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Unread 11-20-2006, 03:47 AM
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Default History of the Fourth Marine Division in WWII

As some of you may already know, my Dad was in the 25th Regiment of the 4th Marine Division during WWII. I have always been proud of my Dads accomplishments during WWII and that is what lead me at an early age to have a facination with military history. My dad died when i was 10 years old in 1979. I never got a chance to talk to him about his experiences. I later found out that he never talked much about the war and his experiences until very late in his life. My one older brother told me it was like he was unburdening himself before he died. He never really spoke of his own acomplishments. He only spoke in terms of rememberance of his fallen friends from so long ago, the horrors of combat, and the great amount of respect he had for the Japanese soldier. It was only a few years ago when after a 2 year wait, i found out what kind of a Marine he really was after getting his service records from the national archives. He excelled at boot camp, scoring marksman with the pistol. He was then sent to NCO school for showing good leadership qualities. After NCO school he went through Heavy Weapons training and was assigned as a corporal in charge of a .50 cal HMG platoon. Then he was off to base camp of the 4th Marine division in Maui. He joined up with the division after the Kwajalein Island Invasion. While at base camp on Maui my Dad made a name for himself as a Boxer and did very well on the Divisions Football team. He went on to fight on the Islands of Siapan, Tinian & Iwo Jima. He was wounded on Iwo Jima. He ran out into open ground, under fire to rescue a wounded comrade. On his way back he got hit in his one buttocks by a mortar fragment but still managed to carry his friend to safety. After the war He was belatedly awarded a Bronze Star for his actions on Iwo Jima. A fact in which he never told anyone. His Purple Heart awarded during the war came with a Bronze Star clasp for bravery. He spent the rest of the war after he healed escorting military prisoners back and forth between Maui and the USA on airplanes.

My Dad was so much like all the others of his generation who fought in WWII. He never spoke of his own accomplishments or the war for that matter, he was just glad to get home alive. They never considered themselves Heros or special in any way. They just did a job and wanted to come home. But they, and especially He, will always be Hero's to me.




The following is a history of the 4th Marine Division in WWII. All info was taken from -

http://www.fightingfourth.com/


I will break it up into several sections because it is so big. I hope you enjoy it.
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Unread 11-20-2006, 03:51 AM
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Operation Stateside...Forming Up & Training


Every Marine Division has its own personal history - - its own kind of esprit, its unique combat experiences, its own section of the vast Pacific which, because so many of its men still lie there in vigilance under the white coral sand, can belong to no other. Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Bougainville, Tarawa, and the Marshalls, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa are all different, and the courage and suffering and glory that went into the taking of them are different, too. Thus the memories of the men in the other divisions will be different from those of the Fourth. This history is an attempt to make permanent the record of the men in the Fourth Marine Division who fought so valiantly on islands in the Pacific.

In many ways the Fourth was more fortunate than some of its sister divisions. It was overseas 21 months, whereas a tour of 26 to 30 months was not unusual for the divisions which preceded it. Its zone of action was exclusively in the Central Pacific; jungles, oppressive heat, and tropical diseases were not part of its experience; casualties from malaria, filariasis, and jungle rot were practically unknown. It was in combat but a total of 63 days; it was based, between operations, in the next best place to the States - - The Island of Maui. Long months of isolation in some rainy jungle or on a barren rock were never part of the Fourth's experience. It was also the first Marine division to return to the States and be deactivated after the war.
But in contrast to this, no division participated in more violent combat than did the Fourth. In 63 days it saw more action than did many units during months of jungle fighting, or in long campaigns in Italy and France. Every day was its own bloody battle, and every acre of Roi-Namur, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima was its own battlefield. The Fourth set something of a record in making four beachheads - - all of them bitterly opposed - - in less than 13 months.

And if men escaped the discomfort of steaming jungles and the plagues of insects and disease, they were not so fortunate where enemy bullets were concerned. Sixty-three days of merciless but futile enemy opposition accounted for probably the highest casualty rate of any Marine division. During the four operations in which the Division was engaged, a total of 81,718 men saw action one or more times. (This is a combined figure of totals of all operations for the Reinforced Division, i.e., some served in all four operations, and thus are included four times.) Out of this total of 81,718, there were 17,722 casualties (some being wounded more than once) killed, wounded, and missing in action - - a total of 21.6 per cent. The percentage of the original 17,086 men who left the States with the Fourth and later became casualties would be even higher than this. These figures are not stated boastfully but as solemn facts that testify as no words possibly can to the contribution which the Fourth made to the victory in the Pacific.

A division is merely a name until its component parts are joined and integrated into a single fighting unit. This process, for the Fourth, took more than a year. It began at Camp Lejeune, New River, North Carolina, where nearly all of the lower echelons were formed, and ended at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, with the activation of the Division as a whole. During this period, separate battalions were combined to form regiments and regiments split to form new regiments; specialized units were welded together to make Special and Service Troops; and a Division Staff was organized.

To the Twenty-third marines goes the honor of being the oldest component unit of the Division. It was activated in July 1942, under Lieutenant Colonel William B. Onley, as a part of the Third Division. In September 1942, Colonel Louis R. Jones took command. On February 15, 1943, it was detached from the Third and five days later designated part of the Fourth. Colonel Jones, a baseball enthusiast, determined to make the Twenty-third not only a first-class fighting outfit but a ball-playing outfit as well, and its regimental team won a long string of victories.

For 15 cold days in January 1943, the Twenty-third conducted amphibious maneuvers in Chesapeake Bay - - a change, but hardly a relief from the long days of training in the North Carolina "boondocks" which all the units were undergoing during these formative months. On May 1 of the same year the Regiment was divided into two cadres, one of which was the nucleus of the Twenty-fifth Marines formed under Colonel Richard H. Schubert. Later that month the Fourth Service Battalion, the Ordinance Company, Division Headquarters Company, and the Fourth Signal Company were activated. On June 15, 1943, the Twentieth Marines, consisting of engineers and pioneers, was activated under Lieutenant Colonel Nelson K. Brown. During the same month the Fourteenth Marines, the Division's artillery regiment, was activated under Colonel Randall M. Victory.

All of these units were transferred, by ship and train, to Camp Joseph H. Pendleton during July and August 1943, and it was here that the Division was brought up to its full strength. Under the leadership of Colonel Franklin A. Hart, the Twenty-fourth Marines, which had been formed in March at Camp Pendleton by combining three separate reinforced battalions, was added. Two of these battalions had been formed at Camp Lejeune and were transferred to the West Coast where unit training was carried out upon organization of the Regiment. On August 16, 1943, the Division was formerly activated. The Fourth was now ready to undergo intensive training as a unit in preparation for combat.

The Division Staff was as follows:
Major General Harry Schmidt--------------------------------------Commanding General
Brigadier General James L. Underhill----------------------Asst. Division Commander
Colonel William W. Rogers-----------------------------------------------------Chief of Staff
Colonel Merton J. Batchelder------------------------------Assistant Chief of Staff, D-1
Major Gooderham L. McCormick-------------------------Assistant Chief of Staff, D-2
Colonel Walter W. Wensinger------------------------------Assistant Chief of Staff, D-3
Colonel William F. Brown------------------------------------Assistant Chief of Staff, D-4
Commander William C. Baty, Jr.-----------------------------------------Division Surgeon
Lt. Commander Otis P. Maddox-----------------------------------------Division Chaplain

The five regiments and other principal units of the Division at this time were commanded by the following officers:
Fourteenth Marines---------------Colonel Louis G. DeHaven
Twentieth Marines---------------Colonel Lucian W. Burnham
Twenty-Third Marines-----------------Colonel Louis R. Jones
Twenty-Fourth Marine---------------Colonel Franklin A. Hart
Twenty-Fifth Marines----------Colonel Samuel C. Cummings
Division Special Troops---------Colonel Emmett W. Skinner
Division Service Troops--------Colonel Richard H. Schubert

It was under this leadership that 17,831 men and officers (as of September 30, 1943) were welded into a hard-hitting fighting machine. In September 1942, training at Pendleton was begun on an intensive scale. The 132,000 acres of the former Santa Margarita Ranch with its hills, canyons, and semi-arid desert were ideal terrain for CPXs (command post exercises), field problems, hikes and maneuvers. Aliso Beach and San Clemente Island served as proving grounds for amphibious landings. In November, the Fourteenth Regiment moved in a body with its 75mm and 105mm howitzers to camp Dunlap, Niland, California, for extensive firing practice.

The three infantry regiments, reinforced with detachments of engineers, medical personnel, Joint Assault Signal men, and amphibian tractor units, boarded transports at San Diego and made a series of practice landings on Aslito Beach. Later the whole Division boarded ship and sailed to San Clemente Island, where, with Task Force 53 giving it live fire support, men stormed the beaches to "take" the island and then returned to their ships to do it again the following days. By now it was evident that the fourth was getting ready to move out. The objective, of course, was TOP SECRET.

A brief recital of the facts conveys but an impersonal outline of these three months of training. As real men were the personal experiences which these days and nights imprinted on their memories.

The experiences, for instance, of trying to stay warm at night in Las Pulgas Canyon. No matter how many blankets a person used, it was always cold. No doubt about it, when the sun went down, California was the coldest place this side of the North Pole.

And for the men of the twenty-fifth Marines and the Tank Battalion, inhabitants of the tent camps, this sub-arctic temperature was a nightly experience. But during the day, the famous California sun beaming down, Camp Pendleton was pleasant.

There are other things one will remember about Pendleton. The machine-gun range, bayonet practice, conditioning hikes, the moving-target range, pillbox assaults in Windmill canyon, night attacks near the Santa Margarita River, rubber-boat landings at the boat basin, combat swimming with the brutal words of the instructor: "STEP OFF!"

Everyone will remember the Post Exchange when it opened at 1030 and the rush for milkshakes..and the slopchute at night, where beer stimulated many an argument and cemented many a friendship..and the movies..and card games in the barracks..

And, of course, there were the liberties in "Dago" and "L.A." and points in between..the mad scramble for a bus, or a seat on the train, or a ride with a passing motorist..The Victory Inn and the Biltmore and the Hollywood Canteen. Sometimes it seemed that Pendleton was simply a place to stay between week ends in Los Angeles.

For you were living on borrowed time, for all you knew, and you wanted to live that time intensely. Every day was precious.

Out of these experiences-the good times as well as the bad-The Division grew into manhood. For a division is not just an aggregation of 17,000 men but an organic thing, with a personality and aspirations of its own. And all the thousand and one details of training and recreation combine to make that quality to which men referred when they talked about the "Fourth."

Early in January 1944, the Division boarded ship at San Diego. We were combat loaded! Everyone knew that this was to be the real thing. For many days supplies had moved off the docks and into holds...then the troops. The Division began a new and strange kind of life that it was to know too well before many months-life on a troop transport.

On January 6 and 7, LSDs and LSTs, carrying the Fourteenth Marines and amphibian tractor detachments, sailed out of the harbor. The remainder of the Division departed just after daybreak on the 13th. Men stood on the decks and watched San Diego grow fainter in the hazy distance. And then they turned and saw an illimitable sweep of ocean beyond which lay the enemy stronghold.

"Operation Flintlock" was under way!
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Roi Namur...Penetrating the Outer Ring
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The Fourth Marine Division set three new records on its first operation: It became the first division to go directly into combat from the United State; it was the first to capture Japanese mandated territory; and it secured its objective in a shorter time than that of any other important operation since the attack on Pearle Harbor. For weeks the coming battle had been known only by its code name, "Operation Flintlock." Not until the big convoy had passed the Hawaiian Islands was its destination revealed to all hands -- the twin islands of Roi - Namur in the Kwajalein Atoll of the Marshall Islands. Simultaneously, the U.S. Army’s Seventh Infantry Division was to invade the island of Kwajalein in the same atoll.

In many ways, Operation Flintlock would be the most important of the Pacific War to date; it would constitute the first offensive strike against the enemy to secure a base for operations. Heretofore, our strategy in the Pacific had been largely to keep the Japanese from expanding their gains, to keep them out of Australia, and to secure our own flank in the South Pacific in order that we might drive straight through the Central Pacific for the knockout blows that were eventually to bring Japan to her knees. The invasion of the Marshalls was to be the spearhead of this drive, and the Fourth Division shared the responsibility for its initial success.

Kwajalein Atoll was recognized as the pivotal point in the defense system of the Marshall Islands. The command of the whole area was exercised from here. It was also the distribution point on which reinforcements were gathered and sent out to other atolls. The atoll contained the world’s largest landlocked lagoon and a naval base with fueling and repair facilities. Roi Island also constituted the principal air field in the Marshalls. Altogether, the atoll consisted of 85 islands and extended 65 miles in length and was 18 miles across at the widest point. It was 2,439 miles west of Pearl Harbor.

During the long, 18-day voyage to the atoll, marines had plenty of time to study their objective. With Tarawa fresh in their minds, the prospect of hitting a small, heavily defended beach was not too cheerful. Operation maps showed numerous installations - - coast defense guns, heavy and medium antiaircraft guns, machine gains, blockhouses, a total of 52 pillboxes, numerous antitank trenches, and barbed wire. Added to this, the two islands of Roi-Namur were hardly more than over grown sand spits. Roi measured 1200 by 1250 yards at its widest points; Namur was 800 by 900 yards - neither island a square mile in size! An estimated 3,000 enemy troops were there to defend them. It was not a pleasant prospect!

Against this, however, was a preponderance of striking power. The Task Force which accompanied the Marine and Army divisions to the Marshall Islands was the largest assembled in the Pacific to that time. Our high command had decided that there would be no more Tarawas. The assemblage of carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers which preceded and convoyed the transports was a reassuring sight to the Marines who lined the rails. Our infantry, furthermore, would out-number the defenders two to one. Perhaps the task wouldn’t be too difficult after all.

The Fourth Division was part of the Northern Landing Force, under the command of Major General Harry Schmidt. Ground operations for the campaign as a whole, including Kwajalein Island, were under the Fifth Amphibious Corps, Major general Holland M. Smith commanding. The Joint Expeditionary Forces were commanded by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, USN, and the Northern Attack Force, of which the Fourth Division was the landing force, was under the command of Rear Admiral Richard L. Conolly, USN. This was the overwhelming force which would be thrown against the tiny but highly defended Japanese bastion.

The two days before D-day, ships of the naval task forces and aircraft of the Fast Carrier Force in support of the Fourth Division, systematically began to bomb and shell every square yard of Roi-Namur. The three battleships, The Tennessee, Maryland and Colorado--5 cruisers, and 19 destroyers combined in a non-stop barrage which laid 2,655 tons of steel on the islands.

Gun crews did their utmost to make certain that every Jap on the islands got at least one shell with his name on it. To add to the weight of our naval explosives, it was planned to land the Fourteenth Regiment, with its 75 mm pack howitzers and 105 mm howitzers on four small islands which flanked Roi-Namur. Two of these islands flanked the entrance to the lagoon. By seizing them we could secure passage that would allow us to assault Roi-Namur from inside the lagoon. From these flanking islands the artillery was to set up its guns, get the ranges, and give close fire support to the assault troops. This was Phase One of the operation, under the command of Brigadier General James L. Underhill, and took place on January 31, 1944.

The seizure of the small islands on either side of Roi-Namur fell to the Fourth Division's Scout Company and Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five. To the Scout Company and Lieutenant Colonel Clarence J. O'Donnell's First Battalion of the Twenty-fifth Marines, went the honor of being the first to land on ai enemy-defended island in the Marshalls. They went ashore at 0958, landing on the seaward side of Enneubing and Mellu Islands southwest of Roi-Namur. Operation maps had told of "submerged coral boulders." Actually, the islands were protected by an exceedingly dangerous coral reef. This, and a high sea, caused many of the LVTs to broach and swamp. Fortunately, resistance was slight. Ennuebing was declared secure at 1055 and the larger Mellu at 1209. Artillery came ashore within an hour.

Following this, the Second and Third Battalions of the Twenty-fifth, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Lewis C. Hudson, Jr. and Justice M. Chambers, respectively, landed on three other islands to the southeast Roi-Namur---Ennubirr, Ennumennet, and Ennugarret. These were secured by nightfall and artillery landed on the following morning. On Ennubirr, the Second Battalion raised the first American flag in the Marshalls on a coconut tree. This battalion also seized an important communication center containing great quantities of American-made radio equipment.

The stage was now set for the main attack on Roi-Namur---Phase Two of the operation. This was be made from the lagoon side by RCTs Twenty-three and Twenty-four, each landing two battalions abreast, on the islands' four beaches. The First and Second Battalions of the Twenty-third, commanded by Lieutenant Colonels Hewin 0. Hammond and Edward J. Dillon, were to strike on Beaches Red 2 and 3 on Roi Island, and the Second and Third Battalions of the Twenty-fourth under Lieutenant Colonel Francis H. Brink and Lieutenant Colonel Austin R. Brunelli, respectively, were assigned Beaches Green 1 and 2 on Namur. The day was February 1, 1944. For most of the men in the Division this was their first time under fire.

Early in the morning the amphibian tractors rumbled down the ramps of the LSTS, and the LCVPs were swung over the sides of the transports. The ships were still far out in the lagoon, and the smoking island was but a streak of sand and haze in the distance. H-hour had been set for 1000, but shortly after the boats began rendezvousing word came to the wave commanders that the landing had been delayed. Men in the boats waited nervously.

Then, shortly after 1100, the assault units were waved over the line of departure, 4000 yards from the shore. Naval gunfire began to hurl its final salvos against the beach; dive-bombers plummeted down to drop 1,000-pound blockbusters on installations not yet completely demolished; fighter planes came over for strafing runs. It was the heaviest and most perfectly coordinated concentration of pre-landing bombardment yet seen in the Pacific.

And it paid dividends-big dividends. The first waves hit the beach at 1200. On Roi Island, the large, three-strip airfield was dotted with crippled Jap planes and wrecked defenses. All but a few hundred of the enemy here had fled to nearby Namur, which afforded better protection against the shelling. When assault companies of the Twenty-third landed, the situation seemed almost too good to believe. Opposition had been completely disorganized, and the beach was virtually undefended. By 1217 the Regiment had reached the Phase Line 0-1, and Colonel Jones instructed his communication officer to radio the good news to the Commanding General. The enthusiastic officer did, in these words: "This is a pip. Give us the word and we 'II take the island." The order came back to halt and reorganize, but in the meantime, the tanks and two supporting companies had pushed ahead. They were recalled to keep them from being shelled by naval guns that were bombarding the farther half of the island.

On nearby Namur the going was not so easy. Here the Japs had set up a stronger defense in the form of fire trenches and pillboxes. Thick vegetation gave them excellent concealment and served as camouflage for many of their installations. And although the naval shelling had killed and wounded many hundreds of Japanese, there was still a sizable, although dazed and disorganized, force remaining to oppose the Marines of the Twenty-fourth Regiment.

The Second Battalion, on the right, received only a little scattered small-arms fire from the beach and pushed inland some 200 yards against light opposition. The Third Battalion, on the left, however, ran into trouble immediately from several undamaged pillboxes. Many men were hit as they stepped from the landing boats. Rather than reduce the pillboxes, the assault companies were ordered to by-pass them where possible and leave them for demolition teams. The companies reached the Phase Line 0-I by 1400, paused to reorganize, and waited for tanks and halftracks to come up.

Meanwhile the Second Battalion moved ahead rapidly. Suddenly a large enemy blockhouse, used as a storage place for aerial bombs and torpedo warheads, exploded without warning. An immense tower of smoke and rubble including many torpedo warheads shot into the sky, concussion felled men in every direction, and fragments of metal and cement caught dozens before they could jump into the safety of shell holes. An officer with the Battalion vividly described the scene that followed:

"An ink-black darkness spread over a large part of Namur such that the hand could not be seen in front of the face. Debris continued to fall for a considerable length of time which seemed unending to those in the area who were all unprotected from the huge chunks of concrete and steel thudding on the ground about them. Before the explosion, the large blockhouse was conspicuously silhouetted against the skyline. After the explosion, nothing remained but a huge water-filled crater. Men were killed and wounded in small boats a considerable distance from the beach by the flying debris. Two more violent explosions, but lesser in intensity than the first, occurred among the assault troops during the next half hour."

The Battalion suffered more than half of its total battle casualties in this swift moment, and its advance was held up temporarily.

By this time, the Japanese were recovering somewhat and beginning to offer fiercer resistance. The battle for Namur was not going to be easy. The Third Battalion, with tanks in support, pushed ahead at 1630. A platoon of men under Lieutenant John V. Power soon encountered a pillbox which was spray-ing death all along the Marine lines. They rushed it, tried to lob grenades through the gunport or to get a place-charge against it. But the fire was too hot. They decided to work around the pillbox and attack from the rear. Lieutenant Power led the way. As he approached the doorway a bullet caught him in the stomach, but he didn't stop. To the amazement of the Japs, he charged forward, emptying his carbine into the narrow slot of a door. No one knows how many of the enemy he killed, but from that moment the pillbox was doomed. Power fell, but one of his squads quickly finished off the last resistance. A Marine pulled the Lieutenant back into the safety of a bomb crater where he died a few minutes later. Lieutenant Power was post-humously awarded the Medal of Honor.
There were many other acts of heroism on Roi-Namur that day; not all of them were recorded, and even if they were, this book would not be large enough to tell of them. Typical was the action of Private First Class Richard Scheidt. A bullet hit Scheidt in the arm a few minutes after he was ashore on Namur. A corpsman bandaged the wound and Scheidt stayed with his company. At one point his platoon inadvertently pushed too far forward and was ordered to withdraw. Upon reaching the new position, Scheidt saw a Marine, Edward Mann, about a hundred yards ahead of the lines, wounded in the eyes and unable to see to make his way back. Jap bullets were spraying the field. Despite his own wound, Scheidt went forward alone. There was no way to lead the blinded comrade back, except to stand up; he unfastened the sling of his rifle, gave Mann one end of it, and holding the rifle, started back to his lines. The Marines stopped firing to avoid hitting them and although the Japs blazed away the two men made it. Scheidt was later awarded the Silver Star.

Another outstanding act of bravery that afternoon is credited to Corporal Howard E. Smith, an automatic rifleman in the Twenty-fourth Regiment. Smith was with an assault platoon covering the advance of a tank unit. The lead tank, commanded by Captain James L. Denig, son of Brigadier General Robert L. Denig, poked its nose out of a jungle thicket onto a road. Without warning, five Japs swarmed over it, one of them throwing a grenade into the turret opening. Smith, seeing the Japs jump onto the tank, emptied two magazines from his automatic rifle at them. Four of them rolled off dead and the fifth was killed by another Marine. But the grenade had set off the tank’s fuel and the four men inside were apparently doomed as the tank became a steel bound hell of blazing fuel and ammunition. Smith handed his rifle to a man near him and ran toward the tank, disregarding the fire of snipers and a machine gun across the road. He opened the hatch, pulled Captain Denig free and dragged him off the road to some undergrowth. Then he went back for Corporal Bill Taylor, the assistant tank driver, whom he brought to the concealment of the thicket, and returned for Corporal Ben Smith, the gunner. The fourth man was trapped and couldn't get to the hatch. Captain Denig died, but the other two men owed their lives to Smith's courageous action which won him the Navy Cross.

One of the most fabulous characters on Namur that day was Sergeant Frank A. Tucker who used "Kentucky windage" exclusively. He probably accounted for more Japs personally than any man who fought in the battle. According to Marine Combat Correspondent Gil Bailey, Tucker and eleven other men from a machine-gun unit flushed about 75 Japs out of a blockhouse. The Japs ran into a trench 50 yards to the rear of the position. It was getting dark, and since the Japs greatly outnumbered them, the Marines decided not to make a direct attack. Tucker crawled on his stomach up to the shelter of a coconut palm, from which position he could look straight down the trench. In the bright moonlight he called his shots and in a few hours accounted for 38 Japs. Tucker himself got a bullet hole through the top of his helmet, another through his canteen, and a third through his field glasses. He, too, was awarded the Navy Cross.

The Twenty-fourth's Second Battalion, which bad been held up by the three violent explosions in its midst, got under way again at 1700. The going was slow through stiffening resistance in the rubble of destroyed buildings. By 1930, when the order came to dig in for the night, the battalion had achieved a maximum advance of 300 yards. The Third Battalion's most advanced elements were within a few hun-dred yards of the island's northern shore. Its right flank, however, angled sharply back to tie in with the Second Battalion. The two battalions set up perimeter defense for the night.
Across the causeway on Roi Island the Twenty-third Regiment raced ahead after resuming the attack at 1600. The enemy, thoroughly disorganized from our shelling, put up no single, well planned defense. Instead, there were a hundred separate fights by individuals and small groups without unified command. Under such conditions the Japanese soldier is a brave and stubborn fighter. On Roi, the enemy took to the partially covered drainage ditches which surrounded the airstrips, popping up to fire into the rear of our troops. This caused some confusion and not a few casualties, but the position of the enemy was hopeless. Demolitions and flame throwers routed them out, and riflemen picked off those who did not choose to blow themselves up with their own grenades. By 1800, six hours after the landing and with less than three hours of actual offensive assault, Roi was declared secured.

When troops reached the northern shore of the island they met one of the ghastliest sights they were to see in many days of combat, a trenchful of enemy soldiers who had committed hara-kiri by placing the muzzle of their rifles under their chins and pulling the triggers with their toes. Dozens lay sprawled in this grotesque posture of suicide, a means to an end, typifying the spirit of hopelessness which surrounded the Jap soldiers.

There was little opportunity for individual heroism on Roi, but one man, Private First Class Richard Anderson, found himself in a position to save several comrades from death or injury. He was about to throw an armed grenade when it slipped from his hands. With insufficient time to retrieve the weapon and throw it, Anderson hurled his body upon the grenade, absorbing the full charge of the blast. He was killed, but his comrades were unhurt, and for this self sacrifice Anderson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

By late afternoon men could pause for breath and look around them for the first time. The ruins through which they had fought were indescribably fascinating. There was hardly a recognizable trace of what had been the Japanese headquarters. On Roi, the gaunt skeletons of a hangar and an operations building were all that remained standing. On Namur only three buildings, all severely battered, had survived our shelling. These were a large administrative building, a concrete radio station, and an ammunition storage building.

Thousands of shells had exploded on the island, leaving the ground pitted with craters. Shattered bread-fruit and coconut palms stood at fantastic angles. Japanese dead were sprawled over the island by the hundreds in shellholes, near ammunition dumps, in the ruins of buildings; most of them were horribly mutilated by the bombardment.
Sheets of corrugated iron were strewn everywhere, twisted, ripped, full of holes. Concrete pilings on which barracks had rested stuck out of the ground in rows like tombstones.

On Roi, many Japanese planes, caught when our shelling began, lay like giant birds pinned helplessly to the ground, their wings broken.

Yet, in the midst of this carnage, a few traces of normal life remained. A dovecote on top of the con-crete radio station was untouched, and birds nested there oblivious to the noise of battle. A pig, several chickens, and a very large goose had somehow escaped death and wandered about unconcernedly.

But the battle was not over. The last few hundred Japs on Namur, pocketed against the northern shore, determined to die in traditional Japanese style. Under cover of rain and darkness made eerie by bursting star shells, they staged a Banzai attack against the Twenty-fourth Regiment's Third Battalion. Companies I and L received the brunt of the attack which lasted, on and off, for several hours. At one point it was necessary to pull back our lines to a more secure position. This led to one of the most remarkable series of incidents of the battle, an example of the spirit of comradeship between Marines and Navy corpsmen.

Pharmacist's Mate Second Class James V. Kirby, a member of the Third Battalion's aid station on the beach, was sent up to the front during the late afternoon to assist company corpsmen. Arriving there, he worked with the wounded for some time and then collected a group of them a short distance behind the lines to await stretcher bearers. But darkness overtook them. Orders had been given to fire on anyone moving about at night, and the litter teams had to stay on the beach. Kirby settled down with his charges to sweat out the night.

He didn't know what was coming. When the Jap counterattack came, and the Third Battalion had to pull back, Kirby found himself-and the wounded-between the enemy and his own troops. He dared not go back for help without endangering the lives of the wounded. He got them into a large bomb crater, administered first aid, cheered them up, and gave them cigarettes which they smoked under the blackout of a poncho.

When the Marines charged forward to regain their old positions, Kirby found himself in the crossfire of battle. He could hear the cries and groans of newly wounded, and crawling out of his hole to find them, led them to the safety of the crater, where he dressed their wounds before returning to new cries in the darkness.

One of the cries that split the night was that of Private First Class Richard K. Sorenson. He and six comrades had been among those who went forward to stop the Jap attack. They had jumped into a shellhole and had continued firing, but in the darkness a Jap crawled close enough to pop a hand grenade into their hole. Hearing it sputter, they scrambled frantically to throw it out. Sorenson saw the grenade come to a stop at his feet and knew that it was too late to get rid of it. He hurled himself upon the deadly weapon in order to absorb the full impact of the explosion. The grenade went off and Sorenson caught the full charge of it. No one else was hurt.

Kirby reached Sorenson in time to tie a severed artery and stop the bleeding which would surely have cost him his life. He took Sorenson to the hole where the other wounded lay and treated him throughout the night. When daybreak came, and the Jap Banzai had been completely broken, a crew of corpsmen advanced to search for Kirby. They found him-and a total of 15 wounded. He had won a twelve-hour tilt with death. For his meritorious service he was later awarded the Bronze Star. And Sorenson-whose action had saved his six companions-lived to receive the Medal of Honor.

There were other heroes that night, many of whom will have to remain nameless. One young private, whose lieutenant and noncom were wounded as they ran from their boat, took charge of the group and led it through a day and night of fighting. He was wounded three times. Twice a corpsman dressed the injury; the third time he was evacuated. Captain Frank E. Garetson was wounded twice while lead-ing his company into battle. Both times he refused evacuation. A young sergeant, William G. Byfield, alone covered the withdrawal of his unit after it had been surrounded by Japanese and then remained be-hind with the wounded. "The first thing we knew we had been cut off and surrounded," Byfield recalled. "The leader of the team was killed. As senior NCO, I took charge. The uninjured slipped away in little groups and I stayed with the wounded, doing just enough firing to make the Japs think all of us were there." A relief party got to Byfield and the wounded next morning.

Although the island was small, mortars were brought ashore. Many times they were emplaced so near to the front lines that their crews fought as infantrymen as well as mortarmen. One mortarman especially singled out for heroic action was Private First Class Leslie M. Chambers, Jr. On one occasion he picked up two live grenades which had been thrown into his gun position and tossed them back at the enemy. When the counterattack came, he stayed at his gun, firing it at perilously close range, until all those around him had withdrawn to new defensive positions. He was awarded the Silver Star.

Tragedy struck in many places that night, but no death was more tragic than that of Private First Class Jack Brown, a member of the Twenty-fourth Regiment's Third Battalion. Nineteen-year-old Jack had stowed away on the transport so he could be with his father, Corporal Earl Brown, 44. Father and son had been in the same company, but when it was time for the Division to ship out Jack was hospitalized with a minor illness and transferred to another outfit. "Pop" boarded the ship alone. Just before the Division sailed, Jack was found stowed away, and was taken off and placed under arrest.

Corporal Brown's wife, Madie, telephoned the Commandant's office in Washington and told the story of her husband's and son's efforts to be together. The charges against Jack were dropped, and he joined his old company. Father and son were together all during the trip to the Marshalls.

Jack hit the beach first and was killed during the night when the Japs counterattacked. Pop went on fighting---alone.

Another who was killed that night was Private First Class Stephen Hopkins, son of the late Harry Hopkins, Special Assistant to President Roosevelt. Three times he went back through heavy enemy fire to get ammunition. He was on the front with his platoon when killed by a Jap rifleman.

Only a few isolated bands of desperate Japs were left to oppose the last phase of the battle for Namur. When morning came, tanks and halftracks moved up to support the final push, blasting pillboxes, block-houses, and other fortifications. Corporal Michael Giba told how his tank ran up to the edge of a bomb crater, stopped, and was soon swarming with Japs.

"I looked out the periscope," Giba said. "A Jap lay down on the turret and looked me right in the eye. He seemed kind of puzzled about just what to do. Then he rose to a squatting position, removed a grenade from his pocket, held it against the periscope, pulled the pin, and lay down on top of it. The periscope was broken but none of us was hurt. The Jap was killed. Then another tank opened up with its machine gun and cleared the turret of the remaining Japs."

Thus the battle drew to an end. The Third Battalion had jumped off at 0900; the Second and First moved up at 1000. The island was declared secured at 1215 just 24 hours and 15 minutes after the first waves had landed.

But there was to be one last minute tragedy before the flag went up officially on Namur. Lieutenant Colonel Aquilla J. Dyess, commander of the First Battalion, Twenty-fourth Marines, was leading his men against the last pocket of Japs when he was caught in a burst of enemy machine-gun fire. He was killed instantly, the highest ranking officer to lose his life in the operation. Lieutenant Colonel Dyess was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the fourth for the Division during the engagement and probably an all time record for 24 hours of fighting.

Phase Two of the operation was now over, and Phase Three-the first step in mopping up all the islets in the northern two thirds of the atoll began. The battle for Kwajalein Island, which lasted four days, was still in progress when the Twenty-fifth Regiment began its sweep down the atoll. The Second Battalion followed the arm which extended southeast from Roi-Namur, while the First moved to the southwest. During the next seven days they reconnoitered the string of islets, finding an occasional stray band of Japs, a few friendly natives, or nothing at all. At a point where the reef curves to run almost due west, the Third Battalion relieved the First and continued to drive toward Ebadon, extreme westernmost isle of the atoll, rounded this and followed the reef in a general southeasterly direction to complete the circuit. All together, the Twenty-fifth Regiment secured 53 islands, with names like Boggerlapp, Marsugalt, Gegibu, Oniotto, and Eru. Most of them were harder to pronounce than to capture.

It was on this junket that the men of the Twenty-fifth got to know the Marshall Island natives, for it was these Marines who freed them from Japanese domination. On many islets, bivouacking overnight, the natives and Marines got together and sang hymns; the Marshall Islanders had been Christianized many years before, and missionaries had taught them such songs as "Onward, Christian Soldiers." K rations and cigarettes also made a big hit with them. And more than one Marine sentry, walking post in front of a native camp, took up the islander's dress and wore only a loin cloth, usually a towel from a Los Angeles hotel.

Meanwhile, the Fifteenth Defense Battalion came ashore to garrison Roi-Namur. Natives who had lived on the islands were helped back to their homes and paid in U. S. currency to help clear the wreckage and bury the Japanese dead. On Roi, tractors, bulldozers, trucks, and jeeps ground endlessly across the shambles of the airfield, bringing in supplies, ammunition, material for installations, and clearing away the debris of Jap planes. Men of the Twenty-third called Roi a "three quarter mile square junk pile." In the 50 or more craters left by our bombs, antiaircraft guns were set up. Over the blasted Jap operations building flew a huge American flag.

On both Roi and Namur, much of the reconstruction of the islands was done by Seabees. For the first time in the Pacific, they had been trained and equipped as part of a regular Marine Corps landing force. With the Twentieth (Engineer) Regiment, they unloaded ammunition, brought in supplies, laid a portable plank road on the beach, recovered unexploded shells, cleared the airfield, and set up a water-distillation plant.

On February 12, the Japs hit the jackpot. A small group of planes, flying high, dropped a few incendi-ary bombs on Roi Island. One of them struck our ammunition dump and a moment later the whole island was an exploding inferno. To elements of the Twentieth Engineers and Seabees, who were still on Roi, the holocaust was more terrible than anything they had gone through in capturing the island. Combat Corre-spondent Bernard Redmond, attached to the Engineers, described "solid sheets of flame" that resulted from the explosions of our own ammunition and TNT. The raid lasted only five minutes, but the bombardment from the ammunition dump continued for four hours.

