_Shortly after the main landings on Okinawa, famed war correspondent
Ernie Pyle, a Scripps-Howard columnist who had been in the thick of the
war in the Italian campaign, shares a smoke with a Marine patrol. Later
in Operation Iceberg he was killed by machine gun fire on Ie Shima, a
nearby island fortress._]
In typical fighting along this front, the Japanese would contain and
isolate an American penetration (Army or Marine) by grazing fire from
supporting positions, then smother the exposed troops on top of the
initial objective with a rain of preregistered heavy mortar shells
until fresh Japanese troops could swarm out of their reverse-slope
tunnels in a counterattack. Often the Japanese shot down more Americans
during their extraction from some fire-swept hilltop than they did in
the initial advance. These early U.S. assaults set the pattern to be
encountered for the duration of the campaign in the south.
General Buckner quickly committed the 27th Infantry Division to the
southern front. He also directed General Geiger to loan his corps
artillery and the heretofore lightly committed 11th Marines to beef
up the fire support to XXIV Corps. This temporary assignment provided
four 155mm battalions, three 105mm battalions, and one residual 75mm
pack howitzer battalion (1/11) to the general bombardment underway of
Ushijima’s outer defenses. Lieutenant Colonel Frederick P. Henderson,
USMC, took command of a provisional field artillery group comprised
of the Marine 155mm gun battalions and an Army 8-inch howitzer
battalion--the “Henderson Group”--which provided massive fire support
to all elements of the Tenth Army.
[Illustration: _Within a short time after they came ashore, Marines
encountered native Okinawans. This group of elderly civilians is
escorted to the safety of a rear area by Marine PFC John F. Cassinelli,
a veteran 1st Marine Division military policeman._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 117288
]
Readjusting the front lines of XXIV Corps to allow room for the 27th
Division took time; so did building up adequate units of fire for field
artillery battalions to support the mammoth, three-division offensive
General Buckner wanted. A week of general inactivity passed along the
southern front, which inadvertently allowed the Japanese to make their
own adjustments and preparations for the coming offensive. On 18 April
(L plus 17) Buckner moved the command post of the Tenth Army ashore.
The offensive began the next morning, preceded by the ungodliest
preliminary bombardment of the ground war, a virtual “typhoon of steel”
delivered by 27 artillery batteries, 18 ships, and 650 aircraft.
But the Japanese simply burrowed deeper into their underground
fortifications and waited for the infernal pounding to cease and for
American infantry to advance into their well-designed killing traps.
[Illustration: