We set up where a road made a sharp turn overlooking a draw. It was the last stand of the second platoon. There were three attacks that night and by the third there was nobody left to fight, so they broke through. They came in droves throwing hand grenades and hacked up some of our platoon. In the morning, I had only ten rounds of ammunition left, half the clip for my BAR. I was holding those rounds if I needed them to make a break for it. I had no choice. Everybody was quiet, either dead or wounded. The Japanese came in to take out their dead and wounded, and stepped on the edge of my foxhole. I didn’t breath. They were milling around there until dawn then they were gone.
As Lieutenant Colonel Cushman, evaluating the action later, said:
With the seizure of Fonte Hill, the capture of the beachhead was completed. In the large picture, the defeat of the large counterattack on the 26th by the many battalions of the 3d Division who fought valiantly through the bloody night finished the Jap on Guam.... What made the fighting for Fonte important was the fact that [the advance to the north end of the island] could not take place until it was seized.
The enemy attack failed in the south also, and in the south it was just as much touch and go at times. The Japanese sailors on Orote were just as determined as the soldiers at Fonte to drive the Americans from Guam.
[Sidebar ([page 24]):]
General Robert E. Cushman
As a 29-year-old lieutenant colonel commanding the 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division, on Guam, Robert E. Cushman, Jr., was awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism during the period 21 July to 30 August 1944. The medal citation states in part:
When his battalion was ordered to seize and hold a strongly organized and defended enemy strong-point which had been holding up the advance for some days, Lieutenant Colonel Cushman directed the attacks of his battalion and the repulse of numerous Japanese counterattacks, fearlessly exposing himself to heavy hostile rifle, machine gun and mortar fire in order to remain in the front lines and obtain first hand knowledge of the enemy situation. Following three days of bitter fighting culminating in a heavy Japanese counterattack which pushed back the flank of his battalion, he personally led a platoon into the gap and, placing it for defense, repelled the hostile force. By his inspiring leadership, courage and devotion to duty, he contributed materially to the success of the mission with the annihilation of one enemy battalion and the rout of another....
General Cushman became the 25th Commandant of the Marine Corps on 1 January 1972. Interestingly enough, he was succeeded four years later by General Louis H. Wilson, Jr., who commanded a company in Cushman’s 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, on Guam.