“=This is Sad Sack Calling Charlie Blue= _We found the battalion
commander (LtCol Edward H. Hurst, CO, 3/7) sitting on a smashed wet
log in the mud, marking positions on his map. By him sat his radioman,
trying to make contact with company commands on the portable set
propped up in the mud. There was an infinitely tired and plaintive
patience in the radioman’s voice as he called code names, repeating
time and again, ‘This is Sad Sack calling Charlie Blue. This is Sad
Sack calling Charlie....’_”]
At least two colonels on Peleliu ended their work day with firm
misconceptions of their situations, and with correspondingly inaccurate
reports to their superiors. At day’s end, when General Smith finally
got a telephone wire into the 1st Marines’ CP, he was told that the
regiment had a firm hold on its beachhead, and was approximately on
the O-1 objective line. He was not told about, and Colonel Puller was
not fully aware of, the gaps in his lines, nor of the gravity of the
Company K, 3/1, struggle on the Point, where only 38 Marines were
battling to retain the position.
Colonel Nakagawa, on the other hand, had reported that the landing
attempt by the Marines had been “put to route.” Inconsistently, he had
also reported that his brave counterattack force had thrown the enemy
into the sea.
[Sidebar (page 15): A Horrible Place
Among the few civilian news correspondents who chose to share the fate
of the Marines on shore on Peleliu was Robert “Pepper” Martin, of
_Time_, who furnished the following description of what it was like
there:
Peleliu is a horrible place. The heat is stifling and rain falls
intermittently--the muggy rain that brings no relief, only greater
misery. The coral rocks soak up the heat during the day and it is
only slightly cooler at night. Marines are in the finest possible
physical condition, but they wilted on Peleliu. By the fourth
day there were as many casualties from heat prostration as from
wounds....
Peleliu is incomparably worse than Guam in its bloodiness, terror,
climate and the incomprehensible tenacity of the Japs. For sheer
brutality and fatigue, I think it surpasses anything yet seen in
the Pacific, certainly from the standpoint of numbers of troops
involved and the time taken to make the island secure.
On the second day, the temperature reached 105 degrees in the shade and
there was very little shade in most places where the fighting was going
on, and arguably no breeze at all anywhere. It lingered around that
level of heat as the days dragged by (temperatures as high as 115 were
recorded). Water supply presented a serious problem from the outset.
This had been anticipated and in actual fact the solution proved less
difficult than expected; the engineers soon discovered that productive
wells could be drilled almost anywhere on the comparatively low ground,
and personnel semi-permanently stationed near the beach found that even
shallow holes dug in the sand would yield an only mildly repulsive
liquid which could be purified for drinking with halizone tablets.
But it continued necessary to supply the assault troops by means of
scoured-out oil drums and five-gallon field cans. Unfortunately,
steaming out the oil drums did not remove all the oil, with the result
that many or most of the troops drinking water from the drums were
sickened. When the captains of the ships in the transport area learned
of this and of the shortage of water, they rushed cases of fruit and
fruit drinks to the beaches to ease the problem somewhat.
The water situation presented a problem even in the case of troops
operating on comparatively level and open ground. Once the fighting
entered the ridges, terrain difficult merely to traverse without having
to fight, the debility rate shot upward so alarmingly that an emergency
call was sent to all the ships off-shore to requisition every available
salt tablet for issue to the 1st Marines.
The statement that heat prostrations equalled wound casualties is apt
to be misleading. Most of those evacuated were returned to duty after
a day or two of rest and rehabilitation; hence, their absence from the
frontlines did not permanently impair the combat efficiency of their
units. But such numerous cases did strain the already overburdened
Medical Corps elements.
]
[Sidebar (page 16): Special Reef-crossing Techniques
Inasmuch as Peleliu’s fringing reef would not permit landing craft
within 700 yards of the beach, such craft deposited tanks at the reef’s
edge. There the depths permitted tanks to operate in most areas,
without being submerged, but not in all. A plan was devised to form
tanks into small columns, each to be led by an LVT. So long as the LVT
was grounded on the reef, the tanks could follow in trace. But when the
LVT encountered a depth which floated it, tanks halted while the LVT
literally “felt” out a suitable shallow path. Then the tanks followed,
still in small columns, and so arrived at the shore at the earliest
possible hour. The technique was one of the keys to timely employment
of armor ashore before D-Day was over.
Two other reef-crossing innovations were used on D-Day. A large number
of amphibious trailers were incorporated into the logistic plan, to
be towed behind landing craft, and later, at reef’s edge they would
be taken in tow by amphibian tractors. Ashore, trucks took them into
tow, enabling critical supplies to be moved well forward to supply
points just in rear of the fighting. Newly available crawler cranes
were emplaced on barges near the reef’s edge. They could lift nets
full of ammunition and other vital supplies from boats to tractors at
the transfer line. Other such crawler cranes were landed early and
positioned by the shore party to lift net-loads from LVTs to trucks for
expeditious delivery forward.
[Illustration:
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 95624.
]
[Illustration:
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 95354.
]
]
_The Assault Continues_
With the dawn of a new day, the two opposing commanders at Peleliu
awoke from whatever sleep they may have gotten to face immediate grim
prospects.
General Rupertus, having been frustrated by his earlier effort to land
his division reserve into the southern sector of his beachhead, was now
aware that his northern sector stood most in need of help, specifically
on the extreme left flank. Rupertus ordered 2/7 into Puller’s sector
for employment there.
[Illustration: _Wary riflemen of the 5th Marines advance through a
devastated Japanese bivouac area to the northeast of the Peleliu
airfield. The concealed enemy troops took full advantage of the rocky
terrain, forcing the Marines to clear out each nook and cranny._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 96763
]
At division headquarters afloat, more had been learned about the
extent of Marine D-Day casualties: 1,111, of whom 209 were killed
in action (KIA). While this was not a hefty percentage of the total
reinforced divisional strength, the number was grim in terms of
cutting-edge strength. Most of those 1,111 casualties had been suffered
in eight of the division’s nine infantry battalions. Except in the
center, Rupertus was not yet on the O-1 line, the first of eight
planned phase lines.
[Illustration: