_A Marine dashes past a fallen Japanese killed a short time earlier,
all the while himself a target of searching enemy fire, during heavy
fighting in the north._]
The 4th Marine Division finally seized Hill 382, the highest point
north of Suribachi, but continued to take heavy casualties moving
through The Amphitheater against Turkey Knob. The 5th Division overran
Nishi Ridge, then bloodied itself against Hill 362-A’s intricate
defenses. Said Colonel Thomas A. Wornham, commanding the 27th Marines,
of these defenses: “They had interlocking bands of fire the likes of
which you never saw.” General Cates redeployed the 28th Marines into
this slugfest. On 2 March a Japanese gunner fired a high-velocity shell
which killed Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson immediately, one week
after his glorious seizure of Suribachi’s summit. The 28th Marines
captured Hill 362-A at the cost of 200 casualties.
On the same day Lieutenant Colonel Lowell E. English, commanding the
2d Battalion, 21st Marines, went down with a bullet through his knee.
English was bitter. His battalion was being rotated to the rear. “We
had taken very heavy casualties and were pretty well disorganized. I
had less than 300 men left out of the 1200 I came ashore with.” English
then received orders to turn his men around and plug a gap in the front
lines. “It was an impossible order. I couldn’t move that disorganized
battalion a mile back north in 30 minutes.” General Erskine did not
want excuses. “You tell that damned English he’d better be there,” he
told the regimental commander. English fired back, “You tell that son
of a bitch I will be there, and I was, but my men were still half a
mile behind me and I got a blast through the knee.”
On the left flank, the 26th Marines mounted its most successful, and
bloodiest, attack of the battle, finally seizing Hill 362-B. The
day-long struggle cost 500 Marine casualties and produced five Medals
of Honor. For Captain Frank C. Caldwell, commanding Company F, 1st
Battalion, 26th Marines, it was the worst single day of the battle. His
company suffered 47 casualties in taking the hill, including the first
sergeant and the last of the original platoon commanders.
Overall, the first nine days of the V Amphibious Corps drive north had
produced a net gain of about 4,000 yards at the staggering cost of
7,000 American casualties. Several of the pitched battles--Airfield
No. 2, Hill 382, Hill 362-B, for example--would of themselves warrant
a separate commemorative monograph. The fighting in each case was as
savage and bloody as any in Marine Corps history.
[Illustration: _“Fire in the Hole,” an acrylic painting on untempered
masonite by Col Charles H. Waterhouse, reflects the extensive use of
TNT to blast Japanese caves._
Marine Corps Combat Art Collection
]
This was the general situation previously described at the unsuspected
“turning point” on 4 March (D+13) when, despite sustaining frightful
losses, the Marines had chewed through a substantial chunk of
Kuribayashi’s main defenses, forcing the enemy commander to shift his
command post to a northern cave. This was the afternoon the first
crippled B-29 landed. In terms of American morale, it could not have
come at a better time. General Schmidt ordered a general standdown on
5 March to enable the exhausted assault forces a brief respite and the
opportunity to absorb some replacements.
[Illustration: