Battle Field Angels (11 page)

Atabrine was a synthetic alternative to quinine, which had been used for hundreds of years to treat malaria. Atabrine was developed by German researchers Walter Kikuth, Hans Mauss, and others in the early 1930s after Germany found itself without a supply of quinine during World War I. Early in World War II, the Japanese seized control of the only major source of quinine, the cinchona plantations in Java, Indonesia. Atabrine became the Allies’ only widely available antimalarial drug.

Some soldiers who began taking it after reporting aboard ships bound for the Pacific theater suffered nausea and vomiting, so they stopped their doses. They may have associated seasickness with Atabrine. Once they joined their units in the Pacific, they found many officers who considered disease control a distraction to “killing Japs.” Enforcement of the daily dose of Atabrine was lax at best. Some soldiers also considered hospitalization for malaria preferable to combat duty.

Although effective, the small yellow tablets tasted extremely bitter. Atabrine also gave the skin a sickly, pale tint. Complaints grew so rampant that some corpsmen and medics stationed themselves at the head of mess hall lines to make sure everyone took his Atabrine every day.

Once his corpsman training was complete, Duffee and hundreds of others reported to downtown San Diego’s Navy Pier 11A and boarded the
Bloemfontein
, a Dutch transport bound for the Pacific.

When Duffee arrived in New Caledonia, the young corpsman began treating exhausted and mangled Marines who had been shipped off Guadalcanal. The island assault in late 1942 was one of the war’s first prolonged battles of attrition in which disease was far more debilitating than the Japanese. Nearly two thirds of the Marines suffered from malaria, while 25 percent had been wounded by the enemy. In November, there were 1,800 cases of malaria (including recurrences) per 1,000 Marines. New Caledonia had been selected for recuperation in part because the anopheline mosquito that spread malaria wasn’t found there.

The second year of World War II became a critical turning point in the military’s undeclared war against disease. In 1943, the British decided that troop health was the responsibility of the officers, not just the medical corps. At one point, three British commanders were dismissed for lack of health and sanitation standards enforcement. Once combat officers were held accountable for the health of their men, enforcement became far more stringent. In the United States that year, medical supplies that once languished on docks became a top priority for oceanic transport. Specially trained disease control units began shipping out to the war theaters as well.

In early summer 1943, Duffee’s transfer to McKay’s Crossing near Wellington, New Zealand, brought him closer to war. Assigned to the 2nd Marine Regiment, he had his hands full as malaria swept through the ranks while they healed, rested, and resupplied after Guadalcanal was secured in February. Sanitation was lax, and officers allowed troops to bivouac in mosquito-infested areas when safer campsites were less than two miles away.

In New Zealand, Duffee learned the value of ingenuity in treating tropical diseases. A man’s temperature had to hit 104 degrees before he was sent to the hospital for two or three days’ treatment with quinine, if it was available, or Atabrine. Duffee discovered the gel caps shipped from the United States often melted in transit, making it impossible to fill them with the medicine. So Duffee calculated the proper dosage of powder, wrapped each in toilet paper, and ordered the Marines under his care to wash it down with grapefruit juice.

Slowly, the Marines regained their strength as they speculated on their next assignment. The combat veterans knew they would not be told until they were already on their way to the next battle. No one looked forward to more island assaults where the Japanese had built nearly indestructible defenses in caves on hillsides above the Marines’ landing sites.

The Japanese high command knew the Pacific war had begun to turn in the Americans’ favor. The standoff in the Coral Sea in May 1942, followed by the decimation of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway the following month and the American victory on Guadalcanal in early 1943, forced a change in Japanese plans. They developed
yogaki
, a defensive strategy along an imaginary line stretching from the Aleutians in the north down to the Marshall Islands, about two thousand miles southeast of Japan. This became the outer line of defense for the Japanese empire in the face of America’s island-hopping advance toward their homeland. The Gilbert Islands, consisting of sixteen scattered atolls in the central Pacific more than two thousand miles from Hawaii, were considered crucial. The Gilberts could not be lost to the Americans because the airstrip on Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilberts would put American bombers within range of the Marshalls.

