CHAPTER TEN
We boarded trucks and headed south over dusty roads. In this central portion of Okinawa we first passed many bivouacs of service troops and vast ammunition and supply dumps, all covered with camouflage netting. Next we came to several artillery positions. From the piles of empty brass shell cases, we knew they had fired a lot. And from the numerous shell craters gouged into the fields of grass, we could tell that the Japanese had thrown in plenty of counterbattery fire.
At some unmarked spot, we stopped and got off the trucks. I was filled with dread. We took up a single file on the right side of a narrow coral road and began walking south. Ahead we could hear the crash and thunder of enemy mortar and artillery shells, the rattle of machine guns, and the popping of rifles. Our own artillery shells whistled southbound.
“Keep your five-pace interval,” came an order.
We did not talk. Each man was alone with his thoughts.
Shortly a column of men approached us on the other side of the road. They were the army infantry from 106th Regiment, 27th Infantry Division that we were relieving. Their tragic expressions revealed where they had been. They were dead beat, dirty and grisly, hollow-eyed and tight-faced. I hadn't seen such faces since Peleliu.
As they filed past us, one tall, lanky fellow caught my eye and said in a weary voice, “It's hell up there, Marine.”
Nervous about what was ahead and a bit irritated that he might think I was a boot, I said with some impatience, “Yeah, I know. I was at Peleliu.”
He looked at me blankly and moved on.
We approached a low, gently sloping ridge where Company K would go into the line. The noise grew louder.
“Keep your five-pace interval; don't bunch up,” yelled one of our officers.
The mortar section was ordered off the road to the left in dispersed order. I could see shells bursting between us and the ridge. When we left the road, we severed our umbilical connection with the peaceful valley up north and plunged once more into the abyss.
As we raced across an open field, Japanese shells of all types whizzed, screamed, and roared around us with increasing frequency. The crash and thunder of explosions was a nightmare. Rocks and dirt clattered down after each erupting shell blew open a crater.
We ran and dodged as fast as we could to a place on a low gentle slope of the ridge and flung ourselves panting onto the dirt. Marines were running and crawling into position as soldiers streamed past us, trying desperately to get out alive. The yells for corpsmen and stretcher bearers began to be heard. Even though I was occupied with my own safety, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the battle-weary troops being relieved and trying not to get killed during those few critical minutes as they scrambled back out of their positions under fire.
Japanese rifle and machine-gun fire increased into a constant rattle. Bullets snapped and popped overhead. The shelling grew heavier. The enemy gunners were trying to catch men in the open to inflict maximum casualties on our troops running into and out of position—their usual practice when one of our units was relieving another on the line.
It was an appalling chaos. I was terribly afraid. Fear was obvious on the faces of my comrades, too, as we raced to the low slope and began to dig in rapidly. It was such a jolt to leave the quiet, beautiful countryside that morning and plunge into a thunderous, deadly storm of steel that afternoon. Going onto the beach to assault Peleliu and attacking across the airfield there, we had braced ourselves for the blows that fell. But the shock and shells of 1 May at Okinawa, after the reprieve of a pleasant April, caught us off balance.
Fear has many facets, and I do not minimize my fear and terror during that day. But it was different. I was a combat veteran of Peleliu. With terror's first constriction over, I knew what to expect. I felt dreadful fear but not nearpanic. Experience had taught me what to expect from the enemy guns. More important, I knew I could control my fear. The terrible dread that I might panic was gone. I knew that all anyone could do under shell fire was to hug the deck and pray—and curse the Japanese.
There was the brassy, metallic twang of the small 50mm knee mortar shells as little puffs of dirty smoke appeared thickly around us. The 81mm and 90mm mortar shells crashed and banged all along the ridge. The whiz-bang of the high-velocity 47mm gun's shells (also an antitank gun), which was on us with its explosion almost as soon as we heard it whizz into the area, gave me the feeling the Japanese were firing them at us like rifles. The slower screaming, whining sound of the 75mm artillery shells seemed the most abundant. Then there was the roar and rumble of the huge enemy 150mm howitzer shell, and the kaboom of its explosion. It was what the men called the big stuff. I didn't recall having recognized any of it in my confusion and fear at Peleliu. The bursting radius of these big shells was of awesome proportions. Added to all this noise was the swishing and fluttering overhead of our own supporting artillery fire. Our shells could be heard bursting out across the ridge over enemy positions. The noise of small-arms fire from both sides resulted in a chaotic bedlam of racket and confusion.
