Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [177]
“At times, it appeared that the only sure way503 of leaving Iwo Jima alive was to be wounded,” said Patrick Caruso. For almost every man who was hit, comrades had a word of consolation. Corporal Robert Graf, however, noticed that when his platoon encountered an intensely unpopular officer prostrate on a litter, the whole file of men passed without speaking. Graf’s own turn came a few days later. A shell fragment struck him in the buttock—the “million-dollar wound.” As he was carried back to the beach for evacuation, “not only alive but leaving504 this godforsaken island…so many prayers of joy and happiness sprang to my lips.”
It was often hard to tell how bad a wound was. Lt. John Cudworth of 9th Marines saw his close friend Bill Zimmer, a former Marquette University baseball and football player, ride past on top of a tank, smoking a cigarette. Zimmer told him: “I got hit in the balls505 and I guess I’m doing OK. Can you get me a couple more cigarettes?” Cudworth handed up half a pack and waved “So long.” Next morning the doctor told him: “Zim didn’t make it.” Men especially feared the hours of darkness, because they knew that if they were hit, it was unlikely that any help could reach them before dawn. Some cracked. Combat fatigue cases mounted alarmingly. “Before getting on the ship in Guam, and on passage to Iwo, little ‘Oiky’ Erlavec was all excited, he was going to get to shoot some Japs,” wrote John Cudworth. “After seeing dead Marines on the island506 and having artillery land near us, he blew higher than a kite and had to be sent back. A sorry event for such a young kid.”
For the defenders, of course, each day of the battle was as terrible an ordeal as for the Americans—worse, because they were far more meagrely provided with food, water, medical supplies, or hopes of victory. Harunori Ohkoshi’s naval unit was spared the early attentions of the invaders, but the heat in their bunkers was almost unendurable: “If you put a bare hand on that volcanic rock, it was scorched.” Through the first ten days, cooks and water carriers made circuits of their positions before dawn and at dusk, but thirst remained a chronic problem. During the long, tense time of waiting, with the thunder of the battle a few hundred yards distant, they made desultory conversation, mostly about home.
Ohkoshi shared his hole with three other men. He felt closest to his runner, Hajime Tanaka, a Tokyo type like himself in a unit of farmboys: “He was a good bit older507 than me, maybe twenty-five, a real family man, and wonderfully steady whatever was happening.” At intervals they were dispatched in small groups on reconnaissance or fighting patrols. These were nerve-racking affairs. On terrain where rocks and vegetation restricted visibility to a few yards, as they crept forward they knew their lives hung upon whether they spotted Americans first. Only once did they clash directly, with a small group of Marines whom they surprised and wiped out with grenades and bayonets. One American got close enough to hit Ohkoshi with the barrel of his pistol before the Japanese killed him.
Each day, American battalions lunged forward, sometimes gaining a few hundred yards, more often declaring themselves pinned down after suffering substantial casualties. The usual quota of brave, sacrificial Marines paid with their lives for being willing to force themselves forward just a little further, inducing others to follow where they led. The combination of thirst, rain, filth, cold food and fear ate into the spirits of even the best. Lt. Ken Thomson, a former sergeant commissioned following heroic performances on Guam and Bougainville, said: “Once I get back home508 to Minnesota and marry my girl,