Recovery
We left the waters off Peleliu and sailed southeast towards to the island of Pavuvu in the Russells, some 2,100 miles away. After a week at sea, our ship arrived there on October 10th. What was left of our battalion went ashore. We found an open area inland, recovered the gear we had left, and set up our tents. We then just sat and rested for several days. Col. Puller, much better after his leg wound was treated on the ship, naturally decided to ignore the doctor’s orders to stay off his feet. We were later told that as soon as we pulled into Pavuvu and docked, he staggered out of his bunk, got dressed, hobbled off the ship with a cane despite instructions to stay in bed, and went back to commanding the regiment—well, what was left of it.
While Pavuvu had improved since we first arrived at the end of April, it was still no paradise. We had to renew our ongoing battle with the rats, the land crabs, and the bugs. Still, it was better than being in combat, and we began to recover.
As the 1st Marines began to recuperate, the men reached out to each other to determine who had survived and who had not. Small groups of three or four would visit tents in other units to see who was still alive and to talk about their experiences. The men often held small, informal wakes in the evenings and on Sundays in remembrance of those comrades who had died on Peleliu, and at the same time as a way of mentally dealing with what they had just gone through.
A few days after we had returned to Pavuvu, I decided to try to visit Rucker. He had been machine-gunned on Peleliu that second day and evacuated to the naval hospital on Banika Island, which was right across from ours. Hopefully, he had since been recovering from that wound. I wanted to see how he was doing.
It was only about 25 miles between Pavuvu and Banika, so the navy had set up a shuttle ferry between the two islands, I took it across, and when I arrived, I saw that the hospital, even though it was only a series of tents, was well equipped and staffed. And I really mean well staffed, because, to my surprise, I saw several nurses. Some of them were natives—Banikan—but a few were U.S. Navy nurses.
I was stunned. I could hardly believe my eyes. It had been over a year since we had left Melbourne and its fair damsels, and we had not seen one white woman since then. So to see these American gals was like dying and going to heaven. With a smile, they directed me to Henry, and we both had big grins as we cheerfully shook hands. Henry told me that he was coming along nicely, and he introduced me to his nurse, an officer. She had obviously been taking good care of him, and the two of them had struck up a friendship. Lucky bastard.
The three of us had a nice chat. As it turns out, being a naval officer, she was allowed a ration of whiskey at the beginning of every month. Since she was not much of a drinker, she generously offered to share her ration with us. She told us to remind her at the end of the month, and if I could return, we could all party together. Henry and I looked at each other, grinned, and happily agreed. After a really great visit, I said goodbye and left the tent to return.
The ferry ran several times a day, so it was easy to hitch a ride back to Pavuvu. Today, I was going back on an LSD.1 I got aboard and we got underway. Being the nosy type, I walked up to the bridge and began talking to the coxswain steering the ship.2
Curious, I wondered what it would be like to steer the ship. So I asked him, “Hey, do you mind if I try driving this thing?” He looked at me as I said, “Let me wheel that thing.”
The sailor looked round, didn’t see any officer, and said, “Okay.”
I moved up to the wheel and he said, “Okay, you got two arrows here in front of you. Ya see them? You have to keep those two arrows lined up. You want them pointing to each other.”
“Got it,” I said with a grin. “Keep them together.”
I took over the helm, and shook my head in wonder. As the ship began to drift off course, I would compensate, trying to keep the arrows together on the rudder indicator gauges. Finally, the coxswain, shaking his head, told me to look back. I did, and chuckled when I saw that our wake looked like some sort of a wiggly snake. Evidently, I had been overcompensating on the helm, and was zigzagging like hell.
I looked over at the coxswain who was laughing. “Well, what the hell do I do?” I asked him.
He shook his head and repeated as he laughed, “Keep the two arrows lined up!”
So I did my best, trying not to oversteer.
Suddenly from below, a deep voice (that I assumed was the Captain) bellowed, “What in the hell’s going on up there?”
The coxswain quickly came up. “Damn! Lemme have that,” and reached for the helm.
I stepped back and quickly sat down. You know, just in case the captain came up to the bridge. But he only did so near Pavuvu. Then he came up and ordered the ship to slow down to a crawl. I saw a guy walk over near the bow with a weight attached to a rope and began tossing it into the water and retrieving it. The coxswain told me they were taking depth soundings. Evidently, there were a lot of reefs around here, and there was a real concern about bottoming out. I thanked the coxswain for the adventure before I left the ship.
