Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  After a command conference at the VAC headquarters, Schmidt ordered a renewed offensive by all three divisions across the line, to be prefaced by a massed artillery bombardment. On March 5, the most worn out and battle-scarred units were pulled back to the rear assembly areas for a short rest, and to integrate replacement troops into the decimated battalions. They were back on the line before dawn on March 6, when the artillery “preparation” started up. This was the heaviest barrage of the battle, a prolonged onslaught by all available field howitzers combined with support from the big guns offshore. The artillery battalions reported the day’s ammunition expenditure as 2,500 155-millimeter “Long Tom” rounds and 20,000 75mm and 105mm rounds. A battleship, two cruisers, three destroyers, and miscellaneous gunboats added 22,500 naval shells. Target coordinates were set at least 200 yards ahead of the U.S. lines, but many shells fell uncomfortably close to the marines, and a few strays fell directly into their lines. The airplanes also did their part, bombing and strafing with exquisite timing. As usual, amateur witnesses doubted that anyone or anything could have survived under the monstrous punishment; as usual, they were mistaken.

  As the barrage lifted, the assault echelons advanced against the enemy lines. Where the terrain allowed it, the Shermans led the infantry. The Japanese opened murderous volleys of machine gun and rifle fire; their resistance was seemingly just as stiff as it had been before. Deadly fire poured out of pillboxes and cave entrances, catching the advancing marines in enfilade. White phosphorus shells fell around them, forcing them to fall flat on the ground and dig for cover. New Japanese firing positions, previously undiscovered, opened fire from inconvenient angles. Given the broken and rocky character of the terrain, the tanks could not advance in many places, and the infantry was obliged to go ahead. The forward momentum of the coordinated attack quickly petered out, but the marines did not withdraw; the fighting continued at a fierce pitch throughout the rest of the day. In hopes of breaking stalemates, forward unit commanders called down artillery strikes on positions as close as 100 yards from their own positions. A few caves were sealed off, some pillboxes were taken out by flamethrowers and demolitions, and scores of Japanese were killed. But the defenders rarely exposed themselves by attacking over open ground. They stuck to their entrenchments and fortifications, and circulated through their underground networks, as they had been told to do by General Kuribayashi.

  By the end of the day on March 6, the marines had advanced by about 250 yards in the draws and gorges along the coasts, but in most places their forward progress was limited to 50 yards. Against the toughest part of the line, the marines might have gained only 30 yards—but that was something, after all. Differing rates of advance left exposed flanks and salients on both sides, which offered the prospect of flanking attacks (and even attacks from overhead) against previously unassailable Japanese firing positions. Armored bulldozers cleared paths through the broken terrain, so that the tanks and 75mm armed half-tracks could move forward with the infantry. But it took time and patience to blaze new tank trails, and to sweep out the mines, and all of it had to be done while under enemy fire. General Clifton B. Cates, commanding the 4th Marine Division, summed up the sense of resignation that had taken hold among the brass. “Well, we’ll keep on hitting them,” he told Bob Sherrod. “They can’t take it forever. We’ve got to keep pressing ’em until they break. Don’t let up.”67

  On March 7, General Schmidt told the artillery battalions to conserve ammunition, which was running dangerously low after the previous morning’s pyrotechnics. He ordered the 5th Marine Division to turn its attack inland and seize high ground overlooking the sea and the chain of formidable defenses around Kitano Point. But the 27th Marines came under devastating mortar fire just as they were preparing to jump off for battle. Company E of the 2nd Battalion took a direct mortar strike that killed or wounded thirty-five men. Not surprisingly, the attack in that area bogged down almost immediately. To the east, in the 4th Division zone of action, much rearguard cleaning up had to be done behind the lines, in the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob features, where new Japanese fighters suddenly materialized as if by some dark sorcery. The division was in rough shape. Leadership had been compromised by the death of so many officers and NCOs. Symptoms of combat fatigue were observed. The division had encountered problems integrating replacement marines at the company and platoon levels. A report noted that “the result of fatigue and lack of experienced leaders is very evident in the manner in which the units fight,” and estimated that the 4th Division’s combat efficiency was about 40 percent of its D-Day baseline.

  The ground north of the Amphitheater was a series of jagged rocky ridges alternating with ravines clustered with heavy underbrush. The 25th Marines continued pressing inland, enveloping the enemy and closing a tighter cordon around a shrinking pocket occupied by the Second Mixed Brigade, commanded by Major General Sadasue Senda. Eyeing the risk of a breakout attack, perhaps even a massed banzai charge, the marines strung coils of barbed wire and planted hundreds of anti-personnel mines between them. They set up weapons of various types and calibers to sweep the terrain over which the Japanese must attack, and registered their pack howitzers and light mortars to hit the no man’s land in front of their lines.

  In the 3rd Marine Division’s sector, there had been insufficient progress toward Hill 362C, a promontory of special tactical value, and a key link in the chain of defenses across the high part of the plateau. The only route led through some of Iwo Jima’s most jumbled and rocky ground, where the Japanese had prepared fiendishly strong defenses. It was an ominous landscape, smelling strongly of sulfur. The ground was warm underfoot—so much so that it was uncomfortable to lie flat and even more so to dig a foxhole. Yet the troops who advanced into this killing zone would need to dig for protection against the enemy’s machine guns, knee mortars, and antitank guns. With little prospect of bringing its rolling armor into that broken and confused terrain, the division would have to do it the old-fashioned way, by direct infantry assault.

  Never before in the Pacific War had the marines attacked at night. It was not in their doctrine or training to do so. But General Erskine had been arguing for some time that a battalion-sized night infiltration attack would catch the Japanese by surprise. Erskine requested and received permission from General Schmidt to launch his attack before dawn on March 8. At first, the flamethrower-demolition squads moved quickly and silently, penetrating about 500 yards behind the Japanese lines. With the benefit of complete surprise, they sealed off pillboxes and cave entrances before the occupants were prepared to react. Many Japanese soldiers were killed in their sleep, sometimes with bayonets. As dawn broke, the marines lobbed smoke shells into the area, drawing a veil across all sightlines. The 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines had been assigned the job of taking Hill 362C, and at first they believed they had done it. But the smoke could confuse the Americans as well as their enemies, and at about 0600 Company K’s officers discovered to their distress that they had taken Hill 331—not Hill 362C, which lay another 250 yards north. And those were long yards, across an exposed salient swept by Japanese machine gun and small arms fire. Fierce fighting continued throughout the day, with two marine companies trapped and taking heavy losses. However, Colonel Boehm, leading the attack, decided to push on toward the original and correct objective. It was a bloody struggle, consuming all of the morning and the early afternoon, but by nightfall the battalion had established defensive lines around the summit of Hill 362C.

  On the same day, also before dawn, General Senda’s besieged forces staged their attempted breakout. This was not a massed banzai charge, but rather a clever series of small unit infiltration attacks all along the line, preceded by a massed mortar, rocket, and artillery fire demonstration. The attackers came stealthily, under cover of darkness, making cunning use of the jumbled terrain. But the 4th Division marines benefited by their defensive preparations. Their pack howitzers poured down shellfire on the advancing force, and many of the attackers det
onated mines or were killed while trying to cut through the barbed wire aprons. About a dozen Japanese penetrated as far as the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines command post, where they were killed quickly. The next morning, 650 dead Japanese were counted on the battlefield. According to Lieutenant Satoru Omagari, one of a handful of Japanese survivors of the battle, the area around the Turkey Knob and the Amphitheater was a charnel house. “I saw torsos with no limbs, dismembered legs, arms and hands, and internal organs splashed onto the rocks.”68

  It was a battle pitting men above against men below, an army of surface dwellers against an army of troglodytes. Many Japanese on Iwo Jima did not see the sun at all for the last several weeks of their lives. They heard the rumbling of the tanks overhead; they heard the gaseous thrust of flames even before they felt the heat. A Japanese commander reported that the Americans were “making a desert out of everything before them. . . . They fight with a mentality as though exterminating insects.”69 When the marines seized terrain above their bunkers, the Japanese sometimes set charges and blew themselves and their enemies to Kingdom Come. It was a horror reminiscent of the “mining” attacks along the Western Front during the First World War, or the siege of Petersburg in the American Civil War. Elton Shrode witnessed one such event, on a hill north of Nishi Village: “I saw many bodies blown into the air like rag dolls.”70 Forty-three marines were killed or injured in the titanic blast.

  DURING THE FIRST TWENTY-ONE DAYS of the fight on Iwo Jima, the medical corps handled an average of 1,000 casualties per day. By D plus 33, a total of 17,677 cases had been evacuated to hospital ships offshore or to hospitals in the Marianas.71 All took justifiable pride in the outstanding efforts of medical personnel, from the corpsmen on the battlefield, to the forward aid stations, to the field hospitals, to the hospital ships offshore, to the hospitals on Saipan and Guam. Corpsmen and litter bearers, the battlefield’s indefatigable first responders, rushed across terrain exposed to enemy fire. Crouching beside stricken marines, shells bursting nearby and bullets snapping over their heads, the corpsmen reached into their “Unit 3” pouches for morphine syrettes, called “Hypos,” to ease a man’s pain and relieve the symptoms of shock; sulfanilamide powder, to be sprinkled directly into wounds as a disinfectant; hemostat clamps, sutures, bandages, and tourniquets to control bleeding. If a man was losing too much blood, he might receive an intravenous infusion of plasma—a life-giving fluid that mitigated the deadly effects of hypovolemic shock. The plasma bottles were held aloft or perhaps slung from a rifle staked in the ground. If the wounded man was fortunate, four litter bearers arrived quickly and carried him back to his battalion aid station, where his wounds were inspected and redressed by a medic. Here, amidst the roar of nearby artillery, he might also receive a shot of penicillin to cut his risk of infection. A chaplain, wearing ordinary fatigues and a helmet, provided a kind word, a sip of water, a prayer, or the sacrament of last rites.

  Stretchers were loaded onto the back of an ambulance jeep, or perhaps a halftrack or tractor, to be transferred down the island to a field hospital. They bounced painfully over rutted roads, plasma bottles swaying on their racks. Field hospitals on Iwo Jima were located on main roads well behind the lines, most in sunken terrain or revetments adjoining South Field—complexes of low, unobtrusive dark green tents surrounded by sandbags. Wounded marines were carried through heavy double-blackout flaps into a long tent serving as the receiving ward, where their stretchers were laid on portable plywood operating tables. Doctors and corpsmen made notations on clipboards affixed to each stretcher. Plasma bottles were often swapped for whole blood intravenous feeds. Bloody or dirty clothing was cut away; wounds were cleaned; preoperative patients were washed and shaved. It was a stifling environment, particularly at night, when the tents had to be sealed against light leakage. The air was stuffy, smelling of blood and antiseptic compounds, and choked with cigarette smoke. Even so, the field hospitals were extraordinarily well equipped, by the standards of mid-twentieth-century medicine—probably the most sophisticated military field hospitals that had ever existed. They were stocked with operating tables, X-ray machines, oxygen masks and tanks, refrigerators for serums, electrical generators, flake ice machines, and banks of whole blood donated by civilians in the United States and flown into the island packed in ice. The more urgent cases were moved directly back into the operating rooms, where surgeons of various specialties went to work immediately. The worst, the doctors agreed, were the “belly cases”—the men who had been shot through the stomach, intestines, or other vital organs. The damaged organs had to be removed, resected, and returned to the wounded man’s abdomen. Such wounds required long, intricate surgeries, often consuming four or five hours, followed by extended postoperative care. Even so, about half of all patients died after surgery, often from sepsis or infection. A sheet was pulled over their heads and they were placed on the ground outside, to await transport to one of the cemeteries.

  More than 9,000 wounded marines were evacuated from Iwo Jima by sea. Their stretchers were loaded into specially configured Higgins boats or LVTs, which carried them to one of four LSTs that had been established as floating triage centers. A corpsman in each boat looked after the wounded while they were in transit. The passage was often rough, as swells tossed the boats and spray arced over the side. Hanging plasma bottles swung on their racks, and some of the wounded men became seasick, compounding their other miseries. Those who died while underway were returned to the beach to be buried in the cemetery.

