Flame of Glory

It was the 13th day of Wake's hopeless, gallant fight. For the first time since the Japanese had struck on the morning of Dec. 8, the bright, pitiless Pacific sky was dulled. Over that tiny speck of sand on the 167th meridian east of Greenwich the clouds hung mercifully low. Those Marines of the original 378 who were still on their feet worked with tight-lipped earnestness against the next attack.

From the sky to the well-tuned ears on Wake came the rumble of engines. But this time Wake's men did not have to worry. For the first time since Dec. 8, a U.S. Navy patrol plane was coming in to see how things were going. The big boat thundered across the island, wheeled, landed in the lagoon. Out crawled her crew.

Before them spread the stage of one of the most grimly deadly dramas in World War II. The Marines were at work, kidding as they went, after the tradition of the professional soldier. A few were bandaged, but still on duty. All had lost the trim, starched look on which Marines in the tropics insist. Behind their grins of welcome their eyes were haggard, hard.

The top officers of Wake were at work, too--jockey-sized, balding Major Jimmie Devereux, the commander; lean-hipped Major Paul Albert Putnam, commander of the fighter squadron; Major Walter Lewis John Bayler, temporary supervisor of Wake's air base (who was to be taken off Wake, presumably to report on weapons, tactics, etc.).

Artillerymen cleaned and reset their pieces, stacked ammunition in orderly piles. Their infantry comrades of the 1st Defense Battalion, U.S.M.C., worked at their rifles, dug entrenchments for the last stand, squinted critically at bright bayonets. The remainder of 1,000 A.F. of L. workmen who had been at work on the island deepened air-raid shelters, helped out Marines at their tasks. On the airdrome, mechanics and officers of the Marine's air squadron, VMF-211, patched up new planes from the tangled junk of their original twelve, now broken and burned by Jap bombs.

It was time for the patrol boat to leave. The props were ticking over. The boat thundered across the lagoon, took the air, melted into the clouds. Wake's men knew the next face they would see would be the face of the Jap. Two days later when the Jap had landed and the last struggle was going, their commander radioed a last gallant message: "The issue is in doubt." But from the hour when the patrol plane left, every man on the island must have been quite sure that the issue was not in doubt--it was inevitable.

Good to the Last Squad. Out of Wake on the 20th came the last report from the men who went down fighting two days later. Released last week by the Navy at Washington, it added new fuel to the imperishable flame of their heroism. It also proved that the Jap had had to pay a bitter price for the capture of the outpost and its thin line of defenders.

How many men the Jap had lost is not known. But he had lost the services of a small fleet of ships--seven in all--a light cruiser, four destroyers, a gunboat and a submarine. Some, including the cruiser, were sunk, the others crippled by gunfire and bomb. In the air, the pilots of VMF-211's single-seaters had also knocked down five Jap bombers.

In casualties, the Marines had suffered heavily. VMF-211 had twelve officers, 49 enlisted men, when the Jap struck. On Dec. 20, 27 were dead, seven were in the hospital, six more wounded but on their feet.

Good From the First Hour. Major Bayler's terse, impersonal notes told the story of their stand, from the first day when news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor sent the bugles shrilling "general quarters."

The Jap struck before noon. "11:58 a.m., 24 Jap bombers on a northern course hit airdrome in close column of division 'Vs' from 3,000 feet. 100-pound fragmentation bombs and simultaneous strafing. Casualties, 25 dead, seven wounded, seven airplanes burned, destroyed."

Since that morning's news, VMF-211 had been on patrol, and the Jap struck when eight planes had returned to refuel --destroying seven of them on the ground. He was back again next morning, 27 planes. He bombed the hospital, killed several patients. One enemy plane was shot down. The Jap hit again the following morning with 27 planes. The Marines knew what to look for next. The Jap was softening them up for a landing party.

He came before the next dawn: "Dec. 11, 5 a.m. landing attempt by twelve Jap ships, including light cruisers, destroyers, gunboats, two troop or supply ships. Jap casualties: one light cruiser, two destroyers, one gunboat, two bombers.

"Note: that Japs closed to 4,700 yards before 5-and 3-inch guns opened up at point-blank range."

The Jap had learned something. He went back to bombing. Wake was hit by 27 planes, again by 32, by 30, by 41. He came again & again. With his patched-up ships, Paul Putnam's men went up to meet him, while the men on the ground slammed away with cannon and machine gun.

Letter for a Great Library. Between raids, 38-year-old Major Putnam penciled a report in his notebook, tore it out, sent it along in the patrol boat as his last report. As a Marine of 18 years' service, afloat and ashore, he must have been aware that he was adding another classic to the library of impersonal letters written by leatherneck officers since the first of the Corps sailed with John Paul Jones.

"Parts and assemblies," he wrote, "have been traded back & forth so that no airplane can be identified. Engines have been traded from plane to plane, have been junked, stripped, rebuilt and all but created.

"Personnel are living in dugouts made by the contractor's men [the A.F. of L. workmen]. . . . Not comfortable, but adequate against all but direct bomb hits. . . . Sanitation is only fair, but so far have had only a mild flurry of diarrhea. Fresh water is adequate for drinking. . . ."

He singled out by name only Lieut. John F. Kinney and Technical Sergeant William J. Hamilton, for their work in patching up the squadron's flying equipment. Of the rest, Major Putnam wrote: "All hands have behaved splendidly and held up in a manner of which the Marine Corps may well tell."

Last week a grateful people, speaking through their President, officially cited Wake's Marines for "devotion to duty and splendid conduct at their battle stations. . . ." And Wake went down in the Corps's history with its other bright stars --the battle of the Bon Homme Richard against the Serapis, Tripoli, Trenton, Chapultepec, Samar, Tientsin, Belleau Wood, Blanc Mont, other bloody fields in every part of the world where Marines have fought and died.

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