Strong Men Armed

by Robert Leckie

  The second Smith was Major General Julian Smith, the commander of the Second Marine Division. He was soft-spoken, gentle-eyed, fatherly. He rarely lost his temper. But if Julian Smith was not angry on October 2, 1943, he was at least concerned.

  General Julian Smith had come to Pearl Harbor with his chief of staff, Red Mike Edson of Guadalcanal, and had begun to confer with General Holland Smith on the Second Division’s assignment to capture Betio. He was worried about the reef and the tides. Even though his men would make their assault from the lagoon side, entering by boat from the western channel, there was a reef there, too. And with the attack occurring during the neap tide, Julian Smith could not be certain of much water over that reef. Tarawa was also visited by “dodging tides” which were sometimes irregularly high, sometimes irregularly low, but Julian Smith did not share Rear Admiral Richard Kelly Turner’s confidence that there would be a high-dodger on invasion day. There could be a low one. If there was, Julian Smith’s Marines would never get over the reef in their landing boats. They would have to wade inshore from 500 to 1,000 yards out—into a murderous fire. Julian Smith wanted amtracks. Amtracks could climb the reefs and churn ashore. But he had only 75 operable amtracks, which was not enough to get his first waves ashore. He needed at least 100 more.

  “All right,” said Howlin’ Mad Smith. “I’ll get’em for you.”

  So Julian Smith and Red Mike Edson flew back to Wellington, but when Howlin’ Mad Smith spoke to Kelly Turner, Kelly Turner said, “No.”

  The admiral who commanded the Fifth Amphibious Force said he would not have the amtracks aboard his ships. There was going to be a high-dodging tide off Betio on November 20 and amtracks would not be needed. Howlin’ Mad said:

  “Kelly, it’s like this: I’ve got to have those amtracks. We’ll take a helluva licking without them. No amtracks—no operation.”

  It was not customary to hand Kelly Turner ultimatums, but this one had the virtue of suggesting Smith’s determination. It was finally arranged that of 100 amtracks then in California 50 would be rushed to Samoa where the Second could pick them up after they departed Wellington.

  Meanwhile, what about Makin?

  Makin would be taken by another general named Smith-the Army’s Major General Ralph Smith, who led the 27th Infantry Division. Intelligence estimated Makin’s garrison at a little better than 500 men, though there were actually 900. To take Makin, Ralph Smith was going to use but one of his three regiments, the 165th Infantry.

  A third, much smaller operation was planned. This was the seizure of Apamama, a beautiful and historic atoll about .85 miles south of Tarawa. Apamama would not be attacked until November 26, but it would be scouted on November 21 by the Fifth Corps Reconnaissance Company of Captain Jim Jones. These Marines were to sail by submarine from Tarawa the night of November 20, going ashore by rubber boat in early morning to learn the extent of Apamama’s defenses. Intelligence believed the atoll to be defended in company strength or more, though actually it was much less.

  Intelligence was more accurate in its estimate of 4,500 men on Betio. They had used a unique yardstick to measure it. An aerial photograph had shown numerous latrines built out over the lagoon. Intelligence officers carefully marked the number of holes, and then, knowing that Japanese doctrine was also inflexible in such matters as the ratio of holes to occupants, they made an estimate not very far from the exact figure of 4,836 Imperial Japanese Marines and construction troops.

  In assault against them would be only two-thirds of the Second Marine Division’s strength, the Second and Eighth Marines with attached troops. The Sixth Marines would be in Corps reserve, on call for either operation. But all of the Second Division’s 18,600 Marines were together when they began boarding ship in Wellington in late October under the delusion that they were merely going to run up Hawkes Bay on maneuvers.

  Julian Smith had not forgotten how the First Division sailed from Wellington fifteen months ago with newspapers talking of an attack on Tulagi, and he took his own Second out of New Zealand under an elaborate smokescreen. Orders for the “Hawkes Bay Maneuvers” were drawn up. The Royal New Zealand Air Force was solemnly briefed on coverage for these practice landings. Men were told they would be back in camp within a week, and of course they told their girls. The final touch was to arrange with New Zealand firms for the movement of equipment from Hawkes Bay back to the Wellington base.

  It was not until the Second sailed from Wellington in late October that the governor general of New Zealand was told the Marines were leaving his country for good. They were going to Efate in the New Hebrides.

  It was at Efate that the Second Division made its practice landings, using those 50 new amtracks picked up in Samoa. It was in Efate that a bull-chested, bull-necked, profane colonel named David Shoup was placed in charge of that Second Regiment which was going to lead the way in to Betio. The Second’s commanding officer, Colonel William Marshall, became ill in Efate, and Major General Julian Smith named his operations officer, Shoup, to take his place. And it was at Efate, during a meeting attended by Britishers who had lived in the Gilberts, that someone spoke of the difficulty of crossing Betio’s lagoon reef on the neap tide.

  “Neap tide!” exclaimed Major Frank Holland. “My God, when I told you there would be five feet of water on the reef, I never dreamed anyone would try to land at neap tide. There won’t be three feet of water on the reef!”

  The Americans were shocked, and a meeting of captains and pilots who had sailed the Gilberts was called. In spite of what Holland had said, it was concluded that there would probably be enough water to float both landing boats and LCM’s over the reef.

  Which was not true.

  But by then all the plans had been made. It was argued that to wait until after November 22, when the spring tides would appear, would also be to risk a coincident west wind which whips up a steep short sea off Betio. Also, the flood of the spring tide would cover Betio’s beaches right up to the barricades and there might not be any place to land. Again, each day’s delay would mean the arrival of the flood an hour later, and because invasions normally must come at the flood, that meant one hour less daylight in which to seize the beachhead.

  Admiral Turner still was willing to gamble on the presence of a high-dodging tide on November 20, and the great invasion fleet of three battleships, five cruisers, nine destroyers and 17 troop and cargo ships had already begun to assemble. Naval bombardment officers were already predicting what they were going to do to Betio.

  “We are going to bombard at 6,000 yards,” said one battleship captain. “We’ve got so much armor we’re not afraid of anything the Japs can throw back at us.”

  “We’re going in at 4,000 yards,” said a cruiser skipper. “We figure our armor can take anything they’ve got.”

  And Major General Julian Smith arose to say, “Gentlemen, remember one thing. When the Marines land and meet the enemy at bayonet point, the only armor a Marine will have is his khaki shirt!”

  Then the fleet upped anchor and sailed for Betio.

  At Betio more misfortune had befallen the Yogaki Plan.

  On November 1 the American Marines had landed at Bougainville and troops intended for Shibasaki had been sucked off to the Solomons.

  On November 5 the American carriers had made their disastrous strike at Rabaul and had knocked out the cruiser screen of Vice Admiral Kondo’s Second Fleet.

  On November 11 the American carrier planes came again, destroying many planes on the ground at Rabaul, shooting down something like go of them in ensuing dogfights. Many of these were the short-rangers from Truk which had been staged into Rabaul in preparation for strikes at the Marines on Bougainville. Now Shibasaki would not get his aerial cover. More, he had also been informed that the submarine force was badly depleted and he could expect the help of only a few undersea boats in the Gilberts.

  By November 13, when the American fleet left Efate, aerial strikes at the Gilberts and especially Betio had risen in fury. America
n planes were constantly overhead from that date until November 10. On the eighteenth alone, carrier planes dropped 115 tons of bombs. Next day it was 69 tons and three American cruisers and two destroyers hurled 250 tons of projectiles into Betio the same day.

  Clearly the Americans believed that they could knock out Betio. Shibasaki did not. He was confident as he moved among the 300 headquarters troops who shared his vast two-story bombproof at roughly the island’s center. He knew, and the Americans as yet did not, that only the direct hits of the biggest bombs could destroy most of his positions. His own bombproof he thought impregnable. As Keiji Shibasaki frequently assured his troops:

  “A million men cannot take Tarawa in a hundred years.”

  The men actually coming to take it, in less numbers and time, were in the best of fighting shape, for they were already bitching.

  They were openly “beating their gums” over the stench and heat below decks; about the confusion of crossing the International Date Line so often that one week had two Sundays and no Thursday; over being tricked by the “Hawkes Bay Hoax” and not having had the chance to say goodbye in style; about being offered the insult of assaulting an upside-down bird of an island rock while the Third Division was taking Bougainville-which even the Stateside folks had heard of-and the First had sneaked up to New Guinea to try to steal headlines from Dugout Doug; over the tedium of playing endless games of gin rummy, of smoking, of drinking lukewarm coffee that the swabbie messman handed you like he wanted to charge you for it; of washing socks and underwear by tying them to ropes and heaving them over the fantail to be cleansed by the wake from the propeller; of reading paperbacked mysteries, paperbacked westerns, Bibles, histories; and finally of having to be led below daily, platoon by platoon, to dissolve in puddles of their own sweat while the officers rolled down the bulkhead maps and went over their role on Betio-again and again and again.

  It was the maps which gave the men the impression of Betio as an upside-down bird. They were of course oriented north, and because the parrot’s back was the south coast and the underbelly the north, the bird seemed upside down. The Marines were going to hit this north coast, the underbelly, with three battalions landing in three sectors almost exactly coextensive with the airfield, the bird’s head and body. In roughly the center of this was a long pier stretching out into the lagoon, and this gave the impression of the bird’s legs.

  Attacking on the left or east would be the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines-detached to Colonel Shoup’s Second Marines for the assault—led by the red-mustachioed Major Henry (Jim) Crowe, a “mustang” up from the ranks and a commander as energetic as he was enormous. In the center would be the Second Battalion, Second, under Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Amey. On the right or west was the Third Battalion, Second, under Major John Schoettel. Major General Julian Smith would have his three remaining battalions in reserve, for his Sixth Marine Regiment was still detached to Fifth Corps.

  The first three waves were to be led into the lagoon by destroyers Ringgold and Dashiell after the little minesweepers Pursuit and Requisite had swept the entrance clear of mines. The amtracks would cross the lagoon reef to bring the assault troops ashore at about half-past eight, then return to the reef to pick up reinforcements which would be brought up to it by landing boats.

  Julian Smith and his commanders still doubted that there would be enough water on the reef for the landing boats to cross it. Their only consolation was that they had had the forethought to provide themselves with enough amtracks to take in the first three waves. They took no comfort from the message sent them by the Tarawa force’s sea commander, Rear Admiral Harry Hill. It said:

  “It is not our intention to wreck the island. We do not intend to destroy it. Gentlemen, we will obliterate it.”

  8

  The invasion fleet stood off Tarawa Atoll on the morning of November 20. Seventeen dark shapes slid into position about a mile off the western entrance to the lagoon, a few miles above the islet of Betio. They were the transports.

  Below the lagoon entrance were the fire-support ships, battleships Maryland, Colorado and Tennessee with their cruisers and destroyers. Japan would regret not having attacked old Maryland and Tennessee in the open sea-where they would have been lost forever—instead of in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor. They had been salvaged, modernized and sent out to join bombardment forces.

  It was about half-past three in the morning. A half-moon flitted in and out of fleecy clouds. It was cool. Marines going down cargo nets into waiting landing boats could feel the perspiration drying on their foreheads.

  They came from stifling galleys in which they had dined on steak and eggs, french fried potatoes and hot coffee, a meal as sure to induce perspiration as it provoked dismay from the transport surgeons who would soon be sewing up some of these men.

  “Steak and eggs!” a surgeon aboard Zeilin exclaimed. “Jesus, that will make a nice lot of guts to have to sew up-full of steak!”

  The men were boated now, moving slowly away from the big ships, coming to make the difficult transfer to the amtracks. They made it without accident. The attack lines were forming a quarter-mile off the lagoon entrance. Little Pursuit and Requisite were darting into the channel to sweep it clear of mines -and at 4:41 A.M. a red star-shell swished into sight high above Betio and a half-hour later the Japanese shore batteries opened up.

  The American battleships fired back.

  Aboard Maryland the great long lengths of steel fingered the sky. One of them leaped. Flame spouted from it. A streaking blob of red sailed toward Betio. Marines in their tiny churning boats could watch its progress. They saw no explosion on Betio. The shell was short. Again the great gob of orange flame and the speck of streaking red, and again no explosion. But then dawn seemed to burst like a rocket from western Betio. A great sheet of flame sprang 500 feet into the air, and the explosion which succeeded it sent shock waves rolling out over the water.

  Old Maryland had hurled one of her 16-inch armor piercers into the ammunition room of the eight-inchers mounted on Betio’s western tip. It was perhaps the greatest single bombardment feat of the war, for that shell of more than half a ton had killed men by the hundreds and had detonated hundreds of tons of enemy shells, and utterly wrecked the eight-inchers’ blockhouse. And then Tennessee and Colorado began to thunder. All the battleships were firing in salvos, drifting in and out of their own gunsmoke as they paraded the Betio shoreline. Heavy cruisers belched flame and smoke from eight-inch muzzles. The lights roared away with six-inchers. Destroyers ran in close to send five-inch bullets arching ashore with almost the rapidity of automatic weapons.

  Betio was aglow. She was a mass of fires. Great dust clouds swirled above her. Smoke coiled up and fused with them. Fires towered high and lit them with a fluttering pink glare. It seemed that Admiral Hill had been right, that Betio would not greet another dawn. The islet was being torn apart. She was no longer visible beneath that pall, now frowning, now glowing.

  Then at forty-two minutes past five the American warships ceased firing. The American carrier planes were coming in, and it would be well to let the smoke clear so that the Dauntlesses and Avengers and the superb new Hellcat fighters could see their targets.

  But the air strike did not arrive, and in the interval those “pulverized” Japanese began firing back.

  They shot at the transports with five-inchers and those eight-inchers still operative. They drove the transports off, and plowing after them in flight went the amtracks and landing boats loaded with Marines. For half an hour the fleeing transports duck-walked among exploding shells, and then, because the air strike had still not arrived, the American warships resumed fire.

  For ten minutes the air was filled with their bellowing, and then with the islet again glowing, the carrier planes came in. Hardly a bursting enemy antiaircraft shell or bullet rose to chastise these strafing, swooping planes, and it seemed that Betio was surely zemmetsu. Again she was swathed in smoke.

  But as Pursuit an
d Requisite entered the lagoon through the reef passage, shore batteries on the landing beaches lashed out at them. The minesweepers called for Ringgold and Dashiell. The two graceful destroyers swept into the lagoon, firing as they came, with amtracks full of Marines churning after them.

  A shell struck Ringgold to starboard, passing through the engine room. But it didn’t explode. Another. Again a dud. Through the smoke and fire ashore Ringgold’s gunnery officer had spotted the flashes of her tormentor. Her five-inchers swung around and gushed flame. There was a great explosion ashore. The enemy gun’s ammunition dump had been hit.

  It was getting close to nine o’clock and the amtrack motors were rising to full throttle. The swaying clumsy craft were going into Betio. They were taking harmless air bursts overhead, taking long-range machine-gun fire with bullets rattling off their sides. The wind was blowing Betio’s smoke into their faces, blowing the water flat and thin over the reef-but the amtracks were bumping over it and boring in. Now the Marines were ducking low beneath the gunwales, for a volcano of flame and sound had begun to erupt around them and there were amtracks blowing up, amtracks beginning to burn, amtracks spinning around, slowing and sinking—for if they cannot move they sink—and there were amtracks grinding ashore and rising from the surf with water streaming from their sides, with helmeted figures in mottled green leaping from them and sprinting over the narrow beaches toward the treacherous sanctuary of the sea wall; and falling, falling, falling as they ran.

  The Scout-Sniper Platoon went into Betio five minutes before the first wave. It was led by a lieutenant named William Deane Hawkins, but hardly any of the platoon’s 40 men could remember Hawk’s first name. He was just Hawk, lean and swift like a hawk, a man as convinced of victory as he was sure of his own death in battle. Hawkins had joined the Marines with this remark to his closest friend: “I’ll see you some day, Mac-but not on this earth.” He had come up from the ranks, actually risen, unlike that legion who “come up through the ranks” by marking time as an enlisted man while powerful friends push their commission through channels.