Word: saipan
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Most Negro marines are in service companies, but all marines are combat-minded. Last week, as a footnote to the invasion of Saipan, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod wrote about the first to see action...
...Negro marines, under fire for the first time, have rated a universal 4.0* on Saipan. Some landed with the assault waves. All in the four service companies have been under fire at one time or another during the battle. Some have been wounded, several of them have been killed in action...
Cool in Combat. "Primarily they were used as ammunition carriers and beachhead unloading parties, but on Saipan some were used for combat. When Japs counterattacked the 4th Marine Division near Charan Kanoa, twelve Negroes were thrown into the defense line. Their white officers said they accounted for about 15 Japs...
Normal Duties. "But Negro marines were at their best while performing their normal duties. Credited with being the workingest men on Saipan, they performed prodigious feats of labor both while under fire and after beachheads were well secured. Some unloaded boats for three days, with little or no sleep, working in water up to waist deep. Some in floating dump details were the first men to pile off their ship toward the beach...
...This was Saipan, as recorded by Lieut. Loyal ("Larry") B. Hays and Technical Sergeant Keene Hepburn of the U.S. Marines. After 13 days there, they were back in the U.S. last week, editing 15 to 20 hours of the best portable wire and disc recordings of battle action made during World War II. They put home-fronters (CBS, We, the People) just about as close to the battle as they could get without participating...