We were just below the crest of a low sloping section of the ridge. It was about ten feet high and on the left of our company's zone. Snafu and I began to dig the gun pit, and the ammo carriers dug in with two-man foxholes. Digging in Okinawa's claylike soil was easy, a luxury after the coral rock of Peleliu.
No sooner had we begun to dig in than terrible news arrived about mounting casualties in the company. The biggest blow was the word that Privates Nease and Westbrook had been killed. Both of these men were liked and admired by us all. Westbrook was a new man, a friendly curly-headed blond and one of the youngest married men in the outfit. I believe he wasn't yet twenty. Howard Nease was young in years but an old salt with a combat record that started at Cape Gloucester.
Many men were superstitious about one's chances of surviving a third campaign. By that time one's luck was wearing thin, some thought. I heard this idea voiced by Guadalcanal veterans who also had survived Gloucester and then struggled against the odds on Peleliu.
“Howard's luck just run out, that's all. Ain't no damn way a guy can go on forever without gittin’ hit,” gloomily remarked a Gloucester veteran who had joined Company K with Nease two campaigns before Okinawa.
We took the news of those deaths hard. Added to the stress of the day, it put us into an angry frame of mind as we dug in. Against whom should we pour out our anger while we were unable to fire at the enemy?
Most of us had finished digging in when we suddenly noticed that our pugnacious lieutenant, Mac, was still digging feverishly. He was excavating a deep one-man foxhole and throwing out a continuous shower of dirt with his entrenching shovel. While shells were still coming in, the fire had slackened a bit in our area. But Mac continued to burrow underground.
I don't know who started it, but I think it was Snafu who reminded Mac of his oft-repeated promise to charge the enemy line as soon as any of our guys got hit. Once the kidding began, several of us veterans chimed in and vigorously encouraged Mac to keep his promise.
“Now that Nease and Westbrook been killed, ain't it about time you took your kabar and .45 and charged them Nips, Mac?” Snafu asked.
Mac never stopped digging; he simply answered that he had to dig in. I told him I would lend him my kabar, but another man said with mock seriousness, “Naw, Sledgehammer, he might not be able to return it to you.”
“Boy, when Mac gets over to them Nips, he's gonna clean house, and this blitz gonna be a pushover,” someone else said.
But Mac only grunted and showed no inclination to charge the enemy—or to stop digging. He burrowed like a badger. Our jibes didn't seem to faze him. We kept our comments respectful because of his rank, but we gave it to him good for all the bravado and nonsense he had been mouthing off with ever since he joined the company.
“Mac, if you dig that hole much deeper they'll get you for desertion,” someone said.
“Yeah, my mom use'ta tell me back home if I dug a hole deep enough I'd come through to China. Maybe if you keep digging you'll get through to the States, and we can all crawl in there and go home, Mac,” came one comment accompanied by a grin.
Mac could hear us but was totally oblivious to our comments. It's hard to believe that we actually talked that way to a Marine officer, but it happened, and it was hilarious. He deserved every bit of it.
When he finally got his foxhole deep enough, he began laying wooden boards from ammo boxes over all of the top except for one small opening through which he could squirm. Then he threw about six inches of soil on top of the boards. We sat in our holes, watching him and the shelling to our right rear. When he had completed the cover over his hole, which actually made it a small dugout with limited visibility, Mac got in and proudly surveyed his work. He had been too occupied to pay much heed to us, but now he explained carefully to us how the boards with soil on top would protect him from shell fragments.
George Sarrett, who wasn't interested in the lecture, inched up the little slope several feet and peeped over the crest to see if there were any enemy troops moving around out front. He didn't look long, because a Japanese on the next ridge saw him and fired a burst from a machine gun that narrowly missed him. As the slugs came snapping over, George jerked his head down, lost his balance, slid back down the slope, and landed on top of Mac's dugout, causing the roof to cave in. The startled lieutenant jumped up, pushing boards and soil aside like a turtle rearing up out of a pile of debris.
