Other friends, too, had died, but nothing could match the loss of Nightingale. Among all the deaths, the young man from Skowhegan, Maine, was the one who least deserved it. Unlike a lot of guys, who drank and whored and gambled, Nightingale had no shadows. He was light and goodness. Had he lived, he would have returned home, married, raised a family, taken over the “faam,” and lived the life that he loved, a model of constancy and kindheartedness. Ever since his death, Freeby had not been the same, still faulting himself for failing to save his friend.
On the 23rd Marines’ right flank, Matthews had been digging a foxhole big enough to accommodate himself and the lieutenant. Racing to get it done before the light faded, he had not noticed the smell. Then it came to him, an overpowering stench of human excrement. When Lieutenant Leary walked up, he blurted out, “Count, what in the world is that smell?” Leary always called him “Count.” He had picked it up from a corporal in the platoon, but Matthews never knew how it began.
“Not sure, Lieutenant,” Matthews replied. “I can sleep with it, if you can.” He was exhausted and did not relish the thought of having to dig another hole. Leary shrugged, climbed in, curled up, and fell asleep in seconds. Matthews had the first watch, but he knew that when his turn to sleep came, he would do exactly what Lieutenant Leary had done, stench or no.
The following day, in the dim light of early morning as the flies began to stir, they saw that they had been sleeping in the farm’s garden amid the night-soil fertilizer. By the second week, most of the men were so sour with sweat, they could hardly stand the smell of each other. But now Matthews and Leary had the distinction of reeking like a sewer. Matthews had come to dislike the nighttime rains, the soggy clouds that reached down to touch the earth, and the cool winds that came in off the coast. Often he would huddle in his foxhole, nearly freezing to death, while waiting for the sun to come up. But now as they moved out and marched into the hill country, he prayed for rain.
At daybreak on June 23, while the various companies waited for orders, Leary said, “Hey, Count, why don’t you read us something from that New Testament you carry.” Since discovering that his little copy of the Gideon New Testament had saved his life on Roi, the book had taken on a special meaning for him. But Matthews was no Bible-beater. Like many of the guys, he had a private, largely uninformed faith. Nevertheless, he was a believer. But what should he read? He thought for a moment. He had always loved the 23rd Psalm. As he began to read, everyone stopped what he was doing and fell silent: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil: For thou art with me.”
If the Lord was listening that morning, he was occupied elsewhere that afternoon. The 23rd Marines’ goal for the day was to capture Hill 600, with the 2nd Battalion leading the way. The Japanese battled like men possessed until forward units crawled within twenty feet of the enemy position and eventually ousted them with grenades. Once on top of the hill, Company G discovered the bodies of the men who made up the previous day’s patrol. They were members of the 24th Marines, and included a radio operator who destroyed his SCR 300 two-way radio before the Japanese could capture it.
By midafternoon the 2nd Battalion had captured the peak and dug in to prevent a counterattack. Ideally they would have moved on, but they were ordered to wait until the 27th Division’s 165th Infantry could catch up. The Army had been assigned the center of the Corps’ northbound front. The 165th was ordered to tie in with the 4th Marines on the right, while the Army’s 106th Infantry tied in with the 2nd Marines on the left.
The 27th Division inherited the territory just east of Mount Tapotchau and just west of a low chain of hills that the division’s soldiers called “Purple Heart Ridge,” which fell off toward Kagman Point. It was a pocket of land, thick with undergrowth that tore at exposed skin, and jagged limestone formations, nearly three quarters of a mile across. Because it formed a saddle-shaped corridor to the northern section of the island, the Japanese guarded it with large numbers of ground troops, tanks, and strategically positioned snipers and machine gunners. Members of the 165th and 106th Regiments named the passage “Death Valley.”
Despite the difficult terrain and a tactical situation that favored the enemy, Holland Smith was distressed that the Army division had not made better progress. The delay created large gaps and left his adjacent Marine units with dangerously exposed flanks. The Marine general confessed that if he thought he could avoid a political typhoon, he would have immediately relieved General Ralph Smith, the 27th Division’s CO. Ralph Smith was not any happier with his troops. He held his regimental commanders responsible for the lack of progress, and promised that on the following day, June 24, he would “personally see to it that the division went forward.”
