The Pacific (77 page)

The Fifth Marines moved into positions being vacated by the 105th and the 106th Infantry Regiments of the army's 27th Division. The 3/5 occupied the positions on the right of the line, the 2/5 took the left, and the 1/5 dug in behind them in reserve. Word passed through King Company that the Japanese had pinned these soldiers here for more than a week, which a few interpreted to mean that the doggies weren't trying hard enough.
⁵⁰⁰

Smoke rounds were fired to obscure the movement, but even as King Company rushed for the foxholes, incoming artillery and mortars began to cause casualties. Under fire and in a cold drizzle, the marines probably could not see that the army regiment they were replacing had been whittled down to the size of their 3rd Battalion.
⁵⁰¹
As his unit relieved one of the army units, R. V. Burgin heard one of the army sergeants give orders to one of his men. The soldier responded, "Go to hell. Do it yourself." That shocked him. Sergeant R. V. Burgin just could not believe his ears, or imagine a marine in #2 gun squad saying such a thing to him. It didn't matter. It was raining. The Japanese were dropping mortar rounds on them and word passed to the riflemen that tomorrow morning "we're going over this ridge. Keep running until you come to an embankment."
⁵⁰²

As the forward observer for his mortar platoon, Burgin got up where he could assess the situation. It was just like old times. " The japs had dug themselves into the high ground." They had perfect firing positions on the marines and they seemed to fire at any movement. The valley between the enemies had the familiar, ugly appearance of a no-man's-land. By the time they went to sleep under their ponchos, the men of the 3/5 had sustained fifteen casualties. The shelling, like the rain, continued intermittently that night.

The next morning a full barrage of U.S. artillery and naval gunfire hit the ridges in front of the Fifth Regiment. The battalions of artillery to the rear fired at the same time at the same spot, creating a new level of ferocity. While the other companies of 3rd Battalion spent the day consolidating their front lines, King Company's rifle platoons prepared to cross the field to the embankment on the far side. A patrol went forward to reconnoiter. It found a large "nip mortar" and its crew on the company's flank; Stumpy radioed back to his artillery, "Will you take care of them?"
⁵⁰³
The patrol soon had to run for it. Burgin's mortar squad began firing smoke rounds to cover their return. The task of the three 60mm mortars the next day would be similar: to support the assault platoons, first by obscuring the advance with some smoke, then by hitting the enemy's positions--if not to kill the defenders, then at least to get their heads down long enough for the riflemen to get close.

Another night passed for the marines dug into the dark earth of Okinawa. A ship offshore provided illumination for them. Once again they awoke to the cataclysmic violence of dozens of 105s and 155s destroying the ridges in front of them. At eight thirty a.m. that Wednesday morning, May 3, King's riflemen started across the field; Love Company failed to join them on time. Farther left, though, marines from the 2/5 were also charging. The riflemen had not taken many steps before enemy artillery shells and mortars began exploding around them. Much of the machinegun fire came at them from a bluff to their left, in front of the 2/5. From shell hole to shell hole they went. The forward elements made it to the embankment, which offered some protection from the direct fire weapons. Artillery and naval gunfire were requested. Two rocket trucks came up, prepared to unleash volleys of screaming fury.
⁵⁰⁴

Beyond the embankment, the riflemen started up the ridge. They had the most dangerous job, as in small fire teams they fought their way to the mouth of each cave by using bazookas, small arms, and machine guns. They had to get a flamethrower in a cave to clean it out, had to throw a satchel charge into it to seal the entrance. It was the old "blast, burn and bury" treatment they had perfected on Peleliu.

The mortar squads displaced forward in support of the advance. Burgin noticed a large earthen barrier, maybe thirty feet wide, had been built up in front of what he assumed was a cave. Every time a marine tried to move around this barrier, a machine gun opened up on him. The position was preventing them from moving forward. "I looked and I looked and I could not spot where that Japanese machine gun was coming from. I could hear it. I knew the general vicinity, but on the pinpointing, I couldn't pinpoint him." Burgin tried moving around to the right, thinking he might find defilade there and be able to spot the machine gun without being hit. As he came around the right side of the knob, the machine gunner "put two bullet holes in my dungarees in my left leg, and he put one bullet hole in my [dungarees'] right leg, between my knee and ankles." Burgin had not been hit, however, and he had seen the muzzle flash of the machine gun. So had Hank Boyes, who signaled Burgin with a new set of coordinates. The 60mm fired one round and Boyes called in an adjustment. The second round "must've hit directly between the jap and the machine gun, 'cause the jap went one way and the machine gun went the other way . . . so that took care of that one."