“You ruined my foxhole!” Mac complained.
George apologized, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. The other men smirked and grinned. We never heard any more from Mac about charging the Japanese line with his kabar and .45 caliber pistol. That enemy shelling had one beneficial result: it dissolved his bravado.
We got our positions squared away for the night and ate some K rations, as well as one could with a stomach tied in knots. More details reached us about the loss of Nease, West-brook, and others killed and wounded. We regretted any American casualties, but when they were close friends it was terribly depressing. They were just the first of what was to grow into a long tragic list before we would come out of combat fifty hellish days later.*
Before dark we learned there would be a big attack the next morning all along the U.S. line. With the heavy Japanese fire poured onto us as we moved into that line, we dreaded the prospect of making a push. An NCO told us that our objective was to reach the Asato Gawa, a stream about 1,500 yards south of us that stretched inland and eastward to an area near the village of Dakeshi.
Rain ushered in a gloomy dawn. We were apprehensive but hopeful. There was some small-arms fire along the line, and a few shells passed back and forth during early morning. The rain slackened temporarily and we ate some K rations. On the folding pocket-sized tripod issued to us, I heated up a canteen cup of coffee with a sterno tablet. I had to hover over it to keep the rain from drowning it out.
As the seconds ticked slowly toward 0900, our artillery and ships’ guns increased their rate of fire. The rain poured down, and the Japanese took up the challenge from our artillery. They started throwing more shells our way, many of which passed over us and exploded far to our rear where our own artillery was emplaced.
Finally we received orders to open fire with our mortars. Our shells exploded along a defilade to our front. Our machine guns opened up in earnest. Our artillery, ships’ guns, and 81mm mortars increased the tempo to an awesome rate as the time for the attack approached. The shells whistled, whined, and rumbled overhead, ours bursting out in front of the ridge and the enemy's exploding in our area and to the rear. The noise increased all along the line. Rain fell in torrents, and the soil became muddy and slippery wherever we hurried around the gun pit to break out and stack our ammo.
I looked at my watch. It was 0900. I gulped and prayed for my buddies in the rifle platoons.
“Mortars cease firing and stand by.”
We were ready to fire or to take up the mortars at a moment's notice and move forward. Some of our riflemen moved past the crest of the ridge to attack. Noise that had been loud now grew into deafening bedlam. The riflemen hardly got out of their foxholes when a storm of enemy fire from our front and left flank forced them back. The same thing was happening to the battalions on our right and left.
The sound of the many machine guns became one incredible rattle against a thundering and booming of artillery. Rifles popped everywhere along the line, while Japanese slugs snapped over the low ridge behind which we lay. We fired some white phosphorous shells to screen our withdrawing troops. Just as we heard “Cease firing,” a Marine came running through the mud on the slope to our right, yelling, “The guys pulling back need a stretcher team from mortars!”
Three other mortarmen and I took off on the double after the messenger. With bullets snapping and popping overhead, we ran along for about forty yards, keeping just below the crest of the ridge. We came to a road cut through the ridge about eight feet below the crest; an officer told us to stand behind him until we were ordered to go out and bring in the casualty. This was the exact spot where Nease and Westbrook had been machine-gunned the day before. Japanese bullets were zipping and swishing through the cut like hail pouring through an open window.
A couple of Company K rifle squads were running back toward us from the abortive attack. They rushed along the road in small groups and turned right and left as soon as they got through the cut to get out of the line of fire. Incredibly, none got hit by the thick fire coming through the cut. I knew most of them well, although some of the new men not as well as the veterans. They all wore wild-eyed, shocked expressions that showed only too vividly they were men who had barely escaped chance's strange arithmetic. They clung to their Mls, BARs, and Tommy guns and slumped to the mud to pant for breath before moving behind the ridge toward their former foxholes. The torrential rain made it all seem so much more unbelievable and terrible.
I hoped fervently that we wouldn't have to step out into that road to pick up a casualty. I felt ashamed for thinking this, because I knew full well that if I were lying out there wounded, my fellow Marines wouldn't leave me. But I didn't see how anyone could go out and get back now that the volume of fire was so intense; since most of our attacking troops had fallen back, the Japanese could concentrate their fire on the stretcher teams as I had seen them do at Peleliu. They showed medical personnel no mercy.
