July 02, 2020
Volume 50 - No. 27
Fiction by Tom Calabrese
When I say the word chubby, the first thing that probably comes to your mind are words like plump and chunky. When you hear the name, Ervin “Chubby” Piper, you can easily picture a pleasant rotund cheerful fellow with rosy cheeks. If you are a sensitive person then you might think that the nickname “Chubby” might be unkind, offensive or politically incorrect. Well you would be right on the first statement and completely wrong on the last two.
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Ervin Piper was twenty one years old and a junior attending Occidental College in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He dropped out of school and joined the Marines and served three and one half years in the South Pacific starting with the Battle of Guadalcanal in August, 1942 where he served with John Basilone at the infamous Bloody Ridge. He reconnected with “Manila” John after the Congressional Medal of Honor recipient requested reassignment to combat duty. They were on the same
landing craft that hit the beach on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945. Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone was leading his men off the beach when they came under heavy attack from small arms and machine gun fire from numerous entrenched Japanese positions. John Basilone saw Ervin Piper in the line of fire so he jumped up, showing no concern for his own safety and pushed his fellow Marine out of harm’s way and was fatally wounded in the process by a hail of enemy bullets. Ervin Piper survived the Battle of
Uncle Chubby’s Pool See Page 2
Iwo Jima and lived to return to California after the war. He had experienced many atrocities at the hands of Japanese, but the nightmare that haunted him the most was the death of John Basilone because he knew in his heart that it should have been him to die on the beach on that fateful day. The guilt never left him even after he returned to civilian life and Ervin lived like he was on borrowed time. His older brothers, Richard and Edward both received medical deferments because of chronic ear infec-