"Tracer ammunition lit up the sky as far as we could see," Redmond wrote, "and for a full half hour red-hot fragments rained from the sky like so many hailstones, burning and piercing the flesh when they hit.... A jeep exploded in our faces a few yards away. Yet half an hour after the first bomb hit, several hospitals and first aid stations were functioning with all the efficiency of urban medical centers."

Casualties were numerous, and it was later estimated that damage to our supplies and equipment amounted to one million dollars. Many of the troops had previously embarked on the transports that were to take them back to the Fourth's base on Maui. Some of the ships were still in the lagoon, and the men came topside to watch the grim spectacle.

On February 13, the Division, less the Twenty-fifth Regiment and the Division Scout Company, left Kwajalein for Maui. The Twenty-fifth remained in the atoll until March 1, as garrison troops. The Scout Company moved on to Eniwetok Atoll, also in the Marshalls, to join the Twenty-second Marines (an inde-pendent regiment) and the U. S. Army's 106th Infantry. The assault against Eniwetok began on February 17, with the Scout Company landing from rubber boats on the unoccupied island of Bogon, just west of Engebi Island, and island-hopping down the western side of the atoll. The Fifth Amphibious Corps Reconnaissance Company moved down the eastern side. With the completion of this mission, both units reverted to control of the Twenty-second Marines and acted as line troops in the invasion of Parry Island.

Fourteen islands were secured by the Scout Company, under Captain Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr., in 48 hours. One of the Division's most notable Marines, Gunnery Sergeant Victor "Transport" Maghakian was a member of the Scout Company.

Transport had been with Carlson's Raiders before joining the Fourth and later, when he returned to the States after the Marianas operation, he had earned twelve decorations, including the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart with cluster.

It was during the long voyage back to Maui that the apocryphal stories began to find their way into cir-culation. There was one, for instance, about the wounded Marine who had captured a new Jap rifle. When stretcher bearers refused to carry both him and the weapon, the Marine got off the litter, placed the rifle on it, and walked. The corpsmen carried it back.

On one of the smaller islets a mopping-up party from the Twenty-fifth was clearing a few dugouts. As the demolition charge was set and the fuze lighted, a Jap came running out with his hands held high.

"Don't shoot," he said. "I have a brother in Brooklyn." He had, too!

Another tall tale which became a legend of the battle was reported by Combat Correspondent Ed Ruder, concerning Private Harold "Dusty" Crowder, a member of the Twenty-fourth Regiment. Dusty stuck his neck out of a shellhole to see if the enemy were in sight. All was quiet-until a lonely shot rang out from a Jap sniper's rifle. The bullet went through the front of Dusty's helmet, parted his hair at dead center, glanced off the back of his helmet, ricocheted down his neck, and neatly clipped off his dog tags. To prove it all, Dusty exhibited a set of new dog tags as shiny as a silver dollar. There was a hole through his helmet, too.

"There's more to the story, though," confessed Dusty. "But then if I told that I'd be accused of building the whole thing up. It's that part where the bullet bounces back and kills the sniper!"

With the capture of Kwajalein Atoll, the United States now had strategic control of all the Marshall Islands. Japanese garrisons on Mille, Wotje, Maloelap, and Jaluit were by-passed and isolated. The Japanese line of communication south from Wake Island had been severed. We had acquired another stepping stone on our march across the Pacific. The 60-mile-long lagoon would furnish an excellent staging base for future operations. The airfields brought our air power within range of Truk and other islands in the Carolines. For a small price we had won a great victory.

The Division reached Maui during the period from February 21 to 25, but there were some who would not come back. One hundred ninety Marines had been killed and 547 wounded during the brief engagement. Overnight the "green" Fourth had become veterans; the Japanese could testify to that. We had captured 264 prisoners, while another 3,472 enemy troops lay buried on tiny Roi-Namur.

Operation Flintlock was now history!

Casualties of the Division, Reinforced - ROI-NAMUR

Off. Inl. Tot.
Killed in Action 12 160 172
Died of Wounds 1 17 18
Wounded 19 528 547
Totals 32 705 737
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Maui...Home Base

IT RAINED! HOW IT RAINED! There are many legends concerning the way in which the Fourth Marine Division got Camp Maui as a rest camp. Some say it was originally intended for the Army but they would have none of it, which made it just the thing for Marines. Others say it was a deliberate conspiracy on the part of the High Command who wanted to simulate combat conditions. Whatever the truth, everyone agreed that originally, the term "rest camp" was a misnomer. This much there was agreement about: Camp Maui sprawled 1,500 feet above sea level on the side of the world's largest extinct volcano, Haleakala, whose broad rim soared nearly 10,000 feet into the sky. To the old Hawaiian natives, Haleakala personified the majestic power of a higher being and it was into its crater that the legendary Madame Pele, as an act of appeasement, threw roast pig, silk handkerchiefs, and jewelry.

But to the Marines, Haleakala was simply the cause of a meteorological freak. Rain clouds, passing over its crest, descended to warmer levels and dumped their moisture. Hospitable islanders pointed out that we had arrived during the rainy season. One story is that a Marine's shoes came off in a ditch one night and he did not miss them for three days. He had been unlacing the mud at night and putting it back on again in the mornings.

The weather was always a good subject of conversation in Camp Maui because it was always different.

The men of the Fourth had their first glimpse of Maui from the transports on the way to the Marshalls as the ships lay off Lahaina Roads for a day to provision. The great fields of sugar cane, the palm trees, mountains, and beaches had a story-book beauty.

When, in late February 1944, the Fourth returned to make the island its home, the beauty was still there; and at close range it was prettier than ever. The long convoy of trucks that wound from the Kahului docks through Paia and Makawao passed under blossoming flame and shower trees, past hibiscus and wild roses, past green clapboard houses from which curious islanders peered. Three times in 15 months the Fourth Division was to make this journey from the Kahului docks to camp, and each time Maui seemed more beautiful.

Slowly, in spite of the mud and the wind and the rain and the first pangs of homesickness for the States, slowly, civilization began to grow out of barren fields. Buildings went up for offices, tents for living quarters; messhalls were constructed and roads carved through the mire. Post Exchanges opened up with supplies of "pogey bait," tobacco, and enough beer for two bottles per man a night. Movie screens and stages were built in each regimental area. Ball diamonds were laid out and boxing rings constructed. Company libraries were opened, and Marines had their choice of 73 magazines. Chaplains, somehow, procured enough lumber for chapels; electric lights were installed in all tents; public-address systems were wired into the company areas and used for piping announcements and the latest music to Marines. Within a few months Camp Maui had become a relatively decent place to live.

Training went on, too. New men joined the Division to replace casualties suffered at Namur. The Army's jungle Training Center was opened to Marines, and several units went through the paces of this glorified obstacle course. Command Post exercises, overnight problems, and hikes became weekly routine.

For entertainment the units had nightly movies in the rain, naturally, traveling USO shows, and local hula troupes. The hula girls took their art seriously and tried to bring the Marines some of the old Hawaiian culture. Later, the Fourth organized its own show, "The Fubar Follies" with Sergeant Lee Cohen as Master of Ceremonies and such talented people as Ed Grower, Eddie Martin, Bill Bloxom, Tom Zackem, Jr., and Jack Flynn as entertainers. This nucleus expanded and with the addition of some new acts and the Twenty-fourth's dance band became the "Just 4 Fun Show" and toured the Pacific in Navy transport planes. They played the "foxhole circuit," giving shows at Roi, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, and Johnston islands, and became probably the best known service troupe in the Pacific.

On April 1, 1944, General Harry Schmidt made the first of several mass presentations of the Purple Heart during the Division's stay on Maui. "This medal is not offered in compensation for the wounds you have suffered," he said. "It is a symbol. It betokens a nation's respect for the sacrifices you have made." Thousands of Marines were to receive the Purple Heart at one time or another on Maui.

On April 26, 1944, Admiral Nimitz journeyed to Camp Maui to present awards to men who had earned them at Roi-Namur. "The world knows of the gallant performance and achievement of the men who fought at Roi and Namur Islands.... There, the Fourth Division wrote another brilliant chapter in the chronicles of the Marine Corps."

Twice again, on Maui, words like these were to be spoken to men of the Fourth, after Saipan-Tinian, and after Iwo Jima. And each time there were fewer of the original Fourth to hear them. On July 4, 1945, a parade was held on the Camp Maui airstrip, at which time 714 men of the Division were decorated. Following this, on August 16, another ceremony was held on the airstrip. At this time the Presidential Unit Citation and the Asiatic-Pacific Theater streamers were attached to the Division and Regimental colors.

On April 30, 1944, the Division opened its own airstrip for "flying jeeps." VMO-4 (Observation Squadron 4) was attached to the Division as an "aerial OP." Henceforth it would accompany the Fourth on operations to fly tactical observation and artillery spotting missions. Little larger than a Piper Cub, the two seater Stinsons were affectionately named "F4U-Pocket Edition," "The Last Straw," and "SB Doodle-bug." Lieutenant Colonel William R. Wendt was Division Air Officer.

As the months rolled by, Maui more and more became "home" to the men of the Fourth. USOs in Haiku, Makawao, Kahului, and Wailuku furnished hot showers, games, swimming, tennis, dances, and refreshments. It was here that Marines met the girls of Maui; many a friendship was formed and many a romance blossomed. Back in camp, officer and NCO clubs were built and the beer lines at Post Exchanges became longer and longer.

There were unofficial USOs too, notably the bars at the Maui Grand and Wailuku Hotels. Putting on the Marine equivalent of "tux 'n' tails," some of the battalions held dances at the hotels, inviting local girls to be their guests. Officers took over the Maui Country Club on several occasions for dances.

The terrain and beaches of Maui provided excellent and rugged training ground. All the Division's amphibious maneuvers for the Marianas and Iwo Jima operations were held off Maalaea Bay. Haleakala became a super obstacle course and 13-mile hikes through its crater, a challenge to those who thought they had tough leg muscles. A total of 47 training areas, many of them belonging to the Army, were available to the Division. Six areas, consisting of gulches and rough terrain, near the camp, were used for non-tactical maneuvering. On the outskirts of camp, a demolitions area, a live-grenade course, a pistol range, and 1000-inch machine-gun range were set up. Five miles east of camp, in a gulch opening into the sea, was the Division's bazooka area, and along the coast, east of camp for about ten miles, were combat firing ranges which permitted the maneuvering and firing of tanks and halftracks in coordination with the infantry. The Division's 100-target rifle range at Opana Point was also located in this area. Another area in the vicinity was used to train motor transport drivers in the movement of troops and supplies under both day and night conditions of combat.

Army facilities on Maui available to the Division, according to Fourth Division records, "consisted of a jungle training center, a village fighting course, a cave fighting course, and an infiltration course. The fortified jungle position consisted of 22 pillboxes and emplacements well concealed in bamboo groves, under the roots of banyan trees, and in thick undergrowth."

In addition to all this, there was a mortar and artillery impact area, a seacoast artillery range and an antiaircraft firing area. The Maalaea Bay area furnished an antitank moving-target range, a close-combat range, and a 20-point rifle range. The beach at Maalaea Bay was fortified with pillboxes and emplacements modeled after the Tarawa Beach. Inland were two artillery positions and maneuver areas. In the center of the island, near the Puunene Air Station, were, the Division's tank maneuver areas.

Morale was always high in the Fourth Division. To a great extent, this might be attributed to the well rounded sports program which the Division fostered, a program which embraced individual sports as well as competitive sports and which allowed not only inter-battalion and inter-regimental competition but allowed competition with Army and Navy units from Maui and neighboring islands as well. Baseball diamonds, handball courts, volleyball courts, and boxing rings dotted the camp; gymnasiums and tennis courts were available in neighboring towns; two golf courses were open to personnel of the Division; the Puunene Naval Air Station offered gymnasium and swimming pool privileges, and there was plenty of ocean, too, to swim in. At Haiku there was a good football field for practice games, in addition to one at Kahului, and all units had a plentiful supply of recreational gear. As a result, the Fourth was a division that was sportsminded to a high degree; and this paid off a hundredfold in combat and in rehabilitation.

The Division's interest in sports is perhaps best illustrated by the Division's football team, organized when the Fourth returned to Maui from the Marianas in August 1944. Coached by Lieutenant Colonel Leroy "Pat" Hanley, the Division Athletic and Morale Officer and former coach at Boston University, the team played seven games and was never defeated. In only one game (against the Kaneohe Klippers) did an opposing team score, and the Maui Marines finished the season as champions of the Central Pacific with a record of 164 points against only six for their opponents. Even more remarkable is that not once during the entire season did this team ever have to call time out for an injury.

In sumnming up the accomplishments of the Division's team, the Puunene Naval Air Station's Island Breeze said:

Presenting a great football team ... one of the greatest football teams we have ever seen--professional, collegiate, or service. This team was not only an outfit with skillful players and a splendid coach, it was above all an organization with an indomitable spirit.... We are very certain of the fact that these fighting men of the Fourth Division had the greatest stamina and above all the finest team spirit of any organization we have ever seen.

Families on the island threw open their doors to the Marines and will be gratefully remembered by hundreds of men in the Fourth for their gracious hospitality. Citizens of Maui proved that "Aloha" was more than a word. The Fourth soon became "Maui's own" and the traditional island slogan "Maui No Ka Oi," became "Maui Marines No Ka Oi." (A free translation of this would be "Maui Marines are the best.") Who will ever forget the reception that Maui gave the Fourth when it returned from Iwo? It is not an exaggeration to say that no division anywhere received a more heartwarming welcome when it came back from battle. This welcome was also expressed in the words of a small pamphlet given to each returning Marine:

ALOHA
Hi, you Marines! Welcome home! It's no "snow job" when we tell you that the servicemen and women and the civilians of Maui are throwing this big shindig for you because we think you're just about the greatest guys that ever landed on this Island. When the news came over the radio that the Marines had hit Iwo Jima, everybody asked the same question, "Are the Maui Marines there?" Then we heard the news flash that you and a lot of other Marines were in there pitching. After that, nothing else that happened seemed to matter very much. We don't need to tell you that everyone from Hana to Lahaina is mighty proud of you. And when we read that you had named that first street "Maui Boulevard", we were practically bursting at the seams.

So welcome to Maui--the old friends and the new! Welcome to Iao Valley and Haleakala---to the rainbows and the rain (that everlasting rain at Camp Maui)-the steaks and the banana splits--the pineapples and the poi--the carnation leis and the steel guitars. But, most important of all, welcome back to all the folks on Maui who think it might be a pretty good idea to add a new word to the famous slogan,
MAUI NO KA OI and let the world know it is now, MAUI MARINES NO KA OI!
THE PEOPLE OF MAUI.

Following its return from Iwo, the Division put the finishing touches on Camp Maui. Improvements soon made living conditions the best yet. Roads were paved; Red Cross recreation huts were built, where coffee and doughnuts were served in the evening by the first women ever to be attached to the Division overseas. Frame buildings took the place of tents for chapels and a number of auditoriums went up, finally making it possible to see movies without getting wet. A USO club was built near the Twenty-third Marines Headquarters. New athletic fields were laid out; one of them, in the Twenty-third area, dedicated to the Division's star football player, Howard "Smiley" Johnson, who had been killed on Iwo. A boxing arena went up and the Division airstrip was converted into a parade ground. For the old timers, who had slogged around in the mud when the Division first came to Maui, it didn't seem quite right. They weren't kidding anybody, though. Everyone enjoyed it, for Maui had become just about the next best place to call home.
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Saipan...The Beginning of the End

May 29, 1944, slightly more than three months after returning from the Marshall Islands, the Fourth Division sailed for Saipan, capital and stronghold of the Marianas Islands. The importance of the operation was keenly appreciated by all hands. Saipan lay 3,715 miles from Pearl Harbor and was only 1,485 miles from Tokyo, within B-29 range of all points in the Japanese home islands. American possession of Saipan would also cut the enemy's supply and communication lines from Japan to her armed forces in the Southwest Pacific.

The over all plan of attack for the Marianas operation called for Saipan to be invaded first, with the Fourth and Second Marine Divisions making the initial assault and the U. S. Army's Twenty-seventh Division landing in reserve. These three divisions constituted the striking force of the Fifth Amphibious Corps (designated Northern Troops and Landing Force for the operation), under the command of Major General Holland M. Smith, who also commanded the next higher echelon-Expeditionary Troops. A few days after the invasion of Saipan, Guam was to be invaded by the Third Amphibious Corps which was com-posed of the Third Marine Division, the First Provisional Marine Brigade and the U. S. Army's Seventy seventh Division. Tinian was last and would be taken by the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions when they had completed the capture of Saipan. A grand total of 165,672 troops (attack forces plus garrison forces) was assembled for the combined operation, the largest body of American troops to be engaged in the Pacific up to that time and the greatest number of troops ever to fight under Marine command. Of the total, the Fourth Division, with reinforcing units, accounted for 21,618 troops.

Not only would there be more men engaged in the Marianas operation, but the United States Fifth Fleet, which furnished the naval forces to transport, land, and support the assault troops, constituted the largest assemblage of warships ever known in the Pacific. No less than 800 ships, from giant battleships and carriers to minesweepers, were under control of this fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN. In addition, Army and Marine air forces, flying from bases in the Marshalls and the South Pacific, conducted softening, up raids against the Marianas and neutralization raids against the Caroline Islands. To the west, submarines of Task Force 17 formed a screen for defense and observation, and a portion of the Fifth Fleet, under Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, USN, made air strikes against the Bonin and Volcano Islands to the northwest to neutralize Japanese airfields.

Thus the stage was set for the blow at Japan's inner empire. Saipan was the headquarters for the Japanese Central Pacific Fleet, its Thirty-first Army and Northern Marianas Defense Force. The town of Garapan was the administrative capital of the whole Marianas. An estimated 22,702 Army troops and about 7,000 "Imperial Marines" were stationed on the island as a defense force. Shipboard briefings, with the aid of relief maps, revealed that Saipan was 13 miles long by five and a half miles wide, that its terrain was rugged, with sharp ridges, fissure like valleys, and many caves. The highest elevation was Mount Tapotchau, 1,554 feet high, in the center of the island. Sugar cane constituted the island's main crop; 20,000 civilians, three fourths of them Japanese and the remainder Chamorro or Korean laborers, farmed the land and worked in the sugar mills. From a military standpoint, Aslito Airfield and the Tanapag Naval Base were Saipan"s most important objectives.