Our company gunnery sergeant, Hank Boyes, was the last man through the cut. He made a quick check of the men and announced—to my immense relief—that everyone had made it back; casualties had been brought back farther down the line where the machine-gun fire hadn't been as heavy.
Boyes was amazing. He had dashed out to the men pinned down in front of the ridge, where he threw smoke grenades to shield them from the Japanese fire. He returned with a hole shot through his dungaree cap (he wasn't wearing his helmet) and another through his pants leg. He had been hit in the leg with fragments from a Japanese knee mortar shell but refused to turn in.*
The officer told us we wouldn't be needed as stretcher bearers and to return to our posts. As we took off on the double to the gun pits, the shells kept up their heavy traffic back and forth, but the bullets began to slacken off somewhat with all our men by then under cover of the ridge. I jumped into the gun pit, and my temporary replacement hurried back to his hole.*
We crouched in our foxholes in the pouring rain, cursing the Japanese, the shells, and the weather. The enemy gunners poured fire into our company area to discourage another attack. Word came down the line that all attacking Marine units had suffered considerable casualties, so we would remain inactive until the next day. That suited us fine. The Japanese shelling continued viciously for some time. We all felt depressed about the failure of the attack and we still didn't know how many friends we had lost, an uncertainty that always bore down on every man after an attack or fire fight.
From the gun pit, which contained several inches of water, we looked out on a gloomy scene. The rain had settled into a steady pelting that promised much misery. Across the muddy fields we saw our soaked comrades crouching forlornly in their muddy holes and ducking, as we did, each time a shell roared over.
This was my first taste of mud in combat, and it was more detestable than I had ever imagined. Mud in camp on Pavuvu was a nuisance. Mud on maneuvers was an inconvenience. But mud on the battlefield was misery beyond description. I had seen photographs of World War I troops in the mud—the men grinning, of course, if the picture was posed. If not posed, the faces always wore a peculiarly forlorn, disgusted expression, an expression I now understood. The air was chilly and clammy, but I thanked God we weren't experiencing this misery in Europe where the foxholes were biting cold as well as wet.
The shelling finally subsided, and things got fairly quiet in our area. We squatted thankfully in our holes and grumbled about the rain. The humid air hung heavily with the chemical odor of exploded shells.
Shortly, to our left rear, we saw a Marine stretcher team bringing a casualty back through the rain. Instead of turning left behind the ridge we were on, or right behind the one farther across the field, the team headed straight back between the two low ridges. This was a mistake, because we knew the Japanese could still fire on that area.
As the stretcher team approached the cover of some trees, Japanese riflemen to our left front opened up on them. We saw bullets kicking up mud and splashing in the puddles of water around the team. The four stretcher bearers hurried across the slippery field. But they couldn't go faster than a rapid walk, or the casualty might fall off the stretcher.
We requested permission to fire 60mm phosphorous shells as a smoke screen (we were too far away to throw smoke grenades to cover the stretcher team). Permission was denied. We weren't allowed to fire across our company front because of the possibility of hitting unseen friendly troops. Thus we watched helplessly as the four stretcher bearers struggled across the muddy field with bullets falling all around them. It was one of those terribly pathetic, heartrending sights that seemed to rule in combat: men struggling to save a wounded comrade, the enemy firing at them as fast as they could, and the rest of us utterly powerless to give any aid. To witness such a scene was worse than personal danger. It was absolute agony.
To lighten their loads, the four carriers had put all of their personal equipment aside except for a rifle or carbine over their shoulders. Each held a handle of the stretcher in one hand and stretched out the other arm for balance. Their shoulders were stooped with the weight of the stretcher. Four hel-meted heads hung low like four beasts of burden being flogged. Soaked with rain and spattered with mud, the dark green dungarees hung forlornly on the men. The casualty lay inert on the narrow canvas stretcher, his life in the hands of the struggling four.