As we continued our refit, we did what we could to regain our health as well. Our battalion doctor was Lieutenant JG Joseph E. Christopherson.3 He was a quiet sort of guy, but we respected him, both as an officer and as a physician. Older than all of us at 35 and already an experienced doctor, his values were I guess different than those of us young enlisted Marines. He was not as coarse and he rarely cursed, and if he did, it sure as hell was not as much as us. So there he was, this navy doctor with us grimy grunts.4 Every day he fought an ever-losing battle to try to get us to change our habits, especially our speech. Like this one time for instance soon after we had returned to the island, a few of us went in with different cuts and bruises. The favorite question the guys seemed to ask him was, “Hey Doc, how about putting some shit on this cut of mine?”
The first time he was asked, the Doc’s eyebrows arched some and he didn’t say anything in return. But when he had heard this a few times or so, he scowled and grumbled, “You know, all you characters who fill up my mornings with that crack are in for a big surprise. Someday, I’m gonna have a little tub of shit waiting for you, and when you ask for it, I’m gonna smear some on.”
He paused and added, “Why don’t you learn to say what you mean?” And then he smiled that dry smile of his.
The guy just looked at him and grinned. Naturally, his crack could not go unchallenged.
Sure enough, one of the guys grunted, “Well, who knows, doc. It might be better that the crap you’re putting on us now.”
As expected, that guy was told to go to the end of the line.
A week after I had visited Henry, I wrote a letter to his nurse friend to remind her of the whiskey ration agreement we had made. I knew that it would only take a few days to get there, right around the end of October. Since there was no classified information in the letter, I figured that the unit officer censoring our mail would have no problems with letting it go through.
As it turned out, I was wrong. My censor I later found out was none other than our platoon leader, Lt. Haggerty, and after having read my letter and remembering my checkered past, he decided that perhaps it might not be a good idea for me to go over for that little shindig. That day came, and I had already secured my liberty pass. I dressed in my best uniform and was walking down to the dingy that would transport me over to the ferry, along with a half dozen other guys. This roundabout service was necessary because of all the submerged reefs along the shore, and a small boat could do it. As we neared the dingy, I spotted Lt. Haggerty standing on the shore next to the boat.
He put his palm up and told me, “You know, you can’t go.”
I looked at him, and all I could say was, “Huh?”
He said, “George, you’re not going over there.”
Surprised, I protested, “Whaddaya mean I can’t go? I … I already got permission and everything.”
“Well, you know, I got to thinking about it.”
I waited in silence, stunned.
He told me he had read my letter and having thought about it, had figured out that I would possibly go over there and from a discipline standpoint, go astray. I tried to tell him that I had turned over a new leaf, but he wasn’t buying any of it.
With a smile no less, he told me “You know, you’re gonna go over there and yer gonna get a drink of that good whiskey, and see an American woman, and yer gonna lose it. One drink of that good whiskey and that woman will drive you off the wall, and yer gonna end up in trouble.”
I tried to plead my case again, and that I needed to get over there to see Henry, but no good.
“You’ll go nuts,” he said, “and I don’t want you to get in trouble again. You’re not going.” He added, “It’s for your own good.”
So, reluctantly, he had to cancel my second visit. But, he added, he knew that I would understand.
Bull. “Well, thanks for nothing,” I growled and went back to my tent. Although looking back on it now, in his infinite wisdom, I guess that he was right at the time. Still, I was pretty PO’d at him for days. In any case, it did not make that much difference, because a week or so later, Henry came back, fit once again, for duty.
Henry’s return was a boost, but not just for morale. We had lost a good many men on Peleliu, and we really needed experienced Marines in the unit. Less than half of the 1st Marines who had sailed from Pavuvu had returned. With a few wounded returning to duty and a couple replacements, we still only numbered about 1,500, less than half our full strength. And in the following weeks, we lost even more as the entire division began to undergo a wide-scale reorganization. Some 4,800 of those that had served in the division since I came on were to be rotated back to the States.5 In our regiment, most of those Marines who had fought at Guadalcanal in 1942 and had survived Peleliu were now shipped back home, having served two years overseas. That was a lot of guys: almost 50 percent of those that had survived.
