With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [104]
In addition to the invaluable experience of being a combat veteran, the immensity of our fleet gave me courage. Combat vessels and armed transports ranged as far as we could see. I have no idea how many of our planes were in the air, but it must have been hundreds.
We climbed down the net and settled into the Higgins boat. Someone said, “Shove off, coxswain, you're loaded,” as the last Marine climbed into our boat. The coxswain gunned the engine and pulled away from the ship. Other boats loaded with Marines from ⅗ were pulling out all along the side of the ship. I sure hated to leave it. Amphibious craft of every description floated on the water around us. The complexity of the huge invasion was evident everywhere we looked.
Our boat ran some distance from our ship, then began circling slowly in company with other boats loaded with men from our battalion. The bombardment of the Hagushi beaches roared on with awesome intensity. Sitting low in the water, we really couldn't see what was going on except in our immediate vicinity. We waited nervously for H hour, which was scheduled for 0830.
Some of the ships began releasing thick white smoke as a screen for the convoy's activity. The smoke drifted lazily and mingled in with that of the exploding shells. We continued to circle on the beautiful blue water made choppy by the other boats in our group.
“It's 0830 now,” someone said.
“The first wave's goin’ in now. Stand by for a ram,” Snafu said.
The man next to me sighed. “Yeah, the stuff's gonna hit the fan now.”
* Ulithi Atoll lies about 260 miles northeast of Peleliu on the western edge of the Caroline Islands. It was captured by an element of the 81st Infantry Division as a part of the Palau Islands operation. Ulithi consists of about thirty islets surrounding an enormous lagoon some nineteen miles long and five to ten miles wide. It became the major U.S. fleet anchorage in the Central Pacific.
†During carrier raids on Japan (18-21 March), Japanese suicide planes had crashed into the American carriers Wasp, Yorktown, and Franklin. The Franklin was the most heavily damaged of the three; her loss was 724 killed and 265 wounded. That the ship was saved at all and later towed some 12,000 miles to New York for repairs was a tribute to the bravery and the skill of her crew.
* By this time in the Pacific war, official unit designations recognized the prevailing system of task organization for combat where supporting elements reinforced the infantry. Such units became regimental combat teams (RCT) and battalion landing teams (BLT); hence official designations were 5th RCT or 3d BLT. But the rank and file infantryman never forgot who he was. Throughout the war I never heard a Marine infantryman refer to his unit by other than its base name. We were always “K/⅗,” “3d Battalion, 5th,” or “5th Marines.”
†Our planners still hadn't realized that this costly large-scale suicide charge tactic had been abandoned for good. The Japanese had shifted to the defense-in-depth tactic as the best means of defeating us. This tactical shift had prolonged our fight on Peleliu and had been repeated with the same murderous results against the Marines on Iwo Jima.
*Three/Five was scheduled to land after the 1st and 2d battalions of the 5th Marines on the extreme right of the regimental beach. It would form the right flank of the III Marine Amphibious Corps and link with the U.S. Army's XXIV Corps landing to the south.
* Manned suicide planes that dived into American ships. Faith in the kamikaze's (“divine wind”) ability to cut off the American fleet's support of the landing force ashore was an important element in the Japanese defensive scheme.
CHAPTER NINE
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