Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley & Ron Powers

Author:James Bradley & Ron Powers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, War, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780553589085
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2000-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

D-DAY PLUS TWO

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

—RONALD REAGAN

A STORM LASHED IN FROM THE OCEAN; blasts of wind; the surf at six feet. But this was nothing compared to the hell-storm about to erupt on the southern neck of the island. At eight-thirty A.M. a thin line of unprotected American boys would arise and rush directly at the most fortified mountain in the history of the world. Almost one third of them would be killed or maimed. But not in vain: Their charge would mark the beginning of the end for “impregnable” Suribachi—and thus for Iwo Jima itself as a factor in the war.

Soaked, cold, and fatigued, the Marines awoke and gazed toward the primitive mass of rock that held their fates. In the tense silence as first light broke, Easy Company lay poised for action on the 2nd Battalion’s right flank. Easy faced a long, lethal gauntlet on the volcano’s northeastern side. Dave Severance’s boys would have to rush across two hundred yards of open terrain toward the mountain’s base, with very little cover of any kind.

The guns trained down on the two hundred yards between the 28th Regiment and the mountain’s base would soon make those yards the worst killing ground in the Pacific. Only after the battle would Americans grasp the full extent of what had been concentrated against them. Suribachi’s interior had been hollowed out into a fantastical seven-story subterranean world, fortified with concrete revetments and finished off with plastered walls, a sewer system, and conduits for fresh air, electricity, water, and steam. As many as 1,300 Japanese soldiers and 640 navy troops filled each of the various rooms and tunnels. They were armed with guns of every conceivable size and design.

The terrain below this fortress—the ground between the Marines and the mountain—was not only barren of natural cover, it lay in the teeth of overlapping ground-fire. At the mountain base stretched a welter of reinforced concrete pillboxes and infantry trenches. The firing ports of the pillboxes were angled so that the Japanese shooters could see one another and offer mutual support with their spewing machine guns.

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