To this general knowledge, briefing officers added information concerning various perils to the health of Marines. A battalion of the Fourteenth Regiment, according to Combat Correspondent John Campbell, heard its medical officer aboard ship describe these hazards.

"In the surf", he said, "beware of sharks, barracuda, sea snakes, anemones, razor sharp coral, polluted waters, poison fish, and giant clams that shut on a man like a bear trap. Ashore, there is leprosy, typhus, filariasis, yaws, typhoid, dengue fever, dysentery, saber grass, insects, snakes, and giant lizards. Eat nothing growing on the island, don't drink its waters, and don't approach the inhabitants."

At the conclusion of the lecture, the officer asked if there were any questions. A PFC raised his hand. Sir," he asked, "why don't we let the Japs keep the island?"

There were times, during the first few days of the invasion, when this question must have run through the minds of nearly all Marines. For Saipan proved to be the most bitterly defended of the three islands, con-tained the greatest number of enemy troops, and boasted the most highly developed system of defensive positions.

Saipan, seen from the decks of transports, appeared deceptively unprotected. Even late photographic coverage of the beaches failed to uncover any formidable defenses; the pillboxes, blockhouses, and trenches which had confronted troops on Roi-Namur, seemed mystifyingly absent. The towns of Garapan and Charan-Kanoa lay in smoking ruins, and the big sugar mill north of Charan-Kanoa loomed like a gaunt blackened skeleton against the pink summer sky. For four days warships had raked the entire beachhead and shelled Aslito Airfield. Carrier planes had blasted fuel and ammunition dumps, from which thick black smoke rose in towering columns.

D-day was June 15, 1944. The plan of attack called for the Second and Fourth Divisions to land abreast on a 4000-yard stretch of beach, with the northern edge of Charan-Kanoa as the dividing line between the two divisions. The Fourth, still under the command of Major General Harry Schmidt, but with Brigadier General Samuel C. Cumming now Assistant Division Commander, would seize the town and the beaches to the south of it; the Second would land to the north. The Third and Second Battalions of Colonel Louis R. Jones's Twenty-third Regiment and the Second and First Battalions of Colonel Merton J. Batchelder's Twenty-fifth Regiment would constitute the assault forces, the Twenty-third landing on Beaches Blue I and 2 and the Twenty-fifth on Yellow 1 and 2. Meanwhile, the Twenty-fourth Regiment, under Colonel Franklin A. Hart, would stage a diversionary demonstration north of Garapan and then revert to Division reserve.

H-hour, originally set for 0800, was delayed until 0840. The landing beaches of the two divisions lay on the western shore of the island, extending from Agingan Point, the southwest tip, northward to a short distance below Garapan. A protective reef, some distance offshore, necessitated the use of amphibian tractors exclusively for the assault troops. The U. S. Army 534th and 773d Amphibian Tractor Battalions, in addition to the Marine amphtracs (350 vehicles altogether) put 4,000 Fourth Division Marines ashore in the first twenty minutes. Armored amphtracs of the U.S.Army 708th Armored Amphtrac Battalion, mounting 75mm howitzers, spearheaded the landing and blasted a path to the initial objective-- a ridgeline running parallel to the shore about a mile inland. The Marines achieved tactical surprise; there was no serious interference with this amphibious blitzkrieg.

There was opposition, of course, but not so much from the beaches, which were virtually undefended. It was artillery, mortars, and antiboat guns that caused trouble for incoming waves. Shells spouted in the surf and many tractors never made it; their crews were trapped or thrown clear and picked up by other boats, if they were lucky. The enemy's guns were ranged in on the beaches too. The harmless looking island had proved deceptive.

However, most of the assault troops were ashore and dispersed before the Japs could concentrate their fire. The plan to drive inland to Mount Fina Susu and its adjoining ridge succeeded only in part. The enemy, conducting an artillery defense, had withdrawn his infantry behind the ridge, and when our tanks and amphtracs drove over the marshy fields, heavy mortar and antitank fire met them. Through this fire, leading elements reached the slopes of the ridge. A mortar platoon of the Third Battalion, Twenty-third Marines, dug in near Mount Fina Susu, and with good observation of the enemy lines, poured a concentrated fire on artillery and mortar positions. When the infantry was ordered to withdraw late on the afternoon of D-day, the mortarmen stayed behind to cover the operation. When it came their turn to leave, the tubes were too hot to handle, and most of the amphtracs had been knocked out. The mortarmen left their guns behind. (When the Third Battalion fought its way back to Mount Fina Susu sometime later, the platoon found its guns still in position. Hardly changing the range, they resumed firing in support of the new advance! )

All down the line from Charan-Kanoa and Lake Susupe to Agingan Point, Japanese artillery and mor-tar fire increased in intensity. The town of Charan-Kanoa had been passed through by the Third Battalion, Twenty-third Marines under Lieutenant Colonel John J. Cosgrove, Jr., and was occupied by the First Bat-talion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Haas, who was later killed on Iwo Jima. Shells crashed into it with terrifying accuracy; casualties began to mount. The pier at Charan-Kanoa burned steadily under Jap bombardment, and its use for unloading supplies was denied to us.

On the southernmost beaches, Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five, in addition to the artillery bar-rage, encountered somewhat heavier small-arms fire. The experience of a platoon commanded by Second Lieutenant Fred B. Harvey, a former Harvard athlete, was typical of many in the confusion of the landing. A few minutes after he hit the beach, a Jap officer rushed at Harvey swinging a sword. The Marine officer parried the blow with his carbine and shot the Jap. Later he picked up an M1. Advancing inland with three of his men, he spotted three Japs in a shellhole. They rushed the Japs, but Harvey's M1 jammed. It was too late to change his mind, so he charged them with his bayonet and got in a couple of good slashes before a Jap threw a grenade at him. Harvey hit the deck as it exploded, knocking off his helmet. His own men by this time had opened fire, and their Lieutenant was spared the further indignity of ducking another grenade. When the platoon, or what was left of it, reached its objective at the end of the day, 31 men remained. The others had been killed, wounded, or lost in the action.

And so it was all down the line. The enemy had an unusual proportion of heavy weapons, and the ter-rain was all in his favor. On the Division's right flank, the First Battalion of the Twenty-fifth had penetrated only 700 yards. Accurate mortar fire against our front slowed the advance considerably. Tanks had been scheduled to come in by LCM through a channel in the reef, but the channel was under such heavy and accurate artillery fire that they had to be unloaded at points along the reef and had to make their way ashore under their own power. By noon, most of the Fourth Tank Battalion had landed and was supporting the infantry assault.

Everywhere the severity of the battle grew. Shells rained down with deadly effect. On the left, the Third Battalion of the Twenty-third, which had made the greatest advance, was met with point-blank fire. The First Battalion, Twenty-fifth, on the extreme right, continued to receive withering enfilade fire from Agingan Point. The enemy was making a determined effort to smash the invasion on the beaches. Wrecked tanks, burning amphtracs, dead Marines, and aid stations filled with casualties, were mute evidence that the Division had a tough fight on its hands.

Describing the appearance of the island after our terrific bombardment, Combat Correspondent Jack Vincent wrote at the time: "Nearly every house on the island had been smashed into a pile of rubbish. Factories had been shelled and destroyed. Sugar cane fields were burned over and palm groves denuded. Hidden foxholes, dugouts, and ammunition caves labyrinthed every hill. Oxen, goats, cows, and chickens roamed over the island and native civilians cowered in caves, waiting for a chance to give themselves up to the mercy of the Americans."

The rubble and dug-in defenses slowed down the front line troops considerably, and to make matters worse, fire on the beaches and in the surf became so heavy that reserves and supplies could not be brought up to support the assault units. The order was given for these advance elements to draw back to a more tenable position for the night. By dark our beachhead had a maximum depth of 1500 yards, although at many points it was much narrower.

In spite of the heavy fire on the beaches, the Fourteenth Regiment was ashore by 1700, and two of the battalions were firing as darkness set in. Needless to say, this boosted the morale of the troops, who had begun to wonder where their own "big stuff " was. The Twenty-fourth Regiment also landed and proceeded to set up a secondary line of defense. General Schmidt and advance elements of the Division command post came in at 1930.

The situation was not good. The enemy still held the commanding ground forward of the Marine positions. Our lines were broken in places, and a serious gap existed between the Division left flank and the Second Division. Expecting a counterattack during the night, virtually everyone stayed awake.

A counterattack was launched, but as it happened, the Second Division bore the brunt of the attack. Aerial observers had reported during the afternoon that Japanese troops had been holding ceremonies in Garapan, with parades, patriotic speeches, and flag waving. At about 2000, enemy infantry, in platoon columns paced by tanks, moved down the shore road. Naval gunfire dispersed most of these troops, and Second Division tanks and halftracks took care of the rest; but an attack against the Twenty-fifth Regiment did force our lines back nearly 400 yards. This ground was retaken when daylight came. Infiltration attempts were especially successful in the Lake Susupe swamp area between the flanks of the two divisions, and a sizeable force of enemy got through to Charan-Kanoa before they were finally killed. Enemy artillery fire continued all night and casualties mounted.

Our own attack was not resumed until 1230 the next day. All divisional artillery was ashore and despite heavy counterbattery fire, was gradually locating and knocking out Japanese field pieces. One howitzer, named Belching Beauty, caught a direct hit in her gunpit which killed or wounded every member of the crew except one, but the gun was repaired and put back in action. Out of 15 batteries ashore, four were knocked out during the day; all were later repaired and put back into the fight. In one case, the Division Ordnance Company actually made one howitzer from the parts of two artillery pieces that had been knocked out of action by enemy fire.

The Japanese had again mustered all their strength to stem the attack, and by 1730 we had advanced but a few hundred yards at the most. The battle had now settled down to a slugging match. Except for the left flank, the Phase Line 0-1 had been secured, and we were gaining the advantage of terrain. During the night of June 16-17, elements of the U.S. Army's Twenty-seventh Division were landed, and the 165th Infantry moved into the line to support the drive on Aslito Airfield. The severity of battle was indicated by an announcement that the Division had suffered 2,000 casualties in the first two days.

The second big enemy counterattack, during the night of D plus 1, also stemmed from the Garapan region and was again met by the Second Division. In all, 36 Jap tanks were destroyed-virtually the entire enemy mechanized strength on Saipan.

On D plus 3 it was apparent that the core of enemy resistance was badly shattered. Our gains were costly, but they were significant. By the evening of D plus 3 the Twenty-fifth Regiment could see the eastern shore of lower Magicienne Bay; the Third Battalion of the Twenty-fifth had secured a portion of Aslito Airfield. (Since Aslito Airfield came into the U. S. Army 165th Infantry's zone of action shortly thereafter, that portion taken by the Third Battalion was turned over to that regiment.) Thus, the southeastern segment of the island was almost cut off, and the Fourth Division was in position to sweep northward up the eastern half of the island.

The character of the fighting had been different from that in any other Pacific invasion. As Combat Correspondent Gilbert Bailey wrote at the time:

"The Japanese fell back gradually, by night, to the natural caves and prepared bunkers in the interior of the island, burying their dead as they went and dragging their equipment with them. A series of rocky ridges running down from Mount Tapotchau stretched in both directions along the length of the island; they were honeycombed with caves, each of which was a personal fortress. Between the ridges were open fields studded with bunkers and dugouts camouflaged with top soil. Other fields were filled with sugar cane which provided good hiding places for snipers. The last quarter mile on the eastern side was a strip of viny, tangled underbrush dotted with huge boulders which formed a plateau overlooking the sea.. Cliffs descended abruptly, but there were no paths down their sides."

This was the type of terrain the Division encountered all the way up the island.

Although the enemy maintained a stubborn defense for 25 sweltering days, yielding ground only under the combined weight of our infantry, artillery, and air power, it was the first three or four days of fighting that will always be remembered as the toughest. On Roi-Namur, Marines of the Fourth Division had not experienced enemy artillery or anything like the savage resistance which the Saipan Japanese put up on the ground. The men of the Fourth were still, in a sense, green. They did a lot of praying---and then joked about the danger. "Three times in the past four days," one man said, "my wife has almost been a rich woman. I could see them counting out my insurance bills ten dollars at a time and the wife riding downtown in a new Packard roadster with a spotlight on each side."

"That guy talking, he's our morale," the section leader said. Morale was needed on Saipan. In the Twenty-third Regiment, the biggest morale builder those first terrible days, was the First Battalion's Gunnery Sergeant Norvell Mills. Gunny Mills had spent five months on Guadalcanal and wasn't going to be bluffed by the Japs. He moved incessantly among his company, standing up while most of the men were reluctant to lift an eyebrow out of their foxholes. He laughed when his men felt like crying. He shook his fist at the Jap lines and swore at them in a voice like a pack howitzer when his men could hardly summon a croak out of their dry throats.

"They're only recruits," he yelled, "and the only thing they're fighting for is a drink of our water."

Later: "We may be getting hell, but they're gettin' it worse."

And again: "They're a bunch of ---'s. I've seen 'em on the 'Canal and I know they can't fight."

For five days Gunny Mills was the cheering section of his company.
"He's our morale," the men said.

Despite the initial shock of heavy opposition, the offensive spirit never wavered. Hand-to-hand fight-ing was not infrequent. To call the honor roll of all heroes is impossible within the limitations of this his-tory. They will be remembered by their comrades, if by no others.... The Marine, for instance, who saw a Jap officer dart from behind a tank to attack a buddy, and wresting the Jap's sword from him, slit his throat.... And another, who, in an attack through the palm grove beyond Mount Fina Susu, was shot in the arm, suffered grenade wounds, saw his clothes catch on fire when his ammunition belt exploded, charged a machine gun nest with grenades, and killed five japs before he was evacuated.... And two communication men, who were sole survivors of a team of ten after a Jap shell had hit their post, kept communication lines open by rigging up captured Japanese telephones....

This was the spirit, and these were the men who made victory possible.

Homage must be paid too, to countless others who gave their sweat and their blood and sometimes their lives so that the invasion would not fail. They were not all riflemen. Negro ordnance troops who went ashore with assault units unloaded 5,600 tons of ammunition in the first 33 hours. The Pioneer Battalion shore parties worked ceaselessly to set up dumps and evacuate the wounded. Tanks, in the forefront ,of the fighting, suffered heavy casualties; one, commanded by Sergeant Wayne R. Fish, caught seven Jap shells before the crew could get out and reach safety. VMO-4 made its operational debut on Saipan and maintained constant observation of the enemy for the use of our artillery and naval gunfire; each plane in the squadron made 20 three-hour hops the first ten days and at least one a day thereafter. Corpsmen took all the punishment the Marines took without a chance to fight back. One corpsman, Pharmacist's Mate Third Class Ernest Dobronte twice rescued the crews of burning tanks. The hazardous actions took place only three days apart; Dobronte was awarded the Silver Star for each action.

Assault Engineers and Pioneers, attached to infantry battalions, found themselves fighting as line troops. To them fell much of the "dirty work" of blowing up caves and fortifications and removing minefields and roadblocks, often under fire. Because many caves were inaccessible, Engineers had to lob their satchel charges from cliffs overhead. Once a team of three men formed a human chain and lowered themselves down the face of the cliff. The man at the bottom, Sergeant Charles C. Bucek, threw several grenades into the cave and finished it off with a heavy charge of explosives.

The Fourteenth Regiment gradually eliminated all enemy artillery pieces in its sector, hurling a total of 40,003 shells into Jap positions during the first week. From data furnished by Intelligence, the artillery systematically destroyed the Japanese water points, fuel and ammunition dumps, broke up their troop concentrations, and harassed their supply routes. But it was not only the cannoneers who deserved credit; the Regiment's forward observers and wire teams lived, fought, and took all the risks of front-line troops so that our shelling would be accurate. (Over 200 miles of telephone wire between FO posts and artillery batteries had been laid by the time the battle ended; 45 men were killed and wounded putting in these lines.)

Amphtracs were an incalculable boon, as every Marine who watched them operate could testify. Day and night they snorted back and forth across the lagoon under Jap shellfire, bringing supplies from the transports right up to the front lines. They plowed through swamps and over fields that no truck could negotiate. On return trips they brought wounded to the hospital ships. At night they patrolled the lagoon against the possibility of a sneak landing by the enemy. When such a landing was attempted early one morning, they alerted for action, but the Jap boats turned in along the Second Division beaches south of Garapan and were disposed of by the craft in those waters.

"Don't let them tell you any one outfit won this battle," a Marine said when it was all over.

Slowly the Division, with three regimental combat teams abreast, hacked its way up the island. On June 17, word came that the Japanese fleet was heading for Saipan. For the next six days, fleet units departed to intercept this threat, and all transports pulled out for safer waters. This left the Division without the customary naval gunfire support or the steady flow of supplies. Ammunition stockpiles were reduced to a "bare minimum." Then the news was received that our ships had completely shattered the Jap sortie, destroying five vessels and 402 planes. Morale was high.

During this time Marines encountered another new and somewhat bewildering problem civilians. Japanese, Chamorros, and Korean laborers had fled their homes at the outset of the invasion and had taken refuge in the hills. As troops advanced, whole families, from aged grandfathers to tiny infants, were flushed out of hiding. Terrified and fully expecting to be killed, they threw themselves on our mercy, frequently choosing the hours of darkness to come out. This created a ticklish problem for our men, for it was difficult to distinguish Jap soldiers from Saipan farmers who wore much the same type of clothing. Nevertheless, thousands of them were safely escorted to the beach, where civil affairs personnel placed them in compounds, provided them with food, and gave them medical care. The intermingling of civilians with enemy troops continued to be one of the most bizarre aspects of the battle and reached its climax in the closing days, when hundreds chose to kill themselves rather than surrender.

