On September 21, Geiger came to Rupertus headquarters on Peleliu and told him he thought the First Marines should be relieved and that he was considering bringing an Army regiment into the battle. Rupertus became alarmed. He asked Geiger not to take such action, and he assured the Third Corps commander that Peleliu would fall in another day or two.
Geiger disagreed. He told Rupertus to prepare to evacuate the battered First and also to receive reinforcements from the 81st Division.
Then Geiger asked Major General Paul Mueller, the 81st’s commander, to detach his 321st Infantry Regiment for assignment to the First Marine Division on Peleliu. The 321st’s soldiers came into the island on September 23— the same day on which their brother doughfoots of the 323rd Infantry landed unopposed on Ulithi—and they marched up West Road to relieve the Third Battalion, First Marines. The following day the 321st turned right to strike at the western face of the Umurbrogal Pocket.
The next day, the twenty-fifth, the Fifth Marines launched a drive around the western side of The Pocket into northern Peleliu—the upper prong of the lobster’s claw.
Colonel Harris’ battalions marched rapidly out of the eastern peninsula—the lower prong of the claw— crossed the island south of the Umurbrogal and then turned right or north to move up West Road. They passed through the 321st to drive into enemy territory.
That night, Colonel Harris bent both his flanks back to the sea. He was all alone, holding a solitary beachhead. The Japanese counterattacked three times, savagely. They were beaten off. On the morning of September 26, the Marines raced farther north. They left the Umurbrogal behind, overran a radio station, crossed the junction of West and East Roads, and came up on the left of L-shaped Amiangal Mountain. Here they encountered cave systems so constructed that Marine tanks could fire point-black into entrances and be struck by fire which
On September 27, while the Fifth began attacking east to seal off the northern tip of Peleliu, the 321st made the maneuver which cut off the Umurbrogal Pocket.
Captain George Neal of the 2nd Battalion, 321st, formed a task force of seven Sherman tanks, six amtracks, one amtrack flame-thrower and 45 riflemen. He led them up West Road, came to the captured junction and turned down East Road on a southward run that brought his force up behind the enemy. When Task Force Neal came up against Hill 100 and killed 15 Japanese in a brief fight, the Umurbrogal Pocket was contained.
Above Neal’s force, the Fifth had been caught between two fires.
On their right, they had come up against the biggest cave on Peleliu. It housed 1,000 men and occupied all of the island’s northernmost ridge. Its seaward tip loomed over the road, here so narrow as to allow only a single tank to pass. Its face was freckled with cavemouths. The moment a tank nosed around its snout, it was struck. The moment infantry sought to crawl along the road they were hit from cavemouths on the right and from Japanese gunners across the 1,000-yard strait on Ngesebus and its adjoining isle of Kongauru to its right or east.
The Marines called for naval gunfire on Kongauru. They brought land-artillery fire down on Ngesebus, firing smoke-shells every fourth round to disconcert the enemy while nine Sherman tanks rolled into range to fire nothing but smoke. Then they sent five armored amtracks wallowing into the strait. The amtracks sailed 300 yards, wheeled, swiveled their guns around and poured a terrible flat fire into the cavemouths. While they did, Shermans swept along the road and around the snout with infantry following. Following them came an amtrack flame-thrower, which doubled back to burn out the cavemouths.
That happened on September 27, the day after Major Robert (Cowboy) Stout brought the white-nosed Corsairs of Squadron 114 into Peleliu.
Now, the Marine fliers would get their first chance to show how well they had developed that tactic of close-up support first used at Hellzapoppin’ Ridge on Bougainville. Cowboy Stout’s low-chargers were to support the Third Battalion, Fifth, during the invasion of Ngesebus on September 28.
The Marines crossed the strait in amtracks, after an hour of naval gunfire, aerial bombing and shelling by corps and division artillery. Two hundred yards from the beaches, the Corsairs roared over them and began to strafe. They kept it up until the Marines were but 30 yards from the shore, and they struck at levels so low the terrified Japanese were unable to defend the beaches. The landing was made without a single casualty, although 50 Japanese were killed or captured in coastal pillboxes.
