With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [162]
On 14 June the 1st Marines attacked portions of Kunishi and suffered heavy losses for their efforts. On the same day, the 1st Battalion—led by Lt. Col. Austin Shofner (former CO of ⅗ on Peleliu)—attacked and captured Yuza-Dake but suffered terrible casualties from the Japanese defenders there and from intense fire sent over from Yaeju-Dake.
Into the hellish confusion we went on 14 June with the words still ringing in our ears, “The 5th Marines may not be committed again.” We plodded along the sides of a dusty road, next to tanks and amtracs moving forward and a steady stream of ambulance jeeps returning loaded with the youthful human wreckage of the battle for Kunishi Ridge.
That afternoon our company deployed along a row of trees and bushes on the south side of the road. We saw and heard heavy firing on Kunishi Ridge across the open ground ahead. My mortar section dug in near the road with our guns adjusted to fire flares over a picturesque bridge that remained intact over a high stream bank.
A couple of us went to look at the bridge before dark. We walked down to the stream on a trail leading from the road. The water was crystal clear and made a peaceful gurgling sound over a clean pebbly bottom. Ferns grew from the overhanging mossy banks and between rocks on both sides. I had the urge to look for salamanders and crayfish. It was a beautiful place, cool and peaceful, so out of context with the screaming hell close above it.
The next morning we relieved 1/1 on Yuza-Dake. As we moved up along a road, we passed a small tree with all the limbs blasted off. So many communication wires hung from it at all angles that it looked like a big inverted mop. A ricocheting bullet whined between me and the man in front of me. It raised a little dust cloud as it smashed into a pile of dry brush by the roadside. Back into the meat grinder again, I thought, as we moved up toward the sound of heavy firing.
Yuza-Dake looked terrible to me. It resembled one of the hellish coral ridges on Peleliu. We could see Kunishi Ridge on our right and the Yaeju-Dake escarpment on our left. Army tanks were moving against the latter while machine guns and 75mm cannons hammered away.
For the first time in combat I heard the wailing of sirens. We were told that the army had put sirens on their tanks for the psychological effect it might have on the Japanese. To me the sirens just made the whole bloody struggle more bizarre and unnerving. The Japanese rarely surrendered in the face of flamethrowers, artillery, bombs, or anything else, so I didn't understand how harmless sirens would bother them. We got mighty tired of hearing them wailing against the constant rattle of small arms and the crash of shell fire.
While we were on Yuza-Dake under sporadic enemy fire, ⅖ joined the 7th Marines in the bitter fighting to capture the rest of Kunishi Ridge. The Japanese emplacements and caves received terrific bombardment by mortars, artillery, heavy naval gunfire, and air strikes consisting of twenty-five to thirty planes. It reminded me more and more of Bloody Nose Ridge on Peleliu.
The 2d Battalion, 5th Marines gained some ground on Ku-nishi but needed help. Company K was attached to ⅖ and arrived just in time to help that battalion fight off a company-sized night counterattack on 17 June. Later that night we heard that our company would attack the next morning to seize the remainder of Kunishi Ridge in the 5th Marines’ zone of action. Once again we would enter the abyss of close combat.
We learned that we would move out well before daylight and deploy for the attack, because we had to move across a wide-open area to get to the ridge. An officer came along giving us what sounded like a pep talk about how the 5th Marines could finish the job on Kunishi Ridge. (We all knew that the 1st Marines and the 7th Marines had already been