Although much of the fighting was against an unseen enemy who concealed himself in scores of coral, limestone caves, a crucial pitched battle occurred on June 19-20 when the Fourth Division attacked Hill 500, near Magicienne Bay. Seizure of this dominating height was essential for our drive against the heights surrounding Mount Tapotchau. A company of the Twenty-fifth Regiment, commanded by Captain James G. Headley, made the first assault, which met with murderous Japanese fire. Headley and 100 men charged the hill and found themselves suddenly pinned down by six machine guns grouped around a cave. It was a tight spot, and the Marines hugged the deck for half an hour while a fusillade of bullets split the air above them in every direction. Headley received orders to withdraw. One man had been killed and 30 wounded. Headley himself had been wounded twice, although not seriously.

Slowly, inching their way back down the hill and dragging the wounded with them, the remaining men crawled to a safer position. Then as they neared their own lines, the very ground seemed to blow up in their faces. A hidden ammunition dump had exploded, possibly set off by remote control. When the smoke cleared, 20 more had been wounded. In less than an hour, the 100 men who had made their way up Hill 500 had suffered 51 casualties. It had been a disastrous morning.

Then the word came down...

Throughout the day mortar and artillery fire were poured on this strongpoint. The next morning Headley led a new attack, with Lieutenant Colonel Justice "Jumping Joe" Chambers personally directing. The men went up the hill in an old fashioned hell-bent-for-leather charge. Enemy machine guns were silenced with grenades and flame throwers; Japs, dashing from caves and bunkers, were cut down with rifles and bayonets. Grenade duels and hand-to-hand fighting went on simultaneously at a dozen places. The dazed Japs fell back, were killed. An hour and a half after the start of the attack, Hill 500 was ours.

"We lost 90 men but we came across a-hellin' and took our objective," Colonel Chambers said later. He himself had been wounded by concussion when a Jap land mine exploded and was taken, unconscious, to a field hospital.

From now on it was a long rugged fight up the island. The enemy knew he was licked. His fleet had been turned back in disgrace, and his air force at most could send but a few "Washing Machine Charlies" over the island at night. Nevertheless, he determined to make the invaders pay the highest price for the conquest. With the terrain still in his favor, he fought obstinately from every cave, gully, and hill. Every foot of advance was paid for in lives. It was during this part of the battle that Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson, Division Staff Officer and famed leader of a Raider battalion in the South Pacific, was wounded while helping to evacuate an injured radioman.

And it seemed at times as if Saipan were all hills: Marines captured one only to be confronted with another. These, and other typical terrain features, acquired such names as Radar Hill, Dead Man's Gulch, Poison Ridge, Impostor's Hill, Death Valley, Nameless Crag, and Back-Break Hill. Each was a bitter reminder of the thing for which it was named.

During the next six days the Division surged forward in a relentless sweep. On one day alone, June 22, it made a gain of 2500 yards and extended the front to the base of Kagman Peninsula. The U. S. Army's Twenty-seventh Division now held the center sector of the line, tying in with the Twenty-third Marine Regiment on its right and the Second Division on the left. However, the Army Division failed to keep pace with the Marine advance, and the interior flank of the Fourth Division was stretched to such an extent that three battalions were required to fill the gap. On the night of June 25-26 some 500 of the enemy broke out of Nafutan Point, attacking our rear and necessitating a delay in our advance while Marines turned their attention to this "front" that had suddenly been created at their rear. On June 27, however, the attack was resumed with a gain of 3000 yards. The Fourth then halted to allow the Army Division to catch up. This required four days.

Meanwhile, Mount Tapotchau, highest point on the island, was taken by the Sixth Regiment of the Second Division. Yet it was a reconnaissance patrol from the Twenty-fifth Regiment, led by Sergeant Major Gilbert L. Morton, that first scaled this formidable elevation. The men had no sooner reached the top when they found themselves surrounded by the enemy. Digging in among boulders and natural revetments, they held the ground against a series of counterattacks, first from one side, then from the other. Slowly the little band was whittled down. Permission came for them to withdraw. It was then that Morton had to make the hardest decision of his life. Should the remaining men go back, leaving their dead and wounded comrades to the harsh mercies of the Japanese, or should they stick it out at the risk of everyone being killed? Night was coming on and escape from the trap would not have been too difficult.

The Sergeant Major polled his men. There were no dissenting votes. Every man agreed to stay and they settled down to fight it out. For 12 hours the Japs hammered at the tiny bastion atop Mount Tapatchau. The black night favored the Marines. Jap after Jap went down trying to dislodge them. Morton strangled two of the enemy with his bare hands. Marines were hit too. Ammunition ran low. Water was gone. There was hardly a man in the patrol who had not been wounded, but those who could, went on fighting. In the morning another patrol rescued them and carried the dead and wounded down the mountain to safety. Only five of the original band were still alive. Sergeant Major Morton was one of them and was awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery.

By July 2 (D plus 17 ) all three divisions were nearly abreast and ready to launch a drive to seize the northern part of the island. With the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Regiments in the assault, good progress was made. The following day the Twenty-fifth was put on the line, and the attack continued with all three regiments abreast. Stiff resistance at Hill 721 stopped the advance, and it was not until the following day (July 4) that this and another strongpoint, Hill 767, were stormed and taken. It was in honor of the date that Hill 721 was named "Fourth of July Hill" by the men who took it.

Garapan and Tanapag Harbor had already fallen to the Second Division. It was now decided to swing the Division's right flank around until the line roughly paralleled the island's axis and to attack downward from the high ground toward the western shore. This pivot took the next two days. With the enemy now contained on Marpi Point and a narrow corridor running southward to a point just above Tanapag, the stage was set for the final squeeze.

We now had more than three-fourths of Saipan, but the conquest had not been cheap. Our casualties had been heavy, and combat efficiency was down to "75 per cent, with troops approaching physical exhaustion." (Commanding officers, however, set the figure for combat units nearer to 50 per cent.) But the end of the battle was in sight, and the men fought with undiminished ardor.

For the Japanese, too, the end of the battle was in sight. Choked off in a small neck of the island, hopelessly outnumbered, their artillery destroyed, and their troops disorganized, they had no choice but to surrender or perish in a last Banzai for the Emperor.

General Saito, in keeping with tradition, chose the Banzai method for his men to join their ancestors, exhorting them, through a written message, copies of which were discovered during the occupation of Marpi Point Airfield on July 9:

Message To Officers And Men Defending Saipan I am addressing the officers and men of the Imperial Army on Saipan.For more than twenty days since the American Devils attacked, the officers, men, and civilian employees of the Imperial Army and Navy on this island have fought well and bravely. Everywhere they have demonstrated the honor and glory of the Imperial Forces. I expected that every man would do his duty. Heaven has not given us an opportunity. We have not been able to utilize fully the terrain. We have fought in unison up to the present time but now we have no materials with which to fight and our artillery for attack has been completely destroyed. Our comrades have fallen one after another.Despite the bitterness of defeat, we pledge "Seven lives to repay our country!" ["Seven lives to repay our country" was the password designated by the Japanese in a battalion order setting the attack that resulted in a breakthrough from Nafutan Point on the night of June 25-26.] The barbarous attack of the enemy is being continued. Even though the enemy has occupied only a corner of Saipan, we are dying without avail under the violent shelling and bombing. Whether we attack or whether we stay where we are, there is only death. However, in death there is life. We must utilize this opportunity to exalt true Japanese manhood. I will advance with those who remain to deliver still another blow to the American Devils, and leave my bones on Saipan as a bulwark of the Pacific. As it says in Senjinkun [Battle Ethics], I will never suffer the disgrace of being taken alive, and I will offer up the courage of my soul and calmly rejoice in living by the eternal principle.Here I pray with you for the eternal life of the Emperor and the welfare of the country,and I advance to seek out the enemy.

Follow Me.
July 1944
C.0. Northern Marianas Defense Force
C.0. District Fleet

The Banzai attack was directed against the U. S. Army's Twenty-seventh Division and was eventually stopped by the Second Marine Division's Third Battalion, Tenth Marines (artillery). An estimated 3,000 enemy troops, including walking wounded mustered in field hospitals, many armed with nothing more than pointed sticks and bayonets, followed General Saito's last instructions and converged, under cover of darkness, along the western shore above Tanapag. The attack was a surprise. During the bloody hours that followed, elements of this tatter demalion army penetrated up to 3000 yards behind the lines of the Twenty-seventh Division and engaged the Marine artillerymen at point blank range before they were finally stopped. Entire companies were cut off; the battle continued throughout the following day. By evening, almost every Jap in the attacking force had been killed. Casualties on our own side were also heavy, an estimated 1500. And General Saito, after launching the Banzai assault, retired to his command post where he committed hara-kiri. "We must utilize this opportunity to exalt true Japanese manhood," he had written. But Japanese manhood lay dead and scattered along 2000 yards of beaches above the once powerful Tanapag Naval Base.

American manhood wrote the final chapter of Saipan. With the failure of the Japanese attack, resistance in the northern neck of the island crumbled. The Twenty-third, sweeping westward from the high ground, cleaned out a few last pockets of stubborn Japs. The Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth drove northward against negligible opposition. It was here that, "the crowning horror of the whole campaign was enacted. Some hundreds of fleeing civilians had taken refuge on the northern shore and in caves in the cliffs which faced it. Now, believing themselves to have reached the last extremity, they set about a veritable orgy of self destruction. Mothers and fathers stabbed, strangled, or shot their screaming children, hurled them into the sea and leaped in after them, all in plain view of Marines atop the cliffs. Surrender pleas were largely in vain. Many who wished to do so were prevented by Japanese soldiers." (Major Frank 0. Hough, USMC.)

At 1220, July 9, after 25 days of continuous fighting, Old Glory went up on Marpi Point. Combat Correspondent Bill Dvorak described the ceremony (or rather lack of it, for troops were still mopping up resistance on the Marpi Point airstrip) which was held by Regimental Combat Teams Twenty-four and Twenty-five. The flag had been brought ashore by the Twenty-fifth's commander, Colonel Merton J. Batchelder, and turned over to Lieutenant Colonel Hollis U. Mustain, who was later killed on Iwo Jima.
It was run up on a Jap telephone pole. A few hours later an official flag raising was held at Corps Headquarters which marked the securing of the island.

To the men who saw it flutter, our flag marked the end of 25 gruelling, bitter, heartbreaking days. Heartbreaking because of incidents like this, which happened to Sergeant Mike Plasha. Mike had won the Silver Star on Roi-Namur and was something of a hero to the boys in the Twenty-fifth Regiment. On Saipan, he risked his life to rescue a wounded buddy under enemy fire. From a hospital ship, the wounded Marine sent Mike a note. It read: "Thanks, Mike, for saving my life." The message was never delivered. On the last day of the battle, Mike Plasha was killed, trying to save another wounded Marine.

The battle to persuade helpless civilians to surrender went on. Public address systems were brought to Marpi Point and the Japanese informed that the battle was over. A battalion of the Twenty-fourth utilized a public address system in conjunction with armored amphtracs which approached the shores of Marpi Point and successfully evacuated civilians from caves and rocks. But in general our efforts were complicated by the intermingling of civilians with fanatical Japanese soldiers who were using them as shields. Many caves in which they hid, furthermore, were almost inaccessible. Add to this their stubbornness and it was not surprising that the process was slow and arduous. Hundreds hid out for months, surrendering at lest to garrison troops who scoured every nook and cranny of the island.

All together, the Fourth sustained 5,981 casualties in killed, wounded, and missing, 27.6 per cent of the Division's strength. But 23,811 Japanese soldiers were known to be dead and 1,810 had been taken prisoner. We had won the most important Pacific base to date. Saipan was more than a mere stepping stone to Tokyo. It was an intersection on the main highway.

There was a satisfaction in victory that assuaged the unutterable and humbling weariness which resulted from the battle. Now a new challenge faced the men of the Fourth: It was announced that the Division would make the beachhead on nearby Tinian two weeks later.

Casualties of the Division, Reinforced - SAIPAN

Officers
Enlisted
Total
Killed in Action
50
891
941
Died of Wounds
12
123
135
Wounded
231
4674
4905
Totals
293
5688
5981

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Tinian...Home of the Enola Gay

Since our landing on Saipan, it had been apparent to the Japs that Tinian would be the next objective. Our warships and planes had bombed it daily and aerial reconnais-sance had been conducted over all parts of the island. It was no secret that we were getting ready to add Tinian to our list of Marianas bases. The enemy, therefore, had more than a month to strengthen and add to his defensive positions.

Following Saipan, the Division was assigned a new commanding general. On July 12, 1944, Major General Clifton B. Cates replaced Major General Harry Schmidt, who became the Commanding General of the Fifth Amphibious Corps. Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith continued as Commanding General, Expeditionary Troops, and assumed command of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific. This command worked out and executed the brilliant plan that made the invasion of Tinian a model of its kind, called by many "the perfect amphibious operation."

Jig-day was set for July 24, 1944. To the Fourth Division went the task of making the assault landing. The Second Division was to land on J plus 1, and the U. S. Army's Twenty-seventh Division was to be held on Saipan in reserve. Marines will remember their surprise when the operation maps were first unfolded. The two beaches selected for the landing were but 65 and 130 yards wide. It seemed impossible that an entire division could be put ashore, against opposition, on these two tiny stretches of sand. Never in the course of the Pacific war had a unit of division strength tried to land on any beach smaller than twice the size of these two combined.

It was precisely this fact, that the landing seemed impossible upon which the generals counted to fool the enemy. For if it seemed impossible to us, it certainly would also seem impossible to the Japs. Assuming this, we expected them to devote their main effort to defending the larger and more accessible beach at Tinian Town, on the southern half of the island. We would, so to speak, sneak in the back door while the Japs waited at the front. Added to this was the advantage of covering and supporting the landing by Corps Artillery based on Saipan.

Our theory was substantiated by reconnaissance carried on before the landing. Aerial reconnaissance was made by virtually the entire General Staff, including General Cates himself, regimental, and battalion commanders. This was another "first" for the Division, the first time in the Pacific that a planning phase included such complete reconnaissance of an enemy-held base by the key officers of an assault force.

Documents captured on Saipan further supported the theory. Everything indicated that the Japanese believed the White Beaches on the northwestern side of the island to be too small to accommodate our heavy equipment, tanks, artillery, bulldozers, and trucks. With an estimated 9,000 troops to defend the island, which was approximately 25 square miles smaller than Saipan, the enemy would be forced to commit the main body of his troops at one or the other end of the island.

Aerial reconnaissance showed that the enemy was devoting most of his defensive preparations to the beaches at Tinian Town, working at night to construct numerous bunkers, pillboxes, and trenches. There was evidence that the beach was heavily mined. The streets of Tinian Town were fortified by an intricate system of bunkers which commanded all streets and intersections.

In a sense this was gratifying, for it indicated that our estimate of the situation was correct. We encouraged the defenders in their belief by concentrating most of our day to day bombardment on the town and on its beaches. The theory was further substantiated by the results of several reconnaissance missions performed by the Fifth Amphibious Corps Reconnaissance Battalion. Landing undetected from rubber boats on the nights of July 10 and 11, the scouts found that Beaches White 1 and 2 were very lightly defended and that the rough coral ledges on each side of the sandy portion of the beaches could be surmounted by foot troops, thus extending the width of the landing areas one or two hundred yards.

From these various sources we achieved a good picture of the enemy defensive setup on Tinian. This w as more remarkable considering that to the naked eye, Tinian was truly an " island of mystery." Lying just south of Saipan and separated from it by only three miles of water, it was under continuous aerial observation. Yet it might as well have been unpopulated, for our planes flew at treetop level without observing a single living thing. Even the thousands of civilians, joining in the enemy's game of hide and seek," had literally moved underground. Photographs revealed continuous work on installations, but soldiers and civilians alike were not to be seen. The island's broad lowlands planted in sugar cane, its single peak, 540 foot Mount Lasso, and the sweeping ridge that formed its southern end, all lay peacefully in the summer sun. The enemy was maintaining the strictest kind of discipline to keep us guessing to the last minute.

Although our own plans were destined to turn the tables and beat the Japs at their own game, no effort was spared to destroy all known defenses. Beginning with the strike by Task Force 58 on June 11, the destruction rained on Tinian increased steadily. Jap shore batteries replied on occasion several of our warships were damaged.

At the end of the battle of Saipan, as many as thirteen battalions of 105mm and 155mm howitzers guns were set up on the southern shores of the island, and massed fire was brought to bear against targets on Tinian. Our planes, flying from Aslito Airfield, and warships of Task Force 58 systematically demolished Tinian's two completed airfields and left its town a mass of smoking rubble. Napalm incendiary bombs were used for the first time with good effect. An official statement from G-3 of the Expeditionary Troops Report later declared: "The preparatory bombardment delivered on Tinian prior to the landings exceeded in duration and deliberate destructiveness any previous preparation of the Pacific War."

The plan of the landing called for Regimental Combat Team Twenty-four to go ashore in a column of battalions on Beach White 1, the northernmost and smallest of the two beaches, while Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five was to land on White 2 some few hundred yards to the south. Regimental Combat Team Twenty-three, held in immediate reserve, was to come in on Jig-day after the assaul troops had established the beachhead. The Fourteenth Marines would also land on Jig-day, four battalions of 75mm howitzers having been preloaded in DUKWs (amphibian trucks) in order to be readily avaiable. (Two of these battalions, from the Tenth Marines, Second Division, were attached to the Fourth Division.) The.Second Division was to conduct a diversionary demonstration off Tinian Town. To enable tanks and trucks to negotiate the rocky, steep beaches, pontoon causeways and special ramps built by Seabees during the battle of Saipan, were to be brought over in LVTs and LCVPs.

H-hour was at 0740. Long before, waves of LVTs had assembled behind the line of departure. The day promised to be bright and sunny after a night of rain in which troops, sleeping on the decks of the LSTs, had been soaked. Smoke from the bombardment completely obscured the beaches, and when the boats were waved over the line of departure, guide planes overhead led the way. Thirty LCI gunboats laid down a wall of rocket and automatic weapon fire.

Never, perhaps, had there been more apprehension in the minds of the men making an assault landing. They remembered the heavy mortar and artillery fire which had greeted them on Saipan. They knew, too, that if the Japs had not been fooled, if the enemy had anticipated our ruse and had zeroed in artillery and mortars on the narrow beaches, the landing would be very difficult. Well directed artillery and smallarms fire could be disastrous to our troops. It would be like walking into a trap, and the landing might conceivably end in a fiasco.

