The 1st Marine Division cadre (The Old Breed officers and NCOs) went into Drill Instructor mode during this period to stage a massive regimental review during which several notable Marines were decorated for gallantry above and beyond during the Guadalcanal campaign. Platoon Sergeant Basilone got his Medal Of Honor and caught a flight out of Australia, headed Stateside for a war bond-selling tour. We'll catch up with him and monitor his efforts to get off the rubber-chicken circuit and back into the war later. Meanwhile, PFC Robert Leckie and his shipmates from H-2-1 are making themselves right at home in Melbourne and over-dosing on the liquor and the ladies...emphasis on the former in Leckie's case. He shipped a little too much Australian beer aboard, let his battleship mouth override his rowboat ass, and wound up in the brig on bread and water for insubordination and threatening an officer. Fortunately, the officer involved respected Leckie's war record and recommended leniency at battalion office hours. Leckie and his buddy Chuckler are back out on the town and making up for lost time with the 1st Marines alerted for movement into the Palaus campaign. And that brings us to PFC Eugene Sledge and his fellow mortarmen of K-3-5 who are already on Peleliu and just setting up to help support the battered 1st Marines who are struggling down from close combat in the Umurbrogol Hills, trailing blood and destined for relief. K-3-5 and the other companies of the 5th Marines have completed their sweep up the eastern side of Peleliu and have been pulled back to the airfield where they are staring into Death Valley, the finger of low-ground between the Five Sisters and Walt's Ridge. They are beat up and battered but Major General Rupertus wants fresh outfits to press the attack against stubborn Japanese resistance and elements of the 5th Marines under Colonel Bucky Harris are being sent up into the meat-grinder. The much beloved Captain A. A. ("Ack-Ack") Haldane is leading Sledge and his buddies up into the fight and he's fully aware of the difficulties his company is facing. King Company is resolutely plodding along into the attack but none of Haldane's Marines are under any illusions about what lies ahead of them in those enemy-infested coral hills. They've seen the bloody survivors coming down and they know the score. Still, they continue the assault...and so do we. Semper Fidelis.