As Duffee and the 2nd Marines began serious training exercises in July, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered Admiral Chester Nimitz to develop a plan to capture the Gilbert Islands. “Get the hell in and get the hell out,” Nimitz ordered his admirals.
²²
Only a few weeks later, the Japanese ordered a rear admiral trained as an engineer, Keiji Shibasaki, to take command of the Gilberts and prepare for the widely expected invasion. The airstrip on Betio at Tarawa must be defended to the last Japanese soldier. The Japanese knew they had to stop the American invaders on the beach. If the Marines established a beachhead, their overwhelming number of men and weapons ultimately would destroy the Japanese defenders.

When American planners spread out a map of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll, they saw what resembled a dead bird lying on its back. Less than three miles long and no more than eight hundred yards wide, the center of the island bowed northward like a bird’s chest with a long, thin tail to the east, and a small promontory, shaped like a bird’s beak, to the west. There was no natural elevation of more than ten feet. Betio was a flat, narrow spit of coral sand covered with palm trees. Admiral Shibasaki intended to turn it into an impenetrable killing zone.

A shallow reef surrounded the island, in some places stretching nearly 800 yards from shore. At low tide, the water could be only a few inches deep, making an amphibious assault extremely risky. Admiral Shibasaki immediately installed steel tetrahedrons interspersed with barbed wire and mines across the reef. Betio had only three landing beaches on the north side, each about 600 yards across. Shibasaki built his underwater defenses on the shallow reef so that American amphibious craft would be driven into channels of crossfire from more than 500 Japanese pillboxes filled with snipers and machine gunners. They were part of a force of more than 4,800 men, 2,600 of whom were highly trained Imperial Japanese Marines.

When Admiral Nimitz ordered Plan 13-43, codenamed Operation Galvanic, on October 5, 1943, a massive showdown became a certainty, a clash that would produce one of the most brutal and shocking battles of World War II.

“Okay guys, we’re headed for Efate for a couple of days of practicing amphib assaults. Get your gear ready.”
²³

When Duffee heard the order from an officer, he had assumed he would be back in New Zealand in time for a dance that had been scheduled in Wellington. A few days at Efate shouldn’t be a big deal—probably some contusions and maybe a broken leg or two to take care of.

Duffee reported to the transport ship USS
Harry Lee
. The living conditions onboard terrorized the nine hundred Marines. Bunks were stacked five high, with the top bunk having only sixteen inches of clearance from the bulkhead. The air grew hot and stultifying, filled with the smell of sweat and vomit. The vibrations from a slightly unbalanced propeller rumbled throughout the ship. Ammunition lay in stacks a few feet from Duffee’s bunk. Death in a dimly lit compartment filled with putrid air would be quick if a Japanese submarine found the
Harry Lee
in its sights.

The Marines conducted two landing rehearsals at Efate. They were less than realistic as their support aircraft had been excused from participating. Veterans of previous island campaigns knew that coordination with air cover was critical to a successful amphibious assault. The Marines’ armada did not turn back for Wellington. The massive assault force set a northerly course as clusters of men tightened and voices hushed when talk turned to what lay ahead.

As Task Force 53 approached Tarawa, the troops spent their days reviewing maps and plans. The Marines learned that the most concentrated bombing in history would precede their landing. Nearly three thousand tons of shells would be lobbed onto 291 acres. They wondered whether there would be an enemy to fight after that. The men around Duffee grew silent. Some never seemed to stop sharpening their knives, oblivious to the rhythmic grate of metal. Others endlessly disassembled and cleaned their rifles. Many wrote their last letters home or watched a second-rate movie,
Marry the Boss’s Daughter
. Some worried more about suffering a crippling injury than death.

Men wilted under the pressure. On the eve of battle, corpsman Duffee saw how fear drove some Marines to desperation. A number of soldiers had avoided battle on Guadalcanal by not taking their Atabrine in the hopes of getting malaria. As the invasion force approached Tarawa, Duffee learned to smell the armpits of men reporting to sick bay. He knew a man sometimes put lye-laden soap under his arm to raise his temperature. A first offense prompted a stern warning from the corpsman and a promise to report it if it happened again.

