Word: tarawa
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Dates: during 1943-1943
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...families of the 1,026 men killed at Tarawa knew what the statistics meant. To most of the U.S., the second figure was still just a figure: 2,557 wounded...
...Tarawa's wounded-like all the wounded from World War II-were coming home. Many would come home with missing arms, legs, eyes, faces. Blood plasma, sulfa drugs and plastic surgery would send many of them back alive but unrecognizable...
...even the road to Rome was still long and muddy, with Berlin in sight only from bomb bays. The road to Tokyo is long and watery, and every island on the way might be a Tarawa. The short, rough water-miles between Dover and Calais looked long...
...life was dull. The men of the and Marine Division fairly wilted in their crowded, hot quarters. They spent an hour each day cleaning rifles, sharpening bayonets, then another hour studying aerial photographs and contour maps of Betio, the little bird-shaped island that was the main fortification of Tarawa atoll. There was nothing else to do except see movies, read dog-eared magazines, play cards and sleep, which Marines can do at any time in any position on almost any given surface...
...Marines' confidence rose. They wondered if the Japs, who undoubtedly knew that the Americans were coming, might now have evacuated Tarawa as they had Kiska. Then, suddenly, a great splash kicked up the sea a few hundred feet from one transport, only 50 feet from another. The Japs were firing their coastal guns. Betio would not be another Kiska, after...