper. Words, however colorfully arranged, can never flash like the muzzle of a machine gun firing through the fog, or rumble like artillery Shells on a mountain, or grunt like a soldier when a bullet hits. Those are things kept secret inside of men who have lived intimately with battle; and they are shared, like prized possessions, only with other men who have lived with battle. Often with such words as, "Sergeant, the Lieutenant is being sent around by the Chief of Staff to get some stories on the battle up on Attu," company commanders introduced me to their men. Then, invariably, with a look full of things the two had shared, and an uneasy glance at me, the soldier and I sat down to talk; sometimes in a mess hall or a CP tent, sometimes on a "cat" or a boat or the soldier's bunk; sometimes on the ground, the very ground where the fighting had been. Most of the men were reticent; some were smugly reticent. They felt a personal ownership of their experiences, regarded the story of the bullets that killed their buddies as a cherished and private thing, not to be tossed about indiscriminately by outsiders. They always waited for me to start, even after I had told them the sort of thing I wanted; and it usually took a catalyst like "Remember that Jap machine gunner on Engineer Hill..." to start the conversation. They remembered all right. They remembered vividly. As the battle reappeared in their minds, the effect was reflected in the face of every man I talked with. But men who have been in battle and felt the impact of combat on their bodies are like members who have been initiated into an esoteric brotherhood. And until I had a chance to tell that I was up there that day, that it was the day I had been wounded, and I knew what hell they were catching the stories were only lifeless statements. After that, however, the men talked freely. Most of the soldiers I talked to alone were shy, but when several got together their mutual memories dovetailed, and the stories built themselves. All the men preferred to tell stories about each other, the one in subject adding details and corrections, and saying, "Ah, hell, if it hadn't been for Joe . . . " They told the truth. For few men who have been in battle will exaggerate or lie in the face of the men who fought beside them, and many of the stories cross-checked where the incidents overlapped. The men were embarrassed by the exaggerated misstatements published about them. They remember just the incidents and are proud of their memories. They remember the men who fell and the way they fell, in the ten or twenty yards on either side of them. They remember the details of a parried bayonet, and the vicious snapping of close machine-gun bullets, and the dirt from a shell exploding beside them. They remember the little things like urinating into an empty shell carton and pouring it over the edge of a foxhole as the height of battlefield fastidiousness. When the unit report states coldly " . . . the attack pushed off at 0600. The attacking companies advanced, under stiff enemy resistance, to within two hundred yards of the objective and were repulsed," the man who heard his buddy drop and dived behind a rock as the bullets splattered against it, knows intimately and accurately how the attack was repulsed. And tomorrow night he will know intimately and accurately how the objectives were gained. He will have been there. The big picture is plainly marked with black grease pencil over the flat contour lines of the map. The other picture is plainly marked, too, with scars, and laughs, and memories. It is the man's picture. I am proud to have seen it, and humble before it. It is the little picture . . . The main force of the 7th Infantry Division on Massacre Beach landed on May 11, 1943, pushed its two battalions of the l7th Infantry (one battalion of the 32d Infantry in reserve) up Massacre Valley to hold at Clevesy Pass (Massacre-Sarana Pass) and to force Jarmin Pass (Massacre-Holtz Pass). The eager Doughboys landed without meeting resistance at the beach and advanced toward the positions at the head of the valley that were the defenses of the Japanese 303d Independent Infantry Battalion (this battalion was landed on Attu 31 January 1943). Five days of bitter fighting were required to clear the area and permit the preparation for the assault of Chichagof Harbor. An extract from "The Capture of Attu," As Told By The Men Who Fought There. From the Fighting Forces Series of The Infantry Journal, 1115 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington , DC.