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however you want to measure. So the 11 days I led the platoon, the 11 days that I was there, we went
ashore, we got about 215 yards out I guess the first day. We were just fighting inch by inch. They were
pre-registered on every square inch of that. They said the Japanese had been there since about 1920 I
believe. They got the island in some kind of a deal from the Germans. It seems to me they were just
digging and building all these fortified positions and so forth for all that time. It was bloody. The First
Marines regiment, believe it or not, after about a week they were no longer effectively a force. We
crossed the airfield on the second day. Prior to our crossing the Japanese must have attacked in mass
across the airfield. We had just gotten our tanks to shore. So we were going back and it was like a
turkey shoot for us. We loved it because we got rid of all of our tanks, and then we had to cross the
airfield and that was quite a deal because they were still on the high ground. They had mutually
supporting fortified positions into these holes. And they had one place higher, one down the draws and
so forth. You couldn't get naval gun fire in on them because of the topography and they were gun firing,
they had a straight line of sight trajectory. So about the only thing we'd get in was the mortar fire
because they were high trajectory weapons. We used a lot of flamethrowers and satchel chargers and
that kind of thing. It was pretty hairy stuff. After about, the time we left, we knew that we were going
to take the island, but at what cost. At that time, the Japanese, they were just fighting a war of attrition.
They were to take as many of us as they could, knowing that they were going to lose the battle. So
that's what the situation was there.
I made three operations, and they just had kind of a destructional impact on me. For the fears, it was
just the ferocity of the battles and such an intense period of time. It took maybe about five weeks really
to secure the island. So the last half of the battle, the airfield was taken so you could take aircraft in.
The Japanese still had a lot of people left, because the naval gunfire didn't do too much good because
they couldn't penetrate these ridges and we couldn't get them in there. The Japanese as well, had
artillery pieces that they had on tracks. And they had steel doors over the atmosphere. They were all
pre-registered. They would take them out of these tracks and they'd fired their concentrations before
we could even get counter fire in on them, they'd roll 'em back again. So we had to do it the hard way
and just go and get 'em.
JL: Tell us about crossing the airfield, when you did it.
LS: Crossing the airfield, we drew a lot of fire. We were completely exposed because they were up on
the high ground. And we took a lot of casualties. I couldn't give you a percentage, but it was quite an
experience for me.
JL: What time of the day did you cross?
LS: It was in the morning hours. I would say, I can't recall the exact time but I think it was probably
around 9:00 in the morning or something like that. That area of time. And I don't think it took us more
than an hour or so to get across. Overall I think it went very well. We knew we were going to take
casualties.
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