Word: jap
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...went the first day. The assault battalions had been cut to ribbons. Anyone who ventured beyond the beachhead and the retaining wall - and by mid-afternoon several hundred Marines had so ventured - was likely to become a casualty. From treetop concealment and from pill box slits Jap snipers and machine-gunners raked the Americans...
...still out there pokin' his rifle in all the holes and shootin' like hell and gettin' shot at a million times a minute." At great risk from shore batteries, destroyers ran close to the beach, opened up on targets as small as one Jap sniper or one pillbox mound. It was precision firing, the shells often landing less than 50 yards from the Marines. If the high explosives did not wreck many of the fortifications, they did strip away most of the islands' palm fronds...
...Turning Point. Next morning before dawn a lone Jap plane came over, shied away as U.S. ships put up a terrific ack-ack barrage. Soon after the first light the 2nd Division's reserves made for shore. From the beachhead it was a sickening sight...
...tide that morning bared the bodies of many Marines, some hunched grotesquely, others with arms outstretched, all arrested while charging forward. At regimental headquarters, located 30 yards inland against a Jap log-and-steel-laced blockhouse, staff officers worked grimly. Colonel David Shoup, huge, bull-necked commander of the men ashore, reported: "We're in a mighty tight spot. . . . We've got to have more men." It was touch-&38;-go whether the Marines would all be killed, or, less likely, be pushed back into...
...turning point came about 1 p.m. on the second day. Millions of bullets, hundreds of tons of explosive poured into the stubborn Japs. Strafing planes and dive-bombers raked the island. Light and medium tanks got ashore, rolled up to fire high explosive charges point-blank into the snipers' slots of enemy forts. Artillery got ashore, laid down a pattern over every yard of the Jap positions. Ceaseless naval gunfire became more accurate...