Saipan,The Battle, as I saw it.

SAIPAN
MAY, 1944

We got on ships and made maneuvers, landing on the coast of Maui. We trained for fighting, in sugar cane fields. We went into Pearl Harbor, here a lot of our troops moved over to LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks). These ships were filled with amphibious tractors. We would go in our next battle in these things. They had very little armor. We had gone into Guadalcanal in Higgins boats, and into Tarawa in rubber boats. There were some bad accidents in Hawaii with the LSTs and the tractors. I didn’t know about it until well after the war was over.

I’m not sure what transport I was aboard, but it seems like the Monrovia. We pulled out of Pearl Harbor, picking up ships right and left. There were more APAs (troop transports) with more Marines. There were destroyers, DE’s(destroyer escorts). Later we picked up cruisers and battleships. I think I remember the Washington and maybe the Indiana. The LST’s had gone on about two days ahead of us. At this time my boss was a Lieutenant Brown. After Tarawa Captain Stegemerten was promoted to Major and moved to Regimental headquarters. Brown was an OC (Officer Candidate). He was less than a Lieutenant, (he made it before we landed on Saipan), doing the job of a Captain. I was a staff sergeant doing the job of a Tech Sergeant. (Promotions come slow in the Marine Corps.)

After we were at sea for two days, Brown brought me an attaché case full of information. We were told we were going to attack Saipan in the Mariana Islands. We started working with maps and intelligence information. I was briefed and then I held daily meetings with my men. I never saw Brown again until we had landed on Saipan. We were to land on Red Beach One in support of 2/6(second battalion, 6th Marine Regiment) and 3/6. Piece of cake!

We had smooth sailing for hundreds of miles. Then we saw land. As we got closer we saw it was friendly. It was Eniwetok, one of the Carolinas. Our new General Watson had conquered it just three months earlier with the 4th Division. It seemed as though the whole fleet gathered in the harbor, (we couldn’t have done this earlier). We messed around here for a day. Here we were transferred into an LST. It took us six more days in that lovely boat to get to the Marianas.

This was an experience. An LST is no pleasure cruiser. There were no bunks for us. We all had to sleep on the deck. The deck was crowded with amphibious tractors, Sherman tanks, and millions of fifty gallon barrels. The thing reeked of gasoline. A spark would have blown us all to eternity. Naturally, there was no smoking.

We went over new aerial photos, maps, and other intelligence information that we just received. The overall responsibility for the protection of the landings rested upon the giant 5th Fleet under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. The fleet of over 800 ships was “the largest ever assembled in the Pacific”. Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher commanded the fast carriers, most of them brand new.

The day before “D” Day, underwater demolition teams went in. They might have blown up some things if there had been anything to blow up. We got their report. There was no coral barrier reef. There were no mines. There were pillboxes and trenches. They missed something most of us saw the next day; the registration flags that the Japanese would use to get accurate fire on us as we came in.

On June 15, 1944, sixty three years ago, we closed on Saipan. We were awakened early. Troops on transports had steak and eggs, but not us. We had our C’s, and loaded into our Amtrak. We wouldn’t get wet this trip. The amtraks would take us clear up on the beach (it says here!). Kearns was with Colonel Jones. We started for land about 8:15 in the morning.

About 200 yards from shore, Captain Triplett, our BN-3 officer, who was in the LVT with Jones, raised his head to get a glimpse of the beach. His head was blown off. Jones and Burga came ashore with blood all over them. I was in the second command Amtrak with Grieco and Corona. Our Amtrak halted about 50 yards from shore, couldn’t go any further. By this time, bullets were whizzing all around us. We jumped over the side with our equipment. The water was about four feet deep. We got to shore in a flash!

We fell down in the protection of the beach. Corona and I lay side by side. Corona said quietly, “Jack, I’m hit.” It must have been a mortar fragment. I found a corpsman for him. The corpsman told him, “The war is over for you”. He pointed out to the harbor. There was a beautiful white hospital ship with a big Red Cross on it. I never saw Corona again. (But I heard from him. He became an attorney in Corpus Christie, Texas.)

I had suspected that we were going in too far to my left, and soon found that our guide boat leaders had allowed the current to drift us about a 1/4th of a mile north of our Red Beach Two. We lost considerable time after we landed in getting over to the place where we belonged.

