getting dusk. Suddenly, the enemy stopped firing. The men realized that someone was speaking to them. It was Major Henry Courtney, the battalion’s executive officer.
“If we don’t take the top of this hill tonight,” he was saying, “the Japs will be down here to drive us away in the morning. The only way we can take it is to make a
There was hardly a pause before the Glory Kid stepped forward, grinning.
“I hate to sound like a guy in a dime novel,” said Corporal Rusty Golar, “but what the hell did we come here for?”
There were 19 other volunteers from this exhausted remnant and there were 26 fresh men who appeared carrying supplies. Major Courtney took these 45 Marines up Sugar Loaf under cover of darkness, heaving grenades as they went, digging in under the protection of their own mortars. From the Horseshoe and Half-Moon came machine-gun fire and mortar shells, while grenades came up at them from the reverse slope of Sugar Loaf. At midnight, Courtney heard the enemy gathering below. He decided to strike them.
“Take all the grenades you can carry,” he whispered. “When we get over the top, throw them and start digging in.”
They went out, behind Courtney. They heard the major shout, “Keep coming, there’s a mess of them down there!” and then they heard the explosion of the mortar shell that killed him. They answered with grenades of their own, hanging on to Sugar Loaf while all of the Japanese positions struck at them, while a cold rain swept in from the East China Sea, until the mists of the morning showed that there were only 20 men left of the 46 who had come up the night before.
In that mist Rusty Golar, the self-styled Storybook Marine, fought the battle he had always sought. He had set up his light machine gun on the right flank of Sugar Loaf. With daylight, the Japanese on Horseshoe Hill to his right opened up on him. Golar fired back. The Japanese on Half-Moon to the left opened up. With a deep, booming “Yeah!” Golar swiveled his gun to rake Half-Moon.
Back and forth it went, the whip-sawing Japanese fire, the booming “Yeah!” of the Glory Kid and his own alternating bursts. It went on while Sugar Loaf’s defenders were gradually whittled to a handful and men trying to bring up ammunition were killed or wounded, until only Golar and a few others were left alive. By then the Glory Kid’s machine-gun belts had all been fired. He drew his pistol, yelling, “Gotta use what I got left.” He emptied it twice more. He threw it at the caves below and began scurrying about the hillcrest to gather grenades from the bodies of dead Marines.
“Still need some more stuff to throw at those guys,” he yelled at Private Don Kelly, one of the few men still alive on the ridge. He threw. He found a loaded BAR in the hands of another fallen Marine, seized it, jumped erect and fired it until it jammed.
“Nothin’ more to give ‘em now,” he bellowed to Kelly. “Let’s get some of these wounded guys down.” He bent down and easily picked up a stricken Marine. “I’ll have you in sick bay in no time,” he said. He walked toward the rear edge of Sugar Loaf. A Japanese rifle cracked. Rusty Golar staggered. He put the wounded man down carefully. Incredulity was written on his broad whitening features. He walked to a ditch. He sat down, pushed his helmet over his face and he died.
Soon the Japanese mortars were bursting on the crest of the Sugar Loaf, driving the Marines off. Japanese crawled from their caves at the foot of the reverse slope and began creeping to the crest again.
It was on the crest that they collided with a relief platoon of 60 men led by Lieutenant George Murphy. The Japanese met the Marines at bayonet-point and in a hand-grenade battle and were driven back. But to hold Sugar Loaf was to hold a lease on death. Little clouds of dust and mortar smoke eddied over it. Murphy contacted Captain Howard Mabie and asked for permission to withdraw. Mabie ordered him to hold, but Murphy could not. He had heard too many of his men scream. He covered them as they crawled down the hill. He picked up a wounded Marine and brought him down. A mortar struck him in the back. He let the Marine fall, turned to empty his pistol at the Japanese—and fell mortally wounded.
Captain Mabie brought his company forward to cover Murphy’s survivors. He signaled battalion: “Request permission to withdraw. Irish George Murphy has been hit. Has 11 men left in platoon.”
