_Col Franklin A. Hart, commander of the 24th Marines, briefs his staff
on the operation plan for the invasion of Roi-Namur. To his left is his
regimental executive officer, LtCol Homer L. Litzenberg, Jr. Both would
retire as general officers._]
Down in the lagoon the signal finally came to the assault waves, “Go on
in!” The two lead battalions of the 23d Marines headed for Roi, with
the two lead battalions of the 24th Marines churning towards Namur.
The memories of this run-in were burned forever into the mind of young
Second Lieutenant John C. Chapin, leading his platoon in the first wave:
By now everything was all mixed up, with our assault wave all
entangled with the armored tractors ahead of us. I ordered my
driver to maneuver around them. Slowly we inched past, as their
37mm guns and .50-cal. machine guns flamed. The beach lay right
before us. However, it was shrouded in such a pall of dust and
smoke from our bombardment that we could see very little of it. As
a result, we were unable to tell which section we were approaching
(after all our hours of careful planning, based on hitting the
beach at one exact spot!) I turned to talk to my platoon sergeant,
who was manning the machine gun right beside me. He was slumped
over--the whole right side of his head disintegrated into a mass
of gore. Up to now, the entire operation had seemed almost like a
movie, or like one of the innumerable practice landings we’d made.
Now one of my men lay in a welter of blood beside me, and the
reality of it smashed into my consciousness.
The landing then became a chaotic jumble of rapid events for that
officer and his men. There was a grinding crash to their right, and
looking over they saw an LVT collide at the water’s edge with an
armored tractor, climb on its side and hang there, crazily atilt.
Simultaneously, there was a grating sound under their tractor as they
hit the beach. Keeping low, the men slid over the side of the tractor
and dove for cover, for their LVT was a perfect target sitting there on
the sand. The lieutenant was the last one to drop to the deck, and as
he sprawled on the sand, the amtrac ground its way backwards into the
ocean.
Now the lieutenant faced his first combat in a situation that
characterized all the landing beaches. His intensive training stood him
in good stead as he took stock of the situation. Being in the first
scattered group of tractors ashore, his men had no contact yet with
any other unit, so the Japanese were on both sides of them--as well as
in front. One glance told him that they had landed on the west side of
Namur, 300 yards to the right of the spit of land that their company
had for its objective. The long hours of studying maps and aerial
photographs had proved their worth. The lieutenant’s account continued:
My immediate task was to reorganize my platoon, for it was
scattered along the beach. The noise, smoke, and choking pall of
burnt powder further complicated things. I turned to my sergeant
guide, as we lay there in the sand, and asked him where his men
were. He started to point and right before my eyes his hand
dissolved into a bloody stump. He rolled over, screaming “Sailor!
Sailor!” (This was our code name for a corpsman. Bitter past
experiences of the Marines had shown that the Japs delighted in
calling “corpsman” themselves, and then shooting anyone who showed
himself.) Soon our corpsman crawled over, and started to give the
sergeant first aid, so I turned my attention to more pressing
matters.
As yet the officer hadn’t seen a single Japanese, even though he was in
the midst of them. But now one of the men next to him gasped, “They’re
in there!,” pointing to a slit trench four feet away; the Marine raised
himself up to a crouching position and hurled his bayonetted rifle like
a javelin into the slit trench. There was heavy enemy fire coming at
the platoon, but it was almost impossible to determine its source. Ten
feet in front of the Marines, however, the Japanese had dug a series of
trenches running the length of the beach. Tied in with these trenches
were scores of machine gun positions and foxholes, mutually supporting
each other, all camouflaged so that they were invisible until a
Marine was right on top of them. Accordingly, as soon as the men of
the platoon would locate an emplacement, they would deluge it with
hand grenades, and then work on the next one. The lieutenant’s next
experience was almost his last:
At one point in this swirling maelstrom of action I was kneeling
behind a palm tree stump with my carbine on the deck, as I fished
for a fresh clip of bullets in my belt. Something made me look
up and there, not ten feet away, was a Jap charging me with his
bayonet. My hands were empty. I was helpless. The thought that
“this is it” flashed through my brain! Then shots chattered from
all sides of me. My men hit the running Jap in a dozen places. He
fell dead three feet from me.
Shortly after this, the squad with the Marine officer was working
on another Japanese emplacement. He pulled the pin from one of his
grenades, let the handle fly off, and started counting to three. (The
grenade’s fuse was timed to give a man about five seconds before it
exploded.) In the middle of his count, a Japanese started shooting at
him from the flank. Instinctively he turned to look for the enemy.
