Tarawa

by Robert Sherrod

  1400: It is quiet around this pillbox, although there is some fire two hundred yards ahead. Six medical corpsmen and a doctor use this pillbox for collecting the wounded, but they have not been busy this afternoon—not nearly as busy as when they arrived yesterday. One of them tells of a Marine from Utica, New York. He was wounded on D Day, shrapnel in his head, arms, and legs, as the amphtrack approached the shore. “Everybody in the amphtrack was killed except him and his buddy,” says a corpsman, “and his buddy lasted only one day. Then he spent two and a half days in that amphtrack in the broiling sun. His eyes were clotted over, his throat scratched inside like a piece of tin. He tried to commit suicide last night, he was in such agony, but he was too weak to pull the trigger. When we got to him he just said, Tour some water over my face, will you?’ Plasma picked him up, and he’s going to be all right, we think.”

  Said another corpsman, “These Marines don’t complain when they are wounded. I certainly have got a lot of respect for them. I guess they must be the best fighting men in the world.”

  Outside, there was some discussion as to whether a dead man was a Jap or a Marine. He had been badly mutilated by shrapnel, and his body had turned a dark green. Most of his face had been blown off. He looked Japanese, but he wore Marine Corps outer clothing, “civvies” instead of the Jap G-string, and he had a lot of hair on his chest. Finally, the burial detail found his name on the inside of his belt, and took him away to be buried with the Americans.

  The Japs around this pillbox, in this big hole, are bigger than any I have seen; three of the four are six feet tall and they are all heavy, even before bloating. The three dead Marines, who apparently had knocked out the pillbox and its machine gun, are about the same size. The sun has raised blisters as big as half dollars on the skin of brown men and white men alike.

  Best unofficial estimate of our casualties: six hundred dead, twelve hundred wounded.

  1500: Two concrete mixers evidence further the Japs’ intention of holding Tarawa. Here is what looks like a fence made of steel grating, six feet high, surrounding a squared area on a concrete base. The Japs had got as far as installing the reinforcing steel, but they had not poured the concrete walls when we arrived. Here is a concrete bomb shelter, about twenty by thirty feet. Marines say there is a dead Jap officer inside. He apparently had been wounded two days ago, had crawled inside to die. They drag him out and search the tomb-like structure, finding boxes full of what appear to be pay-roll books and war savings stamps. The walls of this shelter, which have barely been nicked by bombs and shells, measure fifty-five inches thick.

  1530: From behind the bomb shelter we can see a half-track fifty yards ahead working on a Jap pillbox. The Marines pour round after round of 75-mm. shells into the entrance of the pillbox. Five or six Japs run out, straight into the withering heat of a flamethrower that is waiting for them.

  These Marines are from the first battalion of the Eighth, which took such heavy casualties in the water yesterday morning. Pfc. James Collins of Spartanburg, South Carolina, recalls, “The water was red with blood. All around me men w ere screaming and moaning. I never prayed so hard in all my life. Only three men out of twenty-four in my boat ever got ashore that I know of.” Collins carried one wounded man back to the Higgins boat. Thai he started back with another, a corpsman who had been hit in the shoulder. On the way the corpsman was hit again, half his head blown off while Collins held him in his arms. A preliminary check shows that B Company got ninety men ashore out of 199. Pfc. William Coady of Minersville, Pennsylvania, says he carried ten wounded men back to the Higgins boat before he finally made shore. A Marine from the regimental weapons platoon says his outfit didn’t fare so badly—only one man had been killed and two wounded out of thirty-six.

  1730; Major General Julian Smith has arrived from the battleship on which he maintained headquarters with Admiral Hill—but, even on the third day, the Japs kept a sharp lookout for new arrivals. The general’s amphtrack, which also contained two brigadier generals, was fired upon as it rounded the west end of the island, and its driver was wounded. Rumors, later proved exaggerated, are prevalent, even at headquarters. One officer reports that only 140 men remain out of the first and second battalions of the Eighth Marines, and that more than fifty percent of the officers have been killed or wounded out of the six assaulting battalions which faced enemy fire as they came in.

