Island Victory: The Battle Of Kwajalein Atoll

By Lt.-Col. Samuel L. A. Marshall

An on-the-spot history of a fight in the Pacific during World War II, Island Victory was the first battle history written by—then Lieutenant-Colonel—S. L. A. Marshall, a veteran of World War I who would serve in Korea and Vietnam and become a brigadier general in the process. After the Seventh Infantry Division drove across Kwajalein Atoll in the first days of February 1944, successfully wresting control of the strategic southern tip from the Japanese, Marshall was charged with producing an accurate and comprehensive account of the fight. His solution: bring the front-line soldiers together at once and interview them as a group, tapping the collective memory of a platoon fresh from battle.

In this book, readers get a rare, first-hand sense of all the emotions that soldiers in combat experience. Numerous maps and photographs help us visualize precisely what took place. A compelling work of military history, and the first book of its kind, Island Victory is itself an important chapter in the history of how military exploits are described and recorded.—Print Ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verdun Press
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786257017

Lt.-Col. Samuel L. A. Marshall

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Text originally published in 1944 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ISLAND VICTORY: THE BATTLE OF KWAJALEIN ATOLL

From Official Interviews With All The Men Who Fought

BY

LT. COL. S. L. A. MARSHALL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

MAPS 5

FOREWORD 6

A NOTE ON INFANTRY TACTICS 9

CHAPTER 1—HOW THE TRUTH OF BATTLE IS FOUND 14

CHAPTER 2—CHANCE ISLAND 23

CHAPTER 3—ORDEAL BY FIRE 37

CHAPTER 4—ONE DAY ON KWAJALEIN 54

CHAPTER 5—ACTION AT THE PIGPEN 129

CHAPTER 6—MEN AGAINST DARKNESS 147

CHAPTER 7—FIGHT TO A FINISH 164

CHAPTER 8—COMMENT BY THE EDITORS 185

APPENDIX—CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW AFTER COMBAT 189

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 197

MAPS

MARSHALL ISLANDS

SITUATION AS OF D DAY (JANUARY 31, 1944)

SOUTHEAST PORTION OF KWAJALEIN ATOLL

ISLANDS TAKEN BY THE RECONNAISSANCE TROOP

SHOWING THE ASSAULTS ON D DAY

GEA ISLAND

CHANCE ISLAND

CLOSE-UP OF THE AREA BEHIND THE MOUND

KWAJALEIN ISLAND

SHOWING THE FIRST DAY’S ADVANCE ON KWAJALEIN ISLAND

COMPANY L’S POSITION AT ABOUT 1900 HOURS, D PLUS 1 DAY

EXTENT OF THE ADVANCE ON THE SECOND DAY ON KWAJALEIN

ACTION BEFORE THE BLOCKHOUSE

SHOWING THE ASSAULT ON EBEYE ISLAND

EBEYE ISLAND LANDINGS

EBEYE ISLAND, FIRST PHASE

EXTENT OF THE ADVANCE ON THE THIRD DAY ON KWAJALEIN

C COMPANY, 32D INFANTRY-THIRD NIGHT

SITUATION ON KWAJALEIN ON THE MORNING OF D PLUS 4 DAY

SITUATION ON KWAJALEIN AT 1345 HOURS, FOURTH DAY

SITUATION ON KWAJALEIN AT 1445 HOURS, FOURTH DAY

SITUATION ON KWAJALEIN AT 1515 HOURS, FOURTH DAY

FINAL PHASE, KWAJALEIN ISLAND, FOURTH DAY

SHOWING THE ASSAULTS ON LOI, GUGEGWE AND BIGEJ ISLANDS

FOREWORD

Accurate books about battle are rare, whether written by historians, by commanders of forces in the battle described, or by direct participants in the fighting, or correspondents who were close beside them as they fought.

In its forty years of publication the Infantry Journal’s magazine and books have given infantrymen and men of other branches of the Army opportunity to discuss warfare and find some of the truths of battle. There have been many hundreds of articles and a number of books on combat, many of them written by men who had seen the battles about which they wrote. These, the personal experience narratives of battle itself—from the men who have led and fought in this and other wars—have been most valuable in training for the present war. They have been valuable in training for future combat, and they are used for that purpose now in time of war as well as in peacetime training.

Such past books about combat have been chiefly personal narratives, the battle stories of individuals. Such stories tell what one man experiences—what one man remembers of what he saw and felt and did in the midst of combat, and to a certain extent what he was able to find out from others about the battle afterward. Essentially they are one-man accounts, helpful and useful fighting aids but nevertheless the work of a single author, and accordingly limited to what he alone experienced and what he could learn at second hand from the combat experiences of others.

For the first time in its history the Infantry Journal publishes in Island Victory a book that is a story of combat largely written by all the men who fought—and therefore a highly accurate account of exactly what happened, as one scene of stress and confusion followed another.

Employing a new method, the interview after combat, Lieutenant Colonel S. L. A. Marshall wrote this book from the very words of the men who fought—from the words of all men who fought and were not killed or badly wounded in the action, not merely those of the commanders or a few other leaders. The words and actions of combat were reconstituted after the fight was done through this new method. Thus this book is literally the story of the combat experiences of certain units of the 7th Infantry Division in the battle for the capture of Kwajalein. The chapters of Island Victory are therefore unit experience accounts. They are the personal experience accounts of all the men of a unit combined into one narrative by the men themselves.

No book like it has ever appeared before. And it is most probable that no days of battle in this or any previous war have ever been described as accurately as Island Victory describes the combat on Kwajalein.

It has long been a tactical custom to hold what are called critiques. The word ordinarily means the assembling of officers (and sometimes enlisted men) after a maneuver for the purpose of bringing out the tactical mistakes made and commending good work done. In such critiques a few high commanders and umpires go over the maneuver period in some detail for an hour or two at most. There is no complete reconstitution of the maneuver. Air and ground units, in the present war, have often reviewed the actions in which they have taken part, but not in full detail. The emphasis is usually on particular mistakes made or good jobs done. Air Forces units call this post-combat review briefing, the same word used for the discussions held prior to combat in which orders for the coming action are given and explained. (Briefing is now used by most ground units to mean the same things.)

The interview after combat is not a military critique. It is something far more thorough and complete than any other type of practical review of what has happened in combat. More important still, the interview after combat is based on the willingness of every man in a fighting unit to contribute his utmost to finding out the truth after battle is over—the truth as he and his fellow fighters are able to piece it publicly together—the heroic and the unfortunate alike—in order to learn from their own minds exactly what did happen—and consequently how to fight the next battle still better. Colonel Marshall describes fully in the first chapter of the book and in the appendix just how this can be done with success.

The original aim of conducting interviews after combat was to obtain accurate military history—history for the long-run record. There was in mind, too, the possible writing of preliminary combat narratives at an earlier date.

But the method of the interview, of getting all the men of a company together in order to work frankly, freely, and deliberately at finding exactly how they had fought—this method has most apparently a great immediate value for the unit itself. The method seems sure to bring out every individual combat mistake, every mistake of teamwork and every other strength and weakness of the fighting. It straightens out erroneous ideas about what happened, which it is often important to do because of the intense feelings that may be involved, as when men believe mistakenly that their own supporting weapons—mortars or artillery—have fired upon them. It blows away the fog of war. It reaches clear to the tactical and human truth of the whole action.

Thus by means of the interview after combat every leader and every man may learn the truth about his outfit—about how it fought, in at least a part of a battle. He may learn what all of the two hundred men of his unit were doing while he and those right around him were busy in their own corner of the fight. Through the interview method, also, the leaders find the men who are their mainsprings of action. All facts become known to the whole outfit and they are tempered only by not going into details where further discussion would only emphasize conduct of which a man might feel ashamed. The interview after combat is a process of self-examination that must inevitably make a unit feel like a unit, a team, more than it ever did before.

