With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [31]
I always had the feeling that sailors looked on Marine infantrymen as though we were a bit crazy, wild, or reckless. Maybe we were. But maybe we had to develop a don't-give-a-damn attitude to keep our sanity in the face of what we were about to endure.
In the ranks, we knew little about the nature of the island that was our objective. During a training lecture on Pavuvu we learned that Peleliu must be taken to secure Gen. Douglas MacArthur's right flank for his invasion of the Philippines, and that it had a good airfield that could support MacArthur. I don't recall when we heard the name of the island, although we viewed relief maps and models during lectures. (It had a nice sounding name, Pel’ e loo.) Although our letters from Pavuvu were carefully censored, our officers apparently feared taking a chance on some character writing in code to someone back home that we were to hit an island named Peleliu. As a buddy said to me later, however, no one back home would have known where to look for it on a map anyway.
The Palaus, the westernmost part of the Caroline Islands chain, consist of several large islands and more than a hundred smaller ones. Except for Angaur in the south and a couple of small atolls in the north, the whole group lies within an encircling coral reef About five hundred miles to the west lie the southern Philippines. To the south at about the same distance is New Guinea.
Peleliu, just inside the Palau reef is shaped like a lobster s claw, extending two arms of land. The southern arm reaches northeastward from flat ground to form a jumble of coral islets and tidal flats overgrown thickly with mangroves. Thelonger northern arm is dominated by the parallel coral ridges of Umurbrogol Mountain.
North to south, the island is about six miles long, with a width of approximately two miles. On the wide, largely flat southern section, the Japanese had constructed an airfield shaped roughly like the numeral 4. The ridges and most of the island outside the airfield were thickly wooded; there were only occasional patches of wild palms and open grass areas. The thick scrub so completely masked the true nature of the terrain that aerial photographs and pre–D day photos taken by United States submarines gave intelligence officers no hint of its ruggedness.
The treacherous reef along the landing beaches and the heavily defended coral ridges inland made the invasion of Peleliu a combination of the problems of Tarawa and of Saipan. The reef over six hundred yards long, was the most formidable natural obstacle. Because of it, troops and equipment making the assault had to be transported in amtracs; Higgins boats could not negotiate across the rough coral and the varying depths of water.
Before leaving Pavuvu, we had been told that the 1st Marine Division would be reinforced to about 28,000 men for the assault on Peleliu. As every man in the ranks knew, however, a lot of those people included in the term reinforced were neither trained nor equipped as combat troops. They were specialists attached to the division to implement the landing and supply by working on ships and later on the beaches. They would not be doing the fighting.
Upon sailing for Peleliu, the 1st Marine Division numbered 16,459 officers and men. (A rear echelon of 1,771 remained on Pavuvu.) Only about 9,000 were infantrymen in the three infantry regiments. Intelligence sources estimated that we would face more than 10,000 Japanese defenders on Peleliu. The big topic of conversation among us troops had to do with those comparative strengths.
“Hey, you guys, the lieutenant just told me that the 1st Division is gonna be the biggest Marine division to ever make a landing. He says we got reinforcements we never had before.”
A veteran looked up from cleaning his .45 automatic and said, “Boy, has that shavetail lieutenant been smoke-stacking you!”
“Why?