  1800: By now all the war correspondents are accounted for. Keith Wheeler of the Chicago Times and John Henry of I.N.S. reached headquarters today after landing yesterday to the west, their amphtrack having been turned back the first day, causing them to spend a night bobbing around in the lagoon. It is a miracle that none of the civilian correspondents was killed*—they are the only “unit” which has suffered no casualties. Not one of the newsmen who accompanied the assault battalions as they waded ashore failed to see men killed around him. It is comforting to know that they all came through Tarawa, the toughest of them all, because in two years I have lost friends and colleagues all the way from New Guinea and Australia to Berlin.

  But few war correspondents have experienced the horror which Gil Bundy, the artist, went through on his first assignment. He got into a landing boat with some of the regimental command on D Day. Bundy’s boat received a direct hit about seventy-five yards from shore, probably from a Jap 90-mm. mortar. All others in it were killed or blown out of the boat, but Bundy miraculously was unharmed. That was only the beginning of his troubles. He jumped from his disabled boat, intending to swim to another boat. But a swift current carried him several hundred yards out to sea. Finally, he managed to pull up panting to another disabled boat. Several dead men were in it, but by then it was dark and Bundy had no choice but to spend the night with the dead Marines. Early on the morning of the second day a boat which was returning from the beach stopped by Bundy’s morgue. Captain Harry Lawrence of Albany, Georgia, the officer in charge of the amphtrack company, almost shot Bundy for a Jap—during the night Japs had swum out and manned some of the amphtracks, Bundy, rescued, was taken back to a transport. Until today we had assumed that Bundy had been killed. His identification papers had been found in his original boat, and several Marines had reported having seen his lifeless body, as men in battle often report things they are ninety percent certain of.

  * Two Marine Corps correspondents were killed: Lieutenant Ernest A. Matthews, Jr., of Dallas, and Staff Sergeant Wesley L. Kroenung of South Pasadens.

  1830: Two-thirds of the island’s area is now ours. Lieutenant Commander Fabian, the beachmaster charged with unloading the hundreds of tons of supplies now pouring over the pier, says, yes, he thinks he knows the quickest way to get to a nearby ship which might lend the reporters typewriters. Wading through enemy fire carrying a typewriter is not standard procedure for war correspondents, who are usually dependent on the Navy for the loan of materials. Mr. Fabian introduces me and Dick Johnston and Keith Wheeler to a transport skipper, Captain Claton McLaughlin, who says, “Sure, come with me. I’m just returning to my ship.”

  The ship is a new AK—part transport, part cargo ship. The ship’s crew is anxious for news of the battle. They grin when they hear that the last round is beginning. Says a sailor, “I’d have given anything in the world if I could have been over there on land to help out.” The young junior-grade lieutenant who is the ship’s supply officer opens up his ship’s store to procure razors, tooth brushes, and soap. He will not accept pay—one of the correspondents had somehow retained some money. “It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to do anything, and the battle only two thousand yards away,” he says, bitterly. In the ward room the hovering Negro mess steward brings in extra, after hours helpings of ham and iced tea and coffee. The captain turns over his quarters to the correspondents, including a blessed fresh-water shower bath (but it will take many baths to purge the grime of Betio from the skin pores). The yeoman in the ship’s office finds typewriters and onion-skin paper which is necessary to take the many carbon copies the rules sa
y a correspondent must turn in.

  This desire to lend a helping hand is one of the most touching things in and around a battle, where every man wants to help every other man. I have seen men, when asked for a cigarette, feel the inside of the pack, find only one left. They bulge out the pack, proffer the last cigarette, then pocket the empty pack so the other man will not know that he is accepting the last one. On Betio the drinking water is almost undrinkable—the five-gallon cans had been filled in New Zealand many weeks before and the heat of the South Pacific had caused some of the enamel lining to dissolve into the water. Thus, the only palatable water was that which each man brought in his two canteens from his transport. Yet I have seen several men give their last drink of water to a comrade, with the untrue remark, “Oh, I’ve got some more in my other canteen.” What a pity Americans at home cannot display the same unselfish attitude toward each other and toward the men who fight for them!

