In the summer of 1943, at the height of World War II, battles were exploding all throughout the Pacific theater. In mid-November of that year, the United States waged a bloody campaign on Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll, the most heavily fortified Japanese territory in the entire Pacific. They were fighting to wrest control of the island to stage the next big push toward Japan—and one journalist was there to chronicle the horror. Dive into war correspondent Robert Sherrod’s battlefield account as he goes ashore with the assault troops of the U.S. Marines 2nd Marine Division in Tarawa. Follow the story of the U.S. Army 27th Infantry Division as nearly 35,000 troops take on less than 5,000 Japanese defenders in one of the most savage engagements of the war. By the end of the battle, only seventeen Japanese soldiers were still alive. This story, a must for any history buff, tells the ins and outs of life alongside the U.S. Marines in this lesser-known battle of World War II. The battle itself carried on for three days, but Sherrod, a dedicated journalist, remained in Tarawa until the very end, and through his writing, shares every detail. ROBERT SHERROD was a seasoned American journalist and longtime war correspondent for both Time and Life magazine. He reported from overseas during the Vietnam War, and also World War II, when he was travelling with the U.S. Marines. He went on to write two more books about World War II. Sherrod died in 1994 at the age of eighty-five. Tarawa The Incredible Story of One of World War II's Bloodiest Battles By Robert Sherrod Skyhorse Publishing Copyright © 2013 Skyhorse Publishing All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62087-101-0 Contents FOREWORD, PRELUDE TO BATTLE, THE MARINES, THE FIRST DAY, THE SECOND DAY, THE THIRD DAY, VIEW OF THE CARNAGE, AFTERTHOUGHTS, TARAWA'S CASUALTIES, CHAPTER 1 THE MARINES LIKE OTHER BASES built early in the war, X had settled down. Hastily cleared out of the jungle when the Japs seemed to be on the verge of cutting southward from Guadalcanal to New Caledonia, thus periling the thin supply line to Australia, X was now on the way to becoming a rear area. Life was crude — nothing like the "country dubs" at Honolulu, Noumea, Kodiak, and such places that had apparently been forever by-passed by the war — but it was not unpleasant. Now that the base had been built to sizable proportions, the airfields built, the anti-aircraft guns unlimbered, there was not so much of the backbreaking labor that must go into a new base. The soldiers and sailors had enough beer most of the time; once in a while they saw a good movie at one of the open air theatres; they lived in quarters that were comfortable enough, many of them in Pacific huts or Quonset huts modified for hot weather. Certainly, they wanted to go home, or anywhere. Who wants to sit out the war in a clearing in the jungle, a million miles from nowhere? Many of them counted the days. When the war correspondents finally got ashore and went into Ensign Parsons' office, they asked politely how long he had been on Base X. "I've been here only seven months," said Mr. Parsons, "but some of the men have been here about eighteen months." "Eighteen months, hell," said a dungaree-clad quartermaster. "It will be nineteen months day after tomorrow." We had to wait several days for the arrival of the Marines in the transports. The Officers Club was as pleasant a place as might be found on the edge of a jungle in the South Pacific, and the bar was open two hours each afternoon, serving the best rum Collinses south of the equator. The ice-making machine at the bar was a source of wonderment to the newly arrived officers. It spewed forth in unending succession thin slivers which, when placed in a glass, gave forth such an appearance as to cause one officer to ask, "What am I drinking, bourbon and noodles?" But it was cold. During the wait at Base X we met the men who would run the Tarawa show: Rear Admiral Harry Hill, the lean, handsome commander of the Southern (Tarawa) Amphibious Force; Major General Julian C. Smith, sensitive, kindly Marylander who commanded the Second Marine Division; and Colonel Merritt A. Edson, chief of staff of the division. Of these Edson was best-known. With his famed First Raider Battalion, he was generally credited with saving Guadalcanal during the fierce fighting of September 13 and 14, 1942 — an action which won him the Congressional Medal of Honor and the British Distinguished Service Order. No man in the Marine Corps was more highly regarded by the professionals than Edson. A husky, intense blond, he was slightly hunch-shouldered, and his soft voice did not belie his steel-blue killer's eyes. He hated the Japs, as only men who have met them in combat hate them. Whenever, during his hour-long lecture to the correspondents the day before we left Base X, he used the phrases, "killing Japs," or "knocking off Nips," his eyes seemed to light up, and he smi