Word: mortar
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Master Gunnery Sergeant Leland Stanford Diamond, the Marine's Marine and the Corp's most famed mortar expert (TIME, July 5), is back from the wars. He is running the Hygienic Unit (local name-delousing plant) at Marine Barracks, Parris Island...
Sherrod is a veteran of New Guinea, of Attu, and of the dive bombing of Wake, but "I never was so scared in all my life as when our little boat headed for the beach through a barrage of Jap mortar shells and automatic weapons. The first two boats we met had already been disabled. I gritted my teeth and tried to smile at the scared Marine next...
...came alongside Correspondent Sherrod's party. An officer said: "Half of you men get in here. They need help bad on the beach." Jap shells began peppering the water. Major Rice and 17 men scampered into the small craft, which headed for the beach through a barrage of mortar and automatic-weapon fire. The Higgins boat milled around for another ten minutes, getting its share of near-misses. One Marine picked a half-dozen pieces of shrapnel from his lap, stared at them. Another said: "Oh God, I'm scared...
...later a voice called: "Major, send somebody to help me! The son-of-a-bitch got me." Two men crawled over the retaining wall, dragged back a Marine shot through the knee. Then a mortar man 75 yards down the beach rose to a kneeling position, tumbled with a sniper's bullet through his back. The wounded man's companion popped up to help, got a bullet through the heart...
From the battlefronts last week came new praise for the versatile 4.2 rifled mortar (TIME, Nov. 15). Developed by the Chemical Warfare Service to throw smoke and gas shells, it also lobs 24-lb. shells which carry more than 8 lb. of high explosives. But it owes its new and fearsome fame among Germans and Japs to its white phosphorus smoke shells. Originally used to cloak troops or positions with harmless white clouds, WP (white phosphorus) has become one of the great anti-personnel weapons...