War Stories II (53 page)

MAJOR GORDON GAYLE, USMC
1st Battalion, 7th Marines
Peleliu, Palau Islands
21 September 1944

When I joined the Marine Corps, it was the size of the New York City police force. When the war was over, the Corps was half a million strong.

We went to Guadalcanal in '42, came out of New Guinea in '43. We landed in New Britain and came out in May of '44. It was hot, but not as hot as Peleliu.

After we left New Britain and went down to Pavuvu, a ship came in with replacements. I went down to watch our people leave and watch the new people come off the ship, and the contrast was just mind-boggling. The veterans who were leaving to become the cadre of new units forming up were all thin, lean, sharp-eyed, and walked on their toes, and they were tan.

The new guys coming off the ship were relatively white and heavy, walking on their heels. It was really one of the more impressive experiences that I had during the war. It wasn't anything you could talk about, because you didn't want to tell the troops that they didn't look ready, but it made a terrific personal impression.

My battalion landed on Peleliu in support of the two assault battalions of the 5th Regiment. The 5th Regiment was to land with the 1st Marines on their left and 7th Marines on the right.

It didn't surprise me that we were going to have bitter resistance. Some of the naval officers seemed to think that their bombardment had destroyed everything there and, Colonel Puller was told by the captain of his ship, “I'll see you back here for dinner.”

I went ashore in an Amtrac. And as we went in, you could see other LVTs burning on the beach. You could see Marines lying on the beach, and a lot of pandemonium.

There were a lot of mines, and the Japanese had attempted to rig up log obstacles. The tetrahedrons were down on other beaches, but they weren't on our beach. The obstacles didn't create any particular problem of moving the tractors in or getting out of them and running to shore. It's just that there was a fair amount of fire.

I ordered my troops to move out as fast as they could. Our mission was to go through the two assault battalions and cross the airfield. And I told everybody, “Understand that the nice, comfortable trench that the Japanese dug alongside the airfield will be well registered by their guns, so don't go there.”

We expected the airfield to be defended in depth. And all of those expectations came true. We had been warned that they had tanks, and about mid-afternoon, the Japanese launched a tank and infantry attack across the airfield.

I was in a bomb crater with my intelligence officer. I said, “Send our tanks after them.” I had a platoon of five Sherman tanks, and I sent them into the fight. And they just knocked the Japanese tanks apart, literally.

We had to move as hard and fast as we could in the initial stages. As long as they were up on top of those ridges and looking down on us, we had to keep going.

The significant tactical mistake that was made there, in my judgment, is that the character of the battle changed from a maneuver battle to a siege. General Rupertus never recognized that.

He wanted us to hurry and finish it off. But we needed reserves, and we didn't have them.

You couldn't see those caves. The Japanese were in them on both sides, shooting down. You had to go in there with tanks and shoot them up, and that's what we finally wound up doing.

It became pretty clear that before we landed at Peleliu, somebody at the highest levels in Japan had made the decision to change their tactics. Instead of banzai attacks, they wanted their troops on Peleliu to dig in, hang tough, extract the maximum price, and get the best results that they could.

We captured thirteen Japanese military people out of 10,000. It was partially because of their stubbornness and how hard they resisted. They were tough fighters, and they obviously had a healthy respect for the Marines.

When we went up north, we ran into a hill that had been a mine and was full of Japanese. We had to capture that hill.

We had to get around it on the bottom and were being stopped by all the fire coming out of there. I prevailed upon Colonel Walt, who was executive officer of the regiment, to get a 155 mm gun, which we fired point-blank at 250 yards. We just pulverized the side of that hill and then we went in. That was the kind of fighting that had to be done. Fortunately, my regimental commander knew that. I never got pressured into charging some place where we weren't ready to go.

My battalion landed, covered, and then took the length of the airfield in two days. It took us a day to get across the causeway, which was 200 or 300 yards. Once we were on the other side, we advanced and covered that whole peninsula in the next two days with no opposition. But then when we got up to the north of the pocket, and started working down, if you made fifty yards in a day, you had a good day.

The final cleanup assignment took until 16 October, when they relieved us. My 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines was the last battalion engaged. The island was actually secured, in my judgment, as soon as we captured the north end. After that, the enemy had no more reinforcement
capability. Somebody suggested that we should simply run barbed wire, and designate “the pocket” as a POW enclosure. There was still the thought that the Marines ought to clean it out. And that's why the campaign continued for another ten days.

The debate over whether or not we needed to go to Peleliu is a very difficult one for me. I lost half my men and 60 percent of my officers there, so it's hard to think that maybe we didn't need to take the island.

1ST MARINE DIVISION
PELELIU, PALAU ISLANDS
19 SEPTEMBER 1944