The reply came two minutes later: “You must hold.”
Five more minutes, and Mabie had rejoined: “Platoon has withdrawn. Position was untenable. Could not evacuate wounded. Believe Japs now have ridge.”
They did have it. They held onto it through that day and the next, clinging to Sugar Loaf while the entire complex quivered beneath the combined air-sea-land barrages which preceded the Marine assaults, hurling back each attack exactly as they had repulsed the first. But on May 17 an end run turned Sugar Loaf’s left flank.
An almost imperceptible depression had been observed running north and south between Half-Moon Hill to the left and Sugar Loaf. It was not actually a valley, but Japanese fire on Marines who had wandered into it had not been heavy or accurate. General Shepherd, up on the lines now, decided to move an entire regiment—the Twenty- ninth-through this tiny chink in Sugar Loaf’s armor. Two battalions would go through to strike at Half-Moon Hill, holding there to support another battalion moving against the left face of Sugar Loaf which their own assault was expected to unmask.
The battalions went forward under a fierce barrage. Half-Moon Hill was hit. Sugar Loaf was attacked. Three times a company of Marines charged to Sugar Loaf’s crest. Each time they were driven off. They surged up a fourth time and won. But they had no more ammunition. None could be brought up to them. It was heartbreaking. They had to go down, giving up the vital height taken at a cost of 160 casualties.
Next day they went up to stay.
Four days of full-scale attack, the hammering of two Marine regiments and supporting arms, had worn the complex’s defense thin. Sugar Loaf was ready to fall.
Captain Mabie brought his assaulting company up to the edge of the low ground opposite the hill. Artillery and mortars plastered the crest, while three tanks slipped around the left flank. The barrage stopped. The Japanese rushed from their caves below the reverse slope to occupy the crest. The tanks took them under fire, surprised them and riddled them.
Rocket trucks raced down from the north, bumping and swaying over a saddle of ground, stopped, loosed their flights of missiles, whirled and careened away with a whine of changing gears and a roar of wasted gasoline— just avoiding the inevitable Japanese artillery shells crashing in behind them. The rockets made Sugar Loaf’s hillsides reel and reverberate as though a string of monster firecrackers had been set off. Artillery began again. The Marines sprinted over the field and up Sugar Loaf, one platoon taking the right face, peeling off its fire teams, another sweeping up on the left. They met on the crest, formed and swept down the reverse slope, killing as they went. Back came the message:
“Send up the PX supplies. Sugar Loaf is ours.”
Next day the fresh Fourth Marines relieved the fought-out Twenty-ninth. Marines such as Private Harry Kizirian, a man so big his buddies called him “The Beast,” could rest and have their wounds cared for. Kizirian had three, all received at Sugar Loaf. The Sixth Division’s total casualties for the battle were 2,662 killed and wounded, with another 1,289 knocked out by battle fatigue. But the fall of Sugar Loaf had set Ushijima’s western flank to crumbling. During the next three days, the Fourth Marines drove deeper and deeper into the complex, while throwing back a counterattack in battalion strength. They turned to take Half-Moon Hill, to nail down their left flank preparatory to the drive down-island into Naha. Artillery struck them. It came plunging from the left. It was on Shuri Heights.
The Sixth Marine Division could not strike into the Naha flank of the Japanese line until the First Marine Division polished off Shuri Heights in the center.
The First Marine Division was “processing” its way south.
This was the cold, impersonal term coined by Major General del Valle to describe the cold, grim warfare his Marines were fighting en route to Shuri Heights.
Along that way lay Dakeshi Ridge, Dakeshi Town, Wana Ridge, Wana Draw—those bristling rough places which only the “processing” of tank-infantry-flame-thrower teams could make smooth. These four places were the sentinel forts guarding the northwest way into the heart of the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru line at Shuri Castle. Moving down against them, its regiments leapfrogging one another all along the pitiless way, the First Marine Division was exposed to almost constant fire from its left flank and struck unceasingly from its front. The deeper the advance,