Such, however, was not to be the case. Our strategy worked even better than we had dared hope. Opposition was officially "light" on White I and "moderate" on White 2. Occasional rifle and machine gun fire and desultory mortar fire was the only opposition the two assault regiments encountered. The bulk of Colonel Ogata's troops, excellently trained and well equipped veterans of the Manchurian fighting, waited behind their defenses at Tinian Town while we walked ashore on the two "impossible" beaches far to the north. The "razzle-dazzle" play was an unqualified success.

Against such light opposition, our troops moved in rapidly. Regimental Combat Team Twenty-four advanced toward Airfield No. 1; Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five went south along the coast and inland toward Mount Lasso. At 1630, Regimental Combat Team Twenty-three came ashore, and its Second Battalion took over the Division's right flank. All three regiments then drove ahead toward the Phase Line 0-1.

Everywhere the landing went smoothly. Supplies, preloaded in amphtracs and DUKWs, were brought directly to inland dumps. Tanks, routed to White I because of mines on White 2, negotiated the sharp ledge by means of the cleverly constructed ramps and were soon supporting the infantry. Four battalions of 75mm howitzers were ashore and were firing by 1635. The whole Division had landed within nine hours.

At 1730 the order came to consolidate positions for the night and to prepare for the counterattack which was expected. A beachhead 4000 yards wide and 2000 yards deep had been seized. And the cost? Fifteen were killed and 150 wounded---an unbelievably small price to pay for the achievement.

But what followed that night will probably live in the memory of Fourth Division Marines as a tougher fight than any single battle on Saipan. Indeed, the Japanese counterattack, for all practical purposes, was the battle of Tinian. For when it ended, all the heavy fighting was over. Japan's best troops had been decimated.

This was no wild, unorganized attack, made in desperation, but a well planned and carefully executed counterattack which had for its purpose the total destruction of our beachhead. That it failed completely was due to our well integrated and stalwart defense. Greener troops might have given way, but Marines of the Fourth Division were real veterans now and took in their stride the best the Japs could offer.

The attack was directed at several points of our perimeter defense simultaneously. At 0330, moving north along the main road leading from Tinian Town, clattered six tanks with infantry clustered on them, and more Japs following on foot. Previously, Japanese artillery had opened up on our beachhead. Marines had been alerted for the attack; all along the line 37mm gun crews, with canister and AP shells ready, lay in wait. Bazookamen were stationed at every likely tank approach. Suddenly, listening posts ahead of the Twenty-third's lines heard the rumble of tanks and relayed their approximate location to our artillery. The tanks were 400 yards away when the artillery opened up. Still the tanks came on. Then our antitank guns went into action.

Lieutenant Jim G. Lucas, the Division's Assistant Public Relations Officer, who was with the Twenty--third that night, vividly described what followed:

"The three lead tanks broke through our wall of fire. One began to glow blood-red, turned crazily on its tracks, and careened into a ditch. A second, mortally wounded, turned its machine guns on its tormentors, firing into the ditches in a last desperate effort to fight its way free. One hundred yards more and it stopped dead in its tracks. The third tried frantically to turn and then retreat, but our men closed in, literally blasting it apart. Bazookas knocked out the fourth tank with a direct hit which killed the driver. The rest of the crew piled out the turret, screaming. The fifth tank, completely surrounded, attempted to flee. Bazookas made short work of it. Another hit set it afire, and its crew was cremated."

The sixth tank, far to the rear, made its escape, running south along a railroad track and was found the next day, knocked out. Despite the shattering of their spearhead, Japanese infantry kept coming and were soon fighting at close quarters with the Second Battalion, Twenty-third. Thirty seven millimeter guns sprayed canister shot point-blank at the incoming waves. Machine guns rattled incessantly at the wild charging Japs; bodies piled up by the dozen in every fire lane. The next morning 267 Jap dead were counted in this sector.

But Marines took their share of punishment, too. A 37 mm gun crew, commanded by Gunnery Sergeant John G. Benkovich, winner of the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts, suffered six casualties in the attack, including Benkovich himself. Realizing that the position would have to be abandoned, Benkovich directed evacuation of the wounded and then returned, alone, to dismantle the gun and render it useless to the enemy.

Gradually the attack in this sector was broken up. However, the Twenty-fifth, holding the center sector was having its own fight. As early as 2230 this Regiment was experiencing pressure on its left flank and could hear the enemy forward of its Third Battalion front line elements. The first attack, at that time, was delivered by 500 to 600 Japs and was repulsed by close range mortar and small arms fire. The Japs retreated to the high ground ahead of the Battalion and there reorganized. At 0100 they struck again, this time at the juncture of the Twenty-fifth and the Twenty-fourth Regiments; and although hard fighting ensued, and many of the enemy were killed, about 200 broke through. Reorganizing in a swamp, they speared out in two directions, one group attacking a "breakthrough" platoon behind the Third Battalion lines, and the other group hitting to the northwest, deep within our lines, at our artillery positions. The attack was effectively checked by the "breakthrough" platoon which killed 91 of the enemy and by howitzer crews of D Battery, Second Battalion, Fourteenth Marines, who lowered their muzzles and let the Japs have it at point blank range, killing 99.
The breakthrough had been bitterly contested. When the first indications of an attack were felt,two machine guns, manned by Private First Class Orville H. Showers and Corporal Alfred J. Daigle, were out in front and on the flank of their company. They saw a great number of Japs moving toward them across a field. Showers and Daigle held their fire until the enemy was 100 yards away, then opened up wth everything they had. The Japs charged, screaming "Banzai!," firing light machine guns, and throwing hand grenades. It seemed impossible that the two Marines, far ahead of their own lines, could hold on. Yet they killed most of the Japs.

The second wave came in, more than 200 charging Japs. Back on the main line of defense, Marines could hear the machine guns, their barrels red hot, blazing away. They knew that Showers and Daigle were taking the brunt of the attack. They could have withdrawn to their own lines, no one would have blame them, but they chose to stick by their guns. Then the guns of Showers and Daigle stopped firing.

The next morning Marines found the two men slumped over their weapons, dead. No less than 251 Jap bodies were piled in front of them. And altogether, on this company front, 350 Japs were killed during the night. For heroic action against the enemy, the Navy Cross was awarded posthumously to Corporal Daigle, and the Silver Star was awarded posthumously to Private First Class Showers.

Stories like this, with variations, happened all along the line. In the Second Battalion, Twenty-fourth’s sector, one Jap attack was repulsed largely because of the good judgment of Sergeant John F. Fritts, Jr. Combat Correspondent Dick Tenelly described how Fritts, who had taken command of his platoon after the death of the platoon leader, deployed his men across a road that constituted part of the perimeter defense. The first warning of trouble came when a Jap patrol was sighted just before midnight. One of the platoon's machine guns dispersed the patrol but in so doing gave away its position.

Fritts did some quick thinking. He shifted his gun positions, putting automatic rifles in place of the machine gun, temporarily giving the impression that it was still there. The machine gun was moved to another spot. When the major enemy attack came at about 0200, the Japs directed their attention to the automatic rifles, which were withdrawn in the nick of time. But by this time the enemy had revealed his own positions. The machine gun and a 37mm gun opened up; the surprised Japs became confused and disorganized. They fought bitterly, but by daylight 150 had been killed. All but one of Fritts' main gun crew were wounded.

Meanwhile, on the left flank, in the sector adjacent to the ocean, hard fighting was taking place in the zone of action of the First Battalion, Twenty-fourth Marines. At 0200, about 600 screaming japs came down a road leading into the lines. The Battalion put up flares and opened up with 37mm guns, mortars, automatic rifles, machine guns, and rifles. Artillery registered on the area to the rear of the Japs, preventing a retreat, and our mortars fell in front of and among them, neatly confining the enemy to an area about 100 yards square. Fire continued for four hours, and when dawn broke, the enemy in this sector broke with it and began committing suicide with grenades. Four hundred and seventy-six bodies were counted here when the attack moved forward.

Daylight revealed the extent of the Jap carnage along the Division front; 1,241 bodies were counted, and an estimated 700 or 800 others had been retrieved by their comrades.

The loss of at least one fifth of the Japs' effective strength in one night broke the back of the defense of Tinian. From then on the remaining troops were capable of only the most dazed and weak resistance. Three airfields, a dozen prepared strongpoints, Tinian Town itself, fell with no more than token resistance.

The First Battalion, Eighth Marines, had landed in the afternoon of Jig-day and had been attached as the Fourth Division. reserve. On Jig plus 1, the remaining elements of the Eighth Regiment landed, and four regimental combat teams advanced down the island abreast. Supplies began to flow in, and the Division CP landed. By the following day, July 26, the remainder of the Second Division had landed and had taken over the eastern half of the drive down the island. Airfield No. 1 and Mount Lasso both fell. The airfield was quickly repaired and used for landing ammunition and medical supplies from Saipan and evacuating wounded from Tinian. Planes based on Aslito Airfield continued to give close tactical support to the ground troops. The weather, however, turned bad and the supply situation was made difficult by the heavy swells on the beaches. DUKWs were invaluable in helping to meet this and even air transport was 40mm antiaircraft guns.

The value of tanks was especially evident on Tinian, where flat fields and a good road system permitted them freedom to maneuver. Spearheading the infantry advance, they poured murderous machine gun and cannon fire into cane fields, thickets, and all buildings. One partially destroyed, innocent looking farmhouse, blasted by our tanks, replied with machine gun fire. The tanks put round after round into the structure, and when troops finally closed in they found more than 40 dead Japanese soldiers. The "farmhouse" proved to be a carefully camouflaged blockhouse mounting 40mm anticraft guns.

On July 27 (Jig plus 3), an 1800 yard advance was scored; and on the following day Airfield No. 2, on Gurguan Point, was overrun after an advance of 6000 yards on a 5000 yard front! Two days later Tinian Town was taken against negligible opposition. It was evident that the enemy had retreated to the formidable cliff south of the town for a last ditch. stand.

During the early morning hours of July 31, a tank led counterattack of company strength hit the Twenty-fourth Regiment. It was quickly repulsed, but mortar fire continued all along the front. In a determined effort to seize the ridge, the Marine command decided to launch an all out attack that morning. The ridge was submitted to "the most intense ... and the most effectively controlled of any bombardment of amphibious operations thus far in the Pacific," according to a Division report on the Tinian Opera-tion. Two battleships, a heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, 14 destroyers, 112 planes, and 11 battalions of artil-lery unloaded everything they had on the ridge from dawn until 0830.

The infantry jumped off against progressively stronger resistance. Caves, antitank guns, and mine fields were encountered in greater numbers than at any time since the landing. The cliff itself constituted a formidable obstacle, and the terrain was the most rugged on the island. Tanks could give little support. Added to this difficulty was the fact that nearly all of Tinian's several thousand civilians had fled to this section.

Despite the opposition, troops succeeded, with flame throwers, demolitions, and a liberal use of automatic rifles, in wiping out all pockets of resistance and by August 1, had reached the plateau on the other side of the ridge. At 1855 on that same day, Tinian was declared secured. Officially, the battle had lasted nine days.

Actually, the last and most dramatic battle was yet to be fought-without the firing of a shot. It was fought against Japanese military fanaticism, to save civilians from a ghastly suicide "ceremony" planned by their own troops. Our weapon was a public-address system mounted on a Jeep. From the plateau directed toward the 200-foot cliff, where scores of caves held thousands of civilians. Lieutenant Ralph Haas, Commanding Officer of the First Battalion, Twenty-third Marines, ordered the Jeep, a protective screen of tanks, halftracks, and infantry to advance to the edge of the plain. An interpreter told the unseen thousands that the battle was over, that American troops would give them food, water, and medical care.

A handful of civilians straggled out of the caves. They came out cautiously, saw our tanks and I wondered if it were a ruse. Most of them remained huddled together on the plain a few hundred away. A few broke off and wandered toward us. When they came in, we fed them and gave them water.

One of them, who had been superintendent of the sugar refinery on Tinian, volunteered to address his fellow citizens. After he had spoken, his wife also made an appeal, telling them they would not be harmed. At this, many more streamed out of the caves and over to us.

Then it was noticed that several soldiers had joined the civilian group, attempting to dissuade it from surrendering. As Marines watched in awestruck amazement, one of the soldiers leaped off the into the sea, a sheer drop of more than 100 feet. In a few minutes another jumped. For half an hour the suicide leaps of the soldiers continued. In the caves overhead, the intermittent "poff " and gray smoke of hand grenades told of other Japs who preferred that form of suicide.

The drama was coming to its bizarre conclusion. Seven soldiers had succeeded in gathering a group 35 to 40 civilians about them. Marines looked on in helplessness as two of the soldiers tied the group together with a long rope. Suddenly, a puff of smoke from a grenade went up from among the tightly packed group. But this was only the beginning; the grenade had been used to detonate a larger charge of high explosives. A terrific blast shook the ground. The bodies of the victims were blown 25 feet in the air. Arms, legs, and hands were scattered across the plain. The remaining soldiers committed suicide with grenades. This, seemingly, broke the spell. Hundreds of civilians now made for our lines.

The battle was ended. Japanese fanaticism had lured a few score to their deaths, but American persuasiveness had saved thousands of others. By August 12, 13,262 civilians were safely in the stockades. We had literally saved these people from their own protectors!

On August 14, the last units of the Division boarded ship and began the long trip back to Maui. The blitzkrieg on Tinian had cost the Division 290 men killed, 1,515 wounded, and 24 missing. About 9,000 Japanese Army and Navy personnel were dead, and another 250 were prisoners. The daring strategy of capturing the island through the back door had paid handsome dividends. Guam had been secure on August 10 by the Third Marine Division, the First Provisional Marine Brigade and the U. S. Army's Seventy-seventh Division. The most important Marianas bases were now in our hands.

In recognition of its work on Saipan and Tinian, the Fourth Division was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. The Division was making history.

The Division, Reinforced, was cited "for service as set forth in the following"

CITATION

For outstanding performance in combat during the seizure of the Japanese-held islands of Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas from June 15 to August 1, 1944. Valiantly storming the mighty fortifications of Saipan on June 15, the Fourth Division, Reinforced, blasted the stubborn defenses of the enemy in an undeviating advance over the perilously rugged terrain. Unflinching despite heavy casualties, this gallant group pursued the Japanese relentlessly across the entire length of the island, pressing on against bitter opposition for twenty-five days to crush all resistance in their zone of action. With but a brief rest period in which to reorganize and re-equip, the Division hurled its full fighting power against the dangerously narrow beaches of Tinian on July 24 and rapidly expanded the beachheads for the continued landing of troops, supplies and artillery. Unchecked by either natural obstacles or hostile fire, these indomitable men spearheaded a merciless attack which swept Japanese forces before it and ravaged all opposition within eight days to add Tinian to our record of conquests in these strategically vital islands.

For the President,
JAMES FORRESTAL
Secretary of the Navy

Casualties of the Division, Reinforced - TINIAN

Officers
Enlisted
Total
Killed in Action
15
184
199
Died of Wounds
2
25
27
Wounded
71
1609
1680
Totals
88
1818
1906

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Iwo Jima...Red Blood on Black Sand

THE BATTLE FOR IWO JIMA began, in a strategic sense, when Liberators first bombed it on August 9,1944, six months and ten days before the Marines landed. From that day until February 19, 1945, the island was subjected to more bombings than any other target in the Pacific. The newly organized Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Areas, gave it top priority. On December 8, 1944, the Twenty-first Bomber Command, based on Saipan, began its record 72 day bombing marathon, aided on five different occasions by naval task forces which shelled the island. Bigger bombs and more bombs were used than ever before, and submarine and air reconnaissance was carried out continuously.

[FONT=Arial]Iwo was an important island; we had to have it. The war had entered its final offensive phase, and to carry it to the Japanese home islands we needed nearby bases. Iwo was 758 miles from Tokyo, 727 miles beyond Saipan, and 3,791 miles from Pearl Harbor. This is the unbelievable distance we had carried the war across the Central Pacific, a drive in which the Fourth Division had played a leading role for 13 months. No longer would we be fighting against the perimeter of Japan's defenses but in her very front yard. The bleak little island was to be the last but one of the stepping stones to Tokyo.

There were other reasons why we needed the island. Since our Superforts began their mass raids on Japan, in the summer of 1944, the loss of planes and pilots due to forced landings at sea had been discouragingly high. Many, perhaps most, of these pilots would have been saved had there been a friendly base en route. In addition, Iwo was a base for interceptor planes which were used by the Japanese against our B-29s. By capturing the island, we would not only eliminate this threat but at the same time convert Iwo Jima to positive use as a fighter base from which escort planes could join B-29s on their way to Japan. It would also provide an excellent emergency field for crippled aircraft.

The Fourth Division formed but a small part of the vast assemblage of naval, air, and land power that eventually crushed the enemy stronghold. Yet, the months of preparatory bombardment, the neutralization raids on nearby bases and against Japan itself, were only preliminaries, conducted for the purpose of putting Marines in a position to seize the island. As in every amphibious operation, foot troops would have to do the decisive fighting.

The Japanese themselves were well aware that Iwo was earmarked for invasion, for it was a logical objective, once we had taken the Marianas. Furthermore, our air and naval strikes virtually advertised our intentions. After the fall of Saipan, the Japanese began an intensive program of defense construction designed to make the island impregnable. Some of the finest troops of the Japanese Army were sent to garrison it, and an unusually high percentage of artillery and antitank units were included. Large stocks of food and ammunition were stored. The construction of bunkers and blockhouses, much of which was photographed by our planes, went on feverishly.

This was the picture when the convoy drew up to the shores of Iwo during the dark morning hours of February 19. The enemy was ready and waiting-as ready as he would ever be. One and one-half days of bombardment by our warships and carrier planes destroyed many of his beach defenses while his troops waiting in deep caves, sweated out the rain of steel. Submarines and a screen of surface vessels ringed the island, cutting it off from any possibility of reinforcement. Yet, cunningly, the enemy knew that Iwo's best and most formidable defenses had not been damaged-indeed, they had not even been detected. For there was no way in which aerial photography could discover the vast labyrinth of caves that made the island an underground fortress, a Malta of the Pacific.