Our division commander, General William Rupertus, was gone, having been relieved of command and transferred back to Washington. Well, good riddance to him. None of us had liked the grumpy bastard. His replacement came in on November 2nd, Major General Pedro A. del Valle. An artillery officer, he was no stranger to our division, since he had led the 11th Marines on Guadalcanal. After that, he had commanded the Marines’ artillery in the Guam campaign. Similarly, the 1st Marines went through a command shake-up. Just after General del Valle arrived, our own commanding officer, Col. Puller, whose leg wound had acted up on him on Peleliu, was also transferred back to the States. He was popular with us, and man, were we sorry to see him go. He had always stuck up for the enlisted, and I remembered our encounter in the crater that second day on Peleliu. Puller was replaced by the regiment’s executive officer, Lt. Col. Richard Ross, Jr.6
Of the enlisted left in the regiment, I became one of the more senior NCOs. In the regiment, I was the senior forward observer.
The shakeup continued. The regiment received a whole bunch of replacements, about a few thousand,7 and most of them were green kids that had never seen combat. As a matter of fact, many had been waiting for us there on Pavuvu when we returned. We used these new guys to refill our units. With these inexperienced recruits among us now, I stuck out even more as a senior Marine, even though I was only a few years older than them. Eventually the entire division would take on some 8,000 men.
Since I was one of the most experienced veterans in the battalion (remember, the Guadalcanal vets had been sent home), I became a sort of icon, especially since I was really getting good at my job. Groups of the new recruits would often like to engage me in conversation, just to hear tales about my life, both before the war and in combat. Sometimes, I would have fifteen or so guys around me, wanting to hear my stories, and of course things we had done on Peleliu was one of the most popular topics. Over time, the tales of my exploits spread, and at times many recruits who barely knew me would come up to me and start a conversation, just to later say that they knew George, that he was their pal.
Yet on the other hand, I usually found myself alone, moving around with a company as a rifleman until they got into position. Once I did find me a good observation spot, I could get my radioman, Bob Sprangle, to come up, and the wiremen would string a phone line for me to call in fire missions to the mortar teams. Until then though, there was no sense in dragging all that stuff around with me. So I was attached to whatever company was moving up, and until they were set and dug in, and I had found me a good spot, I was basically just a rifleman—well, certainly beefed up with my Thompson, but still a rifleman.
There on Pavuvu, I helped Haggerty reorganize the mortar teams, and we began to train with them to work together as a unit. I did sessions on map reading, disassembly of the .45 (ah, if only Haggerty would sit in on one), and stuff on the mortars. The communicators began to learn their jobs, and the phone guys practiced how to quickly string lines back to the mortar positions. We rehearsed over and over, and the better we became, the more support we could give to the troops. My radio operator, Bob Sprangle, tried to stay with me wherever I went, and I trained him how to keep our radio in good working order. Bob was some five years older than me but showed up next to me a good deal, and we got along pretty good. He had a cool temperament, and was slow to get riled. Whether it was in the middle of a bombardment or getting his ass chewed out, he maintained an even keel.
I was free to move around as I needed with any one of the companies, and once I had a radio, my call sign in the Division was “Xray,” and I could communicate with anyone in the headquarters section of each of the three battalions, regiments, and even the division, as well as other attached units. I got to talk to so many people, and not just give them vital observational information, but also receive it too, which of course, made me popular with my buddies, because I was usually well informed on what was going on; that is, whenever I had contact through the field lines.
I was briefed on using secure communication techniques, especially since the Japs over time had improved their radio interception capabilities and could sometimes listen in on our conversations. So while any coordinates that they heard would mean little to them, attack plans, units, and personnel identifications and strengths would. Of course, they would have to understand English to make anything out of what we said. I sure as hell could not understand any of their Jap gibberish.
Just like I could not understand anything that those damn Indians in our division said to each other.
They were called “code talkers,”8 and they seemed to be able to do their jobs communicating in Indian pretty good. They had joined our division around the Cape Gloucester operation, and over time, they improved their training with us. They were from the Navajo tribe, and there were always a couple of them attached to each battalion HQ unit, and a few more that worked at divisional headquarters. Naturally, whenever I heard them on the radio, I would have absolutely no idea what the hell they were saying to each other. For all I knew, they could have been talking about my mother. Still, I guess if trying to understand them drove me nuts, I could imagine what it would do to any Japs listening in.