At three o’clock in the afternoon—six hours after the assault began—all but a few hundred yards of Ngesebus had fallen. The rest, with the airfield and adjoining Kongauru Islet, was in Marine hands. There had been 28 men lost.
The next day Major Stout’s fliers were strafing and bombing up and down the Umurbrogal Pocket, helping the Seventh Marines hammer where the First Marines had left off. Day after day, Corsairs made the fifteen-second run from airfield to Bloody Nose Ridge to drop tanks of napalm on the Japanese, banking and landing to rearm without having bothered to retract landing gear.
“The enemy plan,” Colonel Nakagawa reported to General Inoue, “seems to be to burn down the central hills post to ashes by dropping gasoline from airplanes.”
But as the typhoon edged nearer and sullen rains fell on Peleliu, Colonel Nakagawa began to experience less difficulty with napalm and soon had trained his men to keep very low whenever the Corsairs were flying over The Pocket. So the Corsairs began to drop unfused tanks of napalm, leaving it to the attacking Marines to set them alight when they chose by dropping white phosphorous shells on them. When the typhoon’s rains did come they were a blessing to Nakagawa’s remnant. The Japanese had begun to run out of water. Now they trapped enough in underground cisterns to last for months.
Meanwhile, the Seventh Marines had relieved the 321st of their sector in the west, had held there and begun a steady drive from the north and east. They fought against an enemy maintaining an extraordinary discipline. Marines could move through a draw conscious of hundreds of hostile eyes focused on them, and not be fired at. But when they attempted to get a tank through the draw, or tried scaling the ridges—then it fell in fury. At night, the Japanese swarmed from their caves as infiltrators. They caused little trouble to veteran Marines, but they killed many souvenir-hunters. Sailors and service troops who wandered up to The Pocket in search of souvenirs or thrills oftentimes never came out of it alive. Some were even impressed as riflemen by Marine commanders who needed reinforcements and were not fussy about how they were obtained. There were also Marine airmen and service troops who came up to The Pocket for the express purpose of fighting.
Still Nakagawa held out. As September turned into October, his men had inflicted so many casualties on the gradually advancing Seventh Marines that their ranks were almost as badly depleted as the First’s had been. On October 4, with the two most vital of the eastern ridges in their hands, the Seventh Marines made their last attack. The Third Battalion tried to take Baldy Ridge, hoping thus to drive a deep wedge from the east. To get at Baldy, L Company struck at Ridge 120 to its left or south. From this, they hoped to strike Baldy in the flank and rear. A force of 48 men took Ridge 120 with ease. They turned to drive at Baldy and found they were in a trap.
The Japanese struck at these exposed Marines from Baldy and a ring of strong-points, hitting them with small arms, machine guns, cannon and mortars. Gunnery Sergeant Ralph Phillips fell dead at the first machine-gun burst. Men were falling everywhere. Big 230-pound Lieutenant James Dunn attempted to lead the men down the ridge’s sheer face. He was hanging on to rocks when machine guns chugged across the draw and dropped him to his death on the boulders below.
Now the bullets were spanging among the Marines as they crawled wildly for cover. Some of the wounded urged their comrades to leave, others begged them to stay. A corpsman jumped erect.
“Take it easy!” he called. “Bandage each other. Get out a few at a time.”
Then he fell dead.
Down in the draw, Captain James Shanley watched the slaughter of his men in horror. He bellowed to the men of K Company on his left.
“For God’s sake, smoke up that hill!”
K Company’s Marines began hurling smoke grenades into the ravine between their own positions and Ridge 120 to their front and right. Wind wafted a billow of phosphorus over the stricken platoon on the ridge crest. Captain Shanley called for a tank. It came up the draw, but was halted by the boulders. It could not strike at the Japanese, but it became a rallying point for the men on the ridge who were even then pulling out under the smoke.
