It's all uphill from where K-3-5 sits on Peleliu. The outfit made it across that treacherous airfield expanse and is dug in for reorganization in an old Japanese administration building at the base of the Umurbrogols. They've climbed, fought and bled in those hills in previous incarnations so the Palaus campaign is nearly at an end for them. Despite the most determined efforts of Japanese gunners, King Company's 60mm mortars only lost one man. PFC Bill Oswalt, first ammo-humper and reliable swingman in Snafu Shelton and Eugene Sledge's squad, died of multiple shrapnel wounds during the crossing. He'll be sorely missed when the outfit lands on Okinawa in the next scheduled operation. Sledge doesn't know how much of an enemy foul weather and mud can be as he was still in training when the outfit suffered through the Cape Gloucester operations on New Britain, but he's about to become intimately familiar with the concept. Planners have scheduled 1 April 1945 for the Ryukyus landings and May is when the monsoons begin in that region of the western Pacific. PFC Robert Leckie is out of the fight and aboard the hospital ship Hope steaming for unknown ports along with his buddy Runner from the H-2-1 Scout Section. They don't know it quite yet but they've seen the last of active combat in the Pacific. While the rest of the 1st Marine Division rests and re-trains for the Okinawa campaign, Leckie and Runner will wend their way through the evacuation pipeline and reach the States, alive and relatively whole after their ordeals on Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester and Peleliu. We'll spend a little time with them later and look in on how they are making the adjustment to civilian life. It won't be easy or very comfortable, but after what they've been through in the Pacific it's likely they'll survive that too. Semper Fidelis.