With the Marines at Tarawa in 1945....

[Lucky13]

 

[Robert Porter]

That was a good one! Classic War Department narration!

 

[mikewint]

Yea, I loved the line: "Their lives meant nothing to them". Marine causalities were 3,301 and of the 4,836 Japanese troops only 17 survived so not the lopsided victory portrayed in the film. Rear Admiral Shibasaki had oriented his defenses mostly along the southern approaches as the northern shore had a shelf-like reef and a long shallow sloping beach which would prevent the Higgins boats from coming ashore. Shibasaki, low on manpower had not prepared the northern beaches to the same degree.
The Marines attacked from the north in the morning hours at low tide.. While the initial amtracs were able to climb over the coral the following Higgins boats could not and their Marines had to jump out and wade through over 500 yards of wast-deep water while under intense machine gun fire. About 500 Marines died trying to wade ashore. It would have cost the Marines even more men are possibly their beachhead except by a rare lucky break, a sharp-eyed Marine spotted a group of Japanese officers moving in the open and called down a barrage from the destroyers Ringgold and Dashiell who put down a salvo of 5in shells. The entire group, who happened to be Admiral Shibasaki and his command staff (who had given up their command bunker so that it could be used as a hospital), were killed. The importance of this incident cannot be overestimated, for if he had lived, it is likely that Shibasaki would have launched a vicious counterattack at night which could have spelled disaster for the Marines who had a precarious beachhead at best.
Also of note, the water scene. The Marines were desperate for water as theirs had been loaded into old OIL drums and was essentially undrinkable. The large Vicker's guns were not from Singapore as stated in the film but had been sold to the Japanese in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese war.
Also of note: Two Navy lieutenants, John Fletcher and Eddie A Heimberger, became aware that some 150 wounded Marines were stranded on the reef. Working independently, they started to rescue the men and take them back to the tank lighters for transportation to hospital ships. Heimberger had to commandeer an LCVP after his boat was damaged and repeatedly came under fire from a lone Japanese sniper who had swum out to a wrecked LCVP and the Niminoa, an old wreck lying west of the main pier. Heimberger disposed of the sniper and the guns of the Maryland and Colorado were used to reduce the Niminoa to tangled metal. Heimberger continued his task of retrieving the wounded and even collected the regimental surgeon from the 8th Marines to help with the wounded. Heimberger was receive the Navy Cross for his actions and resumed his acting career after the war under his first two names - Eddie Albert.

 

[Old Wizard]

 

[Gnomey]

Good one!