By early afternoon, the companies had advanced some three hundred yards and gained the high ground. It was an important step, allowing the battalions on the flanks also to advance. The enemy, however, unleashed a furious barrage. The flanking fire and the mortars soon made their position untenable. A small enemy "knee" mortar had gotten behind King's forward position and was firing at their backs. King Company men started to fall in rapid succession.
⁵⁰⁵
The shit had hit the fan. Marines retreated off the ridge. Love Company, to the left, fired a barrage of 81mm mortars and moved to retake the key point of it. King tried to support it, but fierce shelling stopped them. From somewhere behind them, Stumpy radioed Hank Boyes, the gunnery sergeant, to pull the company back. The 2/5 could not hold on either, and both units made a run for it as Burgin's men started dropping smoke bombs. Sergeant Hank Boyes could be seen on the top of the hundred-foot promontory, wearing a hat instead of a helmet, throwing smoke grenades to protect the stretcher bearers as they got the wounded out. They carried eighteen casualties with them, the bulk of the twenty casualties the 3/5 suffered that day.

Boyes was the last of the company to return.
⁵⁰⁶
He had a bullet hole in his cap and some shrapnel in his leg.
⁵⁰⁷
His company had lost another rifle platoon leader, a platoon sergeant, and nine riflemen. So far as Gene Sledge could tell, the whole attack had been "a disaster."
⁵⁰⁸
From the rear, marines brought up more ammo for his 60mm mortar. Among the men carrying the boxes was a captain who was a staff officer with the division HQ. Paul Douglas did not have to be running through a rice paddy to bring Sledge ammo. Some of the young marines thought he was a crazy old coot. Despite Douglas's gray hair and captain's bars, he carried more ammo and made more trips than the others.
⁵⁰⁹
No one was surprised. He had done the same on Peleliu.

King needed to reorganize its units. The next day it remained near the battalion aid station while Love and Item pushed forward, gaining the redoubt they had taken to calling Knob Hill in a ferocious firefight. Tanks were able to support their advance on the far side of the ridge. An air strike came in. Some of its rockets hit Item men. Toward the end of the day, King moved up to the rear of Item's position. Love and Item fought off a counterattack at about nine p.m. that evening, which seemed to break the resistance, because in the following two days they gained six hundred yards. King still took casualties, including two more second lieutenants who were hit a few yards from their foxholes. Hank Boyes happened to be nearby and tackled one of the wounded men, who was trying to run on his one leg, so that they could get some morphine into him and get him treated.

On the afternoon of May 5, King advanced to clean out the area on the battalion's left flank. On moves such as these, Burgin would go back to his mortar squads to make sure he was tied in properly. Positioning the mortars, under fire, could be difficult work. Burgin often found, when he came back to the mortar squad, it had set itself up in a bad spot. "For God sakes," he'd yell. "I want to show you something. Look at the terrain. Look where you're at." Bad positioning could "get your ass killed." Burgin ordered them to move. Moving the guns meant breaking them down, hauling them through the mud, and digging new foxholes and gun pits. Invariably, someone would grumble that "Scotty" (Lieutenant MacKenzie) had told them to set them up in that spot. Burgin said, " 'Scotty, we need to move this over here.' He never did argue with me." Scotty knew enough to listen. The rifle platoon called for a lot of smoke rounds that day.

The 3/5 spent three days mopping up their area. Flamethrowing tanks arrived to spread napalm on problem spots. Ahead of them, the USMC Corsairs dropped tons of napalm and the battalions of artillery battered the ridges. The shelling on May 8 featured one gigantic salvo by all available guns from artillery battalions and the navy ships, to honor the Victory in Europe. "I can't see how the beasts stand the terrific pounding we give them day and night," Sledge wondered. " They can't be human and are probably doped up to the fullest."
⁵¹⁰
In the meantime the marines used tanks and the M-7, a self-propelled 155mm howitzer, to clean out caves by firing point-blank into them. Riflemen had to accompany the vehicles to protect them from suicide squads armed with mines. The battalion lost thirty men in the process. Among the losses were men suffering from concussions caused by the endless explosions.
⁵¹¹

On the afternoon of May 9, after the big guns had done all they could do, King and Item moved forward into Awacha Draw. Burgin watched the riflemen move forward. Even after all of those fusillades, the enemy popped up and started returning fire. The IJA's mortars could not, Burgin reasoned, be in the cliff face. They had to be in some kind of declivity up on top, which might explain why ordnance expended against the faces of the ridges was not completely effective. He had an idea. "I made up my mind that I was gonna saturate that thing with 60 millimeter mortar shells."
⁵¹²

He got on the phone back to his mortar platoon and laid out his plan. The #1 gun would fire at a position on the left, then walk its barrage to the right. Snafu's #2 squad would aim fifteen yards farther at a position on the right and walk it to the left. The #3 would fire another fifteen yards farther south, and move left to right. When Burgin said he wanted each gun to fire twenty rounds, he heard his lieutenant, Scotty, get on the phone.

"Hell no, we're not gonna fire no twenty rounds--we don't have that much ammunition, you know, that could put us completely out of ammunition."

"Uh, yeah," Burgin said, "we are gonna fire that." Scotty, who was back with the mortars, began to bluster and Burgin would have none of it. "I finally told him if, uh, he was gonna do the damn observing, get his ass up there on the front line and not a hundred yards back, or let me do the observing."

"Well, Burgin, we just don't have the ammunition. I mean, we'll be completely out of ammunition," Scotty said.

Whereupon Burgin asked the switchboard to connect the call to the command post. When he heard someone pick up, he asked, "CP?"

"Yup."

"This is Burgin. Can you get me a hundred rounds of HE up here pronto?"

"It's on the way." Burgin addressed his mortar platoon, which was still on the line: "Fire at my command." The gun crews got their mortars' sights adjusted, gave their forward observer the prompt, and he unleashed the first salvo. Just after four p.m. King Company and Item Company moved out. They seized the crest of a ridge at the mouth of the Awacha Draw by seven p.m. They had their objective. Fire from the next ridge farther south halted them. It was time to dig in before it got dark.

Burgin could not wait to see what he had hit. Behind the ridge the ground sloped sharply down to a road that ran parallel with it. Behind the road, the ground rose back up another fifteen to twenty feet. The roadway, then, had complete defilade. The Japanese had set their mortars inside this deep cut, while their observers and riflemen manned positions on the ridge. The marines' artillery and the navy's shelling had been either hitting the front face of the ridge, where it did little good, or the shells went over and landed in the field behind the second fold of ridge. Burgin's 60mm rounds, however, had come straight down. More than fifty bodies lay on the road. He counted them.

The next morning the Fifth Marine Regiment began the assault on Dakeshi Ridge with the help of the Seventh Marines. The aircraft providing ground support dropped their bombs forty to fifty yards ahead of the 3/5's lines. King Company made a small advance; by doing so, they established the connection between the two regiments. The units that had closed with Dakeshi Ridge at midday found themselves pushed back that evening. Another twenty-nine men of the 3/5 had fallen, with little to show for it.

It was on a night like this that Burgin, Scotty MacKenzie, and a few others happened to share a foxhole. Burgin listened as Scotty and the others discussed the wounded and the dead. It was a common conversation. MacKenzie observed that a lot of the casualties were officers. Burgin said, "Yeah, the second lieutenants are worth about a dime a dozen when it comes to combat," because they get killed or wounded quickly. Junior officers weren't the only ones disappearing. King Company's first sergeant, W. R. Saunders, turned in sick without telling anyone. Gunnery Sergeant Boyes took on the task of going from foxhole to foxhole, "to get the muster and find out what happened to each missing man for the morning report."
⁵¹³

The Seventh Regiment pressed on to assault the heights of Dakeshi on May 11. The Fifth stayed where it was, giving its men some rest. The noise diminished and three days passed without observing the enemy. Everybody knew that bypassed Japanese could come out at night to attack unwary marines or that its artillery could find them. It was still better than being on the front. The following day Boyes sent Snafu back to the hospital to recover from a bad infection in his lungs.