_Navy medical personnel evacuate the wounded from the beachhead on
D-Day. This was difficult because there were few places anywhere that
Marines could walk upright. The shortage of stretchers compounded the
problems of the landing force._]
First Lieutenant Dean Ladd was shot in the stomach shortly after
jumping into the water from his boat. Recalling the strict orders to
the troops not to stop for the wounded, Ladd expected to die on the
spot. One of his riflemen, Private First Class T. F. Sullivan, ignored
the orders and saved his lieutenant’s life. Ladd’s rifle platoon
suffered 12 killed and 12 wounded during the ship-to-shore assault.
First Lieutenant Frank Plant, the battalion air liaison officer,
accompanied Major Hays in the command LCVP. As the craft slammed into
the reef, Plant recalled Hays shouting “Men, debark!” as he jumped into
the water. The troops that followed were greeted by a murderous fire.
Plant helped pull the wounded back into the boat, noting that “the
water all around was colored purple with blood.” As Plant hurried to
catch up with Major Hays, he was terrified at the sudden appearance of
what he took to be Japanese fighters roaring right towards him. These
were the Navy Wildcats aiming for the nearby _Niminoa_. The pilots were
exuberant but inconsistent: one bomb hit the hulk squarely; others
missed by 200 yards. An angry David Shoup came up on the radio: “Stop
strafing! Bombing ship hitting own troops!”
At the end, it was the sheer courage of the survivors that got them
ashore under such a hellish crossfire. Hays reported to Shoup at
0800 with about half his landing team. He had suffered more than 300
casualties; others were scattered all along the beach and the pier.
Worse, the unit had lost all its flamethrowers, demolitions, and heavy
weapons. Shoup directed Hays to attack westward, but both men knew
that small arms and courage alone would not prevail against fortified
positions.
Shoup tried not to let his discouragement show, but admitted in a
message to General Smith “the situation does not look good ashore.”
The combined forces of Majors Crowe and Ruud on Red Beach Three were
full of fight and had plenty of weapons. But their left flank was
flush against three large Japanese bunkers, each mutually supporting,
and seemingly unassailable. The stubby Burns-Philp commercial pier,
slightly to the east of the main pier, became a bloody “no-man’s land”
as the forces fought for its possession. Learning from the mistakes of
D-Day, Crowe insured that his one surviving Sherman tank was always
accompanied by infantry.
[Illustration: _Marines under fire along Red Beach Three near the
Burns-Philp pier hug the ground as Navy planes continually pound the
enemy strongpoints in front of them._
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection
]
Crowe and Ruud benefitted from intensive air support and naval gunfire
along their left flank. Crowe was unimpressed with the accuracy and
effectiveness of the aviators (“our aircraft never did us much good”),
but he was enthusiastic about the naval guns. “I had the _Ringgold_,
the _Dashiell_, and the _Anderson_ in support of me.... Anything I
asked for I got from them. They were great!” On one occasion on D+1,
Crowe authorized direct fire from a destroyer in the lagoon at a large
command bunker only 50 yards ahead of the Marines. “They slammed them
in there and you could see arms and legs and everything just go up like
that!”
[Illustration: