_“The Wave Breaks on the Beach,” a sketch by Kerr Eby. The scene
represents the unwelcome greeting received by LT 1/8 off Red Beach Two
on the morning of D+1._]
The Marines of LT 1/8 had spent the past 18 hours embarked in LCVPs.
During one of the endless circles that night, Chaplain W. Wyeth Willard
passed Colonel Hall’s boat and yelled, “What are they saving us for,
the Junior Prom?” The troops cheered when the boats finally turned for
the beach.
Things quickly went awry. The dodging tides again failed to provide
sufficient water for the boats to cross the reef. Hays’ men, surprised
at the obstacle, began the 500-yard trek to shore, many of them
dangerously far to the right flank, fully within the beaten zone of the
multiple guns firing from the re-entrant strongpoint. “It was the worst
possible place they could have picked,” said “Red Mike” Edson. Japanese
gunners opened an unrelenting fire. Enfilade fire came from snipers
who had infiltrated to the disabled LVTs offshore during the night. At
least one machine gun opened up on the wading troops from the beached
inter-island schooner _Niminoa_ at the reef’s edge. Hays’ men began to
fall at every hand.
The Marines on the beach did everything they could to stop the
slaughter. Shoup called for naval gunfire support. Two of Lieutenant
Colonel Rixey’s 75mm pack howitzers (protected by a sand berm erected
during the night by a Seabee bulldozer) began firing at the blockhouses
at the Red 1/Red 2 border, 125 yards away, with delayed fuses and high
explosive shells. A flight of F4F Wildcats attacked the hulk of the
_Niminoa_ with bombs and machine guns. These measures helped, but for
the large part the Japanese caught Hays’ lead waves in a withering
crossfire.
[Illustration: _Readily disassembled and reassembled, the 75mm pack
howitzers of 1st Battalion, 10th Marines, were ideal for Tarawa’s
restrictive hydrography. The battalion manhandled its guns ashore
under heavy fire late on D-Day. Thereafter, these Marines provided
outstanding fire support at exceptionally short ranges to the infantry._
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection
]
Correspondent Robert Sherrod watched the bloodbath in horror. “One boat
blows up, then another. The survivors start swimming for shore, but
machine gun bullets dot the water all around them.... This is worse,
far worse than it was yesterday.” Within an hour, Sherrod could count
“at least two hundred bodies which do not move at all on the dry
flats.”
[Illustration: