George woke before sunrise to the sounds of the ever-present artillery and mortar fire. During the night, two Japanese soldiers armed with Nanbu pistols had attempted to sneak past the patrols of the 27th Regiment, but they were summarily killed.1 The Nanbus were highly prized by the Marines, and were quickly snatched up by two lucky souvenir hunters.
The jump-off time was set for 0800, but Fox Company was still to remain in reserve unless otherwise needed. George used the time to fill his unit-3 medical bag with battle dressings and other supplies. He also packed a few hand grenades because he heard how valuable grenades had been in close quarter fighting in previous days.
George pulled out his KaBar (long blade knife) and peeled open a can of scrambled eggs from a K ration. The key for the can was useless because the metal tab used to twist it open had broken off. A shortage of supplies meant that all the preferred C rations had already been eaten, and the tasteless, rubbery K rations were all that remained. George didn’t care what he ate; he wasn’t really very hungry, but he knew he had better eat something to maintain his strength for what could be a busy day ahead.
As the jump-off time approached, George concluded that the signal for the attack was again to be a rocket barrage, since he saw several rocket trucks getting into position. Each truck could launch 36 rockets with each salvo, and a salvo lasted only a few seconds. Reloading could take upwards of ten minutes, and rocket crews usually fired only one salvo. In a very un-Marine-like manner, the crews would fire their rockets, hop in their trucks and scamper away to find shelter.
This act of turning-tail was not lost among the Marine infantrymen who often derisively remarked that the rocket crews were guilty of desertion under fire.
At 0715, Naval guns began to pound the pillboxes and cave openings in 5th Division’s zone of action. Not long thereafter, Marine artillery began to supplement the Navy’s attack. Just as expected at 0800, George watched from his foxhole as the bright flashes of the rocket barrage began, and he heard the rapid fire “swoosh” of the rockets leaving the launch tubes.
The smell of cordite wafted across the barren landscape, and individual Marines began leaping from their rifle pits. Some Marines fired their weapons at the pillboxes and cave entrances, hoping to connect with the ever-hidden enemy. As they began their advance, machine gunfire cut down several Marines within seconds. Watching in fear of meeting the same fate, other Marines remained in their foxholes, firing their weapons at targets of opportunity. As the attack progressed, Marine artillery rounds scored a direct hit on a pillbox, allowing Marines to advance a few yards. They repeated the process again and again, progressing slowly and deliberately forward.
After two hours of constant exchanges of mortar, artillery, and machine gunfire, the 2nd Battalion had advanced only 50 yards and suffered significant casualties. Major Amadeo Rea, commander of the 2nd Battalion, decided he had seen enough, so he decided to try another tactic.
Just before 1000 hours, Captain Frank Caldwell was ordered to take Fox Company forward and pass through the lines being held by the beleaguered Easy Company.3 George followed his platoon leader as they jumped into a rifle pit where a Marine was firing at a pillbox. When the Marine realized he was being replaced, he stopped firing, looked right and left, and waited for the right opportunity to jump from the hole and crawl to a shell hole behind him. Within minutes, he and what remained of Easy Company were off the front lines, resting in the relative safety of battalion reserve.
Colonel Joseph Sayers, the architect of the 2nd Battalion strategy, had purposefully held Fox Company in reserve for such a circumstance. Although Colonel Sayers had been evacuated on D+4, Major Amadeo Rea, now at the helm of 2nd Battalion, understood the strategy and used a similar tactical approach. His plan was to capitalize on Fox Company’s natural competitiveness to prove they were as prepared for the task assigned as Dog or Easy Companies, who up until this time had seen most of the front line duty.
Fox Company was positioned to move ahead, but visibility had worsened as a foggy haze blanketed the island. As if on cue, when Captain Caldwell gave the signal to move ahead, a light rain began to fall, and the combining mist over the battlefield resembled a Hollywood movie set.
The Japanese resistance was fierce as their reinforced positions initially stalled Fox Company’s attack. But within an hour, the Marines had learned how to coordinate their attacks and methodically eliminate a target, thus ridding themselves of several key Japanese emplacements. Or so they thought.
Just as the Marines began to gain momentum, the enemy would scramble underneath the island to one of the miles of connecting tunnels and return to a concrete pillbox that the Marines had believed to be secure. Consequently, Fox Company, suddenly attacked from the rear, suffered several casualties from machine gun and rifle fire.
Having to retake these positions, Fox Company learned quickly and began to use bazookas and hand grenades to neutralize the caves and reinforced pillboxes, especially when they were reentering a previously secure area. As they neared a Japanese position, hand grenades were tossed into the small opening, and the resulting explosion usually eliminated the enemy.
It wasn’t long before Fox Company was making tremendous progress against the once intractable Japanese defenses. Yet despite their advances, the Japanese continued to exact a deadly toll on the persistent Marines. As the 2nd platoon crossed a flat, acre-size area, the ever-patient Japanese commanders waited for the right moment when the Marines were most vulnerable and then suddenly attacked with an intense barrage of mortars and machine guns. Within seconds, several Marines lay wounded and helpless, unable to move and still vulnerable to the ongoing shower of exploding mortar shells.
George had concentrated on staying close to his platoon as they progressed northward adjacent to the other company units. But as he turned around during the attack on the 2nd platoon, he saw up to 15 wounded Marines scattered in the flat, open area that was still being slammed with mortar and artillery fire. Through the noise, he heard their screams of pain mixed with calls for a corpsman to help them.
George couldn’t ignore their pleas for help. He disregarded the exploding mortars that continued to pound the area. His friend Eddie Monjaras was the corpsman for the 2nd platoon, and George feared the worst had happened because Eddie wasn’t there treating the wounded; Eddie would be there if he were able. Without hesitating, George crawled on his hands and knees into the line of fire and began to treat the wounded Marines.
Within seconds, he had crawled to the closest wounded Marine and struggled to drag him to a shell hole. George could see blood gushing from a puncture wound on the man’s thigh, so he ripped open a sealed battle dressing and pushed gauze into the wound to stop the bleeding. When he had finished treating the leg wound, he quickly crawled on his stomach to the next Marine.
With so many wounded men, George first focused on attending to the most critical injuries. Some Marines were missing limbs, others had shrapnel wounds. Crawling to a second man, George quickly tied a tourniquet above his missing leg and tightened it carefully to stop the bleeding. As George finished with that man’s injury, he crawled over to treat a third Marine with a shrapnel wound. George quickly cleared the dirt from the exposed flesh and applied a battle dressing to the bleeding area.
After each task was finished, he crawled from one casualty to the next. Hugging the ground to create the lowest profile he could manage, George ignored the intense explosions from mortar shells that continued to rain around him. Without stopping, he continued his quest to treat every wounded Marine in the area.
After treating his sixth or seventh casualty, he came across the familiar face of his friend Eddie Monjaras. George quickly crawled over to Eddie, who was hit badly in the chest and stomach.
Fortunately, Eddie was not fully conscious. George feverishly cleared away the jacket to assess the wound. He sucked in his breath. Just one look at the injury made George realize the severity of the wounds. He could see his best friend’s intestines and vital organs exposed, and with each labored breath, the blood oozed freely from the skin that was ripped away in the blast. In the minutes it took to treat the other Marines, Eddie had lost a great deal of blood, soaking his dungarees with red. George gently pressed the bandage on the dark, red muscle and visceral tissue surrounding the wound before he quickly opened one of his last remaining syrettes of morphine to insert in Eddie’s arm. Within a few seconds, Eddie’s breathing had relaxed, and George patted his arm as he promised he would be OK. Still, he knew that Eddie’s chances were not good as he summoned the stretcher-bearers. Within minutes, Eddie was being carried to an aid station. That was the last time he saw his friend alive, but George wasn’t thinking of that. He had more wounded to attend to.
The overhead machine gunfire had stopped or at least George didn’t notice it any longer. The mortars continued to land at a steady pace, but were somehow exploding far enough away that the shrapnel missed him.
After Eddie was evacuated, George continued to hear the call for “corpsman,” and he faithfully performed his duty. At the end of twenty minutes of intense mortar shelling, George was treating his fourteenth and final casualty in this open killing field. He helped roll the wounded Marine onto a stretcher and watched the stretcher team dodge mortar shells as they hefted their comrade to an aid station at the rear of the lines.
Depleted, George crawled back to safety and scrambled to rejoin his platoon. Some of the men in his unit were shaking their heads in amazement, having watched this amazing act of courage. Without stating it, they knew they had witnessed one of those unexplainable phenomena on the battlefield. No one could explain how or why George survived almost 20 minutes exposed to the intense mortar barrage.
George collapsed, exhausted, into a shell hole and tried to catch his breath. Soon he began to replay the recent events in his head. It slowly dawned on him that he had somehow evaded countless mortar shells and treated fourteen Marines without as much as a scratch. The realization shocked him like a splash of ice water over his head. George rested his face in his hands and began to shake. He lay there in the hole for several minutes, but didn’t have long to catch his breath. His platoon again started to advance. Eager to stay with his unit, he jumped from the safety of the shell hole and continued to seek cover.
The sloped sandy soil was subtly becoming steeper slopes, cliffs, and ravines. The increasingly rocky terrain concealed cunningly disguised gun emplacements and machine gun nests not discovered until someone was hit.
Looking up the hill to the east, George could see the discouraging complex of ridges and cliffs, with a large hill looming over the difficult terrain. The hill became known as Hill 362A, named for its altitude above sea level. Strangely, three hills of the same height existed on Iwo Jima, and they were distinguished by the Marines simply as Hill 362A, B, and C.
As they approached a hill, PFC Jack Russell of Ogden, Utah, had spotted an artillery piece on a railcar hidden inside the hill behind a camouflaged cave opening. Unexpectedly, it would emerge from the cave and fire its huge shells into a group of Marines, and then retreat within the cave. He watched the well-camouflaged gun several times, until he had memorized the bushes and other features, and could pinpoint its location. Just then, a group of five tanks came up from the rear.
Russell was asked to bring the tanks over, although they were now several hundred yards away. He ran across the open terrain amidst rifle and mortar fire to catch up with the tanks. Out of breath, he reached for the telephone on the rear of the lead tank and told the tank commander, “We need help straight ahead, on the hillside there; they’ve got an artillery gun that comes out on rails, a big one, and it’s kicking our butts.”
Using the machine guns on the lead tank, Russell directed its gunfire with the help of the tracer rounds. When the bright tracer rounds landed on the exact location, he hollered to the tank commanders, “You’re on it…now pour it to ‘em!”
Just then, the three tanks in front, as well as the two in the rear, began to pound the mountainside with their big 75-mm shells. Russell, having no place to hide but behind the tanks, felt the concussion of each shell as it burst from the tank’s big guns. The shells ripped into the Japanese artillery piece, and within seconds, it was silenced for good.
In front of the tanks was a dead Marine, who had fallen several feet beyond the end of the tank’s 75-mm gun. With each shell, Jack watched as the concussion of each blast would blow the dead man’s shirt over his head. Russell, unprepared for the intensity of the blasts, was deafened for hours, and his ears continued to bleed throughout the remainder of the day.