To our dismay, the two carriers in the rear got hit by a burst of fire. Each loosened his grip on the stretcher. Their knees buckled, and they fell over backwards onto the muddy ground. The stretcher pitched onto the deck. A gasp went up from the men around me, but it turned almost immediately into roars of relief. The two Marines at the other end of the stretcher threw it down, spun around, and grabbed the stretcher casualty between them. Then each supported a wounded carrier with his other arm. As we cheered, all five assisted one another and limped and hobbled into the cover of the bushes, bullets still kicking up mud all around them. I felt relief and elation over their escape, matched only by a deepened hatred for the Japanese.
Before nightfall we received information that Company K would push again the next day. As the rain slowly diminished and then ceased, we made our grim preparations.
While receiving extra ammo, rations, and water, I saw our company officers and NCOs gathering nearby. They stood or squatted around the CO, talking quietly. Our company commander was obviously in charge, giving orders and answering questions. The senior NCOs and the veteran officers stood by with serious, sometimes worried expressions as they listened. Those of us in the ranks watched their familiar faces carefully for signs of what was in store for us.
The faces of the replacement lieutenants reflected a different mood. They showed enthusiastic, animated expressions with eyebrows raised in eager anticipation of seeing the thing through like a successful field problem at OCS in Quantico. They were very conscientious and determined to do their best or die in the effort. To me, those young officers appeared almost tragic in their naive innocence and ignorance of what lay ahead for us all.
The new officers bore a heavy burden. Not only were they going into combat with all its terrors and unknowns for the first time—conditions even the best of training couldn't possibly duplicate—but they were untried officers. Combat was the acid test. Faced with heavy responsibilities and placed in a position of leadership amid hardened, seasoned Marine combat veterans in a proud, elite division like the First was a difficult situation and a terrific challenge for any young lieutenant. No one I knew in the ranks envied them in the least.
During the course of the long fighting on Okinawa, unlike at Peleliu, we got numerous replacement lieutenants. They were wounded or killed with such regularity that we rarely knew anything about them other than a code name and saw them on their feet only once or twice. We expected heavy losses of enlisted men in combat, but our officers got hit so soon and so often that it seemed to me the position of second lieutenant in a rifle company had been made obsolete by modern warfare.
After the CO dismissed his junior officers, they returned to their respective platoons and briefed the troops about the impending push. Mac was crisp and efficient in his orders to Burgin and the rest of the mortar section NCOs. In turn they told us what to prepare for. (It was good to see Mac divested of his cockiness.) We would get maximum support from heavy artillery and other weapons; casualties would be given swift aid. So we prepared our equipment and waited nervously.
A friend came over from one of the rifle platoons that was to be in the next day's assault. We sat near the gun pit on our helmets in the mud and had a long talk. I lit my pipe and he a cigarette. Things were quiet in the area, so we were undisturbed for some time. He poured out his heart. He had come to me because of our friendship and because I was a veteran. He told me he was terribly afraid about the impending attack. I said everybody was. But I knew he would be in a more vulnerable position than some of us, because his platoon was in the assault. I did my best to cheer him up.
He was so appalled and depressed by the fighting of the previous day that he had concluded he couldn't possibly survive the next day. He confided his innermost thoughts and secrets about his parents and a girl back home whom he was going to marry after the war. The poor guy wasn't just afraid of death or injury—the idea that he might never return to those he loved so much had him in a state of near desperation.
I remembered how Lt. Hillbilly Jones had comforted and helped me through the first shock of Peleliu, and I tried to do the same for my friend. Finally he seemed somewhat relieved, or resigned to his fate, whatever it might be. We got up and shook hands. He thanked me for our friendship, then walked slowly back to his foxhole.
There was nothing unique in the conversation. Thousands like it occurred every day among infantrymen scheduled to enter the chaos and inferno of an attack. But it illustrates the value of camaraderie among men facing constant hardship and frequent danger. Friendship was the only comfort a man had.
It seems strange how men occupied themselves after all weapons and gear had been squared away for an impending attack. We had learned in boot camp that no pack straps should be left with loose ends dangling (any such loose straps on a Marine's pack were called “Irish pennants”—why Irish I never knew—and resulted in disciplinary action or a blast from the drill instructor). So, from pure habit I suppose, we carefully rolled up the loose straps and shaped up our packs. There was always a bit of cleaning and touching up to be done on one's weapon with the toothbrush most of us carried for that purpose. A man could always straighten up his lacings on his leggings, too. With such trivia, doomed men busily occupied themselves, as though when they got up and moved forward out of their foxholes it would be to an inspection rather than to oblivion.