  Within an hour after the correspondents left the island the Japs staged their twilight counterattack. All day Major Bill Jones’ first battalion of the Sixth Marines had marched gallantly down the south shore of Betio. The tanks went down the beach first, except for those incredibly brave Marines who went ahead and spotted for the tanks. The tanks poured high explosives into the seaward openings of the mighty coconut log and sand pillboxes. Then the Marine riflemen fired into those openings to kill whatever Japs were left. The flamethrowers did the rest. By dusk the Sixth had been able to travel slightly more than halfway down the south shore. There the Marines dug in for the night, with wounded Captain Krueger’s Company B, now in command of Lieutenant Norman K. Thomas, holding the front line. The Japs from the tail end of the island, despite three days of merciless pounding, were able to stage their “Banzai!” attack. Having cautiously stayed hidden in their holes for three days, the emperor-worshiping brown men now threw away all caution in anticipation of inevitable death. Screaming “Marine, you die!” and “Japanese drink Marines’ blood!” they rushed Company B in what seemed like overpowering numbers. The line wavered, and in one place it cracked momentarily. Lieutenant Thomas telephoned Major Jones, “We are killing them as fast as they come at us, but we can’t hold much longer; we need reinforcements.” Said Jones, “We haven’t got them to send you; you’ve got to hold.” Company B held. At least three hundred Japs died in their fanatical charge. Company B’s feat was one of the most heroic on Betio. The red-eyed, grime-coated Marines who stumbled out of the front line next morning, more dead than alive, muttered, “They told us we had to hold … and, by God, we held.” That line, I reflected, might be added to the Marine Corps hymn.

  The rest of the night passed without incident beyond Washing Machine Charley’s nocturnal prowl. Aboard Captain McLaughlin’s ship General Quarters sounded about 0230. Said a sailor, “Don’t let this bother you, but we all hope Charley doesn’t aim at the island and hit us. A hell of a lot of our cargo is bombs and hundred-octane gasoline.” The Jap bombing accuracy was often the subject of American amusement at this-funny-war: “I don’t want to be here when the airport gets ready. The Japs will come over and bomb and aim for the airport and hit you in the tail way down at the other end of the island.”

  was late afternoon of the fourth day before I finished writing and got ashore again. As I walked up the pier, from the comparatively clean-smelling sea, the overwhelming smell of the dead hit me full in the face, and I vomited a little. By dark I was used to it again.

  That fourth night Dick Johnston and I spent on the south shore of the island, in a tank trap with Major Rice, who had by now become, at twenty-five, probably the youngest battalion commander in the Marine Corps; his operations officer, Captain Ben Owens; the executive officer of the heavy-weapons company, Captain Bill Tynes; and the battalion adjutant, lieutenant Albert Borek. Said Borek, “I’m afraid to tell you what the battalion casualties were. The best count I can get is 309 men left out of 750 who landed. There are fifteen officers left out of thirty-nine.”

  Said Ben Owens, “We were talking about medals. We decided nobody should be recommended because everybody should have one.”

  VIEW OF THE CARNAGE

  BETIO HAB BEEN DECLARED “secured” at 15155 on the fourth day, seventy-five hours and forty-two minutes after the first Marines hit the beach. Occasional snipers would fire from holes and rubble-and-corpse-packed pillboxes for days afterward. Until the battle ended I had covered only a small part of the island—perhaps a total of four hundred yards along the beach, and no more than one hundred yards inland. To understand what had happened in each sector, it was necessary to walk over the island yard by yard. This I did for a day and a half before I flew out of the lagoon on a PB2Y on the afternoon of the sixth day.