The tactical result of seeing exactly where teamwork failed goes immeasurably beyond what has ever been achieved in the past, even at the deliberate pace of maneuver critiques. Every error brought out at once suggests the practical remedy—in the minds of the very men who made the error.

The mistakes brought out by the company interviews on the Battle of Kwajalein take nothing from the line achievement of capturing the island. It was a well-planned, well-handled, well-fought light, from the first bombardment to the death of the last resisting Japanese soldier.

It should be understood, also, that in his narratives of company combat Colonel Marshall has not attempted to tell the whole Kwajalein story of cooperation between the Navy and the Army—a cooperation so ready and full (this has been so in action after action in the Pacific) that it will make an extremely interesting separate account when the whole story can be told. Nor has it been possible, for security reasons, to tell in detail about the powerful support given by the Artillery and other arms and services which helped the Infantry and the Cavalry of the Reconnaissance Troop to accomplish the battle jobs this book describes.

Colonel Marshall has neither attempted to give the entire detailed story of the battle performance of each company action he presents, nor to give a complete account of the taking of Kwajalein. The six company and troop actions covered in six chapters tell much of the whole story of the operation but not all of it. There were other Infantry units that fought and fought well; and for several reasons the landing methods, methods of supply, and other aspects of the battle are not included. The chief reasons are, of course, to avoid giving information of possible use to the enemy. Only the pivotal or particularly remarkable company actions were selected to carry out the main purpose of illustrating the results of the interview after combat. The author does, however, most successfully show these results, and they take the form of accounts of combat that are exciting and spirited. At the end of the book there is further discussion on the probable future usefulness of the new method of obtaining battle history.

The Editors,

Infantry Journal.

A NOTE ON INFANTRY TACTICS

The reader who does not know the make-up of Infantry units and something of how they go into battle may be helped by this brief description.

All of the battle actions in this book are centered upon the Infantry Company with the one exception of that in Chapter 2, which tells about a Cavalry reconnaissance troop—a unit of very roughly the size and make-up of an Infantry company but equipped somewhat differently as to weapons. Throughout the book, however, the units whose combat is described in detail were acting as parts of larger units than the company as they fought. Hence an understanding of the make-up of the Infantry regiment and something of how it goes into battle will be helpful to any reader who may not have it.

An Infantry rifle company has a total of some 200 men and 6 officers. The company is divided into 3 rifle platoons, each of about 40 men and 1 lieutenant; and a slightly smaller weapons platoon also with 1 lieutenant; and a headquarters group. The headquarters group consists, of course, of the captain who commands the company and those who help him direct it in training, in approaching battle, and in battle itself—the second-in-command (a first lieutenant), the first sergeant, communication sergeant, mess sergeant, clerk, cooks, messengers, and others who serve the commander directly.

The 3 rifle platoons are each commanded by a lieutenant who has, as his second-in-command, a platoon sergeant. In each platoon there are 3 twelve-man rifle squads and a small command group—the lieutenant, the platoon sergeant, and a small number of others. Each of the rifle squads is led by a staff sergeant and the 12 men usually have among them 11 M1 semi-automatic rifles and 1 BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). All these fighting men may also carry—and usually do in combat—a number of hand grenades and most of them have bayonets to put on their rifles and some have knives.

The company supporting unit for the 3 rifle platoons is the weapons platoon which has 2 main sub-divisions besides its small headquarters group in which are the commander (a lieutenant), the platoon sergeant, and a small number of others. The sub-divisions are the 60mm mortar section with 3 mortars and their crews (squads) and a light machine gun section with 2 guns and their crews.

The rifle companies of an Infantry regiment are lettered A, B, C—E, F, G—I, K, L. Companies D, H, and M are heavy weapons companies each containing a number of heavy machine guns and 81mm. mortars. Companies A, B, C, D, and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, form the 1st Battalion of a regiment; Companies E, F, G, H, and Headquarters Company, 2d Battalion, form the 2d Battalion; and Companies I, K, L, M, and Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion, form the 3d Battalion. The supporting unit within each battalion is its particular heavy weapons company.

