Klingman started down, losing his oxygen at 18,000 feet, and his power at 10,000. But he landed at Kadena Field, dead-stick and on his belly, his wings and fuselage sewn with bullet holes and pieces of the destroyed Nick in his cowling.
Next day Klingman’s fellow pilots were whirling among 150 Japanese planes that struck the radar picket lines, coming to the aid of little destroyers Evans and Hugh W. Hadley in one of the classic ship-airplane battles of World War Two.
For an hour and a half without letup Evans and Hadley fought off 50 kamikaze. Hadley alone shot down 23 of them while Evans claimed 15. The Marines from Yontan and Kadena knocked another 19 out of the skies. Commander Baron Mullaney of Hadley called for Marines to help him. Back came the squadron leader’s answer: “I’m out of ammunition but I’m sticking with you.” He did, flying straight into a flurry of 10 kamikaze coming at Hadley fore and aft, trying to head them off—while other Marines of his squadron rode down through the ack-ack with stuttering guns. They were not always successful, for both of these tough little ships took four kamikaze hits apiece. But they survived to be towed to that anchorage in Kerama Retto which had become a vast hospital ward for stricken and maimed American ships, and there Commander Mullaney could write this tribute to the Yontan and Kadena fliers: “I am willing to take my ship to the shores of Japan if I could have these Marines with me.”
But the commander’s ship would be a long time repairing, as would dozens of others which had limped or been towed to Kerama Retto. It had been because of this terrible loss among picket ships, as well as mounting casualties among the big vessels of the fleet, that Admiral Turner had asked General Buckner to speed up his drive to the south. Buckner had agreed. He had set May 11, the very day of Hadley’s ordeal, as the date for the Tenth Army to attack all along the line.
On that day the attack rolled forward in massive frontal assault. In its numbers and in the fact that it was being fought on foot, it was similar to those great offensives in France during World War One. But in its terrain and in the quick splintering off of its actions it was as unlike France as battle could be. It was mountain warfare on the broad scale. Each of these four divisions in line were fighting for a specific height: the refreshed 96th Infantry, which had relieved the 7th Infantry on the left, struck out for Conical Hill; the 77th Infantry fought for Shuri Castle; the First Marine bucked at Shuri Heights; and the Sixth Marine marched on the Sugar Loaf.
Like the terrible Meatgrinder of Iwo Jima, the Sugar Loaf of Okinawa was not one hill but a complex of three. Coming down from the north the men of the Sixth Marine Division saw Sugar Loaf as an oblong of about 50 feet in height, protected to its left rear by the Half-Moon and to its right rear by the Horseshoe, a long ridge stuffed with mortars. Commanding their approach from the left was Shuri Heights, also stuffed with gunners and many of them able to hit Sugar Loaf.
To attempt to get at Sugar Loaf was to be hit by the others. To strike at the others was to be hit by Sugar Loaf. But this was not suspected until the main position was reached on the morning of May 14, after a fighting crossing of the Asa River and steady grinding down of smaller hills guarding the approaches.
On that May 14 most of the morning was spent evacuating Marines stricken while crossing the flat open ground approaching that harmless-looking loaf of earth. In the afternoon a charge with supporting tanks was driven back when three of four tanks were knocked out and artillery from Sugar’s front, left-rear and rear fell among the riflemen. A second assault before dusk reached Sugar Loaf’s base. But of 150 Marines from the Second Battalion, Twenty-second, who began it—only 40 reached the hill. They were exhausted. They were out of supplies. It was getting dusk. Suddenly, the enemy stopped firing. The men realized that someone was speaking to them. It was Major Henry Courtney, the battalion’s executive officer.
“If we don’t take the top of this hill tonight,” he was saying, “the Japs will be down here to drive us away in the morning. The only way we can take it is to make a banzai charge of our own. I’m asking for volunteers.”
There was hardly a pause before the Glory Kid stepped forward, grinning.
“I hate to sound like a guy in a dime novel,” said Corporal Rusty Golar, “but what the hell did we come here for?”
There were 19 other volunteers from this exhausted remnant and there were 26 fresh men who appeared carrying supplies. Major Courtney took these 45 Marines up Sugar Loaf under cover of darkness, heaving grenades as they went, digging in under the protection of their own mortars. From the Horseshoe and Half-Moon came machine-gun fire and mortar shells, while grenades came up at them from the reverse slope of Sugar Loaf. At midnight, Courtney heard the enemy gathering below. He decided to strike them.
“Take all the grenades you can carry,” he whispered. “When we get over the top, throw them and start digging in.”
They went out, behind Courtney. They heard the major shout, “Keep coming, there’s a mess of them down there!” and then they heard the explosion of the mortar shell that killed him. They answered with grenades of their own, hanging on to Sugar Loaf while all of the Japanese positions struck at them, while a cold rain swept in from the East China Sea, until the mists of the morning showed that there were only 20 men left of the 46 who had come up the night before.
In that mist Rusty Golar, the self-styled Storybook Marine, fought the battle he had always sought. He had set up his light machine gun on the right flank of Sugar Loaf. With daylight, the Japanese on Horseshoe Hill to his right opened up on him. Golar fired back. The Japanese on Half-Moon to the left opened up. With a deep, booming “Yeah!” Golar swiveled his gun to rake Half-Moon.
Back and forth it went, the whip-sawing Japanese fire, the booming “Yeah!” of the Glory Kid and his own alternating bursts. It went on while Sugar Loaf’s defenders were gradually whittled to a handful and men trying to bring up ammunition were killed or wounded, until only Golar and a few others were left alive. By then the Glory Kid’s machine-gun belts had all been fired. He drew his pistol, yelling, “Gotta use what I got left.” He emptied it twice more. He threw it at the caves below and began scurrying about the hillcrest to gather grenades from the bodies of dead Marines.
“Still need some more stuff to throw at those guys,” he yelled at Private Don Kelly, one of the few men still alive on the ridge. He threw. He found a loaded BAR in the hands of another fallen Marine, seized it, jumped erect and fired it until it jammed.
“Nothin’ more to give ‘em now,” he bellowed to Kelly. “Let’s get some of these wounded guys down.” He bent down and easily picked up a stricken Marine. “I’ll have you in sick bay in no time,” he said. He walked toward the rear edge of Sugar Loaf. A Japanese rifle cracked. Rusty Golar staggered. He put the wounded man down carefully. Incredulity was written on his broad whitening features. He walked to a ditch. He sat down, pushed his helmet over his face and he died.
Soon the Japanese mortars were bursting on the crest of the Sugar Loaf, driving the Marines off. Japanese crawled from their caves at the foot of the reverse slope and began creeping to the crest again.
It was on the crest that they collided with a relief platoon of 60 men led by Lieutenant George Murphy. The Japanese met the Marines at bayonet-point and in a hand-grenade battle and were driven back. But to hold Sugar Loaf was to hold a lease on death. Little clouds of dust and mortar smoke eddied over it. Murphy contacted Captain Howard Mabie and asked for permission to withdraw. Mabie ordered him to hold, but Murphy could not. He had heard too many of his men scream. He covered them as they crawled down the hill. He picked up a wounded Marine and brought him down. A mortar struck him in the back. He let the Marine fall, turned to empty his pistol at the Japanese—and fell mortally wounded.
Captain Mabie brought his company forward to cover Murphy’s survivors. He signaled battalion: “Request permission to withdraw. Irish George Murphy has been hit. Has 11 men left in platoon.”
The reply came two minutes later: “You must hold.”
; Five more minutes, and Mabie had rejoined: “Platoon has withdrawn. Position was untenable. Could not evacuate wounded. Believe Japs now have ridge.”
They did have it. They held onto it through that day and the next, clinging to Sugar Loaf while the entire complex quivered beneath the combined air-sea-land barrages which preceded the Marine assaults, hurling back each attack exactly as they had repulsed the first. But on May 17 an end run turned Sugar Loaf’s left flank.
An almost imperceptible depression had been observed running north and south between Half-Moon Hill to the left and Sugar Loaf. It was not actually a valley, but Japanese fire on Marines who had wandered into it had not been heavy or accurate. General Shepherd, up on the lines now, decided to move an entire regiment—the Twenty-ninth-through this tiny chink in Sugar Loaf’s armor. Two battalions would go through to strike at Half-Moon Hill, holding there to support another battalion moving against the left face of Sugar Loaf which their own assault was expected to unmask.
The battalions went forward under a fierce barrage. Half-Moon Hill was hit. Sugar Loaf was attacked. Three times a company of Marines charged to Sugar Loaf’s crest. Each time they were driven off. They surged up a fourth time and won. But they had no more ammunition. None could be brought up to them. It was heartbreaking. They had to go down, giving up the vital height taken at a cost of 160 casualties.
Next day they went up to stay.
Four days of full-scale attack, the hammering of two Marine regiments and supporting arms, had worn the complex’s defense thin. Sugar Loaf was ready to fall.
Captain Mabie brought his assaulting company up to the edge of the low ground opposite the hill. Artillery and mortars plastered the crest, while three tanks slipped around the left flank. The barrage stopped. The Japanese rushed from their caves below the reverse slope to occupy the crest. The tanks took them under fire, surprised them and riddled them.
Rocket trucks raced down from the north, bumping and swaying over a saddle of ground, stopped, loosed their flights of missiles, whirled and careened away with a whine of changing gears and a roar of wasted gasoline—just avoiding the inevitable Japanese artillery shells crashing in behind them. The rockets made Sugar Loaf’s hillsides reel and reverberate as though a string of monster firecrackers had been set off. Artillery began again. The Marines sprinted over the field and up Sugar Loaf, one platoon taking the right face, peeling off its fire teams, another sweeping up on the left. They met on the crest, formed and swept down the reverse slope, killing as they went. Back came the message:
“Send up the PX supplies. Sugar Loaf is ours.”
Next day the fresh Fourth Marines relieved the fought-out Twenty-ninth. Marines such as Private Harry Kizirian, a man so big his buddies called him “The Beast,” could rest and have their wounds cared for. Kizirian had three, all received at Sugar Loaf. The Sixth Division’s total casualties for the battle were 2,662 killed and wounded, with another 1,289 knocked out by battle fatigue. But the fall of Sugar Loaf had set Ushijima’s western flank to crumbling. During the next three days, the Fourth Marines drove deeper and deeper into the complex, while throwing back a counterattack in battalion strength. They turned to take Half-Moon Hill, to nail down their left flank preparatory to the drive down-island into Naha. Artillery struck them. It came plunging from the left. It was on Shuri Heights.
The Sixth Marine Division could not strike into the Naha flank of the Japanese line until the First Marine Division polished off Shuri Heights in the center.
The First Marine Division was “processing” its way south.
This was the cold, impersonal term coined by Major General del Valle to describe the cold, grim warfare his Marines were fighting en route to Shuri Heights.
Along that way lay Dakeshi Ridge, Dakeshi Town, Wana Ridge, Wana Draw—those bristling rough places which only the “processing” of tank-infantry-flame-thrower teams could make smooth. These four places were the sentinel forts guarding the northwest way into the heart of the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru line at Shuri Castle. Moving down against them, its regiments leapfrogging one another all along the pitiless way, the First Marine Division was exposed to almost constant fire from its left flank and struck unceasingly from its front. The deeper the advance, the more numerous and formidable became the defenses-in-depth, the more difficult the terrain.
On May 11 the First began bucking at Dakeshi Ridge and Dakeshi Town. Both fell after a seesaw three-day battle, the Americans plodding forward by day, the Japanese counterattacking by night. Platoons took a position at the cost of three-fourths of their men, then tried to hang on with the survivors. Sometimes they could not. Daylight sometimes meant a fresh attack to recover ground surrendered during the night. In Dakeshi Town the Marines found a labyrinth of tunnels, shafts and caves, with snipers everywhere among the ruins—crouching behind broken walls, hidden in wells or cisterns. But Dakeshi Town also fell and on May 14 the First Marine Division entered Wana Draw.
Wana Draw was a long, narrowing ravine running east to Shuri. It was formed by the reverse slope of Wana Ridge on its left and the forward slope of another ridge to the right. All its low, gently-rising ground was covered by gunfire, from its mouth 400 yards wide to the point at which, 800 yards east, it narrowed sharply between steep cliffs under the heights of Shuri.