Unlike the Second Division, whose plan was to disembark from our vehicles as soon as we got to shore, the Fourth Division was to stay in their LVT (A) vehicles. They had 75MM cannons mounted in the noses. I could look over there and see a lot of them getting out just like we were. I never knew why.

We were ashore, but we had only gotten about fifteen feet of beach under control. All heck broke loose, the fire just got heavier. As long as we could keep down, the machine gun and rifle fire couldn’t get to us. I could hear the stuff going over my head like angry bees. I turned and looked backward, and could see the stuff hitting the water about 100 yards out. I was pretty happy down behind that seawall. Then they got us zeroed in with their mortars and it became plain that we couldn’t stay there any longer. Even their artillery began to shorten up and get down on the beach. We HAD to move forward. At this time, every Marine was a rifleman, no matter what his specialty was.

I never had noticed the smell of gunpowder so much in my previous battles. You could hardly breathe It got hotter and hotter. I was getting more and more of my men together. We had new gas masks going in, but I figured they were shot, because of the sea water and the sand. Some of my guys asked if I would okay it if they dropped them. I told them I couldn’t authorize them to do that. Soon I could see that every one was ditching them. They were soggy and heavy. I was one of the last to dump mine, carrying it another 24 hours. This action would haunt us in another 36 hours.

We moved forward, and began trying to get our communication job going. Soon I found Art Kirchoeffer. Art had been shot; he would also go to the hospital ship. Soon Lieutenant Brown found me. He had a wound in an arm. It didn’t look very bad to me. He said, “I will be going back to Pearl. You have the platoon, and I can’t think of anyone who will do a better job than you”. I thought, “Yes, you ---!”. I never saw him again, either. Out of the 56 men we started out with, there were only 19 when I finally got a tally. Fortunately, they were good ones.

Jones sent out runners and assembled his four company commanders at his command post, (which means he was in a somewhat sheltered area). One of the runners came back with a story about a Catholic priest who had gotten two gas mask covers and filled one with fried chicken and one with Scotch whiskey. The runner said he watched as the priest knelt by a wounded Marine. The young Marine asked the question asked by so many, “Am I going to live?” “Sure, you are”, came the cheerful reply. “How about a piece of fried chicken, and a swig of Scotch?” I never saw a chaplain or a corpsman that slacked his duty. These people were Navy.

We moved ahead slowly all the rest of the day. We were experiencing some very heavy fire. We weren’t keeping up with the Fourth Marine Division on our right. In fact, the Fourth, by simply making their objective, were in a dangerous situation. There was nobody on their right or left. If the Japanese had been able, they could have flanked them, and probably wiped them out.

At about noon, three enemy tanks attacked our “A” Company, and an adjoining company from 2/6. Our guys put them out with rocket launchers.

The areas behind us were filling up with Marines, and I knew that food, water, and ammunition were coming in. We had a beach head!

At night, we set up a Battalion Command Post. Arkie Howell manned the switchboard and we had phone and radio communication with each of our rifle companies, our special Weapons Company and Sixth Marines CP. I was with Jones and Kearns. That night, 2/6 got the expected banzai attack. They fought and held. The next morning over 700 Japanese troops were found. The rest straggled back toward Garapan.

Day 2:

We strengthened our positions. Several more of my lesser wounded men came back to join us. It helped. It had been a tough day on colonels and majors. Of the four battalions in the Sixth Marines, only Jones was still in command. The rest were commanded by executive officers.(Majors) We (1/6) had lost two of our captains. We had captured Charon Konoa by afternoon.

That night, (D plus 2), the army’s 27th Division landed, but they were a mile or so back of us by now.

We heard that a Japanese fleet was headed our way to relieve their beat-up troops. The Fifth Fleet moved out to take them on. Our transports and supply ships moved out for safety. We were left on our own again. Shades of Guadalcanal!

We really dug in this night. We dug three foot deep trenches, and put our main equipment between trees and four feet of dirt. I took over the battalion watch so the operator could get some sleep. Colonel Jones and I were right together. Anything he needed, I would handle. We put out listening posts and ate cold “C” rations.

