PART FOUR
Off pedestal, on base.

Basilone, relieved of his celebrity duties, returned to Camp Pendleton,
where his new work brought him love and war.

The Orange County Register
By Keith Sharon
Wednesday, September 22, 2004

It was as if the president or Joe DiMaggio or John Wayne had walked into the room. Charles Tatum was lying down in the Camp Pendleton barracks, a green Marine fresh out of boot camp, when his new platoon sergeant showed up.

Tatum had read the comics, heard the radio programs, read the newspapers.

Standing before him was Johnny Basilone, whose wish to return to combat was granted by Maj. General Alexander Vandegrift.

Tatum jumped up, ready to salute.

"Relax," said Johnny, trying to regain the confidence he had lost as a celebrity.
"At ease."

After a few awkward seconds in which Tatum pondered "How do you speak to a legend?" and then answered himself – "You don't." Johnny spoke again.

"We're forming the Fifth Division, best one in the Corps," he said. Tatum's knees were shaking. He hoped Johnny didn't notice.

Johnny was home again. He liked the way a machine gun felt in his hands, the rattling sound when it fired. He liked the camaraderie. He liked preparing for hostile circumstances.

He was promoted to gunnery sergeant in April 1944. It was as if he had been born
to be a gunnery sergeant.

Somehow the power and prestige he had inside the camp felt natural. The
stuttering celebrity was gone.

Johnny even liked the Camp Pendleton food, or at least that's what it looked like.

He started hanging around the mess tent, especially after he got to know a pretty staff sergeant cook.

Her name was Lena Riggi, an Italian from a family of five brothers in Portland. She was three years older and different from all the girls who had sent their pictures to Johnny proposing marriage.

She didn't seem impressed. She didn't coo and melt in his presence.

When all the other girls on the base told her that Johnny Basilone, the Johnny Basilone, had become interested in her, "she shrugged him off," said Lena's longtime friend, Barbara Garner.

So Johnny unleashed a tactical assault to win her heart.

He organized group dates in which a bunch of Marines hopped the train in
Oceanside and headed for the bars in Los Angeles. He always made sure
Lena was included.

"He was very attentive," Garner said.

As he usually did when he went to battle, Johnny won.

Lena fell in love with a swaggering, "sure of himself" Marine, Garner said.

One night in Los Angeles, Johnny stopped Lena in the middle of the street,
kissed her and screamed, "I'M GOING TO MARRY THIS GIRL."

Lena didn't believe him at first.

The next day, they set a date.

They were married at St. Mary's Church in Oceanside, July 10, 1944, with a reception at the Carlsbad Hotel. They honeymooned at her parents' onion farm in Portland.

Johnny talked about buying a 10-bedroom house and putting "a kid in each room."

When they returned, the Basilones lived in separate barracks. So they spent
their weekends trying to find an apartment. But housing around the base was
scarce.

Lena begged Johnny to tell these prospective landlords who he was. Manila
John Basilone could get an apartment with one phone call.

But Johnny refused. He wasn't going to rely on his fame anymore.

He was just a Marine. The way he wanted it to be.

Thirty-two days after he was married, he got orders to ship out for an invasion
of "Island X," a yet-to-be-disclosed target.

The girls on the base arranged for Johnny and Lena to have a private room for his
final night. Lena gave him the cross that she wore around her neck at the wedding.
•••
Johnny shaved his head at Camp Tarawa in Hawaii.

There aren't going to be any barbershops where they were going, he told his men.

On Jan. 28, 1945, Johnny was aboard the USS Hansford when Lt. Col. John
Butler announced that their undisclosed target would be an eight-square-mile
speck in the Pacific called "Iwo Jima," which means "sulfur island."

Iwo Jima was prime real estate in the battle for control of the Pacific Ocean.
Located 660 miles south of Japan, an American-controlled base on Iwo Jima
could offer air cover to attacks on downtown Tokyo.

Butler said the Japanese had 5,000 soldiers on the island, and that the Marine
Corps could take them in five days.

Butler and the brass had no idea how wrong both estimates would prove to be.

One night as an American armada cut through the tide toward Iwo Jima, Mike Cantor, who worked in the Seabees instruction battalion, was on the deck of the landing ship when he saw Johnny Basilone and men from his platoon scurrying around the tanks where he wasn't supposed to be.

"He wasn't much for regulation," Cantor said years later. "They would steal the machine guns off the other tanks and pick the best ones."

It was the same trick Johnny had used at Guadalcanal.

With the best guns he could find, Johnny and his men prepared for the invasion.
He led them in calisthenics. They played cards. They wrote letters home.

Finally, the invasion came, Feb. 19, 1945.

They were served steak, eggs and coffee at 3 a.m.

"We called that a 'killer breakfast,'" Cantor said.

PART FIVE, COMING THURSDAY: AT THE FRONT AGAIN
When the Marines were digging for cover on the brutal beach at Iwo Jima,
one man was standing: Johnny Basilone.

OCRegister.com News
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