  More serious cases were taken farther offshore to transports, or to the dedicated hospital ships Samaritan and Solace, which shuttled patients down to Guam and Saipan in relays. Large red crosses were painted on their sides, with a green stripe around the hull—and unlike virtually all other ships in wartime, they were kept brightly illuminated at night. Stretchers were taken aboard by block and tackle rigs, and moved immediately to a spacious hall serving as a receiving ward. The treatment wards produced prodigious amounts of medical waste—bloodstained bandages and washrags, empty plasma bottles, strips of cut-away clothing, discarded casts and splints—and the cleanup crews moved through frequently, gathering it all up to be jettisoned. Sailors pushed mops over bloodstained decks, stopping frequently to wring the red-tinted water into a bucket.

  Yet somehow, most of the wounded marines remained brave and even cheerful. A man whose leg had been blown off told a doctor on the Solace, “Doc, I think I’m going to be all right if I get enough blood.” The doctor replied, “Son, we’ve got all the blood anybody needs.”72 Many deprecated the seriousness of their wounds and urged the doctors and nurses to look after others who had been more seriously hit. Some apologized for having earlier shouted in pain, disturbing the peace. Some joked. A man who had lost his right arm remarked, “Well, anyway, I won’t have to write any letters now.”73 Marines whose pallor was blanched and corpselike could be revived by an infusion of whole blood. Color returned to their faces and they regained consciousness. Some patients were frankly elated, reveling in the knowledge that they had done their duty and survived the war.

  Beginning on March 4, Skymaster “flying ambulances” began evacuating about two hundred cases per day from South Field, Iwo Jima. By March 21, D plus 30, a total of 2,393 medical casualties had been flown out of the island.74

  Battlefield medicine had taken long strides in the quarter century since the First World War. In the earlier conflict, about eight of every one hundred wounded soldiers evacuated to a U.S. field hospital subsequently died. In World War II, that figure fell to under 4 percent. It was a superb improvement, attributed by medical authorities to better first aid on the battlefield, quick evacuation of the wounded, including by air, and the widespread availability of fresh, type-matched whole blood.75 But despite the excellent capabilities of the medical corps on Iwo Jima, the mortality rate of casualties evacuated from the island was nearly 8 percent. In other words, it was double the mortality rate for all theaters in World War II, and about the same avera
ge as for U.S. infantry forces in the First World War.

  The disparity is explained by a horrific feature of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Relentless mortar fire literally tore men apart, creating a high proportion of especially grievous wounds. Often they were contaminated by the island’s fine volcanic ash, and could not be easily cleaned. A doctor on one of the transports said: “I was on this ship in the Normandy invasion, and not more than five percent of our cases required major surgery; here, I swear I believe it will run 90 percent. I never saw such nasty wounds.”76 And unlike that in most other Pacific island fights, the carnage continued almost unabated into the second, third, and fourth weeks of the battle. Units involved in the hardest fighting suffered cataclysmic losses. Officers and NCOs were killed or wounded at such a rate that young lieutenants were left in charge of entire companies, and buck privates led platoons. For officers of the 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines, the casualty rate was a staggering 108 percent. The pool included fourteen replacement officers, sent forward from the reserves to take the place of those killed or wounded in the line. Of those fourteen replacements, ten were subsequently killed or wounded.77 Company B of the 1st Battalion, 28th Marines lost eight consecutive company commanders. Company I, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines landed on D-Day with 133 riflemen; when the company departed the island thirty-five days later, nine remained alive and unwounded.

  DURING THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE BATTLE, Japanese artillery and mortar barrages slackened noticeably. The last big shells fell within American lines on March 11. But for units in the vanguard, driving into the northern reaches of the island, the fighting remained as bitter and costly as ever. The terrain was unforgiving, and largely inaccessible to tanks, with alternating boulder fields, rocky outcrops, and plunging gorges. Sulfur steams hung like shrouds over the angry, scarred landscape. Infantry squads with flamethrowers took out pillboxes one by one, advancing to point-blank range and filling the enclosures with fire, then finishing the job with demolition charges. Getting to the northern coast of the island was an important psychological goal, and the breakthrough came on the morning of March 9, when a six-man advance patrol of the 21st Marines climbed down the northern cliffs and plunged into the sea. They filled a canteen with seawater and sent it back to General Erskine marked: “For inspection, not consumption.”78