The Conquest Of Okinawa: An Account Of The Sixth Marine Division by Major Philips D. Carleton

Author:Major Philips D. Carleton [Carleton, Major Philips D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, United States, Europe, General, Germany, Asia, Japan
ISBN: 9781786257451
Google: mUtvCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-11-06T05:08:24+00:00

Tanks Evacuate Casualties From Sugar Leaf Hill.

Captain Martin J. Sexton, CO, King Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, had joined the 3rd Raider Battalion at Samoa and been at Bougainville, Emirau, and Guam.

Captain Lawrence S. Bangser, CO of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, had been part of the 2nd Raider Battalion. He had scouted behind Japanese lines at Bougainville and counted Japanese troops at Kakile. He had gone through Guam.

For a good many of them this was the only life they had known in the outside world. Some had left college in their sophomore years; others had gone directly from college into the Corps. They had survived the most dangerous period of their training as 2nd Lieutenants and were now in a position hardly more safe. They had the care of the 245 men under them. Through them came requests for air strikes and artillery fires. They had to know the capabilities of machine guns and mortars. They had to maneuver men in their zone of action. On their shoulders rested ultimately the responsibility for casualties. A captain is an officer without a staff. He must see to the disposition of every last man in his company; he must make all the final decisions. During combat a captain hardly eats or sleeps or has time to dig a foxhole. He sleeps in snatches, eats when he can, and grows more haggard every day.

Heiden’s men, then, clung to their ridge. Captain Specht brought his company up along the railroad track, and sent one platoon up on a long ridge behind Charlie Company to cover the draw that led down to the tracks. Now before the division could seize either of the two hills, was the time for the Japanese to counterattack down the Asa-Kawa basin where the 1st Marine Division was maintaining only a tenuous contact with the 6th Marine Division. Two battalions of Japanese troops thrown down this corridor could cut the ridge, destroy our communications and snap our supply lines.

On this same day, when 2/22 had been thrown back from Sugar Loaf, there had been the threat of such action which was finally broken by heavy artillery fire. It may be that our terrific concentrations of fire prevented the Japanese commander from attempting to stem our advance by counterattack during the day, but it is puzzling to note that only once during this whole period of the fighting around Sugar Loaf was a counterattack made at night, and that was to secure lost ground. Why General Ushijima did not follow the standard procedure of the Japanese night attack when his opportunities were so great can be explained possibly by his confidence in his defenses, but more probably by his entire lack of intelligence of our numbers. He had of course, knowledge of our movements, but he could not know or did not know that at most periods during this time only two companies stood between him and the sea.

There was more artillery fire during the night but no counterattack. There were a few more wounded.

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