Strong Men Armed

Over.”

“Playmate, this is Spider. Hard to tell much through this smoke. Over.”

All that could be seen to shoreward was a great pall of twisted, drifting smoke, sometimes suffused with a pinkish glare by the shivering of flames beneath or within it. It was a fiery Moloch of a cloud, created by the thundering of the great naval shells exploding beneath it, the clash-crashing of thousands of rockets and the whuffling thump of the bombs which screaming dive-bombers dropped through it. It was so impressive that the skipper of Colonel Chesty Puller’s transport rushed up to the veteran Marine commander as he began to go over the side to join his men.

“Coming back for supper?” he called out cheerfully.

“Why?” Puller growled.

The skipper waved an airy hand shoreward.

“Hell, everything’s done over there. You’ll walk in.”

“If you think it’s so easy,” Puller snapped, “why don’t you come on the beach at five o’clock? We could have dinner together and maybe you could pick up a couple of souvenirs.”

Then Spitfire’s commander went ashore, losing all of his communications amtracks on the way.

“Playmate, this is Spider. Resistance moderate to heavy, I’d say. There are amtracks burning on the reef. Repeat: There are amtracks burning on the reef. Over.”

“Spider, this is Playmate. Where are our front lines?”

“Lines well inland on the right and center, but left of Spitfire is still on beach. They seem to be pinned down…. I’m going lower to try and see what’s to their front….”

They were pinned down. The Marines of Captain George Hunt’s K Company, First, had come in jauntily singing, “Give My Regards to Broadway,” until the amtracks began to lurch and odd bumping, strangling noises against their sides signaled the arrival of Japanese mortars. The Marines fell silent, their faces paling beneath the outlandish streaking of their camouflage paint. Captain Hunt’s amtracks crunched ashore, his men jumped out—and they were struck from their left by a terrible enfilading fire.

On that left stood The Point, a mass of coral rising 30 feet from the sea, a natural fort made of crevices, boulders and pinnacles, fortified at its base with five pillboxes of ferro-concrete, sprinkled with others protected by coral-and-concrete roofs six feet thick, and salted with spider holes. Within the pillboxes were heavy machine guns and one of them held a 47-millimeter antiboat gun.

Even now that gun was dropping shells among the First Marines on the beaches. For The Point stood on the division’s extreme left or northern flank and it had the First’s landing zone clearly in view beneath it. Over a rocky corridor between The Point and the sea, the Japanese could launch a counterattack almost any time they chose. Clearly, The Point must fall.

Captain Hunt ordered two platoons up against it. They turned left from the coconut grove and attacked. They were riddled. Hunt called battalion.

“We’re pretty well shot up and there’s a gap between my two assault platoons. I’m throwing the first platoon in to take The Point. The goddam naval gunfire didn’t faze the Japs ! We need stretcher-bearers!”

“All right, bub,” said Major William McNulty. “I’ll have L Company fill in the gap. I’ll send up everybody I can spare with stretchers.”

But L Company did not plug the gap, nor did A or B Company from the First Battalion, nor were the stretchers able to reach the stricken during that incredible and impetuous assault which did, in fact, storm The Point.

The wounded had to be taken out by amtracks running the gantlet from the sea. When they had departed, there were Captain Hunt and Lieutenant Bill Willis and 30 men—all alone atop The Point.

“Playmate, this is Spider Two. Spider One has been shot down. Lonewolf is on the edge of the airfield in several places. Mustang making good progress, too, but resistance is heavy behind Spitfire’s beaches. Over.”

“Spider Two, this is Playmate. How are things on the reef now? Over.”

“Damned bad! Boy, the stuff’s sure hitting the fan now! There’s about twenty amtracks burning off the Spitfire beaches and I make about eighteen off Mustang’s. They got that one enfiladed, too.”

“Spider Two, th— ”

“Ow, I see ‘em! Six of f ‘em with a field gun! Request permission to attack. Over.”

“Spider Two, this is Playmate. Your request: Negative.”

“Please? Just one little strafing?”

“Spider Two, this is Playmate. Negative. Repeat: Negative. You’re supposed to be an aerial observer. Stay in the air and observe. Over.”

“Oh, goddamit it to hell….”

On the heavy cruiser Portland a gunnery officer had also seen the Japanese field piece. He watched through glasses as a great steel shutter swung open in the face of a hill, as tiny figures trundled out a gun, as it fired, as the men pulled it back inside the cave and the steel door swung shut again.

The gunnery officer had the target spotted.

“Fire!”

A full salvo of eight-inch armor-piercers screamed shoreward. The hillside flashed and smoked.

The shutter swung open again.

The field piece was run out again, it spoke again, it was withdrawn again.

Four times more Partland’s eight-inchers breathed flame and smoke rings, four times more the cave-gun fired, and at last the gunnery officer shook his head in grieving futility and said:

“You can put all the steel in Pittsburgh on that thing and still not get it.”

From the division’s right Sank—the beaches south of the airfield where the Seventh Marines were landing, where Spider Two had seen all those burning amtracks—Colonel Herman Henry Hanneken sent the command ship that most ominous message of an amphibious invasion:

“Assault waves are wading ashore.”

The Seventh had come in to a deadly subsea garden sown with antiboat mines, antiboat barriers, antitank mines, and antitroop mines—above which sprouted a wicked black tumbleweed of barbed wire—and all planted to channel attacking boats and wading Marines into preregistered mortar and artillery fire.

From reef to water, smoke and flames rose from burning amtracks while ammunition popped around them. The white coral sands of the beaches ashore were pocked with shellholes and these were filled with Marines in mottled green dungarees and helmets. And there were limbs and heads and pieces of flesh flying through the air; there were men staggering about in the last throes of death, their lives spouting crimson from severed faces or stumps of arms; there were files of men erased from sight in the water by obliterating shellbursts; there were bullets clipping the wavelets and Marines falling with heavy splashes among them.

Then there were Sherman tanks coming ashore, plodding carefully in the wake of the few remaining amtracks, stopping whenever the amtracks became waterborne in coral potholes, waiting until a safe path could be scouted. The Shermans got ashore, only to be blocked by beach mines.

One of the tank commanders unbuttoned his turret. He scouted the mined beach on foot. He led his tank through it, trailing toilet paper to lead the others through. They lumbered inland at the point where the Seventh’s left flank joined Colonel Harold “Bucky” Harris’ Fifth or Lonewolf in the center.

“Playmate, this is Spider Three. Enemy tanks forming in Target Area 134-R…. Enemy tanks supported by infantry crossing airfield to attack Lonewolf…”

The Japanese tanks came in a cavalry charge.