Late that afternoon, Holland Smith received a report that enemy units planned to counterattack. At six-thirty that evening, the Japanese struck, sending tanks to pound the boundary between the two Army regiments. With bazookas and 37-mm guns, the American soldiers held them off, taking out five of the six tanks. An hour later five more tanks crashed into the 106th Infantry’s lines. The regiment’s cannon company destroyed four of them, but one penetrated the 3rd Battalion’s perimeter, setting fire to an ammunition dump and attacking an aid station. Another five tanks tried to break through the area between the 165th Regiment and the 23rd Marines, attempting to climb Hill 600 via a road on its western side, but the troops held them off. Although the tank attacks failed, small bands of Japanese tried to break through the Marine and Army lines.
It was a hellish night for the members of the 23rd Marines’ 2nd Battalion. Matthews heard the Japanese on the opposite side of the ridge, talking. He looked into the dark, watching for vague forms slipping through the trees and the high grass, focusing his eyes, and trying to steady his thumping heart. If a branch snapped or a bayonet struck a slab of coral or a rock, he wanted to be able to hear it. Then he would slink down low in his foxhole, his finger brushing the trigger of his rifle. He would wait until the enemy soldier got close enough to smell, and then he would pump a clip into his chest.
Graf heard them, too. They sounded like they were drinking, and as the night wore on they grew louder. To Graf they sounded like “demons from hell,” like “movie Indians prior to an attack on the wagon train.”
Like Matthews, Graf waited for them. He had set out clips of ammo and his knife where he could reach them. Next to him sat Major Fought, scanning the trees, trying to pick up movement by the light of the flares. In the days since Fought had found him on the beach, mourning the loss of Lieutenant Roth, Graf had grown close to the major. He was the consummate gentleman and soldier. Rather than punish him for what some might have called cowardice, he had given the young private another chance to prove that he was a Marine. From that moment on, Graf determined that he would never give the major cause to doubt him. Fought recognized that, and as they battled their way across the island, he took Graf under his wing as he might a son, and their friendship blossomed. They studied maps together and discussed battle strategies, and Fought seriously considered Graf’s recommendations and opinions. Huddled together in a foxhole, they shared their personal stories, too.
The morning of June 24 came early as the sun clambered above the horizon. Graf turned his face toward the light and felt the first rays of sunshine. Then he sat for a moment and looked out over the beautiful cliffs of the Kagman Peninsula. From another foxhole he heard someone say, “Jesus, that was one helluva night.” That was Graf’s cue to get moving. June 24, he sensed, was a day of big expectations.
On the 2nd Battalion’s left, General Ralph Smith’s 27th Division was ready to move out, into the heart of Death Valley, as he had told Holland Smith they would. At 8:00 a.m., just before the division pressed forward, Ralph Smith received a dispatch from the Marine general. The dispatch read, “Commanding General is highly displeased with the failure of the 27th Division on June Twenty Third to launch its attack as ordered.… It is directed that immediate steps be taken to
cause the 27th Division to advance and seize objectives as ordered.” Minutes later the Japanese pummeled one of the battalion command posts with mortar fire, chopping up men who had just put on their field packs and picked up their rifles.
Only 100 yards in, the 27th Division walked smack into a wall of machine-gun and mortar fire. The 165th wheeled to the right, to the northeast, but the 106th was caught. To its left was a cliff face pockmarked with holes and caves that held Japanese snipers, machine gunners, and mortarmen. The 106th soon discovered that short of direct artillery and mortar strikes, those positions were nearly indestructible. Unable to advance, the regiment hammered the cliff and sent out small units to probe the valley. All returned with casualties and the same report: forward movement was impossible.
By midafternoon the handwriting was on the wall: the 106th would retreat to its line of departure, leaving—except for one company that had been able to tie into the right flank of the 2nd Marine Division—a dangerous gap of 300 to 400 hundred yards on its left flank. Ralph Smith was angry and embarrassed for his men. In the meantime, a livid Holland Smith was now more determined than ever to make the command change. He went to the Rocky Mount to discuss the issue with Admiral Turner, who advised that they both go see Admiral Spruance, who, as commander of the 5th Fleet, had the ultimate say over the entire operation. Smith argued, as he later wrote, that Ralph Smith should be relieved, that he was slowing the advance because he lacked “aggressive spirit.” Turner agreed, and Spruance assented to the Marine general’s wishes.
Not long after, Spruance followed up with an official message to Holland Smith, authorizing him, as commander of the Northern Troops and Landing Force, to dismiss General Ralph Smith. At 4:00 p.m. that day, the 27th Division’s commanding general received a message from Holland Smith ordering him to turn over his command.
On the evening of June 24, the 23rd Marines dug in again on top of Hill 600. The drive north had ground to a halt, the Kagman Peninsula remained to be taken, and now individual Marines cursed the 27th, stranded in the valley below. “Goddamn dogfaces,” one of the Easy Company Marines said. “They’re leavin’ us out to dry.” Graf wanted to come to the division’s defense. The 27th was made up of lots of men from his neck of the woods. They were tough soldiers from Troy, Albany, and Schenectady, brave and reliable men, from good upstate New York stock. It was their commanders who deserved the criticism. They had apparently forgotten that their troops were what Graf knew to be “damn good fighters.”
Although the 27th certainly deserved criticism, it was also being scapegoated for the slow, costly grind that Saipan had become. Perhaps no one should have been surprised that the island had exposed the fundamental differences between the Marines and the Army and the way they waged war.
In combat, the Marines drove hard. They believed in speed and hitting power, in getting in and getting out as fast as possible. The Marines’ basic premise was to apply unremitting pressure on a concentrated objective. They fought till sunset and then dug a line of double foxholes with no flanks. The Army, on the other hand, advanced more methodically and cautiously, often behind an artillery barrage, stopping one hour before sunset to establish a series of mutually supporting foxholes—even if that meant giving up ground gained during the daylight hours. Two forward companies dug in with a full perimeter defense while a third, situated some distance behind, covered the gap between them. In the eyes of tacticians, each method had advantages and disadvantages. The Army claimed that this alignment discouraged nighttime infiltration, a favorite ploy of the Japanese. The Army also asserted that its way preserved men. The suggestion was that the Marines ignored casualty counts and recklessly threw its men into situations that clearly favored the enemy. Countering, the Marines alleged that the Army’s method encouraged timidity. They may lose more men in the early days of a battle, but in the end, they contended, the Army lost more because its campaigns were longer than they needed to be.
On Saipan, Holland Smith’s strategy for a relentless drive north posed problems for the Army. First, from the Army’s perspective, General Smith failed to consider the nature of the terrain. Death Valley resembled a canyon and left little room for the 27th to maneuver. To make matters worse, Holland Smith’s orders often arrived late in the day, which gave the 27th little time for reconnaissance or to position its troops and artillery or to develop a scheme for advancing. The Marine general also seemed unwilling to alter his battle plans. Although he was concerned about gaps between the Army units and his Marines, he did not instruct the 2nd Division to move to its right or the 4th Division to move to its left to fill those gaps. Instead he expected his ground troops to push the battle until late in the day, and discouraged withdrawal even to consolidate lines.
Whatever Holland Smith’s and Ralph Smith’s respective shortcomings and whatever mistakes the two of them might have made, by the evening of June 24, with the American forces stranded in the middle of the island, the interservice “brotherhood” that Ralph Smith had extolled just days before was over.
CARL MATTHEWS (right)
SAMMIE BOYKIN
EDGAR HUFF
Secretary of the Navy (1940–44) FRANK KNOX
PERCY ROBINSON
GEORGE BOOTH
RICHARD FREEBY
Lieutenant JAMES LEARY
From left: Admiral CHESTER NIMITZ, Admiral ERNEST KING, and Admiral “BULL” HALSEY
From left: ROBERT GRAF, BILL JURCSAK, and WALT HASKELL
FRANK BORTA
From left: MILT LEMON, FRANK BORTA, and RICHARD CARNEY
GLENN BREM
Secretary of the Navy (1944–47) JAMES FORRESTAL
GENERAL HOLLAND SMITH (center), FLANKED BY TWO MARINES
LIEUTENANT JAMES LEARY (standing), CARL MATTHEWS, and WENDELL NIGHTINGALE on invasion day, Saipan
PERCY ROBINSON stooping over a box of ammunition
THURGOOD MARSHALL
CHAPTER 29
Tapotchau’s Heights
On June 18, Major General Keiji Iketa drafted a message to Tojo. “The army,” he told the prime minister, “is consolidating its battle lines and has decided to prepare for a showdown fight. It is concentrating … in the area east of Tapotchau.”
When the 1st Battalion, 29th Marines, wheeled north, Chick Borta could tell that Mount Tapotchau, the island’s highest ground and ultimate prize, was the goal. Tanks and jeeps would be useless. The mountain would have to be taken on foot. The problem was how. A valley that ended in a deep gorge ran along the mountain’s eastern flank. The front, south-facing side was nothing but sheer cliffs. The western side was a tangle of gulleys, ravines, and thick forests. The inability of the 27th Division to push through Death Valley proved problematic, too. “We cannot attack Mount Tapotchau until the Twenty-seventh Division moves up,” complained a staff officer, “and we’ve got to have that high ground so we can look down the Japs’ throats instead of them looking down ours.”
As much as he dreaded the push toward Tapotchau, Borta’s more immediate concern was his foxhole partners. The night after Rachitsky was killed, Borta was dug in with a cook who had been sent in as a replacement. The guy had a fierce appetite, and when he finished his rations, he was still hungry. “I need food,” he told Borta. “I gotta go find something to eat.”
“You’re an idiot,” Borta told him. “If you don’t get killed by your own men, the Japs will get you.” The guy left anyway. Borta wondered if the shit-for-brains even bothered to learn the password. Hours later he was alone in the foxhole as flares lit up the area, bright white ones that the Marines sent up every eight minutes, and yellow ones that the Japanese used. The flares meant that something was up. Japanese soldiers might be trying to get back to their lines, or infiltrators, clad only in loincloths, might be sneaking in on the Americans. Another possibility was that the Japanese were trying to hit the supply lines.
Borta listened to the rain spatter against his poncho and watched the flares, wondering if some Jap had already cut the cook’s t
hroat. When he slid back in the foxhole, Borta was astounded. The cook was the luckiest damn Marine on the whole island of Saipan. He had not returned empty-handed either. He had brought back a five-gallon can of fruit salad. Borta opened it with his trench knife. After spooning half the can into his mouth, he spent the rest of the night vomiting. By morning the cook was gone.
That day the 29th pushed farther north in the direction of Tapotchau through a patchwork of small farms and burned sugarcane fields. It was the cane fields that really scared Borta. Cover was nonexistent, and when the spotters atop Tapotchau called in artillery strikes, individual Marines could do little more than sprint and zigzag and hope. After one crossing, Borta and a number of others came across a farmhouse. They moved forward, edgy with adrenaline, fingers on the thin metal of their triggers, ready to snap off shots at the slightest movement, the faintest sound.
Borta crept up to the door, kicked it open, and dove to the side. Before he could shout “Kosan se yo!” (“Surrender!”), or “Detekoi!” (“Come out!”), a BAR man rushed in and sprayed the room with bullets. The walls were riddled with holes, and on the floor, drenched in blood, lay an old man, a woman, and a young child. The BAR man stood with his rifle hanging from one hand, staring straight ahead, as if hypnotized. Borta turned, walked out of the shack, and sat down in the dirt of the farmyard and gulped at the oily water in his canteen.
The Color of War Page 25
