_Sgt Robert A. Owens was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor._]
In spite of the chaos, the intensive training of the Marines took hold.
Individuals and small groups moved in to assault the enemy, reducing
bunker after bunker, dropping grenades down their ventilators. For an
hour, the situation was in doubt.
The fierce combat led to a wry comment by one captain, Henry Applington
II, comparing “steak and eggs served on white tablecloths by stewards
... and three and a half hours and a short boat ride later ... rolling
in a ditch trying to kill another human being with a knife.”
The devastating fire from the 75mm cannon on Cape Torokina was finally
silenced when Sergeant Robert A. Owens, crept up to its bunker, and
although wounded, charged in and killed the gun crew and the occupants
of the bunker before he himself was killed. A posthumous Medal of Honor
was awarded to him for this heroic action which was so crucial to the
landing.
Meanwhile, on Puruata Island, just offshore of the landing beaches, the
noise was intense; a well-dug-in contingent of Japanese offered stiff
resistance to a reinforced company of the 3d Battalion, 2d Raiders.
It was midafternoon of D plus one before the defenders in pill boxes,
rifle pits, and trees were subdued, and then some of them got away to
fight another day. A two-pronged sweep and mop-up by the raiders on D
plus 2 found 29 enemy dead of the 70 Japanese estimated to have been on
that little island. The raiders lost five killed and 32 wounded.
An hour after the landings on the main beaches a traditional Marine
signal was flashed from shore to the command and staff still afloat,
“Situation well in hand.” This achievement of the riflemen came in
spite of the ineffective prelanding fire of the destroyers. The men
in front-line combat found that none of the 25 enemy bunkers on the
right-hand beaches had been hit. Some of the naval bombardment had
begun at a range of over seven miles, and the official Marine history
summarized, “The gunfire plan ... had accomplished nothing.”
[Illustration: _On a beach, rifles pointing toward the enemy, Marines
get ready to fight their way inland._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 69782
]
Unloading supplies and getting them in usable order on the chaotic
beaches was a major problem. Seabees, sailors, and Marines all turned
to the task, with 40 percent of the entire landing force laboring as
the shore party. They sweated 6,500 tons of supplies ashore.
[Illustration: THE LANDING AT CAPE TOROKINA