WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.
Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.
The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: "escalation of force", "friendly-fire", "development meeting", etc. The reports can also be viewed by our "severity" measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.
The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary -- including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.
This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
The Afghan War Diary (AWD for short) consists of messages from several important US military communications systems. The messaging systems have changed over time; as such reporting standards and message format have changed as well. This reading guide tries to provide some helpful hints on interpretation and understanding of the messages contained in the AWD.
Most of the messages follow a pre-set structure that is designed to make automated processing of the contents easier. It is best to think of the messages in the terms of an overall collective logbook of the Afghan war. The AWD contains the relevant events, occurrences and intelligence experiences of the military, shared among many recipients. The basic idea is that all the messages taken together should provide a full picture of a days important events, intelligence, warnings, and other statistics. Each unit, outpost, convoy, or other military action generates report about relevant daily events. The range of topics is rather wide: Improvised Explosives Devices encountered, offensive operations, taking enemy fire, engagement with possible hostile forces, talking with village elders, numbers of wounded, dead, and detained, kidnappings, broader intelligence information and explicit threat warnings from intercepted radio communications, local informers or the afghan police. It also includes day to day complaints about lack of equipment and supplies.
The description of events in the messages is often rather short and terse. To grasp the reporting style, it is helpful to understand the conditions under which the messages are composed and sent. Often they come from field units who have been under fire or under other stressful conditions all day and see the report-writing as nasty paperwork, that needs to be completed with little apparent benefit to expect. So the reporting is kept to the necessary minimum, with as little type-work as possible. The field units also need to expect questions from higher up or disciplinary measures for events recorded in the messages, so they will tend to gloss over violations of rules of engagement and other problematic behavior; the reports are often detailed when discussing actions or interactions by enemy forces. Once it is in the AWD messages, it is officially part of the record - it is subject to analysis and scrutiny. The truthfulness and completeness especially of descriptions of events must always be carefully considered. Circumstances that completely change the meaning of an reported event may have been omitted.
The reports need to answer the critical questions: Who, When, Where, What, With whom, by what Means and Why. The AWD messages are not addressed to individuals but to groups of recipients that are fulfilling certain functions, such as duty officers in a certain region. The systems where the messages originate perform distribution based on criteria like region, classification level and other information. The goal of distribution is to provide those with access and the need to know, all of the information that relevant to their duties. In practice, this seems to be working imperfectly. The messages contain geo-location information in the forms of latitude-longitude, military grid coordinates and region.
The messages contain a large number of abbreviations that are essential to understanding its contents. When browsing through the messages, underlined abbreviations pop up an little explanation, when the mouse is hovering over it. The meanings and use of some shorthands have changed over time, others are sometimes ambiguous or have several meanings that are used depending on context, region or reporting unit. If you discover the meaning of a so far unresolved acronym or abbreviations, or if you have corrections, please submit them to wl-office@sunshinepress.org.
Messages may contain date and time information. Dates are mostly presented in either US numeric form (Year-Month-Day, e.g. 2009-09-04) or various Euro-style shorthands (Day-Month-Year, e.g. 2 Jan 04 or 02-Jan-04 or 2jan04 etc.).
Times are frequently noted with a time-zone identifier behind the time, e.g. "09:32Z". Most common are Z (Zulu Time, aka. UTC time zone), D (Delta Time, aka. UTC + 4 hours) and B (Bravo Time, aka UTC + 2 hours). A full list off time zones can be found here: http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/military/
Other times are noted without any time zone identifier at all. The Afghanistan time zone is AFT (UTC + 4:30), which may complicate things further if you are looking up messages based on local time.
Finding messages relating to known events may be complicated by date and time zone shifting; if the event is in the night or early morning, it may cause a report to appear to be be misfiled. It is advisable to always look through messages before and on the proceeding day for any event.
The message starts with a unique ReportKey; it may be used to find messages and also to reference them.
The next field is DateOccurred; this provides the date and time of the event or message. See Time and Date formats for details on the used formats.
Type contains typically a broad classification of the type of event, like Friendly Action, Enemy Action, Non-Combat Event. It can be used to filter for messages of a certain type.
Category further describes what kind of event the message is about. There are a lot of categories, from propaganda, weapons cache finds to various types of combat activities.
TrackingNumber Is an internal tracking number.
Title contains the title of the message.
Summary is the actual description of the event. Usually it contains the bulk of the message content.
Region contains the broader region of the event.
AttackOn contains the information who was attacked during an event.
ComplexAttack is a flag that signifies that an attack was a larger operation that required more planning, coordination and preparation. This is used as a quick filter criterion to detect events that were out of the ordinary in terms of enemy capabilities.
ReportingUnit, UnitName, TypeOfUnit contains the information on the military unit that authored the report.
Wounded and death are listed as numeric values, sorted by affiliation. WIA is the abbreviation for Wounded In Action. KIA is the abbreviation for Killed In Action. The numbers are recorded in the fieldsFriendlyWIA,FriendlyKIA,HostNationWIA,HostNationKIA,CivilianWIA,CivilianKIA,EnemyWIA,EnemyKIA
Captured enemies are numbered in the field EnemyDetained.
The location of events are recorded in the fields MGRS (Military Grid Reference System), Latitude, Longitude.
The next group of fields contains information on the overall military unit, like ISAF Headquarter, that a message originated from or was updated by. Updates frequently occur when an analysis group, like one that investigated an incident or looked into the makeup of an Improvised Explosive Device added its results to a message.
OriginatorGroup, UpdatedByGroup
CCIR Commander's Critical Information Requirements
If an activity that is reported is deemed "significant", this is noted in the field Sigact. Significant activities are analyzed and evaluated by a special group in the command structure.
Affiliation describes if the event was of friendly or enemy nature.
DColor controls the display color of the message in the messaging system and map views. Messages relating to enemy activity have the color Red, those relating to friendly activity are colored Blue.
Classification contains the classification level of the message, e.g. Secret
An average of 18 US military veterans
are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the
Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides
driven by Washington’s wars of aggression.
The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times,
citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department.
The department estimates that there are 950 suicide attempts every
month by veterans who are receiving treatment from the department. Of
these, 7 percent succeed in taking their own lives, while 11 percent try
to kill themselves again within nine months.
The greatest growth in suicides has taken place among veterans
returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who accounted for 1,868
suicide attempts in fiscal 2009, which ended on September 30. Of these,
nearly 100 succeeded in killing themselves.
The connection between the “surge” in military suicides and the
ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undeniable. The suicide rate
within the military doubled between 2001 and 2006, even as it remained
flat among the comparable (adjusted for age and gender) civilian
population. And the numbers continue to rise steadily. In 2009, 160
active-duty military personnel killed themselves, compared to 140 in
2008 and 77 in 2003.
Many have blamed the increasing number of suicides on the repeated
combat deployments to which members of the all-volunteer US military are
subjected, with the so-called “war on terrorism” approaching its 10th
year and nearly 200,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The effect of the repeated deployments is compounded by the shortness
of so-called “dwell time”—the interlude at home bases between combat
tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over most of the two wars, this has been
limited to just one year because of personnel pressures. While it is now
closer to two years, psychological research has indicated that at least
three years are necessary to ameliorate the psychological stress
inflicted by these deployments.
The military command has tried to obscure the connection. Last month,
for example, the Army’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, told
a Senate committee that the most common factor in military suicides was
“fractured relationships of some sort.” Clearly, however, the multiple
deployments and the psychological impact that they have upon soldiers is
the leading cause of broken marriages and mental health problems that
lead to the breaking off of relationships.
Craig Bryan, a former Air Force officer and University of Texas
psychologist who advises the Pentagon on suicides, linked the phenomenon
to the training given by the military itself.
“We train our warriors to use controlled violence and aggression, to
suppress strong emotional reactions in the face of adversity, to
tolerate physical and emotional pain and to overcome the fear of injury
and death,” he told Time magazine earlier this month. These
qualities, designed to prepare soldiers to kill unquestioningly, “are
also associated with increased risk for suicide,” he said. He added that
these psychological traits cannot be altered “without negatively
affecting the fighting capability of our military.” To put it bluntly,
suicide, according to Bryan, is an occupational hazard. “Service members
are, simply put, more capable of killing themselves by sheer
consequence of their professional training,” he said.
The same training, combined with traumatic experiences in Iraq and
Afghanistan, has created severe difficulties for many veterans of the
two wars trying to re-integrate themselves into civilian society. While
the suicides are the most glaring and tragic indicator of these
problems, there are many others.
Last month, the jobless rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan
reached 14.7 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the official
nationwide unemployment rate in the US.
According to one recent Veterans Administration estimate, 154,000 US
veterans are homeless on any given night, many of them living on the
streets. Increasingly, the ranks of this homeless army are being swelled
by those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
General Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, was compelled to
acknowledge on Monday that the military’s response to soldiers returning
from combat with psychological problems has been one of
“over-medication.”
“I can tell you that we are concerned about over-medication,” the
general said, adding that “we’re very concerned about the panoply of
drugs that are being used and the numbers of drugs that are being used.”
According to a report in the Military Times last month, one
in six members of the US military is using some form of psychotropic
drug, while 15 percent of soldiers admitted to abusing prescription
drugs over the previous month.
Schoomaker’s comments came at a press conference called to respond to
an article published in the New York Times Sunday exposing a
so-called “warrior transition unit” at Fort Carson, Colorado. It
referred to this facility and similar units as “’warehouses of despair,
where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of
prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers.”
Soldiers interviewed in the article said that they were given pain
pills to which they became addicted as well as sleeping pills and other
medication, while alcohol and heroin were readily available in their
barracks. Little or no therapy was on offer, however.
At least four soldiers sent to the unit at Fort Carson have committed
suicide there since 2007.
On April 16, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, the former
Army chief of staff, testified on Capitol Hill on veteran suicides,
providing equally telling numbers. He reported that VA suicide hotlines
were fielding 10,000 calls a month.
Shinseki told a congressional panel that he was haunted by two images
of US military personnel. The first was that of new recruits who
“outperform all of our expectations, great youngsters.”
The second is that of veterans who make up a “a disproportionate
share of the nation’s homeless, jobless, mental health (problems),
depressed patients, substance abusers, suicides.”
“Something happened” along the way, said Shinseki, “and that’s what
we’re about is to try to figure this out.”
It is not a great mystery. These “great youngsters” are thrown into
wars of aggression and colonial-style occupations where they are exposed
to horrific violence and employed in the subjugation of entire
populations, with the inevitable killing of civilian men, women and
children. Those who acknowledge the mental and emotional trauma created
by these conditions are treated as pariahs and weaklings
On the same day that Shinseki was testifying in Washington,
27-year-old Jesse Huff, an Iraq war veteran, killed himself outside a
Veterans Administration medical facility in Dayton, Ohio, where he had
been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. Huff, who had been
injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, shot himself twice in the head with
an assault rifle at the foot of a statue to the Union soldiers of the
Civil War. A cousin told the Associated Press that he “hadn’t been the
same” since returning from Iraq, while the father of a young man with
whom he lived said that Huff was “really hurting.
THOSE DASTARDLY DOGS ... DO NOT FORGET THAT THEY TOSSED THE HASSENFEFFERS' AND THE GLOCKENSPIEL FAMILIES OUT OF THEIR LITTLE CLUB - BECAUSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE GRAND DUCHY OF FENWICK THE LAST HASSENFEFFER: - SIR CEDRIC FERDINAND FITZROY VON SCHTUPP - IS CURRENTLY PETITIONING THE HOUSE OF LORDS ........ "GIVE US BACK OUR GARTER !!!!"
Recently my aunt, who is now 86, came across a couple of her World
War 2 ration books that she had as a young child. I was fascinated to
see these artifacts which are still in very good condition despite
being more than 60 years old. I wanted to share these rare items with
you.
During World War 2, American
citizens at home were asked to conserve everything. The government found it necessary to ration
food, gasoline, rubber, and many more commodities, even clothing.
In
the spring of 1942, the Food
Rationing Program was introduced with the goals of preventing public pique at shortages
and to preclude people with more means from acquiring an unfair portion
of scarce goods.
Rationing controlled the amount of commodities
that persons could buy. Not all items required rationing, however. All
meats, butter, fat, and oils, and most cheese were regulated with "Red
Stamp" rationing. Each individual was allowed a number of points
weekly. "Blue Stamp" rationing controlled the distribution of canned,
bottled, and frozen fruits and vegetables, plus juices and dry beans;
and such processed foods as soups, baby food and ketchup. Rationing
also employed a point system. But many Americans grew frustrated and
confused trying to decide what coupons went with which items, how many
points they needed to purchase them, and that some coupons did not
require points at all.
Rationing also controlled the
distribution of clothing, shoes, coffee, gasoline, tires, and fuel oil.
With each new coupon book came new rules and deadlines. Rationing of
gas and tires depended on the distance to a person's job. X stickers on
cars permitted their owners unlimited supplies and were obviously
highly prized.
An
unintended and serious side effect of the rationing programs was the
rise of a "black market" dealing in the illicit sale of rationed goods
at inflated prices. Meat, sugar, and gasoline were the staples of the
black market trade in the US.
In 1944, ration coins were
introduced. These pressed cardboard coin-like tokens allowed vendors to
make change on purchases made with ration stamps. For more images of World
War 2 rationing items, visit this site World War II Rationing.
With the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914,
strong anti-German feeling within Britain caused sensitivity among the
royal family about its German roots. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, also a
grandson of Queen Victoria, was the kingâ€s cousin; the queen herself
was German. As a result, on June 19, 1917, the king decreed that the
royal surname was thereby changed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor
A
photograph of a KKK parade in Stockton, California, 1920s.
The Klan
was a powerful political and social force in California in
the 1920s,
staging parades such as this all over the state.
Snakes in the
Garden
The History of Racism and the KKK in Santa Cruz County
In
1922, Ku Klux Klan organizers came into Santa Cruz County and
began
to tap into the anti-foreign sentiment that was sweeping
across the
country. Roman Catholics and Jews were the targets of this
campaign
of fear and intimidation, and burning crosses punctuated the
night sky.
Local communities struggled to balance free speech guarantees
against
the obvious hateful and racist message the Klan espoused. What
was the
Klan doing here in Paradise? And where does all this fit in
the history
of Santa Cruz County?
The
secret charter of the Klan Klavern #105 officially founded
in Watsonville
on December 22, 1926. The Klan was organized throughout
the Monterey
Bay Region in the 1920s.
One
of the themes of the 1920s KKK was allowing the Bible to
be taught
in public schools.
The
KKK closely identified itself with American icons such
as the
flag and the statue of liberty.
The
KKK in the 1920s was very much anti-Catholic and opposed
the immigration
of Roman Catholic Southern Europeans. The caricature of
“Rome”
as a priest or monk with tonsure was a common one used by
the Klan.
Note: All of
these cartoons
were published in a book titled Heroes of the Fiery Cross by
Bishop
Alma White, New Jersey, 1928.
The KKK in the
Monterey Bay Region in the 1920s
Rebirth 1915
The Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan was re-born on
Thanksgiving night,
1915 in Atlanta Georgia. Hoping to catch hold of the popular
groundswell
that was sure to come with the opening of D.W. Griffith’s
movie,
Birth of a Nation, the new KKK’s founder, William J. Simmon’s
gave birth to an oddly-skewed fraternal organization based
loosely on
the original Klan. Fueled by anti-immigrant fears following
World War
I, the KKK membership grew until it reached an estimated
4,000,000 members
by 1924.
Anti-Catholic, Anti-Semitic
The primary targets of the 1920s Klan was Jews and Catholics,
and the
organization eventually reached the region targeting primarily
the Catholic
church, Catholic hospitals, bootlegging and any other
potential threat
to the basic, Protestant family and its values.
