A Brief Excerpt From Sterling Mace's Book - September 17th & 18th, 1944

Here is a little excerpt from my forthecoming book. Some people have expressed a little interest. Please let me know what you think.



Before Carl Hubbell and Ms. Muggins, before PFC. Mahan and Guy Lombardo, and before Harry S. dropped a “Little Boy” on 350,000 Japanese, a little girl died in South Ozone Park one day.

The end.

I didn’t know much about that little girl, only that she was my sister. Dorothy was her name. White skin, blonde hair, and a great stillness hung around her as she lay in her casket at our home in Queens. I was too young to know a whole lot more. After all, I was only 4 years old.

It was September 9th, 1928.

My dad was there, I’m sure. And mom too. Neighbors would come to the house and pay their respects to our family – and to view the little dead girl, who would never again be troubled by arms and legs which she found unusable in her thirteen years of life. Dorothy no longer had to eat with spoons that had been bent, inwardly at the handle, creating a ladle-like instrument, so that tiny paralytic hands could manage the utensils easier. Those spoons would always remain in my memory; assuredly because I was viewing them at a time when my young mind was making the connection between the normal spoons I was just beginning to master, versus the ones my parents had to fashion for my sister out of necessity.

It was infantile paralysis that killed mom’s first born child. Polio to some. The same affliction that later killed a certain wheelchair bound President – the man who stood up boldly for a grieving and angry nation, one day in late 1941; and with a “righteous might,” declared that sneak attacks by little yellow bastards would not go unpunished by the United States of America.

Crippled Presidents, it seems, make big decisions regarding life and death.

Crippled little girls do not.

Memory begins to fade slower, here. My recall blanches to white. White like the large crape paper floral piece that festooned the front door of our home, which signified that a death had occurred within the walls.

I certainly remember that too.

Back in those days, people would hang a crape on the door, or a doorknob, and everyone knew what that meant. In fact, a person would be walking down the street and see a crape hanging on the entrance of a home, and they would cross to the other side of the street, just to get away from it. A sort of urban superstition, if you will. As if death was catching (and we all know it is) just not in the way that some people made it out to be.

Dorothy’s crape probably took up three-feet or more, about a foot in diameter, with another two-feet of white and gold banners hanging down from the center, listless, as the pendulum of a grandfather clock that had stopped cold and simply ran out of time.

I didn’t know what the crape was in 1928. The paper door-piece was a curio; akin to the same childish curiosity that had lead me to Dorothy’s casket in the first place.

Nobody, not my mom or dad, took me by the hand and lead me to see Dorothy for the final time. I lead myself; and the truth is, my last look at Dorothy is a thought that also serves as my very first memory of the girl. My first memory of anything at all, in fact. And it was a memory of death.

So, on September 15th, 1944, almost 16 years to the day when Dorothy passed away, me and about two dozen other Marines, packed liked matchsticks in our amphibious tractor, found ourselves skimming the Pacific Ocean towards the beach of Peleliu Island, with the rest of the 1st Marine Division – all of us immortal young men, about to become severely mortal, courtesy of the Empire of Japan.

And as we were heading in, for some reason that I will never know, my little Dorothy came to mind— just a flicker like a muzzle flash, a trace memory of something inexplicable—and I said to myself, “...

I said to myself something that I’ve told very few people in my life, save for my mom, upon my return from the war…

You see, it was my mom who explained to my middle sister, Mercedes, and I, that Dorothy was an angel. Mom called Dorothy an angel; and that was something she really ingrained into the minds of her living children.

Every weekend mom would take me and Mercedes to Evergreen Cemetery, in Brooklyn, to visit Dorothy’s grave. We would catch the bus to Metropolitan Avenue and then take the trolley car to Bushwick Ave. Then we’d walk the rest of the way to the cemetery, where we viewed the mound that marked Dorothy’s final resting place. Every weekend, for a long, long time, we did this.

Now, at 20 years old, and a Marine Corps rifleman, I was taking a very different journey, yet with striking similarities to the boneyard of Dorothy’s eternal youth. Peleliu: the bitterest battle that the Marine Corps faced in World War II, became the charnel house for many more youths, many years later.

This singular moment in time, before we hit the beach at Peleliu, ticks off the echoes of my personal past, present and future into an amalgamation of everything that became the life as I know it. It was a defining moment that transcends all the clichéd stories of old men who sit around dreaming of the days when they were young and at peril.

