The View From Kalamazoo

In early August November 1942 a very young Pfc. Philip E. Fiero rode on a transport in the South Pacific.

When his vessel took a lot of structural damage – hit by a falling Japanese plane – he jumped over the side with a buddy. He was picked out of the water by a tin can (destroyer). He never saw his buddy again. On August 7 he stormed the island of Guadalcanal, in the Solomons (just to the east of Australia), and the following day fought (the Battle of Savo) to take control of a crucial strategic airstrip – Henderson field.

That night he stood on the shore and, as he watched the Vincennes attacked and sunk, he thought he’d never see Michigan again. He would, but not before he saw more death than he could have imagined when he enlisted 7 months before; not before he subsisted on 2 meager meals per day of wormy barley, fish heads, and rice captured from the Japanese; not before he killed, saw buddies die next to him – saw the terrible, gruesome gore of war.

There were daily dogfights overhead, and he later spoke of Squadron 223 (manning Grummans), “Those Marines were the fightingest bunch of men I ever saw or ever hope to see.” Two weeks later at the Battle of the Tenaru River (as he would recount) some 1,200 Japanese combatants were killed with a loss of only 28-30 American lives. He helped to bury the dead – dynamite was used to blow large holes that they would fill with bodies, cover well, and then move on to the next hole. He remained, he fought, and eventually he was badly wounded and spent three months in a military hospital before coming home to visit his mother.

This information came from a home-town newspaper interview (the only one he ever agreed to) given within days of his return on this visit. Otherwise, and thereafter, he didn’t speak of it. We might have heard references to going out drinking with his buddies, something about the terrible weather in North Carolina where he had basic training…but there were no war stories, no relating heroic tales, no prosaic reflection of macho deeds done (not even to his two sons). There was no question as to why – my sister and I silently observed his emotional response when a WWII movie set in the Pacific was on TV, when, for a few brief moments, he was transported back to those days and weeks of his life before, wounded, he made it out of Hell. When he sat and cried when he received a phone call informing him that one of his buddies, a man he fought with and barely survived with, had recently passed. Having seen what he saw, every loss of life thereafter broke his heart.

War is not romantic. War is not a topic suitable for light dinner discussion, not a shining series of heroic deeds strung together on the silver screen. War is about death, and dying, and the loss of life and limb even in victory is still loss. War is not protestors with snappy comments on cardboard signs, it’s not politicians in air-conditioned rooms playing a game of chess with real lives, it’s not the bits and pieces of the puzzle the media choose to share to the exclusion of the rest of the picture. War is hell.

The WWII memorial was recently dedicated after a battle for its very existence longer than the Pacific campaign my grandfather fought in and survived. He lost his last fight in November of 1997, some 55 years after he made it through the horrific fighting in the Solomons. I wish he could have lived to see this memorial (and his second great-grandchild, the first boy in the family since his own sons were born. and hear his first great-grandchild call him ‘Gampa’… and my sister’s wedding, where he would have danced with her to the Mills Bros Paper Doll (as I would have done had I not had a very small, scaled-down affair…if I had known..).

Not all of his buddies, and the buddies of so many other Marines, made it home. Very few of those who did are still around to see this long-overdue memorial dedicated, and fewer still able to go and see it with their own eyes (and hearts). Maybe some day I’ll go to D.C. and see it. The memorial in Nashville, next to the Carillon Bells, is wonderful. Many others I’ve seen are noticeably small, or barely there. I don’t know how he felt about memorials and their quality and their heart…but I know I have expectations of a level of respect that only a small handful have met.

Through the period from Memorial Day to his birthday in early July he remains on my mind – though time has passed I still spend this month remembering. As school ends for my daughter I remember that my sister and I would pack up and have a long visit right after school was out…I remember that on the 4th of July we’d celebrate his birthday, mine two days earlier, my sister and uncle’s birthday’s a week on either side of that, and his wedding anniversary (and, later, mine as well). I don’t enjoy celebrating my birthday as much anymore…it’s just not the same.