Regional Klaverns
It is difficult to know just how many Klansmen there were in
the region
during this period as it was a secret society and did not
publicize
its membership. However, there was at least one Klavern in
Watsonville,
one in Santa Cruz, and several in Live Oak. There was an
effort made
to organize a Klavern in Monterey, but it seems to have been
thwarted
by the local police chief. And, I’ve seen evidence of a
Klavern
in Hollister. Periodic reports of cross burnings appear in the
local
and regional newspapers during the 1920s, and there were
several large
public recruiting meetings in the region during this time.
Klan winds down
Nationally, the KKK began to run out of steam in the late
1920s because
of several large scandals, and by the 30s, the Klan is no
longer active
in the region.
However, the themes of racism and prejudice continue to be
prevalent
in the region, bursting forth against the Filipinos in the
early 1930s,
the Okies during the mid-1930s, and the Japanese in the early
1940s.
Even today, anti-immigrant sentiments are frequently voiced,
this time
against people coming from Mexico and Latin America.
Anti-immigration
agitators continue to play on fears that are very similar to
those that
existed in the region in the 1920s.
Top
of the Workingmen’s Party ballot, Santa Cruz County, 1879.
The anti-Chinese movement was particularly strong in Santa
Cruz.
German automaker Mercedes-Benz recently announced four new, heavily
armored models. All of the machines are geared toward modern wars, and
the need for nimble all-terrain vehicles rather than tanks. The concepts
will be first shown on June 11th at Eurosatory, a European trade show
for the defense industry.
Mercedes-Benz is producing two trucks similar to armored Humvees, the
LAPV 6.X and 7.X (pictured above). The 6.X is built upon the same
modular system as the G-class SUV, while the 7.X uses the system from
the Unimog, MB's legendary go-anywhere vehicle. Both are intended to
serve as heavy duty recon trucks, with level 3 protection (enough to
stop a 7.62mm shell at 30 meters).
The Actros 4151 AK is an eight-wheeled, all-wheel drive "protection
class" transport that offers high grade armor against artillery and
landmines. It specifically provides level 4 protection against
ballistics, which means enough armor to stop a 155mm explosive shell at
30 meters; and level 4b protection against landmines, enough to stop an
explosion directly under the vehicle.
The FGA 14.5 is a chassis platform intended to be customized for
specialized use. It's built on MB's G-class SUV's--which themselves were
engineered to be modular, so that they could eventually be reconfigured
for myriad uses.
Royal Marines in
Afghanistan have begun using a new long-range rifle in their fight
against the Taliban.
Members of 40 Commando have deployed the Sharpshooter on the
front line in Helmand province for about a fortnight now, the Ministry
of Defence said.
The semi-automatic weapon - the first new infantry combat rifle
in more than 20 years - is more accurate over long distances with
higher calibre rounds.
More than 400 were bought in January as a £1.5m urgent
operational requirement.
'It's hoofing'
The Sharpshooter will be used alongside the Army's standard
issue SA80 A2 assault rifle, and each weapon shared amongst three or
four soldiers.
Sgt Baz Evans of 40 Commando said: "I have fired over 1,000
rounds on the rifle in training; accurately hitting targets over 800m
(2,625ft) away.
"The new Sharpshooter rifle provides quick and accurate fire,
with the flexibility of using it in the assault rifle role as well. It's
hoofing."
Members of 40 Commando have begun using the Sharpshooter rifle
in battles with the Taliban in dangerous Sangin in Helmand province.
The new semi-automatic weapon fires a 7.62mm round, larger than
the SA80's 5.56mm bullet.
Col Peter Warden, from Defence, Equipment and Support, said:
"It is a versatile weapon which will give our units a new dimension to
their armoury."
journey
through the darker reaches of humankind, Apocalypsis is a
record of loss, grief, injustice, violence and death through war in
Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Photographer Alvaro Ybarra
Zavala aims to bring the realities of these regions into our daily
lives, and to confront us with what he describes as “the orgy of
desperation, blood and despair which human beings are capable of
inflicting upon their fellows”; he undertakes to record these darker
episodes in our recent history to show that they are omnipresent
realities. “People are moved by what they see,” writes Zavala. “They
respond emotionally, intellectually and morally. All we have is each
other. We create our own problems, and it is up to us to solve them. I
want this project to become a part of our visual history, to enter our
collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to
remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great
leaders who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who
are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury.”