We were in pretty good shape. There were some guys from the Intelligence section to my right, and Corporal Burton, who, while in camp was the battalion mail clerk, was about 75 feet behind me. We were all close to form a defensive line, and we were supposed to hold it if necessary.

It began to get dark. There was firing close by, and further away. There wasn’t one second you couldn’t hear gunfire. Every man had his own little piece of earth and line to hold.

Then, Burton got hit. I think it was in the arm or shoulder. He really “took on”, really howling. I asked Jones if I should go back to him. Jones didn’t think we could afford to leave when at any moment, we might hear from one of our line companies, and we would need to do something,. Burton began cursing us. I really wanted to go back to him, but I couldn’t. He called us everything he could think of, and I sure wasn’t looking forward to hearing him all night.

Then I had something else to think about. We got word from Captain Thomas and Captain Durfee that a Japanese tank unit with infantry was coming toward them. They asked for 37 MM anti-tank guns, and Jones ordered them to move up. He also requested illumination of the area from the Navy. We found the next morning that there were about 24 of those tanks. Our guys didn’t have much to fight them off with. They did all kinds of heroic things with grenades.

We lost Captain Norman K. Thomas in this tank fight. He had been a hero on Tarawa, but he gave his life that night on Saipan.

We were about 200 yards from where the battle was going on. Bullets were zinging all around. If you wanted a purple heart that night, all you had to do was to stick up a finger! I was going to do what I could with a carbine and an M1 if they kept coming, but they didn’t. One of the weapons we had that could do some damage to those tanks was the bazookas. We had a special weapons platoon that had 37MM guns, and they could do damage, and I guess they did. One of the guys in one of the rifle companies was Dean Squires. I knew him pretty well. He was from Oklahoma. There were some good stories about how he fought that night. I didn’t fire a shot, neither did Colonel Jones. We made it through the night.


Day 3, June 18, 1944

The next day began with no food or water. I still had some “C” rations and some water in my canteen, but since a lot of the guys didn’t have anything, I didn’t eat anything either. We needed to go forward, so we did.

Lt. Gen. Holland M. (Howling Mad) Smith was in command of the operation. The orders that day were for the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions to attack.

The rifle companies were out in front of us, and it sounded like they were getting some action. Then we heard the very bad news that Captain Durfee, the “A” Company commander, had been killed.(Durfee was an Annapolis man and I worshipped him.)

We had crossed a little ravine and were going forward when I heard someone say, “Look ahead!” I could see a cloud of white out ahead of us. It wasn’t more than 50 feet high, and very deadly looking. “Gas”!!

“Oh, Lord!” No one had a gas mask. We had trained for this, but we didn’t have any masks! We had dumped them, full of sand and salt water back at the beach.

This was a time when we would have learned if we had a coward in our outfit. I still can’t believe that no one ran. I began thinking of how I could manage. I had a good “battle towel” in my pack. I got it out and wet it as good as I could, and thought I would hold it over my face. I wondered if it were mustard gas, or something else that would burn. I think we all thought that our time had probably come. It rolled in on us. I closed my eyes, wondering if the gas would be accompanied by a banzai attack of Japs with gas masks. No one said anything. It was very silent. I heard an officer say, “Don’t open your eyes”. My ears and neck began to burn. Then I heard Arkie Howell say, “Ammonium Hydroxide”.

“A” Company called, and said that a fertilizer plant had been blown up, and the cloud was scary, but not dangerous. Nobody was hurt, but I think we all had a higher degree of respect for the men around us after seeing how they reacted in the face of terrible danger. What a relief!

About 10:00AM, our wonderful cooks and bakers came up behind us with a marvelous breakfast. There was bacon, lovely powdered eggs, SOS (chipped beef in gravy on toast), and hot coffee. Wow! It was all in aluminum containers.

Berger and I got to talking. “Ten years from now, we’ll really have something to tell anyone who will listen. But nobody will listen”. (Betty’s note: But we did listen. I loved to hear Jack and Lorne Berger talk about their war experiences, and just laugh and laugh about things that happened, like the poison gas scare. Some of the men used extraordinary means to moisten something to put over their faces, remember they had no water, and that was one of Lorne’s stories. We did love that man.)

