Faithful Warriors by Dean Ladd

Author:Dean Ladd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2011-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

And the evening and the morning were the third day of the battle for Betio.

For Dick Stein, that third day of the operation—the second day of fighting for him and the rest of the 8th Marines—started with more of the same—going over the seawall and coming back, again and again. Fighting and killing the Japanese, still mostly invisible. But not for long.

Later that morning Dick and Red Nelson and 1st Lt. Newell T. Berg were resting next to the sheltering bulk of the wrecked LVT1-44. A pillbox was situated some distance in front of their position, and Berg went over the wall, crawled through enemy fire to the top of the installation, and dropped a white phosphorous grenade down the air vent. A few seconds passed, then they heard an explosion inside. White smoke poured from the entrance and as many as fifteen Japanese burst forth in panic, pushing and shoving each other, desperate to get out. Dick and Red Nelson fired a few shots.

“Don’t shoot!” Berg shouted. “Let’em run!”

Wise decision: Berg didn’t want bodies clogging the entrance. Stein and Nelson ceased firing. As many as two dozen Japanese emerged, and the Marines waited until they were about forty feet from the entrance and then opened fire. Other Marines in the immediate vicinity also opened fire, and a slaughter ensued, lasting about a minute. The Japanese were all bunched up, easy to hit, and Red Nelson was very excited, shouting, “Oh, boy! This is like shootin’ rabbits!’”

This was the same Red Nelson who had been hit by a Tommy gun round on Guadalcanal, the slug hitting him in one shoulder and traveling around his spine and lodging in his other shoulder. He was later killed on Iwo Jima. He should have been sent home after Tarawa, maybe after Guadalcanal. Nelson had long since “gone Asiatic,” Marine-speak for someone who had become unhinged from too much overseas service, too much combat, maybe even too much time as a Marine.

The signs of going Asiatic were usually subtle at first, taking the form of eccentric behavior that was customarily tolerated if it didn’t interfere with job performance. Which made sense, in the prewar era especially. If every Old Salt who behaved eccentrically had been discharged, the Marine Corps really would have been reduced to a just “few good men,” and very few at that. But going Asiatic meant going beyond mere eccentricity, far beyond: it meant going insane. Red Nelson had been going insane since Guadalcanal. According to Dick, when we were in New Zealand Red spent a lot of time just lying on his bunk muttering endlessly and unintelligibly to the wall of the tent. He became a casualty of war long before he was killed.

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