  What I saw on Betio was, I am certain, one of the greatest works of devastation wrought by man. Words are inadequate to describe what I saw on this island of less than a square mile. So are pictures—you can’t smell pictures.

  So that the reader may be able to place the scenes I describe in their approximate positions, I have inserted three drawings of the three trips I made over Betio.

  Here on the south beach the coconut-log and sand and concrete pillboxes are larger and more powerfully constructed than on the beach we invaded. Undoubtedly, the Japs, who had themselves landed on the north beach, expected us to land there, and not through the lagoon. In the water there are rows of land mines and double fences of barbed wire. There are fifteen dead Japs in and around the first pillbox next to the tank trap, all dressed in green uniforms, wrap-around leggings, and hobnailed shoes except one who wore a Navy flyer’s blue uniform, Two of the fifteen have blown their guts out with hand grenades, as evidenced by their missing stomachs and right hands. Most of the bodies are already turning a sickly green, though they have been corpses only two days—as against five for most of the five thousand putrefying bodies on Betio.

  Down the beach, it is possible to see these mighty fortresses, one after another, as far as the eye can reach. There are twelve Japs inside the second pillbox—more than the smaller machinegun boxes on the north shore could contain—and there are thirteen outside. Some of these wear only shorts, some only the G-string shorts which do not cover the flanks.

  After a brief alert, caused by friendly planes, which we spend in a foxhole on the beach, Dick Johnston and I start across the airstrip toward the regimental command post near the northern shore. On the edge of the airstrip we find that the huge, fifteen-foot-high, box-like structures made of coconut logs are not blockhouses, but revetments to contain two planes. All the bombing and shelling have blown a few logs off these three-sided pens (the open side faces toward the runway), but generally they are surprisingly intact. There are perhaps a dozen Jap planes—Zeros and twin-engined bombers—along the runway, but only two inside the revetments which are fairly well riddled by shrapnel and bullets. The first light, maneuverable Zero we examine is in fairly good condition, however. The red ball of the Japanese is painted on both sides of the fuselage just back of the cockpit and on the top and bottom near each end of the wings.

  A bullet-riddled, brown truck is on the edge of the runway. Inside the next big coconut-log revetment there are three identical trucks. Though they are Japanese-made, the dashboards of the trucks have their instruments labeled in English. Here is an example of the Japanese tendency to imitate: the “water” thermometer dial is in the centigrade of the French, as is the “kilos” of the speedometer; “oil” and “amperes” dials might have been taken from either the Americans or the British, but the fuel indicator is labeled “gasoline” instead of the British “petrol.” The tires on this truck are four different brands: Dunlop, Bridgestone, Yokohama, and Firestone. An uncamouflaged black sedan nearby, also of Japanese make, had been hit and burned until there is less than half of it left. It has a license plate with the Navy anchor insignia on it, and the number . The black out oilcloth over the headlights has no ordinary little hole through which a small beam of light might show; it has a Navy anchor, which
gives the headlights the appearance of a Hallowe’en pumpkin.

  Beside one of the revetments four naked Marines take a bath in a well of brackish water. The well, many years old, had been there before the Japs came. It had gone through the Battle of Betio unharmed.

  At headquarters Captain J. L. Schwabe, one of the regimental staff officers, says we will find at the northwest tip of the island (the bird’s beak) spots where our flamethrowers killed thirty and forty Japs at a time. He estimates that 250 Marines were killed in the water along the north beach between headquarters and the beak. Estimates of casualties in the Second Regiment are sickening: First Battalion 63 killed, 192 wounded, 41 missing; Second Battalion has 309 left out of 750 who landed; Third Battalion has 413 left, about the same as Major Crowe’s Second Battalion of the Eighth. These figures were found later to be somewhat exaggerated, but they indicate how forcefully the first casualty compilations struck us. Five cemeteries have been started thus far—by 0800 of the fifth day—and less than one-fourth of our dead have been buried. The largest cemetery, next to the regimental command post, has 134 graves; the others 80, 53, so, and 41 respectively.