Marines knew that the battle would be tough, how tough was anybody's guess. The terrain was admittedly rugged; the defenders, under General Kuribayashi, numbered 23,000, almost as many as had defended Saipan, although Iwo was but one ninth as large! Some hint of the reception that awaited the attackers was given on D minus 2, when a number of LCI gunboats, giving close in support to our underwater demolition teams, were hit by accurate shore fire. The enemy, mistaking the underwater demolition teams for a landing force, announced that a landing had been repulsed. Marines knew better, but the knowledge that Jap shore batteries had inflicted damage upon some of our ships was not comforting.

To seize the island, it was planned to put nearly three times as many men ashore as there were defenders. The same chain of command that planned and directed the invasion of Tinian was to operate at Iwo: the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, under Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith, and the Fifth Amphibious Corps, under Major General Harry Schmidt. The three divisions composing the Fifth Amphibious Corps for the operation were the Third, under Major General Graves B. Erskine, the Fourth, under Major General Clifton B.Cates, and the Fifth-in battle for the first time-under Major General Keller E. Rockey.

There had been some changes in commands in the Fourth since Saipan. The Twenty-fourth's former commanding officer, now Brigadier General Franklin A. Hart, had become Assistant Division Commander. The Twenty-third's Colonel Louis R. Jones had also been promoted to Brigadier General and became Assistant Division Commander of the First Division. Colonel Walter I. Jordan became commander of the Twenty-fourth, Colonel Walter W. Wensinger, former D-3, commanded the Twenty-third, and Colonel Edwin A. Pollock became the D-3. Colonel John R. Lanigan took over the Twenty-fifth, replacing Colonel Merton J. Batchelder, who became Chief of Staff. Lieutenant Colonel Melvin L. Krulewitch headed the Support Group. Altogether, more than 19,000 troops, many of whom had joined the Division as replacements after the return from Saipan, made the trip.

At dawn on D-day Marines saw Iwo Jima for the first time. It was unlike any other island they had ever seen. Instead of palm trees and a white ribbon of beach which had first met their gaze at Roi-Namur, or the green canefields of Saipan and Tinian, they saw an ugly lump of volcanic sand and clay, which was treeless, craggy, and blistered with endless sand hummocks. Mount Suribachi, at the southern tip, loomed like something out of the Inferno; the plateau at the north was a series of ridges and hills, although little of it really hazardous character could be appreciated from the ships. In the center of the island lay the two air fields. The beach was not white, but black, and the vegetation which grew sparsely, was wilted, burned out colorless. It was as if, prophetically, Iwo was meant to support not life, but death.

H-hour was 0900. By 0730 the ships were lying to, and troops were going over the side. The plan of the landing called for the Fourth and Fifth Divisions to land abreast on a beach 3500 yards long. The Third Division would land on call, as reserves. Beginning at Mount Suribachi, the Fifth would land on the Green and Red beaches, while the Fourth would assault the Yellow and Blue beaches from a point fronting Motoyama Airfield No. 1 to the East Boat Basin. Landing on Beaches Yellow 1 and 2 would be the First and Second Battalions, Twenty-third, on Blue 2, the First and Third Battalions, Twenty-fifth. The Twenty-fourth was to be held in Division reserve.

At 0756 Admiral Turner's flagship broadcast the encouraging news: "Very light swells. Boating: excellent. Visibility: excellent." Waves of B-29s, glistening in the sun, roared overhead to drop blockbuster and napalm bombs. A record number of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers systematically shelled every target area. Hellcats, sweeping in at treetop height, riddled the beach and airfields; LCIs, close in to the shore, poured forth a continuous barrage of rocket and 4.2-inch mortar fire. From all directions, from ever type of weapon, molten steel rained on the island.

At that moment it seemed that taking Iwo would be easy.

And for a short time it appeared that it might be. When the first waves left the line of departure at 0830, there was no sign of life on the island. At 0849, eleven minutes before the first waves were to land, aerial, observers reported: "No counterfire as yet." The island was strangely, frighteningly quiet.

As the first wave of armored amphtracs, spouting fire from their cannon, neared the beach, enemy mortar and artillery shells began landing in the surf. A few tractors were hit, and a few planes went down from ack-ack. But as the first wave poured ashore at 0902, troops encountered surprisingly little fire.

Then the Japs came to life. From the sand dunes, machine guns began to chatter. Dual purpose guns, on the edge of the airfield, were depressed to deliver plunging fire on advancing Marines. From Mount Suribachi and the hills to the north, artillery began to comb the beachhead in increasing intensity. Even in demolished pillboxes and blockhouses, Japs were alive and fighting. From that moment, until the end of D-Day, Marines clung to their beachhead by their fingertips. True, our intensive shelling had driven the Japs on the beach half crazy, and they fought wildly, without organization or leadership, but the battle raged bitterly all morning. The Japanese fought from trenches and half wrecked pillboxes. Nothing but well aimed grenades, flame throwers, and bayonets routed them.

The four assault battalions had come ashore in forty-five minutes. Tanks had also been landed from LSMs and were seeking passages through the two terraces. A mist of smoke hung over the black ash, and the acrid smell of cordite was everywhere. Giant bomb craters pocked the beach. LSMs slipped in and landed bulldozers and more tanks. LCVPs, following in the wake of the assault waves, were landing with 37mm guns, radio and medical equipment, jeeps, Seabees, and Shore Party personnel.

Assault platoons advanced over the first terrace and made their way toward the airfield. The Japs, organized in, depth, attempted to hold the Marines to as narrow a beachhead as possible so their artillery could fall with deadliest effect. Every defended position had to be taken by total annihilation of the defenders.

The enemy's tenacity was not the only thing which made the going tough. Something which pre D-day aerial photographs couldn't tell us was the character of the beach. It was composed of loose, coarse, volcanic ash into which men's feet sank to the ankles and jeeps sank to the hubcaps. Escarpments, or terraces, some five to ten feet high, paralleled the shoreline in two rows about 100 and 200 yards from the water's edge. Until they could find passageways through these terraces, tanks wallowed helplessly and were picked off by enemy guns. Trucks could not operate at all, and supplies had to be manhandled from the water's edge to the front. It was, in fact, like trying to fight in a bin of loose wheat.

Inexorably, the Jap guns began to take their toll. Despite our concentrated counterbattery fire and com-plete domination of the air, hostile shelling increased as more and more guns were ranged in on the beach. LSMs now found it extremely difficult to land men and supplies, and virtually all those that tried it were hit. The enemy laid down a curtain of steel along the water's edge, and Seabees, Engineers, Pioneers, and evacuation stations were in most cases harder hit than front line troops. Whole aid stations were wiped out with one shell burst; LCVPs had to run a gauntlet of fire to get out the wounded. Dumps containing our much needed initial resupply of ammunition and demolitions were blown sky high. The Japs were staking everything to annihilate us on the beach.

As afternoon came on, Marines of the Twenty-third had managed, somehow, to push their lines to the base of the airfield, while the Twenty-fifth had kept pace to the north. But "somehow" is a vague word and can be explained only in terms of countless acts of individual bravery working within the collective will of the whole unit. Months, and years, of training lay behind this unflinching action.

It explains why a company could watch its captain and sometimes most of its officers fall, and yet stick together as an effective fighting unit. It explains why Corpsmen, without litters, with half their supplies wrecked, with many of their own men wounded and killed, could go on treating casualties, crawling to them in the face of fire and then, using ponchos as stretchers, get them to the beach and into a boat. It explains why an NCO like Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, of the Twenty-third, could make three trips from his own lines to the rear of a pillbox which held up a whole platoon, and with grenades, wipe it out, giving his own life in the doing. It explains why an officer like Lieutenant Arthur W. Zimmerman, who, realizing that tanks were needed at all cost, constantly exposed himself to direct their fire against a blockhouse which had pinned down his platoon. And it explains why a tankman like Sergeant James R. Haddix could willingly station his tank by a shell hole full of trapped Marines for four hours, until he had eliminated every Jap who threatened them. These are but a few random examples of the "UNCOMMON VALOR" which became, in the words of Admiral Nimitz, "A COMMON VIRTUE" on Iwo.

By mid-afternoon it was apparent that our assault units had been depleted greatly and should be relieved. Both the First and Second Battalions of the Twenty-third had made a frontal attack on the airfield, suffering heavy casualties. At 1655 orders were issued for the Second Battalion, Twenty-fourth, and the Third (reserve) Battalion, Twenty-third, to land. (The Second Battalion tied in with the First Battalion, Twenty-fifth, on the right and the Third Battalion, Twenty-third, on the left. The latter passed through the First Battalion, Twenty-third, and occupied the edge of the airfield. This was completed by 1800.)

Meanwhile, the Twenty-fifth was having a stiff fight on its own front. This Regiment had the difficult mission of not only landing on a narrow front (one battalion had to land in a column of companies) but also of executing a turning movement in preparation for enveloping the heights to the immediate right. This turning movement was executed in the face of heavy fire that inflicted excessive casualties upon the Regiment. By 1200 the situation was such that it was vital for Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five to seize the high ground northeast of Beach Blue 2, from which the heaviest volume of enemy fire was coming. Taking a desperate gamble and committing all its reserves, the Regiment drove across Blue 2, its strength rapidly diminishing as it advanced. At 1745 two companies of the Third Battalion, under the courageous leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Justice M. Chambers, seized the high ground to the left of the quarry, and at 1830 Company L placed 26 men above the quarry, where it engaged in a fire fight until relieved, receiving 17 more casualties but holding the ground tenaciously. At 1900 the front-line strength of Chambers' Battalion was only 150 men, and at 0100 this Battalion was relieved by the First Battalion, Twenty-fourth Marines. The close of the day found the high ground taken and the beach secured, but in this zone it had been accomplished at an expense of 35 per cent of the personnel of the entire Regiment.

All tanks had been ashore by 1300, and the First and Second Battalions of the Fourteenth Regiment, preloaded in DUKWs, had landed in direct support of the assault regiments, despite heavy opposition and a bad surf which destroyed some of the guns. They were in position and firing by late afternoon. Regimental Combat Team Twenty-four, less the First and Second Battalions, which had been previously attached to Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five and Regimental Combat Team Twenty-three respectively, landed and was in its assigned assembly area by 2030. Shore parties and beach parties had also been set up and were in operation.

At 1700 all units were ordered to dig in and prepare for a night counterattack. D-day, the most momentous and costliest D-day of the Pacific war, was drawing to a close. More than 1,000 Fourth Division Marines had already been evacuated to hospital ships; an undetermined number lay dead. And although the picture was far from encouraging, we had opened a wedge in the "impregnable island." The initial opposition had been overcome and a beachhead extended some 500 yards inland. (To the south, the Fifth Division had cut across the narrow neck of the island, isolating Mount Suribachi.)

Despite the enemy's numerous attempts to infiltrate and his constant harassing fire, he staged no counterattack on the night of D-day. He had learned his lesson on Saipan and Tinian. No longer was he to fritter away his forces in piecemeal and ineffectual counterattacks. This time he had determined to retain the advantage of fighting from concealed positions and force us to come and get him.

It was not until the next morning, when Marines along the airfield could look back on the beach, that the full extent of our losses was apparent. The wreckage was indescribable. For two miles the debris was so thick that there were only a few places where landing craft could still get in. The wrecked hulks of scores of landing boats testified to high price we had paid to put troops ashore. Tanks and halftracks lay crippled where they had bogged down in the coarse sand. Amphibian tractors, victims of mines and well aimed shells, lay flopped on their backs. Cranes, brought ashore to unload cargo, tilted at insane angles, and bulldozers were smashed in their own roadways.

Packs, gas masks, rifles, and clothing, ripped and shattered by shell fragments, lay scattered across the beach. Toilet articles and even letters were strewn among the debris, as though war insisted on prying into the personal affairs of those it claimed.

And scattered amid the wreckage was death. An officer in charge of an LCT had been hit while trying to free his boat from the sand and was blown in half; a life preserver supported the trunk of his body in the water. Marines, killed on the beach, were partially buried under the sand as the tide came in. Perhaps a hand stretched rigidly out of the sand, and that was all.

And in the face of this, Marines went on fighting.

Despite the shock of D-day and the excessive casualties, the attack jumped off on the following morning according to schedule. Regimental Combat Team Twenty-three with one battalion of the Twenty-fourth attached, and paced by tanks, took the airfield against bitter resistance. But the Twenty-fifth, on the right flank, with another battalion of the Twenty-fourth attached, made little progress; minefields prohibited the use of tanks, the terrain was rugged, and enemy resistance was fanatical. The Regiment also continued to receive heavy flanking fire from the heights to its right. In most places it advanced no more than 200 yards by the end of the day. The Twenty-third, in crossing the airfield, had moved its lines some 1000 yards ahead.

It was clear that Iwo would be the Division's toughest battle. By the end of the second day casualties totaled 2,011. And now it was apparent that we were fighting a new kind of enemy, not only fanatic and determined, but intelligent, well directed, well armed, and prepared to fight from immensely superior positions. As Lieutenant John C. Chapin wrote in a historical monograph later:

". . . there was no cover from enemy fire. Japs deep in reinforced concrete pillboxes laid down interlocking bands of fire that cut whole companies to ribbons. Camouflage hid all the enemy installations. The high ground on every side was honeycombed with layer after layer of Jap emplacements, blockhouses, dugouts, and observation posts. Their observation was perfect; whenever the Marines made a move, the Japs watched every step, and when the moment came, their mortars, rockets, machine guns, and artilley--long ago zeroed-in--would smother the area in a murderous blanket of fire. The counterbattery fire and preparatory barrages of Marine artillery and naval gunfire were often ineffective, for the Japs would merely retire to a lower level or inner cave and wait until the storm had passed. Then they would emerge and blast the advancing Marines."

This was to be the situation for 24 grim days, the time it took for the Division to go from Motoyama Airfield No. 1 to the eastern coast just above Tachiiwa Point, a distance of slightly more than three miles.

The Division's records tell in detached, almost impersonal terms, the story of the following day:

"During the early morning hours of February 21, an attempted infiltration by about 100 Japs against the Twenty-fifth was repulsed, with all enemy killed. The Fourth Battalion, Fourteenth Regiment, completed landing. Only four guns were operative, seven having been lost in the sinking of DUKWs and one having defective sights. The Twenty-first Regiment of the Third Division landed and was attached to the Fourth Division. At the close of fighting, combat efficiency was estimated at 68 per cent. An advance of 50 to 500 yards had been made on the Division front." (The remainder of the Third Division, less theThird Regiment, came ashore on February 24 and went into the line on February 25, at which time Regimental Combat Team Twenty-one reverted to Third Division control.)

Because these records were concerned with the over-all picture rather than the multitude of individual incidents, they couldn't tell the human drama of this advance. But Combat Correspondent Dan Levin, with the Twenty-fourth Regiment, recorded a typical action. Six pillboxes held up a rifle company on the other side of the airfield.

"Two tanks had tried to knock them out, but were blown up by mines while approaching the area. Then the battalion commander asked Marine Gunner Ira Davidson, a 43-year-old 'regular,' from Chavies, Kentucky, 'Could you get at those pillboxes with a 37?'

"The Gunner nodded. He scrambled through mortar fire to get six of his men and a gun. They man-handled it across 200 yards of open runway. One of the crew was killed, two wounded, another shell-shocked. The Gunner and his remaining two men arrived near the position, and [now aided by a few riflemen] nosed the gun into position facing the pillboxes. He set his telescopic sights and poured 12 to 15 HE shells into each pillbox.

"They stopped firing. The infantry moved up. In each pillbox they found two to four dead Japs. Davidson had put his shots through the firing slit of every pillbox so that the shells burst inside."

And as if this weren't enough, three days later Gunner Davidson assisted one of his gun crews in dragging a 37mm gun 250 yards ahead of the front to demolish three light machine guns, a medium machine gun, and an observation post. He was later awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action.

On February 22, the Twenty-first Regiment, still attached to the Fourth Division, passed through the Twenty-third and advanced to the southeastern edge of both airstrips of Airfield No. 2, against continued bitter resistance.

It was on the following day, February 23, that news reached the Division that Old Glory had been raised on Mount Suribachi following its capture by the Twenty-eighth Marines. No one knew then--not even the men who had raised it--what an historic moment it was to become. That discovery was to be made in the photographic dark room on Guam, where Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's famous picture first saw light. But it made Marines feel proud to know that after four days their flag flew at the island's highest point. There was comfort, too, in knowing that the enemy could no longer look down their backs.

On February 23, the battle was begun for Airfield No. 2 and "Charlie-Dog Ridge" (so called because it lay in target squares "C" and "D") by Regimental Combat Team Twenty-four. The fighting between the two airfields was among the bitterest on Iwo. Probably no other section of the island of equal size boasted such an elaborate system of defense. The wild terrain resembled, with its hundreds of bomb craters, the surface of the moon. The ash was ankle deep, and when the wind blew, it pelted the men's faces like buckshot. The Japs had converted every dune into a bunker from which the muzzles of machine guns and anti-tank weapons jutted defiantly.

The attack was made following a heavy artillery bombardment and was carried through this day and the next. When the infantry charged they found Japs all around them. Captain LaVerne W. Wagner, commander of an assault company in the Twenty-third, participated in the assault on February 25, when that Regiment returned to the lines, and he reported that more hand-to-hand fighting took place in the day-long battle than in any engagement he had ever seen. "The lines literally melted away," he said. "We were chasing the Japs down trenches, and they were chasing us. Grenade duels took place everywhere.' More often than not, we found ourselves in the rear of Jap pillboxes which were still doing business on the other side."

One explanation for the tenacity of the enemy might lie in a document found on the bodies of the majority of the enemy dead at this time and which was also posted on pillbox walls. Apparently disseminated by the Island Commander to raise and unite the spirit of his troops, the document read in part as follows:

COURAGEOUS BATTLE VOW

Above all else we shall dedicate ourselves and our entire strength to the defense of this island.

We shall grasp bombs, charge the enemy tanks and destroy them.