On November 19, a blazing tropical sunset on Betio reddened the sky. As the twilight air cooled, Admiral Shibasaki looked out across the mine-studded reef. The promised Japanese scout planes had failed to arrive. Military intelligence on what might be approaching was limited to his instincts and imagination. “I feel it in my bones … in a day, maybe less, we will be fighting for our lives,” he said before he issued the final battle order to his troops:

Hours earlier, just over the horizon, a message from the command ship USS
Maryland
had been flashed to the American task force: “It is not the Navy’s intention to wreck Betio. We do not intend to destroy it. We will obliterate it from the face of the earth.”
²⁵

Ray Duffee jerked awake to reveille at forty-five minutes past midnight on November 20. Tradition held that Marines eat steak and scrambled eggs as a last meal before battle. Duffee never saw it. Instead “shit on a shingle”—chipped beef on bread—landed on his tray. He encouraged everyone to eat lightly. Corpsmen didn’t want full intestines emptying out onto the sand in a few hours after bullets ripped open a man’s abdomen.

After landing craft came alongside the troop transports, Duffee and thousands of others climbed down the cargo nets hanging over the side of the ships and jumped into their amphibious craft. Duffee heard four things as he climbed down the rope ladders: sloshing water, a periodic muttered prayer, the landing craft’s engine, and Marines retching onto the deck.

At 0500 hours, Betio exploded. Dozens of American warships simultaneously opened fire. Within seconds, a curtain of smoke, sand, and coral dust hung over Betio. The entire island disappeared in balls of fire as spasmodic volcano-like eruptions marked ammo dump detonations. More than seventy-five landing craft circled offshore, watching one of the most intense bombardments of World War II.

“Maybe they pulled a Kiska,” said a Marine in one landing craft, referring to the Japanese abandoning Kiska Island in the Aleutians in the face of a U.S.–Canadian assault. “Yea, right,” said another. “Whether they bugged out or not, they’ll be flattened when the battleships are finished,” promised another.

“The earth shook and the sky was a fiery red ball,” wrote one Japanese soldier. “I thought of my family as the shells slammed around us … we were flung like rag dolls … I thought of honor and courage and the Mikado … this was the acid test.”
²⁶

Captain John Moore of the USS
Indianapolis
marveled at how the attack decimated the island. “Fires were burning everywhere. The coconut trees were blasted and burned and it seemed that no living thing could be on the island.”
²⁷

Despite the massive bombardment, Admiral Shibasaki’s preparations on Betio withstood the assault, in part because American warships had moved in too close. Many shells skipped off Betio and detonated harmlessly on the reef on the far side of the island. Hundreds of others found their mark, yet proved largely ineffective against Shibasaki’s concrete bunkers, which were reinforced with mounds of sand and layers of coconut logs.

The waiting had seemed endless to Duffee, as shells sounding like freight trains thundered overhead. As his group circled outside the reef with dozens of other landing craft, the prelanding assault already had been bungled. Communication between Navy ships disintegrated when the command ship USS
Maryland
’s communications went down with the initial barrage.

Finally, orders came at about 0900: “Head for the beach.” The boats turned south toward three landing zones. Duffee’s boat headed for the middle landing zone on the north side of Betio, alongside a five-hundredyard pier. The water over the reef boiled white in the landing craft’s wake. As they approached the beach, palm trees shredded by shrapnel emerged from the hazy smoke, looking like a grotesque, twisted picket fence. The smell of smoldering palms, sulfur, and rubber floated out over the lagoon as black smoke drifted over Betio.

Many of the advancing landing craft ground to a halt at the edge of the coral reef far from shore. They had “high centered” on coral heads. Assault planners had known there would be only a fifty-fifty chance the tide would be high enough to allow the amphibious Higgins boat to navigate over the coral reef. Senior officers had rolled the dice, betting the lives of hundreds of Marines assigned to the boats—and lost. The Marines paid with their lives. They either stayed in the stranded boats hundreds of yards from shore and became targets for the enemy or took a deep breath, prayed, and climbed out to wade ashore.