The 3 battalions (called rifle battalions) plus certain regimental units, make up the regiment. These units arc regimental headquarters, headquarters company, the service company, the antitank company, the cannon company and the medical detachment. In the antitank and cannon companies are caliber .50 machine guns, 105mm howitzers, antitank rocket launchers, and 57mm antitank guns. And in different units throughout the regiment are a number of such weapons as submachine guns, hand grenades, and automatic pistols. Actually, the number of weapons in an Infantry regiment may differ from time to time and in different war-theaters, as new weapons are tried out or adopted for general purposes in every theater or for specific purposes in a given theater.

Next above the regiment comes the Infantry division. Such a division contains 3 rifle regiments and units of several kinds of troops other than Infantry to make up a complete combat team of all arms except air, such as a cavalry reconnaissance troop, Field Artillery battalions, and quartermaster, ordnance, signal corps, medical, and other units.

Supporting weapons means the weapons of high fire power that back up the Infantry riflemen, and automatic riflemen of rifle squads and platoons. Supporting weapons are too heavy to be carried by an individual fighting man (except for the light machine gun) and all of them require crews of several men to operate them efficiently. Therefore, supporting weapons are set up in one suitable place and kept there for some time, while the rifle units may be moving as they fight. The fire of most of the supporting weapons usually goes over the heads of the riflemen to strike enemy targets some distance in front of the rifle units farthest forward in the fight.

Thus, when a given rifle company is in combat, it is supported by its own weapons platoon (light machine guns and 60mm mortars) and it is likely to receive a good deal of help at different times during the battle from heavy machine guns and 81mm mortars within the regiment, from 105mm Infantry and Field Artillery guns, and other sizable supporting weapons, to include tanks; and also from Engineer groups with flame throwers and explosives such as the satchel charges often mentioned in this book. And in amphibious battles there is usually heavy gunfire from ships of the Navy and similar aid—especially just before an attack, and sometimes during battle—from bombing and machine-gunning planes of Army or Navy air units. (Reasons of security prevent giving more details in this book about these supporting weapons and methods.)

In the Kwajalein fighting this book describes, there were a number of small islands to be captured. The Commanding General of the 7th Division, Major General Charles H. Corlett, and his staff, in their planning for the battle, divided the available troops of the division up into combat teams, each of which had the task of taking a separate island. These teams were of different sizes, depending on the size of the island and the amount of Japanese resistance expected on the basis of advance information obtained from air reconnaissance and any other sources.

Thus the combat described consists of parts of several separate island actions, all related, however, to the over-all 7th Division plan for taking the Kwajalein Atoll. Parts of regiments and sometimes parts of battalions had to be separated in forming some of the teams to tackle each separate island in the atoll. In Chapter 2, for example, the Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, plus part of an Infantry company, was charged with capturing two very small islands.

On Kwajalein Island itself, parts of two different regiments operated; and usually the units of the two regiments divided the responsibility, advancing along the island with their leading units abreast and in contact along a regimental boundary, this boundary being a line selected on the map or air photograph, running along the approximate center of the island. The units of one regiment were responsible for the success of the attack on one side of the boundary and those of the other regiment for the success of the attack on the other side of the boundary.

But in each regimental sector the leading unit of the attack (often called the assault unit) might be a single company. Thus a regimental boundary was also a boundary between battalions of different regiments and companies of different regiments fighting and advancing abreast. Whether units fighting and advancing abreast are of the same battalion or regiment or not, they must keep continuous contact and must continuously cooperate in the fight.

In all plans for an attack, the ground to be taken is thus divided by boundaries drawn on the map—usually drawn through features recognizable on the ground itself—thus to prevent the mixing up of units in the confusion of combat as well as to give each unit its specific battle job.

At times in the battle narratives in this book, it is said that after attacking for several hours or more certain units