We shall infiltrate into the midst of the enemy and annihilate them.

With every salvo we will, without fail, kill the enemy.

Each man will make it his duty to kill 10 of the enemy before dying.

Until we are destroyed to the last man, we shall harass the enemy by guerrilla tactics.

Japanese tenacity was no surprise. The Marines had encountered it before many times. There was, however, one unexpected weapon in their defense which caused no little consternation until its identity was established. One thousand pound rockets, or "buzz bombs," were launched from well behind the enemy's lines against our installations on the beach and near the airfield. Fired primarily at night, the "floating ashcan," or "bubbly-wubbly," chugged across the sky like a slow freight, its motor clanking and leaving a trail of fire behind it. The first few of these sailed right off the island and Marines laughed at them. Later, when the Japs brought down their range, it wasn't so funny. They were not accurate, but on the crowded island they occasionally landed near a dump or in the midst of troops. Japanese prisoners later admitted that they had been as afraid to set them off as we were to have one land in our lines.

Slowly, the enemy gave way-those who still lived in spite of battle vows. Our tanks, although hampered by mines and loose sand, managed to deliver the coup de grace to many Japs who tried to flee. Casualties for the Division had mounted to 3,163, but our objective had been gained. The Twenty-fourth Marines, after a slow, bloody battle, had taken Charlie-Dog Ridge on February 24. On February 25, that portion of Airfield No. 2 in the Fourth's zone of action had been secured.

Of these days, Lieutenant Jim G. Lucas wrote:

"It takes courage to stay at the front on Iwo Jima. It takes something which we can't tag or classify to push out ahead of those lines, against an unseen enemy who has survived two months of shell and shock, who lives beneath the rocks of the island, an enemy capable of suddenly appearing on your flanks or even at your rear, and of disappearing back into his hole.

"It takes courage for officers to send their men ahead, when many they've known since the Division came into existence have already gone.

"It takes courage to crawl ahead, 100 yards a day, and get up the next morning, count losses, and do it again.

"But that's the only way It can be done."

During this time the beaches began to take on the semblance of order. Enemy fire still landed on them intermittently, but supplies poured in uninterruptedly, ammunition dumps were set up, a beach road was started by the Engineers, and nine water distillation plants were brought ashore. VMO-4 was the first to land its planes on Airfield No. 1.

Then on the following day, February 26, began the week-long battle for Hill 382 and Turkey Knob, the bitterest and costliest engagement of the whole battle for Iwo. At some time or another almost every battalion in the Division was committed in this battle. When at last these strongpoints fell, the Japanese main line of defense had been breached.

The chain of defenses that made up Hill 382, the Amphitheater, Turkey Knob, and Minami village was not only the backbone of the Jap defense on northern Iwo, but the nerve center of the whole island. A radar station, destroyed some time before, several cleverly concealed observation posts and a large commuication blockhouse gave the Japanese observation over all of our positions.

The terrain was admirably suited for defense. An intelligence report described the Hill as "a complicated mass of crevices, 15 to 50 feet deep which cover its surface, making it a bastion of defense capable of receiving an attack from any quarter. The crevices look worm eaten with caves. The monumental mass of rocks, crags, and out-croppings furnish countless OP sites."

To this the enemy had added every weapon which might be useful in repelling an attack. Four tanks buried to their turrets, commanded natural routes of approach. Antitank guns peered down every crevice. Three 75mm AA guns, with their muzzles depressed, looked down the throats of Marines. Twelve twin mount guns, four heavy machine guns, and numerous Nambu and Lewis type machine guns were scattered throughout. In addition, there were at least 20 pillboxes and an uncounted number of caves, some of the several tiers deep.

The Hill, the Amphitheater, and Turkey Knob were all interdependent, mutually defensive, and contstituted the key to the enemy's cross-island and main defensive system. To the Twenty-third Regiment went the job of assaulting the Hill while the Twenty-fifth attacked the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob Jap positions on the Knob were capable of delivering fire on the Hill and into the Amphitheater. The Amphitheater, in turn, shielded the Knob. The whole system would have to be stormed at once.
The easiest way to describe the battle which followed is to say that we took the Hill almost every time we attacked--and that the Japs took it back. The first assault was made by the Third Battalion, Twenty-third, under Major James S. Scales. After a day of bitter fighting, two companies reached the summit, but their strength had been so depleted that they were unable to hold their gains and retired under cover of smoke screen. The Japs were cagily withdrawing from the Hill, when it became apparent that they could not hold it, and then directing mortar and artillery fire on it. When we withdrew they returned to their positions.

A battalion of the Twenty-fourth was encountering the same fanatic resistance in the Amphitheater, where camouflaged cave entrances concealed machine guns which played havoc with our exposed troop. As for the Twenty-fifth, moving in on Turkey Knob, Division records state: "Both flanks received a murderous concentration of heavy mortar fire which was extremely accurate."

This pattern was repeated day after day---a charge that put Marines on the Hill and in the Amphitheater with comparative ease, then a day of bitter fighting in which the enemy seemed to appear from everywhere to disorganize our forces and cut them up, and finally a withdrawal at dusk, with the wounded being carried and dragged to safety.

On March 1, four days after the beginning of the battle, Colonel Walter W. Wensinger's battered and weary men of the Twenty-third were relieved by the Second Battalion, Twenty-fourth, under Lieutenan Colonel Richard Rothwell. Elements of the Twenty-third which had not yet been committed in this sector then relieved the Twenty-fifth in the Amphitheater and around Turkey Knob. Such was the line up as the battle for these strongpoints went into its final stages.

For four more days the fighting see sawed. Captain Wagner's K Company of the Twenty-third slowl blasted the Amphitheater's caves until, finally, the big blockhouse near Turkey Knob, which had withstood every kind of air and artillery assault, could be brought under direct attack. The Second Battalion, Twenty-fourth, hammered away at the Hill, gradually knocking out one position after another, sealing caves, and destroying OP sites. At last, a 75mm pack howitzer from the First Battalion, Fourteenth Marines, was taken to the front lines and manhandled into position to deliver point blank fire at the blockhouse near Turkey Knob. Then demolition teams crawled close enough to breach its walls. A flame throwing tank delivered the coup de grace.

But things had not gone well with Rothwell's men. They had succeeded in scaling the hill, but the losses had been extremely heavy. A jinx seemed to hang over Company E. Commander after commander was killed or wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Rothwell couldn't seem to send replacements fast enough. One young second lieutenant, Richard Reich, who had joined the outfit just before the operation, found himself in command repeatedly while awaiting the arrival of another captain. "They came so fast," he said, "I didn't even get their names."

At last Captain Walter J. Ridlon's F Company, and what remained of E Company, aided by a depleted platoon of C Company, reached the summit, and stayed there. Turkey Knob had fallen a short time before and the Amphitheater too was in our hands. The whole defense bastion collapsed at once. On March 3, Hill 382 was officially ours, but it had been taken at a terrible cost. Casualties now totaled 6,591 men. Despite fresh replacements, combat efficiency of the Division was down to 50 per cent.

Many brave men died on Hill 382, in the Amphitheater, and in the storming of Turkey Knob, and there were many noteworthy acts of bravery. Again, it can be said that no one outfit deserves the credit. All three infantry regiments were involved. The Engineers furnished sappers and demolitions teams. Joint Assault Signal Teams and artillery forward observers were at the front with riflemen. Quartermaster personnel brought up food and ammunition under fire. And corpsmen, as always, were to be found wherever a Marine was in distress.

The skill and quick thinking of these corpsmen is best illustrated by the action of Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Cecil A. Bryan. During the battle he saw First Sergeant Fred W. Lunch, a member of the Twenty-fourth, fall wounded. Bryan ran to him and saw that the "Top's" windpipe had been severed by a shell fragment. Unless something were done immediately, the Marine would be dead within a few minutes. Bryan thought fast. He knew that he had to give Lunch an artificial windpipe. Grabbing his aid pouch, he yanked out a piece of rubber tubing used for plasma transfusions, cut off six inches, and thrust it into Lunch's throat. Then he carried his patient, barely alive and bleeding freely, to an evacuation station. Today, Lunch is living and able to talk. Bryan won the Silver Star.

Working under similar conditions were the medical officers. No group of men worked harder, none received more praise from the Marines. They were to be found as close to the front as they could get their aid stations. And back at the edge of the airfield, where a Division hospital had been set up, 17 doctors (four operating teams) worked twenty-four hours a day on casualties, under the supervision of Commander Reuben L. Sharp, commander of the Fourth Medical Battalion. In one day alone, 400 pints of whole blood were used.

The battle was not over. Although we had the commanding ground, the Japs still held out in hundreds of caves and could not yet be considered an unorganized foe. From now on the fight was to be, more than ever, a matter of cave warfare. On March 4 alone, the Twenty-third used 2,200 pounds of demolitions in blasting cave entrances and exits. On this same day, the direction of attack was changed so that the whole Division executed a pivotal movement and advanced toward the coast, parallel to the terrain corridors, in a southeasterly direction.

March 5 was a day of reorganization and rest. The Division Reconnaissance Company was attached to the depleted Twenty-fifth. Then, on the following day, the attack was resumed with all three rifle regiments abreast, preceded by the heaviest concentration of artillery fire yet experienced in the battle. Using batteries from the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Divisions and the Fifth Amphibious Corps, a total of 12 battalions, reinforced by naval gunfire, fired for 36 minutes. The Second and Third Battalions of the Twenty-third then attacked in a column of battalions.

The Division's records, summarizing the results of this attack, state bluntly: "In extremely bitter fighting against caves, pillboxes, and emplacements in rugged terrain, the Twenty-third advanced approximately 100 yards, except on the extreme left, where no gain was made."

During the next two days the attack continued to be heartbreakingly slow. The terrain was beyond th scope of imagination. Lieutenant John Chapin describes it:

"Crevices, draws, ravines, cross compartments, and hills were all filled with cave and tunnel system. Halftracks and tanks were unable to move into the area. Advancing troops would be met with fire from one quarter and when they attacked there, they would be hit from a different side by Japs using underground passages. The enemy had to be routed out by assault squads and their weapons.... Anti-personnel mines were sown in cave mouths, approaches, tunnels, paths; deadly accurate snipers were everywhere."

Once more Marines discovered what is always being forgotten in modern war: that there are places which bombs and shells cannot reach. Instead, they must be taken by men alone, willing to die.

Slowly and relentlessly, we pushed the enemy back. The pressure drove him out of his hole at last. On the night of March 8-9, the only organized night counterattack of the campaign was attempted against our lines. From 1800 until 2000, rocket, mortar, grenade, rifle, and machine-gun fire fell along the Division front followed by a systematic infiltration against our lines. From the First Battalion, Twenty-fifth, on the right, to the Second Battalion, Twenty-third, on the left, continuous waves of Japs hammer at our positions, and some broke through to command posts. Hand-to-hand fighting took place all up and down the line and in the command post of the Second Battalion, Twenty-third Marines. Many Japs, carrying land mines strapped to their chests, came at Marines in attempts to blow them up in a suicidal charge. Others, seeing that the attack was a failure, killed themselves with grenades. But the majority were killed by Marine riflemen who lay in their foxholes and blasted every moving object. The next morning 784 Jap bodies were counted. The attack had been stopped, and although our own casualties by this time had mounted to 8,094, and combat efficiency had fallen 45 per cent, the end of the battle was in sight.

And now, during the momentary lull in the fighting, many chaplains held their first services. They been with the regiments all through the battle, assisting in the aid stations. Combat Correspondent Bob Cooke described one service at the front:

"The Catholic altar was a pile of water cans, the Protestant, the radiator of a jeep. The communion rail was a mound of black volcanic gravel.... Yet not in any of the world's great cathedrals or churches was there more sincere reverence. Men ignored heavy shells overhead. The chaplain's words were interrupted by the roar of planes. Clouds of dust from tanks and bulldozers swept the area. But the chaplain's vestments, the altar cloth, and cross gleamed through the pall of the battlefield.

"There was no compulsion about attending these services, but almost everyone went. Marines of all denominations joined in receiving communion from chaplains whose robes did not conceal the leggings and dungarees beneath. No loudspeaker was needed. Pitiably few of our original 900 were physically present: many lay in the new Fourth Division cemetery. But we did not feel that they were totally gone from us. In this hour of prayer and communion, our battalion was reunited."

On March 10 began the final stage of the battle. The Twenty-fifth Regiment closed off an enemy pocket and wiped out the strongpoints within it while the Twenty-third seized commanding ground some 400 to 600 yards from the coast. The Japs were conducting a purely passive defense from an intricate system of well concealed caves which had to be located and sealed, one by one. At 1500, patrols from Twenty-third reached the coast without encountering opposition. By the following day, the Division front had advanced to the ocean. The Twenty-fiftb, on the right, with one battalion of the Twenty-fourth attached, was still meeting heavy opposition. In this, the last pocket of resistance, an area of indescribably wild terrain, the Japs chose to make their last stand.

From March 12 to March 16, Regimental Combat Team Twenty-five was occupied in cleaning out this pocket. In an area of resistance studded with caves and emplacements and absolutely impenetrable to tanks and other support weapons, the Jap defenders fought until they were individually routed out and killed by riflemen, demolition and grenade teams, and flame throwers.

On March 12, General Cates sent the following message, transcribed into Japanese, and broadcast by loudspeaker, to the Japanese Brigade Commander believed to be in this pocket with his men:

12 March 1945
To: The Brigade Commander:

This is the Commanding General of The Fourth Division, U. S. Marines, making a direct appeal to the Brigade Commander and his command to honorably surrender. You have fought a gallant and heroic fight, but you must realize that the Island of Iwo Jima has been lost to you. You can gain nothing by further resistance, nor is there any reason to die when you can honorably surrender and live to render valuable service to your country in the future. I promise and guarantee you and the members of your staff the best of treatment. I respectfully request you accept my terms of honorable surrender. I again appeal to you in the name of humanity---surrender without delay.

C.B. Cates
Commanding General
Fourth Marine Division

The broadcast was repeated several times but the Brigade Commander, if he heard it, chose to ignore the offer.

Finally, during the night of March 15-16, a party of nearly 60 Japs tried to break out of the pocket but failed in the attempt and were driven back to their caves. This defeat seemed to break their spirit of resistance, and by 1000 on March 16, the pocket had been secured.

In the meantime, the remainder of the Division conducted extensive mopping-up operations, policed the area, and buried the dead. On March 12, the order had been given to secure all Fourth Division artillery, for the section held by the enemy had no longer constituted a practicable target area. The Fourteenth Marines fired their last round---the 156,000th on Iwo. (In 63 days of warfare in the Pacific, this Regiment fired a total of 350,000 rounds, for an average of 5,500 a day.) At 1800 on March 16, twenty-six days and nine hours after the first troops landed, Iwo was declared secured. The greatest battle in Marine Corps history was over. On March 19, the last units of the Division boarded ship, and on the following day, the convoy sailed for Maui.

The Division had paid a heavy price. Nine thousand and ninety eight men had become casualties, almost half the Division strength. Of these, 1,806 were killed in action. It had been a battle in which no quarter was given. An estimated 22,000 Japs had been killed by the three divisions, 8,982 having been counted in the Fourth's zone alone. Another thousand were believed sealed in caves or buried by the enemy. Only 44 prisoners had been taken by the Division.

But our sacrifice had been an incalculable step forward in the progress of the war. On March 4, Marines bad watched the first crippled B-29 settle down on Airfield No.1. In the following days the planes came in even greater numbers. (Within a few months, the Army announced that 1,449 Superforts, with crews totaling 15,938 men, had used Iwo as an emergency landing field.) Army P-51 Mustangs were based on Iwo even before the fighting stopped and soon were flying escort missions for the gigantic raids on Japan.

Looking back from the northern shores of the island, Marines could see the miraculous transformation that had taken place. The airfields had been repaired; and where the Japs had had dusty little trails, our Engineers had constructed broad, hard packed roads. Mountains of supplies, rows of tents, a few frame buildings, and hundreds of trucks, jeeps, bulldozers, cranes, and caterpillar tractors occupied what had been barren sand a few short weeks before. And yet Marines knew that their flesh, and blood, and sweat, told them that it was not these shields of steel that counted but the iron hearts that men had carried inside them. Our tanks and bulldozers and trucks were supported by the iron hearts of the men who fell in the sand where they fought, through with all battles.

There was one constant reminder of this: the row upon row of glistening white crosses and slabs that marked a tiny part of Iwo belonging to the dead. It seemed as if they had agreed to occupy this black and windswept bit of beach so that men's homes and country, their ideals, their hopes and aspirations as Americans, might be shared by the living.

[B]Casualties of the Division, Reinforced - IWO JIMA
Officers, Enlisted, Totals
Killed in Action 78 1384 1462
Died of Wounds 14 330 344
Wounded 292 7000 7292
Totals 384 8714 9098
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The 4th Marine Division was awarded 2 Presidential Unit Citations and one Navy Unit Commendation Streamer. Here are the individual medals awarded to the members of the Division.



MEDAL OF HONOR - Roi-Namur 4,Saipan-Tinian 2, Iwo Jima 6

NAVY CROSS - Roi-Namur 17,Saipan-Tinian 38, Iwo Jima 56

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL - Roi-Namur 1,Saipan-Tinian 2, Iwo Jima 1

SILVER STAR - Roi-Namur 60,Saipan-Tinian 288,Iwo Jima 298

LEGION OF MERIT - Roi-Namur 12,Saipan-Tinian 33,Iwo Jima 8

DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS - Roi-Namur 0,Saipan-Tinian 7,Iwo Jima 29

AIR MEDAL - Roi-Namur 4,Saipan-Tinian 15,Iwo Jima 84

NAVY-MARINE CORPS MEDAL - Roi-Namur 5,Saipan-Tinian 47,Iwo Jima 5

BRONZE STAR - Roi-Namur 45,Saipan-Tinian 1,110,Iwo Jima 1,362

PURPLE HEART - Roi-Namur 611,Saipan-Tinian 6,262,Iwo Jima 7,863
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This is a pic of my Dad.



This is a studio pic of some of my Dads Buddies. Unfortunately, i have no idea what their names are.
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