©2000-2001 Carole Moore
It was officially known as "Operation Stalemate II" but the survivors still call it "The Forgotten Battle". It was one of
the last big Pacific battles of World War II and one of the bloodiest. Even the names associated with the inhospitable strip of land in the Palau islands sound hostile and discordant: Bloody Nose Ridge, the Pocket, Five Sisters,
Five Brothers and the China Wall. And to many Marines, it still represents, to steal a phrase from Charles Dickens, the worst of times. The street named for the Palau island where thousands of young Marines lost their lives in
the fall of 1944 runs peacefully through a Camp Lejeune housing area. Peleliu -- it rolls off the American tongue with difficulty -- is one of those places official military historians would prefer to pretend just doesn't exist.
But it does and it has the ghosts to prove it. The invasion of Peleliu began on Sept. 13, 1944, with concentrated naval bombardment of the island designed to help clear a path for the attack. D-Day, Sept. 15, started with a
pre-dawn shelling, a couple of bombing runs and the launch of Amtrak's full of infantrymen. But these were no ordinary infantrymen. Although there were a number of battle-hardened veterans aboard those Amtrak's, many of the
Marines deployed at Peleliu were young, inexperienced draftees, teenagers straight out of basic training. It was upon these young, unpracticed shoulders that the burden of taking Peleliu would fall. Take it they would, but the
price they paid would be heavy, every inch of that island bought and paid for in blood, both American and Japanese. The decision to take Peleliu still confounds many historians. The strip known as the Palaus was considered
operationally insignificant at that late point in the contest to control the Pacific theater. But a battle of wills between the Navy's Chester Nimitz and the Army's Douglas McArthur led to an American operational plan to proceed
with the battle on Peleliu. The attack was in trouble right from the beginning. As wave after wave of American Marines from the 1st Marine Division, known by the nickname "The Old Breed", hit the beaches, they came
under merciless enemy fire. This open aggression would be short-lived, however. The Japanese command, realizing they were bottled up, decided to change their tactics and make the Marines come after them, with the goal of costing
the Allied forces every man they could. It was suicidal and they knew it. But it was all they could do, short of surrender. Peleliu's geography made such a strategy workable. The Japanese were holed up in an almost impenetrable
series of caves and underground bunkers, which ran throughout the center of the island on the higher elevation. These strongholds were not visible from the air and had not been discovered by early island reconnaissance. The
invading Marines were the ones to make this unhappy discovery. The first assaults on the beaches were much like Tarawa, with units split and isolated from one another. The Japanese were on the offensive -- a tactic that wouldn't
last long. Their tanks amassed for a run at the 5th Regiment's 1st and 2nd battalions, which were supported by Sherman tanks. The Shermans made mincemeat of the enemy tanks. Only two Japanese tanks weren't destroyed in the ensuing
battle and over 450 enemy dead were counted. The 1st Regiment, under the command of Col. Chesty Puller, was assigned to take the sections of the beach designated White 1 and 2. In the center, Col. Harold "Bucky" Harris
and the 5th Marines were to take Orange 1 and 2. The 7th Marines, under Col. Herman Hanneken, were given the mission to secure Orange 3 on the right of 1 and 2. The Japanese commander, Col. Kunio Nakagawa, controlled a garrison
that numbered over 10,000, which included soldiers and conscripted workers. They concentrated their efforts at preventing the invading forces from establishing a beachhead. Probably the most difficult mission fell to Puller's K
Company, which was ordered to secure the left flank. The company found itself in the unenviable position of being cut off from the rest of the unit with its back to the sea. K Company then fought one of the most ferocious battles
of the war, a siege for control of what was called "The Point". When the battle was over, only 78 of the 235 Marines attached to K Company were left alive and many of those were wounded. The rest of the landing force
was also finding the going tough. In temperatures that soared to between 110 and 120 degrees, the Marines were given tainted water and many became sickened. There was no food, beyond their original provisions, and many wounded who
were in the process of being evacuated were fired upon and killed while on their stretchers. After the first day, the Japanese counter-offensive concentrated on taking advantage of holes in the American's line of defense.
Japanese soldiers even tried tricking the Marines out of their foxholes by pretending to be wounded Marines, calling for medics. But the bulk of the Japanese forces retired to the labyrinthine tunnels and caves. This meant the
Marines had to flush the Japanese out of their hiding places on the high ground, in order to prevent them from anticipating their beach operations. Thus began a series of raids designed to secure the hills and ridges that were at
the heart of Peleliu. In one assault involving Co. C of 2nd Btn, a night of hand-to-hand combat during an attempt to take what was believed to be Hill 100, left only 8 men unwounded from an original complement of 242. As soon as
the Marines withdrew, it fell back into enemy hands. The attacking Marines found themselves fighting side-by-side with valiant black Marines from the 16th Field Depot, who had volunteered for combat and whose offer had been
accepted. Soon, the airfield was under their control, but as the fighting escalated, Maj.Gen. William Rupertus, commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division, refused to allow his men to be relieved. Finally, his commanding
officer, Maj.Gen. Roy Geiger, visited the front lines himself. Finding the troops depleted and exhausted, he overruled Rupertus and ordered the Army's 321st Regimental Combat Team, 82nd Infantry Division, to Peleliu from the nearby
island of Anguar, where it was mopping up from a previous operation. By this time, the losses were staggering: Puller's 1st regiment had sustained the heaviest losses ever suffered by a Marine regiment in history: 1,672 Marines
dead or wounded in 200 hours of combat. 1st Btn. suffered 71 percent casualties and every single lieutenant platoon leader in the battalion had been killed or wounded. 2nd Btn. suffered 56 percent casualties and 3rd Btn racked up
55 percent in casualties. According to one historian, one Marine died every two and a half minutes, day and night, during the first week of fighting. With the establishment of an air strip, bombing runs commenced, but most of
the island fighting was accomplished by the infantry units, moving inch-by-inch up the ridges to clear pockets of Japanese soldiers before the Japanese killed them. The going was slow, and, even with the Army reinforcements,
casualties ran high on both sides. The battle for control of the high ground continued through the month of October, until finally, in late November, Col. Nakagawa and another Japanese officer committed ritual suicide after
notifying his commander that all was lost. Of the nearly 11,000 enemy troops and conscripted labor on Peleliu, only about five dozen men remained alive and unwounded. The remaining ammunition was divided among them and they were
instructed to fight to the death. The Marines sustained over 1,200 dead and in excess of 5,000 wounded, with another 73 considered missing in action. The First Marine Division received a Presidential Unit Citation and eight
Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded as a result of the fighting on Peleliu. But, unlike Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, the battle for Peleliu has been cast aside and forgotten, a poor payment for the men who lost their lives or
grew up very quickly in a forsaken spot on the map called Peleliu.
Home -- About the Humor Writer -- Getting Older . . . Not Better -- Potpourri
Encounters of the Kid Kind -- Life With A Man The Perils of Eileen -- The New Adventures of Eileen
--
My Serious Side --