Well, it seems like some units get all the breaks. That's what PFC Eugene Sledge and the rest of the hard-pressed Marines from K-3-5 are thinking right now as they prepare to trundle across the wide-open Peleliu airfield under fire from the Japanese dug into caves and bunkers up on the Umurbrogol massif. Their buddies in the 1st and 7th Marines are having a hell of a time on liberty in the bars and bistros of wartime Melbourne, Australia. Those Division units who caught the lucky cards this week include PFC Robert Leckie and H-2-1 plus Platoon Sergeant John Basilone and his surviving machinegunners from 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. Basilone doesn't know it yet, but he'll soon be among the VIPs at a Division parade ceremony during which he'll be awarded the Medal Of Honor. At the conclusion of that ceremony, he'll be sent back Stateside to help sell war bonds to the American public...at least until he can work his bolt and join up with the 5th Marine Division forming at Camp Pendleton. PFC Leckie is also blissfully unaware that he'll be among the marching Marines who pass in review at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds to honor Basilone, Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Paige, Colonel Merritt A. (Red Mike) Edson, LtCol. Lewis B. Puller and other heroes of the Guadalcanal Campaign. Modern Marines will likely be a little startled when they see the reproduction of this parade. WW II Marines who arrived in Melbourne with their dungarees literally rotting off their aching backs had no uniforms, so Major General Vendegrift and his staff borrowed khakis from the Army and green woolen battle dress jackets from the Australians to create a field expedient version of a dress uniform. The eagle, globe and anchor emblems appear on the lapels but not much else will be familiar. This sojourn in Melbourne also marks the first time the Marines wore the now-familiar Division diamond insignia as a shoulder patch. The patches were manufactured by a local company and became wildly popular with the Marines but the Division staff failed to specify how they were to be worn, so Marines just sewed them on anything and everything any way that suited their fancy. You'll see some on the left shoulder and some on the right and some with fancy stitching that would send a modern Marine First Sergeant into fits of indignation. All that is neither here nor there to Sledge and the 5th Marines who are facing heavy Japanese opposition back on Peleliu as the Palau Islands campaign continues. They survived a suicidal Japanese tank-infantry attack on the perimeter of the airfield and are scheduled to conduct a sweep up the eastern arm of Peleliu. When that mission is complete, they will return to the airfield area with orders to relieve the devastated 1st Marines in the attack on the Umurbrogol hills. We continue the liberty...and the attack. Semper Fidelis.