As real estate, the Gilbert Islands aren't much to
look at. Actually, they might better be described
as a group of atolls. Tarawa, for example, consists
of nine principal islands and a number of smaller
ones. Makin is two large islands and some islets.
Abemama is a patch a dozen miles long and five
wide. Betio, the member of the Tarawa atoll where
the heaviest fighting occurred, is a scant square mile
in area and nowhere more than 10 feet above sealevel.
In strategic value, however, these bits of coral,
sand and palm rank high. For the Japs they constituted
an extreme eastern flank shielding the major
nerve centers of their western Pacific naval sphere,
and a threat to American communication lines. In
American hands they represent an important new
dent in the Japanese defensive perimeter and a
springboard for operations in a number of directions
which the continuing Pacific offensive must take.
For them, we paid a price. Probably not since
the stone wall at Fredericksburg or Pickett's charge
at Gettysburg have American fighting men taken
such concentrated punishment. Old hands who had
seen the dreadful fighting on Guadalcanal said nothing
there had been so bloody as the battle for Betio.
Some, with a professional knowledge of such things,
held there never before had been such a call for
courage and a willingness to sacrifice.
Col. Merritt A. Edson, one of the Marine Corps
officers whose names are practically synonymous
with Guadalcanal derring-do, was among these.
"Nothing in any previous war or this war compared
with it," he said. Col. Evans F. Carlson, the
Carlson of Carlson's Raiders who disrupted Jap
installations on Makin in August, 1942, and who
also saw Guadalcanal action, said, "Guadalcanal
was something-but I never saw anything like this."
The casualty list tells the story. At Tarawa, 1,026
died and 2,557 were wounded. On Makin, where
the Twenty-seventh Division, originally New York
National Guardsmen, made its landing, the contest
was bitter in spots, but less gruelling. Sixty-five died
there and 121 were wounded. Abemama, where the
Marines went ashore after the main fighting had
begun on the two atolls farther north, cost but one
dead and two wounded.
Artillery preparation began at 5 a.m. Nov. 20,
west longitude date. The sky was abruptly alight
with the muzzle blast from the guns of battleships,
cruisers and destroyers. In the time before the first
wave was due to reach the beach, 1,500 tons of
shells would rain on Betio's square mile. The landing
force had the support of the mightiest fleet ever
gathered in the Pacific.
Softening by aerial bombardment had begun a
week earlier, when the Seventh USAAF's Liberators
began a series of raids. Their last one took place
the morning of the attack, with the naval shells
bursting under them and carrier-borne aircraft
hurtling down past the formations of heavies to
bomb and strafe. Altogether Betio got about 1,000
tons of bombs.
It was a staggering concentration of explosives,
but it didn't do a great deal toward knocking out
the Jap defenses. More about those later. They
were good. Close-in cannon fire, bangalore torpedoes,
grenades and flame throwers were needed to
finish them off, and they exacted a prodigious toll
among the attackers.
What happened between the beginning of the
bombardment and the final Americanization of
Betio 76 hours later, as told here, is derived from a
variety of dispatches written by several correspondents
who went in with the waves of Marines and
others who stayed at Pearl Harbor to do the overall
picture.
The Marines were scheduled to hit the beach at
8:30 a.m. At first, going in toward Betio, it was
easy and quiet. There was even talk that it was
going to be another Kiska, with the Japs gone and
only demolitions to show where they had been.
The remarks about another Kiska stopped when the
boats were about 1.500 yards off shore. Land batteries
opened heavily against the Higgins boats already
heading in and the transports down whose
nets the later waves were clambering to their landing
craft.
Rough seas and geysers thrown up by shells
drenched the Marines, and then the boats began to
strand. The coral shelf around the island wasn't
giving them the anticipated draft. The lucky ones
got to within 150 yards of the beach. Many ibcame
fast 500 and even 600 yards off shore. Smaller craft
with shallower draft began ferrying in all they
could. Plenty waded-neck deep, chest deep, knee
deep. There weren't enough of the shallow-draft
boats, and those available couldn't afford to take
chances. The best they could do was bring men
in for a shorter wade.
One of the small boat skippers explained that to
Marines piling out of a stranded Higgins boat
into his craft.
"It's hell in there," he told them. "They've already
knocked out a lot of boats, and there are a lot
of wounded men lying on the beach from the first
wave. They need men bad. I can't take you all the
way in because we've got to get back out here safely
and get some more men in there quick. But I'll let
you out where you can wade in."
It was neck deep where that particular group
began its wading.
William Hipple, of the Associated Press, told
about the wading part in his story. Wrote Hipple:
"About 400 yards from the beach our boat apparently
was out of control. The colonel ordered
us out and to head in.
"Just before we climbed over the side the calm,
cool colonel shouted at me and grinned:
" 'I guess you got a story. It looks like the Japs
want a scrap.' A few minutes later the colonel was
killed. Meanwhile I hit the water waist deep; cut
off my Mae West life jacket with a knife. I couldn't
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