Understand this: the spearhead of any attack is the rifleman and his rifle.

My name is Sterling Mace. And I was that rifleman.

© SM 2010

 

Thank you for that post Sir. I too will look forward to anything else you care to share with us.

Oddly enough you reminded me (the angel part) of my own brother Robert. He died shortly after birth, and would have been my older brother had he lived. When we would go to the cemetary to visit other deceased family and friends, there would be his white marble mini-tombstone with a little "slumbering lamb" on the top of it and the words "Our Angel" inscribed upon the face above his name and "birth/death" dates. Separated by mere months.

It is odd that I rarely think of this little boy that I never knew, but your post reminded me and put a lump in my throat.

 

Thank you, gentlemen and ladies for your kind words. This is, indeed, how the book starts. Still, don't get the impression that this book will be devoid of combat. There is a lot of it in there. What I did. What I saw. What I wish I didn't do. How I did it.

Nevertheless, like most books of its kind, I've wanted to include some of my life before the war. After all, I wasn't born a Marine. Too few war memoirs don't let you know what shaped the Marine before they ever touched a rifle. That I was a kid growing up in the Great Depression, I feel that it shaped me, along with my whole generation, in how we viewed the war and how we fought it. Like it says in my book...

"From the Great Depression of the 1930s and Rooseveltianism of the New Deal ideals, (right or wrong) we youths of the era collectively and individually were molded by our circumstances, and thus found ourselves better equipped to kill the sons of Nippon and lay low his yellow nation.


We didn’t know it then, but the kids of the Great Depression, a deprived generation were preparing for war…and we were becoming damned good at it, even before we laid hands on a weapon."

When you grow up feeling as if you're the lowest common demoninator, and then you're placed in a rifle squad and made to feel the same, you've got a chip on your shoulder. The irony is, 90% of all combat ground action is borne on the shoulders of the Marine and his rifle.

My book is not some philosophical treatise on why we fight. Nor is it an armchair dustcover for wimps. I do, however, try my hardest to connect the dots between the man and his rifle. And since there are so few riflemen alive today, it is my hope that I can somehow speak for those who are no longer able to speak, while telling a very personal story in the process.

The title? That has been the hardest bit to write! hahaha. But nobody is pushing me right now. I've even had a thought of creating a contest for those who come up with the best title. The working title right now is: "Close to the Flame: A Marine Rifleman's Trip Through Hell."

I've written too much. Boy am I tired!

I don't know if anybody would be interested, but look for things in the future as the book release ramps up for these podcast things (we've already recorded some) and some more interesting contests and prizes. I don't know if it sounds too bold of me, but I want this current generation to be as much a part of this writing as it can be.

Best,
Sterling Mace

 

Sir,

Thanks for sharing with us, a few sneak peaks at this wonderful book, which is yet to hit the shelves.

As for the Title, might i suggest "The Rifle And The Marine: The Heart of the Pacific Soldier" ?

Thank you and kind regards sir,
And may you find yourself in best of health.

Regards,
TBA

 

The book should be coming out in Feb (if not sooner), just in time for my 87th birthday.

You see where it says September 17th-18th 1944 in the title? That was my mistake. I was going to post something from those dates on Peleliu but changed my mind at the last moment.

I almost wish I had posted something from Peleliu on here (well, I did, in a way), because of the action and such. But for some reason I'm sort of fond of the way the book starts out; so I posted that instead.

Maybe next time I'll post something from the 5 Sisters. But it's hard to give away some things when you want people to read it in print. Not because book sales; but because it just reads better in your hands.

Everyone has been too gracious.

sm

 

Not bad, kiddo! I'm glad you didn't say "The Marine and his Gun." Then we would have really been in trouble!!!

 

This is my Rifle, and this is my Gun, one is for Business, the other is for Fun

Aint' i right Mr Mace ?

Regards,
YBA

 

Pretty close. haha. They were probably saying that as far back as the Spanish American war, I'm sure.

 

Hello Mr. Mace,

Great writing. I am sorry for your loss. I know how it feels, I lost a brother when he was 23.
Thanks for letting us have an early look at the book. I am sure you are very proud of it as
you are an excellent writer.

Thanks for everything, Sir!
Richard