There were two of these code talkers in our 3rd Battalion. The taller, thinner one was a guy called Dennis Cattlechaser.9 Hell, I thought that was his nickname or his official Indian handle or something. I did not know until years later when I saw his name listed on a battalion roster for that time that Cattlechaser was actually his legal name.
These Indian radiomen had trained there on Pavuvu and now went on campaigns with us. Although I saw them around the battalion a lot, I noticed that they pretty much kept to themselves, and did not associate much with the white guys. They hung out together and did not talk much to us outsiders. Whenever they did, a lot of their conversation was just “yes” or “no,” or more often than not, they just grunted as a reply or a reaction.
I will say one thing for them. Those stories that I had heard so many years ago about Indians and alcohol seemed to be true, because these guys drank whenever they could. Okay, me too, but what the hell. They would get loaded and then jibber what I figured was Indian gossip, or Indian chants. Hell, the bastards even had their own version of the Marine Corps Hymn (which drove the rest of us nuts when they sang it).
I remember one night a bunch of them Indians got loaded on some batch of jungle juice that they had either made or gotten a hold of. That night, I was hanging around with Bernie Huxel and Howard Quarty.
Now these two big guys lived about as far away from each other in the States as you could get. Bernie was from Oregon and Howard was from Long Island, and each of them was a really huge, burly fellow, about five ten. They were built like solid lumberjacks: in fact, that had been Huxel’s profession before the war. Still, these two guys, although they were gruff and mean-looking, actually seemed nice fellows when you got to know them—well, Ernie was. Quarty was a boozer. He was okay when he was sober, although he had a chip on his shoulder that made him sometimes want to get into trouble when he had been drinking. He had already been married a couple times, and I think that it ate at him, making him a mean drunk. I believe that was also why he did not perform well in combat. He would fight anyone anywhere for any reason, and often started fights. But he sometimes seemed scared as hell in combat. Huxel looked out for him when he had been drinking, and the two of them had become really close buddies. I mean, they went everywhere together: wherever you saw the one, you saw the other.
So this night, I was sitting outside their tent with them, shooting the bull, when we spotted these two drunk Navajos walking unsteadily down the dirt lane between two company areas, talking their weird talk, singing Indian crap. Generally, they were being loud and obnoxious. Quarty, who sometimes liked to pick a fight, impulsively stood up, walked up to one of the Indians, picked him up, and just threw him across the lane. I saw the guy go sailing past me in the dark and land with a thud in the dirt.
Somehow, he slowly tottered to his feet and dusted himself off. Both of the Indians laughed and took of staggering down the lane. The three of us just looked at each other and shook our heads. Obviously, the Indians were as crazy as hoot owls.
On the other hand, because they were Indians, and because they seemed crazy, although the rest of us were fearless Marines, we learned that sometimes messing with them was not such a good idea. There was one time when a bunch of guys were playing a high-stakes game of craps in their tent. Dennis, who bunked there, had evidently that evening been into a fair amount of jungle juice that he and his fellow tribesmen had managed to make, and whether the experience for him had been a good one or not, he was now exhausted, and the noise from the guys playing was probably driving a spike right through his skull.
Finally, tired and probably hung over, Dennis decided that he had had enough. He got up, scuffed over to where the guys were playing, and dropped a boot right over the dice. He looked down at the guys and said tonelessly, “You go now. Dennis going to sleep.”
Naturally, the guys reacted as you would expect, and started protesting.
“Cmon, Dennis! Knock off the shit! Gawddamit, this game’s got a long way to go! Back off! Get out of the way, asshole!” Plus a few more choice words for effect.
The code talker though, was having none of it. He stood there with his foot on the dice. Narrowing his eyes, he repeated, “You go now. Dennis going to sleep.”
The guys in the tent yelled at him again, and in even fouler language, told him to get his sorry ass off the dice and to leave them the hell alone before they beat the crap out of him.
Staring down at them, Dennis Cattlechaser simply turned and walked back to his bunk. Wordlessly, he pulled out his Thompson submachine gun from under his blanket, jammed a 20-round magazine into the bottom, and pulled back the action bolt. He walked back to the group with the muzzle pointed at them, and said again, stony-eyed, tonelessly, “You go now. Dennis going to sleep.”10
The tent was clear in about three seconds. A few minutes later, the guys heard him snoring in his bunk.