We were partially successful with our attack on 3 May. The knockout of the Japanese heavy machine gun by our mortars the previous day helped our company's advance to the next low ridgeline. But we couldn't hold the hills. Heavy enemy machine-gun and mortar fire drove us back about a hundred yards. Thus we gained about three hundred yards for the entire day.
We moved into a quiet area back of the front lines well before dark. Word came that because of heavy casualties over the past two days’ fighting, Company K would go into battalion reserve for a while. We dug in around the battalion aid station for its defense.
Our casualties were still coming back from the afternoon's action as we moved into position. Much to my joy I saw the friend with whom I'd had the conversation the night before. He wore a triumphant look of satisfaction, shook hands with me heartily, and grinned as a stretcher team carried him by with a bloody bandage on his foot. God or chance— depending on one's faith—had spared his life and lifted his burden of further fear and terror in combat by awarding him a million-dollar wound. He had done his duty, and the war was over for him. He was in pain, but he was lucky. Many others hadn't been as lucky the last couple of days.
COUNTERATTACK
We settled into our holes for the night, feeling more at ease off the line and in a quiet area. My foxhole partner had the first watch, so I dropped off to sleep, confident that we would have a fairly quiet night. I hadn't slept long before he woke me with, “Sledgehammer, wake up. The Nips are up to something.” Startled, I awoke and instinctively unholstered my .45 automatic.
I heard a stern order from an NCO, “Stand by for a ram, you guys. One hundred percent alert!”
I heard heavy artillery and small-arms firing up on the line. It seemed to come mostly from the area beyond our division's left flank where army troops were located. The firing directly forward had increased, too. Our artillery shells swished overhead in incredible numbers. It wasn't just the usual harassing fire against the Japanese; there was too much of it for that.
“What's the dope?” I asked nervously.
“Beats me,” said my buddy, “but something sure the hell's going on up on the line. Nips probably pulling a counterattack.”
From the increasing fire, enemy as well as friendly, it was obvious something big was happening. As we waited in our holes hoping to get word about what was going on, heavy machine-gun and mortar fire broke out abruptly some distance to our right, to the rear of where the 1st Marines’ line reached the sea. From our little mound we saw streams of American machine-gun tracers darting straight out to sea under the eerie light of 60mm mortar flares. That could only mean one thing. The enemy was staging an amphibious attack, trying to come ashore behind the right flank of the 1st Marines, which was the right-hand regiment on the 1st Marine Division's line.
“The Nips must be pullin’ a counterlanding, and the 1st Marines’ givin’ 'em hell,” someone said tensely.
Could our comrades in the 1st Marine Regiment stop that attack? That was the question on everyone's mind. But one man said confidently in a low voice, “The 1st Marines'll tear their ass up, betcha.” We hoped he was right. With no more than we knew, it was clear that if the Japanese got ashore on our right flank and counterattacked heavily on our left and front, our entire division might be isolated. We sat and listened apprehensively in the darkness.
As if things didn't seem grim enough, the next order came along. “Stand by for possible Jap paratroop attack! All hands turn to. Keep your eyes open.”
My blood felt like icewater throughout my body, and I shuddered. We weren't afraid of Japanese paratroopers as such. They couldn't be any tougher to deal with than veteran Japanese infantry. But the fear of being cut off from other U.S. troops by having the enemy land behind us filled us with dread. Most nights on Peleliu we had to keep a sharp lookout to front, rear, right, and left. But that night on Okinawa we had to scan even the dark sky for signs of parachutes.
We lived constantly with the fear of death or maiming from wounds. But the possibility of being surrounded by the enemy and wounded beyond the point of being able to defend myself chilled my soul. They were notorious for their brutality.
A couple of Japanese planes flew over during the night (we recognized the sound of the engines), and I experienced a dread I had never known before. But they passed on without dropping parachutists. They were bombers or fighters on their way to attack our ships lying offshore.
