Strong Men Armed

“Great God Almighty!” Major Duchein roared.

He thought he had seen the island disappear, and his plane had shot up into the air like a rocket. He peered into the dense clouds of smoke billowing in all directions below him, and he yelled again to Headquarters: “The whole damn island’s blown upl”

“Are you hurt?” Headquarters inquired.

“Wait a minute,” Duchein replied, still trying to see land beneath the smoke. “Stand by a minute.”

“Is your plane damaged? Where are you?”

Duchein could hear debris rattling off the bomber’s fuselage, but he breathed with relief for he had seen land beneath the smoke, and he answered the question.

“I’m about a thousand feet higher than I was. But the island’s still there.”

It was, but the warehouse that had held tons and tons of torpedo warheads had vanished completely. Its fragmented remains were still falling on those Marines who crouched in shellholes and craters wondering what had caused that unbelievable rocking roar. They crouched in an inky darkness while whole heads of palm trees, chunks of concrete, bomb and torpedo casings fell from the skies. It seemed an endless rain, and then the smoke drifted away and where there had been a warehouse there was now only a great crater filled with water.

Lieutenant Stein and most of his men were dead, though one man who had been blown 150 feet out into the lagoon was found unhurt. There were 40 Marines killed by the explosion and another 60 wounded. A half-hour later there were more casualties when the Japanese blew up two other blockhouses.

At four o’clock the Twenty-fourth Marines were attacking again, and the Japanese were fighting back.

On the left flank a pillbox pinned down a platoon of Marines led by Lieutenant John Power. The men tried to work up to it to lob in grenades but were driven back. Power charged and was hit in the belly. Covering the wound with his left hand, firing his carbine with the right, receiving two more wounds, he completed his charge. He routed the enemy and fell to his knees, dying. With Pfc. Anderson, Lieutenant Power would receive a posthumous Medal of Honor.

Now the Marines were moving through terrain which made Namur so much more difficult than Roi. The tanks were stalled by fallen trees and logs, and were laid open to the attacks of Japanese who jumped on them to drop grenades through the visual ports. Captain James Denig and his gunner were killed that way, although a BARman named Howard Smith shot down five of Denig’s assailants and risked flaming gasoline and exploding shells in an attempt to save him. The Marine attack slowed down with the approach of night and the order came to dig in.

“Stand by for a counterattack,” came the word.

It came in a clear pale moonlit night and the Marines fought individually to contain it. Sergeant Frank Tucker lay behind a tree and shot 38 Japanese dead, firing ammunition brought to him by Pfc. Stephen Hopkins. Tucker received bullets through his helmet, his canteen, his field glasses, while Hopkins received the rifle shot that killed him. Corpsman James Kirby lay in a shellhole between the lines to care for a dozen wounded Marines, saving the life of Pfc. Richard Sorenson, who had fallen on a grenade to save his buddies and would now live to receive a Medal of Honor. Nineteen-year-old Pfc. Jack Brown was killed while his father, Corporal Earl Brown, survived. And then the medium tanks Jezebel, Jenny Lee, Joker and Juarez rolled up to the front at half-past five in the morning with machine guns and 75’s flashing flame and the Japanese attack was broken.

With the full light of day, these four tanks led a counterattack. This was the final lunge which brought death and a posthumous Medal of Honor to Lieutenant Colonel Aquilla Dyess as he put himself at the front of his battalion. The drive ended on Namur’s northern shores at some time before noon of February 2 as the tanks rolled up to the edge of a bomb crater filled with Japanese. Corporal Michael Giba looked through Jenny Lee’s periscope and saw an inflamed Japanese eye. The enemy soldier had jumped on Jenny Lee, draped himself over its turret and now he was contemplating Corporal Giba. The Japanese did not seem to know what to do. Corporal Giba reached for a weapon, and the Japanese produced a grenade, pulled its pin, tapped it against the turret to arm it—and then lay down on it.

Jenny Lee jumped. Giba heard bullets clattering against Jenny Lee’s sides. The other tanks were shooting the Japs off his turret. Then all four of them lumbered down into the crater.

It was all over on Roi-Namur. In two more days it was all over at Kwajalein Islet to the south. Eleven days later the Fourth Marine Division sailed east to its new base of Maui in Hawaii, a veteran outfit. The Fourth had secured its objective in twenty-four hours, had lost 190 dead and 547 wounded—and had buried 3,472 enemy troops while taking 264 prisoners.

The camp at Maui was not far from Camp Tarawa, where the Second Marine Division was renewing itself for combat, a battle which the Fourth would join and find more fierce than this. For Admiral Nimitz had his desired bases in the Central Marshalls and American air and sea power were truly neutralizing the other atolls of the chain. Soon the vast and various American panoply would strike west beyond the Marshalls.

But not before the seizure of Eniwetok—“The Land between East and West.”

28

Eniwetok was truly a dividing land. The Micronesians had found it so in their long canoe journeys to and from the Carolines in the west and the Gilberts-Marshalls in the east. It had been a stopping place, what the logistics of modern war call a staging area.

Eniwetok was to become a staging area for the United States armed forces. Its numerous islets could hold airfields and receive men and its broad round anchorage could harbor ships. More, lying nearly 3,000 miles west- southwest of Pearl Harbor, Eniwetok was only 670 miles northeast of Truk and about 1,000 miles southeast of Saipan.

Truk and Saipan would have to be pinned down while Eniwetok was being seized. Truk, being closest, would be hit first—and it would be hit with the swelling power of the Fifth Fleet under Vice Admiral Spruance. Nine carriers under Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher, six big new battleships under Ching Lee, 10 cruisers heavy and light, three full squadrons of destroyers and a special task force of 10 submarines—all of this would strike at the mighty atoll which the Marines called “the Gibraltar of the Pacific.”

That would be on February 17.

That same day the orphan regiment of the Marine Corps would be fighting for the airfield on Engebi Islet on Eniwetok Atoll.

The Twenty-second Marines were the waifs of the Pacific. They were an independent regiment formed in early 1942. They had been out of the States eighteen months, but had spent almost all this time on garrison duty in the Samoan Islands, maneuvering in the jungle, making countless landings —training, training, training—and coming down with malaria and that horrible swelling of the legs and genitals called filariasis or elephantiasis, but which the Marines knew as mumu. Disease, not bullets, had riddled the Twenty-second and filled it with replacements.

In late 1943 the staging for Kwajalein began and it seemed that Colonel John Walker’s regiment would at last see battle. But the Twenty-second wound up with the 106th Army Infantry in that tactical reserve commanded by Brigadier General Thomas Watson. They stood off Kwajalein in their ships while the “boots” of the Fourth Marine Division went ashore at Roi-Namur.

Now it was these very Fourth Division boots who were salty. They hadn’t a month overseas yet, but they were already coming around offering to show their scars. It was not pleasant for a grizzled gunnery sergeant of the Twenty-second to be patronized by fuzzy-chinned teen-agers who were still wearing their first pair of GI socks. To them the hash-marked gunnies could not scream, “Yuh chicken-boot—I’ve worn out more seabags than you have socks!” The boots had only to blink and inquire earnestly:

“You guys seen any action yet?”