I made sure during this time that I caught up on my letters. I was sending out quite a lot, because at the time, I was corresponding with five different women in five different towns. Lt. Haggerty, who was our censor and as such was allowed to screen our mail, got a big kick out of this. I guess that he figured I would get found out and one of them would shoot my butt when I got home.
He saw me writing to a few of them one day, and laughed. He asked, “George, how the hell are you going home to marry five different women?”
I looked up at him and laughed. “Damn, who the hell says I’m going home?” Of course, had I thought a bit about what I had said, I might not have laughed. Still, I think that by that time I had gotten used to my life in the Corps and even enjoyed most of it. And I found that I was even getting used to the combat. It was just another thing that I had to go through, waiting for my next liberty. I think that living outdoors so much had helped in that.
Being in combat as intensely as we had at Peleliu somehow had affected every one of us in one way or another, some more than others. A lot of the guys were on the edge. Several of them would panic at the littlest impulse; others just did their best to control the fear and do their jobs. Some guys just went berserk, either in combat, or afterwards. A few just quietly went haywire.
One of the guys in 1st Battalion went insane, but in a quiet, deadly sort of way. Their C Company was right next to my Headquarters Company, only about 100 yards away from us. One night, a Marine was attacked in his sleep and killed. His throat was slashed by what appeared to be a machete.
As the weeks went by, a nighttime killing happened a few more times. Every once in a while, a Marine sleeping under the mosquito net in his tent would be noiselessly slashed in the dark, hacked to pieces in the same way. Division ordered all the machetes collected, but that did not stop the nut. Two more Marines were killed, and another few were seriously slashed and eventually evacuated. None of those who survived the assault could identify the attacker.
Our command really became concerned, and each company began posting guards everywhere, walking around at night. Still, the butchery continued, although not as frequently. No one could figure out the killer’s identity. Was it a Marine, one of our own? Or was it one or more Jap infiltrators? No one knew.
The guys began sleeping with one eye open, so to speak. This nighttime executioner became known as the 12 o’clock Killer of Company C, and we were all uneasy about for a few weeks, wondering when—or where—the crazy bastard would attack next.
Finally, it came to a head one night when the killer decided to strike again. So once more, he grabbed his weapon—we guessed it was a machete that had not been turned in—and crept out into the night to find another victim. Unfortunately for him though, as he was skulking about, one of the guards armed with a Thompson sensed someone nearby.
The guard ordered, “Stop,” and the marauder angrily charged at him brandishing his weapon, which appeared to be a large butcher’s knife that the cooks used to cut meat. The guard just opened up on him and fired his whole magazine at the charging maniac. Half asleep, I heard the sound of the gunfire and thought, wow, that’s a helluva lot of shooting going on. But it was too dark for us to make out anything, and no sergeant came running into our tent to get us up, so we did not get up to see what happened. Eventually, we all went back to sleep.
As it turned out, that guard stitched him good, and a couple MPs ran up to the body and fired their .45s into him as well. When they took off the killer’s hood, they found out that the guy was one of C Company’s mess cooks, and his weapon of choice was confirmed to be one of his butcher’s knives. There were no more killings after that.11
Unknowingly, I had crossed paths with this crazy bastard a few days before his demise. He had always been somewhat of a fruitcake, and really did not have any friends. He had this habit of periodically walking up and down the road between the company units and hollering nutty crap to the guys. On this day, I was walking with two of my buddies, the battalion Jolly Green Giants who went everywhere together—Bernie Huxel and Howard Quarty. The cook approached us, mentally in his own crazy world, snotty, oblivious, quirky, cursing and making nasty remarks. We stopped and watched him as he strolled by; he looked at us and made some smart-assed insult.
I was feeling sort of brave with my two giant buddies on each side of me, so I glared at him and replied, “Ah, you sonuvabitch, screw you. Yer crazier than hell.”
The cook stopped, turned around and angrily stared at me, but seeing my two big friends, just glared, and kept on going.
Of course, I had no idea at the time that this was our mad killer. Had I known who he was, I sure as hell would have kept my mouth shut. And I suppose that it is just as well that they stopped him permanently a couple nights later, because in hindsight, I have a feeling I had made his list.
