Cpl Anthony P. Damato, V Amphibious Corps, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for having saved the lives of his fellow Marines by throwing himself on a Japanese hand grenade.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 303037
For the assault troops, it was a continuing story of “spider holes,” tunnels, underground strong points, and enemy resistance to the death. Another young Marine, Second Lieutenant Cord Meyer, Jr., in his first combat fought on both Eniwetok and Parry. The grueling experiences he had were typical of everyone who took part in these battles. He was landed with his machine gun platoon in the second wave of assault troops, three minutes after the first men to hit the beach on Eniwetok. Moving quickly inland, the platoon came to the edge of a blasted coconut grove. Then, as the lieutenant later wrote home:
We were hard hit there, and with terrible clarity the reality of the event came home to me. I had crawled forward to ask a Marine where the Japs were—pretty excited really and enjoying it almost like a game. I crawled up beside him but he wouldn’t answer. Then I saw the ever widening pool of dark blood by his head and knew that he was dying or dead. So it came over me what this war was, and after that it wasn’t fun or exciting, but something that had to be done.
Fortune smiled on me that day, or the hand of a Divine Providence was over me, or I was just plain lucky. We killed many of them in fighting that lasted to nightfall. We cornered fifty or so Imperial [Japanese] Marines on the end of the island, where they attempted a banzai charge, but we cut them down like overripe wheat, and they lay like tired children with their faces in the sand.
That night was unbelievably terrible. There were many of them left and they all had one fanatical notion, and that was to take one of us with them. We dug in with orders to kill anything that moved. I kept watch in a foxhole with my sergeant, and we both stayed awake all night with a knife in one hand and a grenade in the other. They crept in among us, and every bush or rock took on sinister proportions. They got some of us, but in the morning they all lay about, some with their riddled bodies actually inside our foxholes. With daylight it was easy for us and we finished them off. Never have I been so glad to see the blessed sun.
With that battle over, the lieutenant and his men were hustled back on ship. For a day and a night they were “desperately trying” to get their gear into proper shape to go right back into combat. The following morning, they went in on the attack on Parry.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 72434
Poised in a shallow trench, riflemen of the 22d Marines await the order to attack an enemy coconut-log strongpoint on Eniwetok. While the most of the men are carrying M1 rifles, the flamethrower in their midst may well prove crucial.
They found the beach was swept with machine-gun and mortar fire, but they surged inland over ruined, shell-blasted soil rocked by the continual mortar bursts. Then their captain suddenly pointed, and above the brush line they saw 150 or so men bending forward, moving on a parallel course about 50 yards away. The Marines, however, waved, thinking that they must be fellow Marines. The men paid little attention to the Marines and seemed to be setting up machine guns. The realization struck home: they were Japanese.