I took off my steel helmet. It was so heavy. It seemed like I had worn it for a hundred years. I had been in three campaigns now. There was a lot of this one left. Would the war ever end? I had only one pair of underclothes nice and clean in my pack. I had used all my socks once. My shoes had been through salt water and sand. Would they be the last ones I would ever have?

I didn’t have too much time for this kind of thinking. We advanced about a mile. It seemed like twenty. We were relieved by some group. We walked back over the ground. We dug our protective fox holes and settled down for a night of rest and sleep (without anything to eat.)

Day 4:

We were going up a long hill without opposition. I heard a whamming noise about 100 yards. It was a BIG old bullet, the projectile from one of our cruisers in the Garapan harbor. They were firing to help us, and they were supposed to be just ahead of us, but they were firing right in on us. We found out later that it was the Omaha.

Colonel Jones got on the radio, and got it stopped. These were big old shells, and we could see them bouncing along. I don’t know why they didn’t explode.

While Jones was using the radio, he told regimental headquarters that he would be setting up his command post in a building that was a couple of hundred yards up ahead. I guess the Japanese heard it, because in just a few minutes the building was blown to smithereens. Jones never forgot that radio transmission. We had a tough time getting up that hill!

W moved on up, and to the seaward side a little. I helped one of the wiremen run a line out to a rifle company. When I got back, I looked at where my little platoon had dug their foxholes. They were in a regular line, and they looked like a bunch of graves, and they were certainly in sight of the Japanese if there were any out in front of us. I made them move under a crest of a hill. Some of them didn’t like it very much, but by the time we got dug in for the night and had put up our pup tents, several round of enemy mortar fire had made the area where we had been look like a plowed field.

I haven’t mentioned this, but our pup tents consisted of two “shelter halves”, one belonging to one man, and one to another. I was fortunate in that I had a private first class named Corpier, a Cajun from Louisiana who would put up our tent while I was winding down, looking over everything, and getting assignments made for the night. He could do a really good job, bringing the sides down, and covering the edges with dirt so the tent wouldn’t blow away in the rains that came almost every night. I loved Corpier!

From here on, the days are blurred.

We moved on up Mount Tapotchau. By then, it was about D+7. We kept working on up, and then one day we were in position. The Eighth Marines, the Fourth Marine Division, and the Army 106th Infantry were to make a push and we were to be in reserve. At the right time, the 8th and the 4th Division jumped, but the 106th didn’t. After some conversation, Marine Gen. H.M. Smith relieved Army Major General Ralph Smith of the 27th Division. There are still discussions about that act.

As in many cases, it was not my outfit that reached the top of Mount Tapotchau. I think it was some of the 8th and the 29th Marines. But it relieved us of having the Japs looking down at us, and seeing our every move.

At about this time I got a new boss. He was Lieutenant Edward Walsh. He was a really good fellow, and our friendship lasted throughout the rest of the war, and until his death a few years ago. (Betty’s note: Jack was Ed’s hero, and he never failed to let us know how he admired him.) He had been a newspaper reporter from Sea Girt, New Jersey. He really knew almost nothing he needed to know, but he let me do my job, and supported me to the Nth degree. He came between Colonel Jones and me, so instead of getting my orders directly from Jones, I got them through Walsh. This didn’t cause any problem at all.

One of the little things I won’t ever forget happened while we were up there. We were about a mile behind the front lines. We had a little command post set up, and settled down a little. To the west of us just about 50 yards was a sheer cliff that rose about 100 feet. Suddenly, some Japanese came out of a cave that we hadn’t noticed, and started shooting and throwing grenades into us. I had left my carbine about 30 feet away, but I found one lying by me, and I picked it up and started firing into the Japs. Here again, I may have killed Japanese. I aimed and shot and people fell. But there were several others firing into them, so I never knew for sure. That’s fine with me.

I emptied a clip and heard Corporal Cunningham yelling at me to give him his gun. I handed it to him, and then I noticed that the Japanese had run out of ammunition and were throwing rocks and dirt.

I made our guys stop firing. Cunningham never forgave me for that incident. Years after, he would tell the story and say, “The only chance I ever had to kill a Jap, and that --- Langston picked up my rifle instead of his own”. We called in one of our intelligence people who got an interpreter. The Japs came out of the cave, kept coming, kept coming, and finally there were about 125 of them, including some Chamorros and women and children. They were taken back toward Charon Kanoa.

