War Stories II (45 page)

LIEUTENANT DEAN LADD, USMC
Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll
21 November 1943
0845 Hours Local

We knew we were moving out; we didn't know where until about the first of October 1942. We were put into the line battalions and started training as a unit against snipers and the things that we'd learned from what was going on in Guadalcanal. In the process, I went to Officers' School, which they did with a lot of us who had combat experience to see if we had the necessary leadership ability in high-stress situations. Many of the NCOs became officers. I was one of those. As corporal I got a field commission and a week or two later we got the mission to go to Guadalcanal.

I joined a green unit that hadn't been in combat. We were there on Guadalcanal three months. We made our last drive to shove the Japanese off the island as they started to withdraw. They fought a real rear guard action. We were just continually being whittled down. A lot of it was from sickness, malaria. I had four men killed and three wounded on Guadalcanal. When we finally drove the Japanese off the island, we had no idea what our next mission was going to be.

I was twenty-two, almost twenty-three. I was leading guys who were seventeen, eighteen. Some had joined the Marine Corps when they were sixteen, having lied about their age.

The Japanese decided that Tarawa was going to be defended. They brought in a lot of concrete, cut down coconut trees, and put in some of the thickest-walled bunkers you can imagine. They put in eight-inch naval turret guns. They had rifle pits and a seawall all the way around made of coconut logs that were about four feet high. And then, spaced between the riflemen in the pits, were hundreds of machine guns. Well, we were led to believe that our naval gunfire would pretty well obliterate that place. But it didn't.

As we got into our LCVPs, each holding a platoon—roughly thirty men—we didn't have any communication. Because of the disruption, we didn't get the final word of where we were to land until our battalion commander came by in his LCVP and said, “We're landing on Red Beach Two,” which turns out was the worst one—it was right in the crossfire.

I was the first one out when we got to the reef, yelling, “Come on, let's go, follow me.” And I start wading as fast as I could. I looked back and the men were kind of slow getting out, a little reluctant. I said, “Come on, let's go,” a couple more times and then the next thing I know, I'm hit. The Japanese got me with a machine gun, firing at us from the right flank. I was around 600 yards out in the water when I was hit very seriously in the abdomen. And course nobody's supposed to stop for the wounded. Everybody's got to keep going. But one of my men, Private Sullivan, started to drag me over to one of these landing craft where the ramp was down. Eddie Albert, the famous movie actor, had brought one of the LCVPs to pick up the wounded. There were about twenty or more of us already hit.
Guys still in the water shoved us up over the ramp, and we rolled down inside, and I was in agony by that time. And someone says, “You're gonna make it.”

I was the first one on the operating table on the
Sheridan
. There were two surgeons, and the one who operated on me had been an abdominal specialist at the Mayo Clinic. What a fortunate chain of events: One of my men disobeyed orders and dragged me to safety, Eddie Albert was there to take me to the ship, and a surgeon who was an abdominal specialist at the Mayo Clinic was there to treat me. Amazing!

BETIO ISLAND, TARAWA ATOLL
21 NOVEMBER 1943
0900 HOURS LOCAL

CORPORAL HARRY NIEHOFF, USMC
Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll
22 November 1943
1120 Hours Local

When I was at Tarawa I was considered a combat engineer, attached to a line company with the 8th Marines. I had a flame-throwing demolition team of five members. We were to do whatever the 8th Marines wanted us to take care of.

My primary job was demolition but I also trained on the flame-thrower. We used diesel fuel as the main fuel instead of gasoline. Then you had the igniter, just like a cigarette lighter. When you pressed that igniter, the air pressure in the middle tank forced the diesel fuel through and you had ignition. A huge flame bellowed out.

Later in the war, when they developed napalm, they took that and mixed fuel with the napalm gelatin, and that's where you got the straight shots coming out rather than the billowing flame. But at Tarawa, we used strictly the diesel.

I had never heard of Tarawa before. It was something brand-new to me. It was just another atoll in the Pacific Islands.

When we arose on D-Day, we heard the bombardment already taking place. As time went on and daylight came, it was quite clear, and then the big battleships started to let go. We could really hear them—they made a noise all their own. It was quite impressive.

When we approached, we all looked at what we could see of the island. All you could see was just a little dark streak on the horizon. And you'd see all the smoke coming up and the bombs and shells hitting it. Someone said, “Boy, they're really getting it! There won't be anybody left. They'll sink the island.”

Then all of a sudden we started to hear the whine of the shells coming toward us.

We had a job on our hands. I think everybody must have thought, “I don't know about this trip. This is going to be a tough one.” And when we
got there almost all of the Marines who had landed earlier were killed, and we were killing Japanese in hand-to-hand combat.

I was originally assigned to F Company. But the Amtrac landed at the wrong place and I ended up with E Company. I tried to find F Company, but they had all been shot. There was no unit there!

All the officers had already been killed. I was told, “When you come ashore, you'll be assigned to this platoon. Your job is to take care of that bunker.”

We found out later that “that bunker” provided the electricity for the island. So I thought that was going to be my team's job, so we went right to it and tried to figure out what to do. Well you couldn't go around the right side or the left side.

There was only one way and that was to go straight up. The bunker was twenty-five or thirty feet high. And it was covered with sand, so if you tried to climb up the side of the bunker, which we were trying, the sand would just cascade out from under you and you'd start sliding down.

Lieutenant Alex Bonnyman, who led the Pioneer Platoon, had been there since the day before. He rallied us and tried to help us. He knew what we were trying to do. He said that they needed to get that bunker taken. But it was still a barrier. No one could get over or around it.

Behind the bunker was a Japanese command post. So there was a lot of manpower and a lot of rifles. So any move you made around there, somebody was sure to pick you off. And then Lieutenant Bonnyman yelled out for everybody to go over to the top. He was next to me and turned around to yell to get more demolitions. At that moment he was hit, and he fell dead. I expected to be hit next because we were side by side.

I was out of ammunition and demolitions. So I came back down, went over to the supply point, picked up some TNT, and came back to the bunker. I was prepared to charge and a major said, “I want you to be careful, that Jap's already killed five men.”

My hair stood straight up on the back of my neck. I got down alongside the pillbox and we made our charges with four blocks of TNT. Each
block was just about two and a half inches square by five inches long, so I had a five-inch square package of TNT taped together.

I lit the fuse. When I reached around to push it through the rifle slot, I found out the rifle slot was only about three inches wide. But I had a package that was five inches square and I didn't know what to do with it except drop it and take cover. The charge didn't kill the man in the bunker, but it opened up the slot. And before I knew it, one of my men came up beside me and put another charge in. That took care of it.

The devastation on Tarawa was quite horrific. Crossfire went in every direction. Troops who went in got shot at from the front and from the side. The men were just dying by the hundreds. We had dead and wounded Marines in the water. We had the wounded on the beaches that we couldn't get to. There was no way to get them. If you went out to try to help them, which many of the Marines did, you might wind up being shot yourself. But the guys did it anyway. They would try to get anybody they could.

Tarawa was really the worst.