Word: peleliu
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...even before last week's casualties had been counted, Peleliu's hillside caves and mangrove swamps had not come cheap. The marines killed more than 8,000 Japs but lost 981 in killed and missing (against Tarawa's 984), had 3,639 wounded (against Tarawa's 2,072). Percentagewise, the 81st Infantry Division's losses on Angaur were higher. In killing 1,075 Japs, the soldiers had 880 casualties: 106 dead, five missing, 769 wounded...
Palou's Significance. Plainly, meeting entrenched Japs was an operation expensive in human lives, which are highly regarded in the U.S. if not in Japan. Wherever possible, U.S. strategy has been to by-pass Jap defenses. From air bases on Angaur, Peleliu and Ngesebus, the U.S. can now neutralize not only the 25,000 Japs on Babelthuap, Koror and the other northern Palaus, but also an estimated 100,000 others on once-mighty Truk, Ponape and other Caroline islands...
Without invading Babelthuap and the other northern Palaus, the U.S. could not immediately use the vast Palau fleet basin. But airfields in the southern Palaus would serve: 1) for bombing the Philippines-if MacArthur invaded the central Philippines instead of Mindanao, Peleliu would be closer to the invasion coast than Morotai; 2) for air patrols which could clamp the northern Palaus in a neutralizing vise. Last week marine flyers based on Peleliu were already strafing and bombing Babelthuap...
...front of Bloody Nose ridge on Peleliu. a Marine colonel fretted in his command post-a piece of tin under a poncho which shaded him from the sun. He worried the end of a frazzled cigaret, surveyed the field before him with hard, bloodshot eyes. For many days his regiment had been fighting it out in this sector against Jap troops dug into the limestone face of the ridge...
...southern slope of a hill on furnace-hot Peleliu, two hospital corpsmen came upon a badly wounded marine, a young Southerner. They lifted him on a stretcher and started toward the beach through the machine-gun fire that corpsmen often brave to rescue fallen comrades...