Then something in his mind clicked, “And what about that live grenade
in your hand?” Without looking, he threw it and dove for the deck. It
went off in mid-air and the fragments spattered all around him....
[Illustration: D-DAY in the NORTH]
[Illustration: _Artillerymen unload ordnance on D-Day for the
preparatory bombardment from the neighboring islets to pound targets
before the infantry attacks on Roi-Namur._
Department of Defense Photo (Army) 324729
]
Groups of Marines were forming now under their own initiative, and
beginning to work their way slowly inland. It was nearly impossible
to keep tight control of the platoon under these conditions, but the
lieutenant was moving with them, trying to get them coordinated as best
he could, when suddenly he dropped to the ground, stunned. He recalled:
My first reaction was that someone had hit my right cheek with a
baseball bat. With the shock, instinct made me cover my right eye
with my hand. Then I realized I’d been hit. Searing my mind came
the question, “When I take my hand away, will I be able to see?”
Slowly I lowered my arm and opened my eye. I could see! Relief
flooded through me. The wound was on my cheekbone, just below the
eye, and it was bleeding profusely, so I lay there and broke out my
first aid packet. After shaking sulfa powder into the wound rather
awkwardly, I bandaged my right eye and cheekbone as best I could.
The bullet had gone completely through my helmet just above my
right ear, and left a jagged, gaping hole in the steel. My left eye
was still functioning all right, however, so after a drink from my
canteen, I started forward again.
A little later I encountered another lieutenant from our company,
Jack Powers. He had been hit in the stomach, but was still
fighting. Crouching behind a concrete wall, he showed me a pillbox
about 25 feet away that was full of Japs who were still very much
alive and full of fight. This strong point commanded the whole area
around us and was holding up our advance very effectively. It was
about 50 feet long and 15 feet wide, constructed of double rows
of sand-filled oil drums. Grabbing the nearest men, we explained
our plan of attack and went to work. With a couple of automatic
riflemen, Jack covered the rear entrance with fire. Taking another
man and a high-explosive bangalore torpedo, I crawled around to the
front and observed for a few minutes. Then we inched our way up to
the slit that served as a front entrance, and I threw a grenade in
to keep down any Jap who might be inclined to poke a rifle out in
our faces.
Next we lighted the fuse on the bangalore, jammed it inside the
pillbox, and scrambled for shelter. The fuse was very short, we
knew, and we barely had tumbled into a nearby shell hole when
we were overwhelmed by the blast of the bangalore. Dirt sprayed
all over us, billowing acrid smoke blinded us, and the numbing
concussion deafened us. In a few moments we felt all right once
more, and a glance told us that we had closed that entrance
permanently. We worked our way back to where we’d left Jack Powers,
and found that he’d managed to locate a shaped charge of high
explosive in the meantime. Taking this, we repeated our job--this
time blowing the rear entrance shut.
That took care of that pillbox! Jack looked like he was in pretty
bad shape, and I urged him to go get some medical attention, but he
refused and moved on alone to the next Jap pillbox (where, I later
learned, he was killed in a single-handed heroic attack for which
he was awarded the Medal of Honor).
All over Namur there were similar examples of individual initiative.
They were needed, for the island was covered with dense jungle,
concrete fortifications, administrative buildings, and barracks. It
was difficult to mount an armored attack under these conditions.
Meanwhile, the Japanese used them to their fullest extent for cover and
concealment. Enemy resistance and problems of maintaining unit contact
slowed the Marines’ advance.
Amidst all of this, a Marine demolition team threw a satchel charge of
high explosive into a Japanese bunker which turned out to be crammed
with torpedo warheads. An enormous blast occurred. From off shore, an
officer watched as “the whole of Namur Island disappeared from sight
in a tremendous brown cloud of dust and sand raised by the explosion.”
Overhead, a Marine artillery spotter felt his plane catapult up 1,000
feet and exclaimed, “Great God Almighty! The whole damn island has
blown up!” On the beach another officer recalled that “trunks of
palm trees and chunks of concrete as large as packing crates were
flying through the air like match sticks.... The hole left where the
blockhouse stood was as large as a fair-sized swimming pool.” The
column of smoke rose to over 1,000 feet in the air, and the explosion
caused the deaths of 20 Marines and wounded 100 others in the area.
[Illustration: ROI-NAMUR ISLANDS