Now the lieutenant began to get very worried:
Here we were—completely isolated from the rest of the company—only half a dozen of us left—our flank man had disappeared and now we were getting heavy fire from an uncertain number of Japs who were right in our middle and whom we couldn’t locate! Some of the men were getting a little jittery I could see, so I tried to appear as calm and cool as I could (although I didn’t feel that way inside!). I decided to move back to the other end of the hilltop and report to [our company commander] on the phone. If I could get his OK, I would then contact [another one of our platoons] for reinforcements, and we could move back into this area and clean out the Jap pocket.
Pressing hard against the Japanese defenses constantly resulted in these kinds of face-to-face encounters. Three days later (D+19), Lieutenant Colonel Chambers observed a memorable act of bravery:
Three of our tanks came along the road.... They made the turn to the south and then took the wrong turn, which took them off the high ground and into a cave area where there were literally hundreds of Japs, who swarmed all over the tanks. We were watching and heard on the radio that (the lieutenant) who commanded the tanks was hollering for help, and I don’t blame him. They had formed a triangle and covered each other with the co-axial guns as best as they could.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 85221
He may have started out sitting on a dud 16-inch Navy shell, enjoying a smoke while emptying sand from his “boondockers,” but by the end of the campaign, three weeks later, he had had too little sleep, too many fire fights, and too many buddies dead.
“Patrol, Saipan.”
By Richard Gibney in Marine Corps Art Collection
