bombproofs. Perhaps a hundred Japanese rushed out, tumbling over one another in their flight down a narrow exit channel.
Fifty, perhaps more, of the enemy were struck to the ground by that shattering shot and soon resistance had ended among the bombproofs.
To the west, in The Pocket, the Marines of Major Hays’s battalion and the Ryan-Schoettel battalion were cleaning up. Half-tracks drove among the pillboxes and blockhouses blasting with their 75’s, while kneeling riflemen picked off the fleeing enemy. Others hurled shaped charges and grenades. Flame-throwing teams darted up to the entrances and fire gushed from nozzles.
McLeod’s Marines were approaching Betio’s eastern shore.
At one o’clock in the afternoon a dusty, sweating Marine waded into the sea between Betio and Bairiki and stooped to bathe his face in warm water.
Betio had fallen.
13
“The Saps are all dead,” the tall young Apamamese said cheerfully on the morning of November 24, and asked for a cigarette. It was given to him, and he began to tell Captain Jim Jones of what had happened to the Japanese since November 22, when Jones attacked their radio station behind the shelling of the submarine
The following day, said the Apamamese, he had gone to the vicinity of the radio station. He had seen that the captain of the atoll garrison was making a speech to about fifteen soldiers who had survived the shelling and the fight. He hid himself and watched.
The captain waved his
“We shall kill the American devils!”
He yanked his pistol from its holster and brandished it in the air. It went off accidentally. It struck the captain and mortally wounded him. Then his men began killing themselves. They dug graves and lay down in them and then placed the muzzles of their weapons in their mouths and pulled the triggers.
Captain Jones led his men to the radio station and found that this was so. The Marines finished the burial job the enemy had begun and then the people of Apamama came out of hiding.
There were smiling young men, strong and athletic; eager youngsters more than willing to shinny up trees and throw down coconuts to the Marines; young girls with round bare breasts and straight black hair hanging to their waists and skirts of sail cloth bound tightly around brown hips; and there were old people coming out of the hiding places they had fled to when the shooting began. They came back to their thatched huts to light cooking fires. Shyly, some of the girls began to sing “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.”
The Marines looked away. It was not that they were shy. It was just that they were embarrassed. They felt awkward in their clumsy habiliments of war. They felt heavy with themselves and their world, as though they had blundered into some Eden which had not known the serpent.
It was, of course, a romantic notion. But this was the Atoll of the Moon, that Apamama which these Marines would prefer to remember as “The Land of Moonshine.”
14
On this same November 24 the Marines were preparing to leave Betio. The transports were already standing into the lagoon with deliberate slow majesty.
The Third Battalion, Sixth, would soon be sailing south to “invade” Apamama and gain that comic celebrity which Marines do not value. The Second Battalion, Sixth, had begun the long hot march up the atoll chain from Bairiki—driving all the Tarawa survivors before them, until, at the northernmost islet of Buariki, they would destroy 175 Japanese against 32 of their own killed and 59 wounded.
But now, on the morning of November 24, most of the Second Division was departing the stench and heat and ruin of Betio. They had killed 4,690 of the enemy and 991 of their own comrades had died or were dying. They had suffered 2,311 men wounded—and many of these would not be fit to fight again. But they had taken Tarawa the untakable, they had done the thing Japan thought impossible. Yet, there was no thought of glory in their minds—of the posthumous Medals of Honor that would come to Hawkins, Bordelon, Bonnyman, of the one that Colonel Shoup would wear—as they came to the beach and stopped and blinked in astonishment.
There was no beach.
The spring tides had come, and the sea flowed up against the sea wall. For a moment there was wonder in the old eyes staring out of young faces. Then they shrugged and clambered aboard the boats. It was all one: high water on the reef also would have meant high water at the sea wall and nowhere to hide.
The boats took them out to the waiting ships while, overhead, roaring airplanes were already beginning to arrive on Hawkins Field. One of them carried Major General Howlin’ Mad Smith. He was coming from Makin, which had been taken by about 6,500 soldiers of the Army’s 27th Division. They had landed unopposed and killed 445 Japanese combat troops while capturing 104 laborers. They had lost 66 dead and 152 wounded. Howlin’ Mad Smith was greeted at the airfield by Julian Smith. Both generals went to division headquarters for the flag-raising.
“Maybe we should have two flags,” said Julian Smith. “After all, Tarawa was British once.”
“Anybody got a British flag?” Howlin’ Mad Smith asked.
Major Holland, the Britisher who had predicted the height of the reef water with such accuracy, rummaged in his bag. He pulled out a pair of underwear drawers and a little Union Jack. He grinned and handed it over. The banners of the two democracies went up the poles and the Rising Sun came down.
The generals Smith began to tour the island. Even Julian Smith, who had been on Betio since November 22, was stunned by what he saw. Both generals understood at last why pillboxes and blockhouses which had withstood bombs and shells had eventually fallen. Within each of them lay a half-dozen or more dead Japanese, their bodies sprawled around those of three or four Marines. Julian Smith’s men had jumped inside to fight it out at muzzle range.
Many of the pillboxes were made of five sides, each ten feet long, with a pair of entrances shielded against shrapnel by buffer tiers. Each side was made of two layers of coconut logs eight inches in diameter, hooked together with clamps and railroad spikes, with sand poured between each layer. The roof was built of two similar layers of coconut logs. Over this was a double steel turret, two sheathings of quarter-inch steel rounded off to deflect shells. Over this was three feet of sand.
“By God!” Howlin’ Mad exclaimed. “The Germans never built anything like this in France. No wonder these bastards were sitting back here laughing at us. They never dreamed the Marines could take this island, and they were laughing at what would happen to us when we tried it.” Howlin’ Mad shook his head in disbelief. “How did they do it, Julian?” he began, and then, below and above the sea wall, he found his answer.
Below it as many as 300 American bodies floated on that abundant tide. Above it, leaning against it in death, was the body of a young Marine. His right arm was still flung across the top of the sea wall. A few inches from his fingers stood a little blue-and-white flag. It was a beach marker. It told succeeding waves where they should land. The Marine had planted it there with his life, and now it spoke such eloquent reply to that question of a moment ago that both generals turned away from it in tears.
“Julian,” Howlin’ Mad Smith went on in soft amendment—“how can such men be defeated?”
