_From the viewpoint of Marine company commanders, having their own
“artillery,” in the form of 60mm mortars, was a very satisfying matter.
A 60mm mortar crew is at work, in a natural depression, lobbing round
after round at enemy positions._]
General Erskine came down with pneumonia during this period, but
refused to be evacuated. Colonel Robert E. Hogaboom, his chief of
staff, quietly kept the war moving. The division continued to advance.
When Erskine recovered, Hogaboom adjusted accordingly; the two were a
highly effective team.
Erskine had long sought the opportunity to conduct a battalion-sized
night operation. It rankled him that throughout the war the Americans
seemed to have conceded the night to the Japanese. When Hill 362-C
continued to thwart his advance, Erskine directed a pre-dawn advance
devoid of the trappings of prep fires which always seemed to identify
the time and place of attack. The distinction of making this unusual
assault went to Lieutenant Colonel Harold C. “Bing” Boehm, commanding
the 3d Battalion, 9th Marines. Unfortunately this battalion was new
to this particular sector and received the attack order too late
the previous day to reconnoiter effectively. The absence of advance
orientation notwithstanding, the battalion crossed the line of
departure promptly and silently at 0500 and headed for Hill 362-C. The
unit attained total surprise along its axis of advance. Before the
sleepy Japanese knew it, the battalion had hurried across 500 yards of
broken ground, sweeping by the outposts and roasting the occasional
strongpoint with flamethrowers. Then it was Boehm’s turn to be
surprised. Daylight revealed his battalion had captured the wrong hill,
an intermediate objective. Hill 362-C still lay 250 yards distant; now
he was surrounded by a sea of wide-awake and furiously counterattacking
Japanese infantry. Boehm did what seemed natural: he redeployed his
battalion and attacked towards the original objective. This proved
very rough going and took much of the day, but before dark the 3d
Battalion, 9th Marines stood in sole possession of Hill 362-C, one of
Kuribayashi’s main defensive anchors.
Boehm’s success, followed shortly by General Senda’s costly
counterattack against the 4th Marine Division, seemed to represent
another turning point of the battle. On D+18 a patrol from the 3d
Marine Division reached the northeast coast. The squad leader filled
a canteen with salt water and sent it back to General Schmidt marked
“For inspection--not consumption.” Schmidt welcomed the symbolism.
The next day the 4th Marine Division finally pinched out Turkey
Knob, moving out of The Amphitheater towards the east coast. The end
seemed tantalizingly close, but the intensity of Japanese resistance
hardly waned. Within the 5th Marine Division’s zone in the west, the
2d Battalion, 26th Marines, was reporting an aggregate casualty rate
approaching 70 percent. General Rockey warned of a state of “extreme
exhaustion and fatigue.”
The division commanders began to look elsewhere for relief of their
shot-up battalions. In the 4th Marine Division, General Cates formed
a provisional battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Melvin L. Krulewitch
which conducted a series of attacks against the many bypassed enemy
positions. The term “mopping up” as applied to Iwo Jima, whether
by service troops or subsequent Army garrison units, should be
considered relative. Many pockets of Japanese held out indefinitely,
well-armed and defiant to the end. Rooting them out was never easy.
Other divisions used cannoneers, pioneers, motor transport units,
and amtrackers as light infantry units, either to augment front-line
battalions or conduct combat patrols throughout rear areas. By this
time, however, the extreme rear area at Iwo had become overconfident.
Movies were being shown every night. Ice cream could be found on the
beach. Men swam in the surf and slept in tents. This all provided a
false and deadly sense of security.
Not very far to the north, Lieutenant Colonel Cushman’s 2d Battalion,
9th Marines, became engaged in a sustained battle in extremely broken
terrain east of the third airfield. The Marines eventually encircled
the Japanese positions, but the battle for “Cushman’s Pocket” raged on.
As the battalion commander reported the action:
The enemy position was a maze of caves, pillboxes, emplaced
tanks, stone walls and trenches.... We beat against this position
for eight continuous days, using every supporting weapon. The
core--main objective of the sector--still remained. The battalion
was exhausted. Almost all leaders were gone and the battalion
numbered about 400, including 350 replacements.
Cushman’s 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, was relieved, but other elements
of the 9th and 21st Marines, equally exhausted, had just as difficult
a time. Erskine truly had no reserves. He called Cushman back into the
pocket. By 16 March (D+25), Japanese resistance in this thicket of
jumbled rocks ended. The 4th Marine Division, meanwhile, poured over
the hills along the east, seizing the coast road and blasting the last
Japanese strongpoints from the rear. Ninety percent of Iwo Jima now lay
in American hands. Radio Tokyo carried the mournful remarks of Prime
Minister Kuniaki Koiso, who announced the fall of Iwo Jima as “the most
unfortunate thing in the whole war situation.”
General Smith took the opportunity to declare victory and conduct a
flag-raising ceremony. With that, the old warhorse departed. Admiral
Turner had sailed previously. Admiral Hill and General Schmidt finally
had the campaign to themselves. Survivors of the 4th Division began
backloading on board ship, their battle finally over.
[Illustration: