[The following is in relation to the beginning of the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. For context: The Japanese had long planned for the island to be invaded by American forces. Their strategy was to kill as many American soldiers as possible. They did so by constructing a vast underground fortress, complete with an enormous amount of pillboxes and bunkers on the surface. Their opening strategy was to let the Americans make an uncontested landing, letting as many of them mill about on the beach as possible. As soon as they started to venture inland, the entire island’s defenses would erupt at once, slaughtering them.]
The beach rapidly turned into a scrap yard of wrecked trucks and Jeeps stuck in the sand or smashed by artillery. The dead piled up along the shore-line. “Coming in, I could see guys lying on the beach,” Corpsman Roy Steinfort recalled. “I thought, great! They’ll cover our landing. But when we drew closer I saw they were all dead.”
Annihilation seemed possible in the hideous first minutes. Radio transmissions back to command quarters aboard the ships raised that specter: “Catching all hell from the quarry! Heavy mortar and machine-gun fire!” “Taking heavy casualties and can’t move for the moment!” “Mortars killing us!” “All units pinned down by artillery and mortars!” “Casualties heavy!” Need tank support fast to move anywhere!” “Taking heavy fire and forward movement stopped! Machine-gun and artillery fire heaviest ever seen!”
But it was even worse than what the transmissions had indicated. No one was out of danger. A five-foot-three Associated Press photographer named Joe Rosenthal, landing with the 4th Division, ran for his life through the hail of bullets. Later he would declare that “not getting hit was like running through rain and not getting wet.” Corpsman Greg Emery, crawling on all fours, glanced back at a landing craft coming in; the ramp dropped down; machine-gun fire ripped the interior. Boys fell dead atop each other as they stumbled off the ramp.
Source:
Bradley, James, and Ron Powers. “D-Day.” Flags of Our Fathers. Bantam Dell, a Division of Random House, Inc., 2006. 156-57. Print.
Further Reading:
Battle of Iwo Jima / Operation Detachment
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