The Japanese and American artillery fire to our left front rumbled and roared on and on with frightening intensity, drowning out the rattle of machine guns and rifles. To our right, elements of the 1st Marine Regiment kept up their small-arms and mortar fire out to sea for quite some time. We heard scattered rifle fire far to our rear. This was disturbing, but some optimist said it was probably nothing more than trigger-happy, rear-echelon guys firing at shadows. Rumors passed that some enemy soldiers had broken through the army's line on our left. It was a long night made worse by the uncertainty and confusion around us. I suffered extremely mixed emotions: glad on the one hand to be out of the fighting, but anxious for those Americans catching the fury of the enemy's attack.
At first light we heard Japanese planes attacking our ships and saw the fleet throwing up antiaircraft fire. Despite the aerial attack, the ships’ big guns began heavy firing against the Japanese on land. Toward our right and rear, the firing of our infantry units slackened. We learned that radio messages indicated the 1st Marines had slaughtered hundreds of Japanese in the water when they tried a landing behind our division's flank. The sound of scattered firing told us some enemy had slipped ashore, but the major threat was over.
Our artillery increased its support fire to our front, and we were told that our division would attack during the day. We would remain in position, however—an order we found most agreeable.
Word came that the army troops on our left had held off the main Japanese attack, but things were still grim in that area. Some enemy had gotten through, and others were still attacking. While ⅗ remained in reserve, the 1st Marine Division began its attack to our front, and we heard that the opposition was ferocious. We received orders to be on the lookout for any enemy that might have slipped around the division's flank during the night. There were none.
There was a massive enemy air attack against our fleet at this time. We saw a kamikaze fly through a thick curtain of flak and crash-dive into a cruiser. A huge white smoke ring rose thousands of feet into the air. We heard shortly that it was the cruiser USS Birmingham that had suffered considerable damage and loss of life among her crew.
The Japanese counterattack of 3-4 May was a major effort aimed at confusing the American battle plan by isolating and destroying the 1st Marine Division. The Japanese made a night amphibious landing of several hundred men on the east coast behind the 7th Infantry Division. Coordinated with that landing was another on the west coast behind the 1st Marine Division. The Japanese plan called for the two elements to move inland, join up, and create confusion to the rear while the main counterattack hit the American center.
The Japanese 24th Infantry Division concentrated its frontal attack on the boundary between the American army's 7th and 77th Infantry divisions. The enemy planned to send a separate brigade through the gap in the American lines created by the 24th Division's attack, swing it to the left behind the 1st Marine Division, and hit the Marines as the Japanese 62d Infantry Division attacked the 1st Marine Division s front.
If the plan succeeded, the enemy would isolate and destroy the 1st Marine Division. It failed when the two American army divisions stopped the frontal assault, except for a few minor penetrations, with more than 6,000 Japanese dead counted. At the same time, the 1st Marines (on the right of the 1st Marine Division) discovered the enemy landing on the west coast. They killed over 300 enemy in the water and on the beach.
* The 27th Infantry Division had been in action since 15 April. It had suffered heavily in the attacks of 19 April in capturing Kakazu Ridge, Machinato Airfield, and the surrounding area. After the 1st Marine Division relieved it, the 27th Infantry Division went north for patrolling and guard duty.
*Gy. Sgt. Henry A. Boyes was a former dairy farmer from Trinidad, California. He fought with K/⅗ at Cape Gloucester and landed on Peleliu as a squad leader. He won a Silver Star there and became a platoon sergeant after the assault on Ngesebus. Wounded during the fighting around the Five Sisters, he was evacuated, but returned in time for the landing on Okinawa. Wounded early in May he refused evacuation and became first sergeant of Company K. After the company commander, 1st Lt. Stumpy Stanley, was evacuated in late May with malaria, Boyes shared the primary leadership role with 1st Lt. George Loveday A powerfully built man, Hank Boyes was stern but compassionate. No matter how low morale got, he was always there inspiring like some inexhaustible dynamo. Today he and his family run a successful logging and cattle business in Australia.
* At some time during the attack, Burgin ran out and exposed himself to heavy machine-gun fire from a weapon that no one could locate. He called back a fire mission to the mortars after he spotted the machine gun. Our mortar fire hit on target and knocked out the gun. Burgin won a Bronze Star for his actions.