Word: coconuts
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...during that first day on Tarawa "dozens of Marines were being killed or wounded every five minutes. Anyone who ventured beyond the precarious beachhead we held behind the retaining wall was more likely to become a casualty than not. Jap snipers were hidden so carefully in the tops of coconut trees or under earth-mounded coconut logs that they could rarely be seen. Machine guns from slits in those fortifications covered the beach and the areas behind the beach, chattering incessantly as they raked the Americans...
After centuries of wading through shallowing water and deepening machine-gun fire, the men split into two groups. One group headed straight for the beach. The other struck toward a coconut log pier, then crawled along it past wrecked boats, a stalled bull dozer, countless fish killed by concussion. Those who got ashore did not know just how many of the 15 had been lost - probably three or four...
...year-old crewman on the boat had been shot through the head, and had murmured: "I think I'm hit, will you look?" Now he lay on the beach. A Jap ran out of a coconut-log blockhouse into which Marines were tossing dynamite. As he emerged a Marine flamethrower engulfed him. The Jap flared like a piece of celluloid. He died before the bullets in his cartridge belt finished exploding 60 seconds later...
...Marine beachhead at this point comprised only the 20 feet between the water line and the retaining wall of coconut logs which ringed Betio. Beyond this strip, Jap snipers and machine-gunners were firing. In a little revetment was the headquarters of Major Henry P. ("Jim") Crowe, a tough, red-mustached veteran who had risen from the Marine ranks to command of one of the assault battalions. Near by passed a parade of wiremen, riflemen, mortarmen and stretcher bearers...
Lieut. William D. Hawkins, a Texan, led his platoon into the coconut palms. Though twice wounded, he refused to retire. He personally cleaned out six machine-gun nests, sometimes by standing on top of a half-track and firing at four or five Japs who fired back from blockhouses. One of Hawkins' men sobbed: "My buddy was shot in the throat. He was bleeding like hell and saying in a low voice, 'Help me, help me!' I had to turn my head...