Although neither Shuri nor Shuri Castle was in the zone of the First Marine Division, but rather in the 77th Division’s, the plunging fire that fell from them was meant for the First Division’s left flank. It was necessary for the First to face left, or east, and attack up Wana Draw—both to remove that thorn from its flesh and to knock out those powerful positions menacing the entire western half of the Tenth Army front. Any attack south past Shuri would be struck in both flank and rear.
On May 14, the day on which Major Courtney led the charge on Sugar Loaf which was to bring him the Medal of Honor, the First Marine Division began “processing” Wana Draw.
A few tanks slipped into the ravine. They probed for the caves. Antitank fire fell on them. Supporting riflemen took the Japanese gunners under fire. Suicide troops rushed the tanks hurling satchel-charges. Again the supporting riflemen protected the tanks. But sometimes the antitank guns knocked out the tanks, sometimes the Japanese infantrymen drove the Marine riflemen back, sometimes the satchel-chargers blew up a tank. But when the tanks did gain a foothold, then the more vulnerable flame-throwing tanks rumbled in. They sprayed the hillside with fire, particularly those reverse slopes which could not be reached by bombs or artillery.
Squads of foot Marines went in after them, men with bazookas, flame-throwers, hand grenades, blocks of dynamite —peeling off, team by team, taking cave after cave, crawling up to them under the protective fire of riflemen kneeling in the mud. More and more men went into Wana Draw. Day after day the Division bucked against this barrier, but soon there were whole companies working up the slopes, “processing” caves and pillboxes, calling down their mortars and rifle grenades on the machine guns and mortars sure to be nesting on the reverse slope. It was war at its most basic, man-to-man, a battle fought by corporals and privates. And these were the men who won the Medals of Honor while the First Division processed its way into Shuri: Private Dale Hansen, using a bazooka, a rifle and hand grenades to knock out a pillbox and a mortar position and kill a dozen Japanese before he lost his own life; Pfc. Albert Schwab, attacking machine guns alone with his flame-thrower, silencing them even as he perished; Corporal Louis Hauge, doing the same with grenades, and also dying. With these men were their indomitable comrades of the Navy Medical Corps, men such as Corpsman William Halyburton, who deliberately shielded wounded Marines with his own body until the life leaked out of it.
This was the fight for Wana Draw, that elemental blood-letting which took place while the very elements howled about these struggling men in muddy green floundering up the forward slopes, these men in smeared khaki sliding down the reverse slopes. At night, under cover of smokescreens, the men in khaki crept forward again to close w
ith the men in green, to fight with bayonets and fists and strangling hands. But the men in khaki were losing the fight for Wana Draw. The Marines drew closer to Shuri. The soldiers of the 77th Division on their left were thrusting toward Shuri and Shuri Castle from the eastern gate. On the east flank the 7th Infantry Division was back in the line and smashing into Yonabaru; the Sixth Marine Division was again on the march to Naha on the west. All along the line division and corps artillery were battering Ushijima’s strong points, the Tenth Army’s Tactical Air Force roved over the battlefield at will—and the warships of the fleet were slugging away with the most formidable supporting fire yet laid down in the Pacific, for they had caught the hang of pasting those reverse slopes which land-air pounding could not reach.
Ushijima’s barrier line was buckling.
On the night of May 22, while Marines of the Sixth Division crossed the Asato River and the Division was poised to break into Naha, there was another conference under Shuri Castle. Lieutenant General Ushijima had decided to retreat. He could no longer hold his Yonabaru-Shuri-Naha line. He would have to withdraw south of the Yonabaru-Naha valley, abandoning even that fine cross-island road. Where to? Should it be the wild, roadless Chinen Peninsula on the east coast, or southernmost Kiyamu Peninsula? The wrangle began. In the end, the Kiyamu was chosen because of the strength of the Yaeju-Yuza Peaks and the honeycombs of natural and artificial caves which could accommodate the entire 32nd Army for its final stand.
Strong Men Armed Page 53