We stayed awhile on this hillside. There was a lot of cleaning up, getting the enemy out of caves, etc. We had bypassed scores of them, and they kept coming out behind us and bumping off our people.

Colonel Jones informed Walsh that up ahead of us where we had been and secured a couple of days earlier, there was a Japanese supply dump that had a lot of communication gear in it. He asked Walsh to send someone and me to look it over, and see if any of it was of value to us.

I took Corporal James Weber. We traded our carbines for Colt 45 automatics that would be easier to carry. We went up and looked it over. It was pretty tempting, because there was a lot of the stuff that was very sophisticated. It was really no good for us in our tactical situation. We made some notes, and picked up four of their walkie-talkies and started back.

Immediately, we heard mortar shells exploding back in our command post. They were really zeroed in on it. As we started back, three Japanese soldiers came out of somewhere and began firing at us. I thought, “Brother, of all the times to be carrying a 45”. I had qualified as sharpshooter with one in boot camp, but I knew I couldn’t hit a barn with one. We got down behind some fallen trees and had a little Cowboy and Indian battle for a while. I could hear some of our riflemen coming up to help us out. One of the Japs got up from where he had been hiding and started to run toward me. I fired the 45 at him, and he fell. He got halfway in a hole and started firing again. Some of our riflemen finished him off. The only time I fired a 45 I knocked down a Jap. Pretty good!

We joined in with the rifle platoon and went back to our CP. We had taken a direct hit on our BD71 switchboard. Arkie Howell, a corporal in the wire section, had been hit pretty badly. I said good bye to him as they were taking him back to the rear. That was all the war for Arkie. He was from Lone Oak, Arkansas, his brother was Dixie Howell, a professional football player. Mayence, an intelligence platoon man with whom I had played baseball back in Hawaii, was hit in the right shoulder. He was under contract to play for the St. Louis Cardinals.

We began putting the pieces back together. Replacements began to come in to help us. I was surprised to see how well prepared they were. We were about to go down and tackle Garapan.

I suppose Garapan was one of the firsts of the Marine’s street fighting in a real city. It was not hard for my outfit. Again, elements from the Second and Eight were right in there with us. This time, we had Sherman tanks and half-tracks to open the way. We got through on the 3rd of July. The word back home was that the island was secured, and we celebrated on the fourth of July.

The fighting was not nearly over. There was mopping up everywhere. Even almost a week later, we cleared Marpi Point and over 2,000 Japanese were killed. Here we had to watch as soldiers and Japanese civilians jumped to their death from the cliff. The civilians had been brainwashed by the military about the cruelty of the Marines. We saved hundreds of them, along with a lot of the Chamarros. They were taken back toward Charon Kanoa where a prisoner of war camp had been set up.

The end was in sight for the Japanese leaders. General Saito did the best he could to set up a final banzai charge in which there was no hope for victory. Then he committed hari-kari. They cremated his body so we never saw it. He was the general in charge of the attack on Pear Harbor. The outfit that relieved us was an army outfit (27th Division?)

The banzai attack indeed took place. Most of the fury was spent on the 105th Army regiment. It was hand to hand fighting at its worst. They really had a terrible battle. We could hear the sounds. They pushed all the way back to the 10th Marines artillery. The next day, we went through them. There were soldiers and Japanese lying all over the ground. They had been in hand to hand battles. You could hardly walk without stepping on them. The soldier’s gear was all-new. I worried that they might have been inexperienced and in their first and only battle. Many of our Marines took off canteen belts, canteens, weapons and outer clothing from the soldier’s bodies. I couldn’t see anything I wanted bad enough to take.
This pretty well ended the official fighting. On the 15th of July, Army garrison troops took over the responsibility for the island. This time we didn’t go back to Hawaii or New Zealand. We set up tent camps right on Saipan. We knew Tinian and Guam had to be conquered. Artillery from Tinian came in on us every once in a while. There would be very little time for rest. But there would be some. Showers and roads had been set up by the Sea-Bees. We continued to get reinforcements. We knew we would be fighting again soon