As the months went by, we began training again for the next operation. The senior NCOs like Henry and me did what we could to help the new kids along, trying to pass on what skills we had learned at Cape Gloucester and Peleliu. Looking back on those days now, I sometimes wonder what our motivation was. I certainly knew that the more trained these kids would be, the better all our chances of staying alive. On the other hand, having seen what we had at Peleliu, and with the upcoming operation promising to be just as bloody, many of us veterans, including those like me who had been lucky so far to have not been hurt, had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were probably going to die before it was all over. I was pretty sure that I would not see home again, although at that point, many of us had forgotten what home was like. Nor did I train day after day out of patriotism. Not really. As far as I was concerned, there was just no room for that flag-waving crap in a combat zone.
We received some more replacements. Some were green kids we had to train. Some like Bill Mikel, had been in for a while and were only now getting assigned to a combat unit. Funny thing, Bill initially was a quiet guy and did not say much. He told me why after the war. When he got orders to transfer to the First Marine Division, it scared the hell out of him. He had heard so many horror stories about us, and not knowing what to expect, it had really unnerved him.
I suppose we all had our reasons for diligently sticking to our training and improving our efficiency. I think at that point for me a good part of it was just a case of hating those Jap bastards. They had started this damn war, and they were the reason I was over here. All the misery we had experienced was their fault, and I was going to make sure some of them paid for that. So as far as I was concerned, it was easy to blame them and, from what I had seen, to hate them.
There was, of course, our Marine bonding as well, and that I feel was a key to all our motivation: the feelings we had for each other, for our comrades in combat, for our fellow Marines. It is something quite hard to explain to those who have never experienced the feeling of intense camaraderie and esprit in the Corps.
Six months after Peleliu, the word came down that we were about to saddle up and move out. The months of training were over, and each unit in the division was back to its peak efficiency. The replacements had learned well, and our morale was back up to where it should be.
We were ready.
1 Possibly the USS Gunston Hall (LSD-5).
2 George undoubtedly means the ship’s helmsman.
3 Lt. JG Christopherson, attached to the 1st Marines, won the Silver Star at Peleliu for his actions on September 16, 1944. He would win the Bronze Star for his actions on Okinawa. After the war, he returned to Mason City, Iowa, where he became a medical examiner for Cerro Gordo County until he died of cancer on December 28, 1964, at the age of 54.
4 Medical services in all Marine units have traditionally been (and still are) administered by U.S. Navy officers (doctors) and enlisted personnel (medics, orderlies), even in combat.
5 Some 246 officers and 5,500 enlisted that had served in the 1st Marine Division since Guadalcanal were sent home accordingly. Russell Diefenbach in his autobiography puts the number at 4,800, but that probably did not include wounded lying in hospitals.
6 On December 13th, Lt. Col. Ross, the temporary commander, was replaced by Col. Kenneth B. Chappell, who would lead the regiment onto Okinawa in April 1945.
7 The entire 1st Marine Division would take on another 8,000 replacements in preparation for the Okinawa campaign in a little over four months.
8 Code talkers were Native Americans who famously served in World War II as radiomen. They were specially trained in communications to utilize their own native language to converse with each other and thus allow secure message traffic between combat units. Perhaps most famous of these were the over 400 Navajos who trained and fought with the Marines in the Pacific. Their finest performances were considered to be at Iwo Jima and later at Okinawa. Not only was their obscure language impossible for the Japanese to decipher, but their rugged Western upbringing made them well suited for the harsh Pacific island climates. In addition, their culture of hunting in stealth and physical resemblance to Orientals frequently allowed them to penetrate enemy lines for short periods without being fired upon. Of course, this feature worked both ways, and thus it sometimes also made them difficult to be distinguished as being a friendly to other U.S. Marines.
9 23-year-old PFC Dennis Cattlechaser, who was from Tuba City, Arizona. He passed away on December 15, 1996.
10 The magazine was more than likely empty, because all live ammo is turned in to the battalion armory or the range officer when the day is over. Anyone caught with live ammo in their tent would be subject to disciplinary action. Of course, the men playing dice could not know if there were cartridges in Dennis’s magazine or not.
11 Russell Diefenbach added that the killer was also the division’s boxing champion from the 5th Marines. A story based on the killer of Company C was written by Edward Slaughter and published in the February 1958 issue of Male magazine.