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This clip, incorporating historical footage from the U.S.
National Archives and the Department of Defense, provides a video
biography of John Basilone.
On the 19th of February, 1945 - Iwo Jima's D-Day - Basilone and other
members
of the 5th Marine Division landed on the left side of Iwo Jima's beach.
By the time of fighting at Iwo Jima, Basilone (a Medal-of-Honor winner
for conspicuous bravery and heroism at the earlier battle of
Guadalcanal) was a Marine Gunnery Sergeant.
The following month
- on the 19th of March, 1945 - Time Magazine published an article on Basilone. Among other things, it reports how he
prevented the Japanese from recapturing the airfield at Guadalcanal:
John
Basilone commanded two machine-gun emplacements. When one gun crew was
wiped out, he rolled back & forth over the ground, firing first one
gun, then the other, kept them chattering through the long night. When
the guns got too hot, he used his pistol. When the ammunition got low,
he went back through enemy fire for more. When the Japs gave it up,
there were 38 dead in front of just one of John Basilone's emplacements.
He and his handful of survivors had virtually annihilated a Jap
regiment, had helped save Henderson Field.
For his
extraordinary courage at Guadalcanal, Basilone won the Medal of Honor.
The same issue of Time reports how John notified his family
about this development:
Not until the following June [of
1943] did his family hear from him again. Then came a letter on
cheap note paper, in John's schoolboy hand: "I am very happy for the
other day I received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award
you can receive in the arm forces. . . . Tell Pop his son is still
tough. Tell Don [his brother] thanks for the prayer
they say in school for us. . . ."
Believing he was
needed back home, to raise money for war bonds, Basilone's commander
told John to pack his bag for the return trip. The Marine wasn't happy
about such a turn of events. He wanted to stay and fight.
Back
in the States, Doris Duke allowed her estate to be used for a huge
home-coming. Around 30,000 people welcomed John Basilone, the war hero:
On
a bright September Sunday of 1943, John Basilone got his welcome home.
At the estate of Doris Duke Cromwell, 30,000 assembled to greet Hero
John—mayors, judges, ex-Governors and ex-Senators, and a movie star with
upswept hairdo, who kissed John Basilone on the mouth. His picture
stood in all the shop windows, alongside General MacArthur's. A portrait
of John Basilone was hung in Town Hall.
John
got a $5,000 war bond, and went off on a Treasury-conducted war bond
tour. Marine officers who accompanied him found that Sergeant Basilone
was still steady, modest about his honors, anxious to get back to his
outfit.
"I'm becoming a museum piece," he said.
"And what if some marines should land on Dewey Boulevard and Manila John
[his nickname, earned for telling so many stories about his
Army days in the Philippines] isn't among them?"
After
pleading with his superiors, Basilone got his wish to return to "his
boys." Orders sent him to Iwo Jima, where he made the D-Day landing.
On
Guadalcanal, Basilone battled to keep the island's airfield under
Allied control. At Iwo Jima, he was charged with leading a Marine
assault team (from the 27th Regiment, 5th Division) to capture another
Japanese-held airfield: Motoyama.
Ordering his men to quickly
get off Iwo's beach - where they (and everyone else) were being pounded
with withering firepower from hidden, dug-in Japanese defenders -
Basilone was not far from the airfield when he was fatally wounded.
The
following month, Time reported how Basilone (who would win
another medal for his courage at Iwo Jima) met his end:
When
the first waves of marines went ashore on Iwo Jima, Gunnery Sergeant
John Basilone was there, commanding an assault team of the 27th
Regiment, 5th Division. By noon Medal-of-Honor man Basilone had his
outfit on the edge of Motoyama airfield. There he met the shell that had
his number on it. By nightfall John Basilone, a good marine, was dead.
In
2010, HBO is featuring the story of John Basilone in its mini-series, "The Pacific."
He remains one of the most-decorated enlisted men in American
history.
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An average of 18 US military veterans
