Word: tarawa
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...last time I saw Mr. Johnston [at Tarawa] he was pecking away on what I'm sure was a portable. Of course, the way things were at that time I could have been mistaken, maybe he was playing a piano...
Kwajalein, key to the Marshalls, was secure in U.S. hands. The second amphibious attack on Central Pacific atolls had been successful far beyond the first heroic but costly assault on Tarawa and Makin. As they were learning through experience about other phases of war, U.S. forces were improving their amphibious operation. Kwajalein's casualty list was only about half as large as Tarawa...
...land and on the sea. They man Navy guns and they shoot Army rifles. But the toughest job in any military operation lies in that half-&-half area between the troop transport and the dry land of the defended enemy beach. Said a Marine sergeant who waded into Tarawa through the soprano whine...
...shoulder. On Makin he came upon a young lieutenant firing madly at nothing visible. "Son," said General Smith, "if you don't quit that wild shooting I'm going to take your gun away from you." From Makin soon after the battle had ended, he flew to Tarawa. He walked through little Betio Island's 5,000 enemy and U.S. dead with the 2nd Marine Division's Major General Julian Smith.* A few minutes after they passed a pillbox rubble, Jap snipers killed three marines on the spot they had left...
When he is not learning more about amphibious warfare on places like Makin, Tarawa or Kwajalein, Holland Smith lives in a house near the naval base at Pearl Harbor with his tall, courtly Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Graves B. ("Bobby") Erskine, his aide, Major Clifton A. Woodrum Jr. (ex-SEC lawyer and son of the Virginia Congressman) and his three Marine orderlies...