The fundamental choice faced by most other Marines on Betio that day was whether to stay put along the beach or crawl over the seawall and carry the fight inland. For much of the day the fire coming across the top of those coconut logs was so intense it seemed “a man could lift his hand and get it shot off.” Late on D-Day, there were many too demoralized to advance. When Major Rathvon McC. Tompkins, bearing messages from General Hermle to Colonel Shoup, first arrived on Red Beach Two at the foot of the pier at dusk on D-Day, he was appalled at the sight of so many stragglers. Tompkins wondered why the Japanese “didn’t use mortars on the first night. People were lying on the beach so thick you couldn’t walk.”
Conditions were congested on Red Beach One, as well, but there was a difference. Major Crowe was everywhere, “as cool as ice box lettuce.” There were no stragglers. Crowe constantly fed small groups of Marines into the lines to reinforce his precarious hold on the left flank. Captain Hoffman of 3/8 was not displeased to find his unit suddenly integrated within Crowe’s 2/8. And Crowe certainly needed help as darkness began to fall. “There we were,” Hoffman recalled, “toes in the water, casualties everywhere, dead and wounded all around us. But finally a few Marines started inching forward, a yard here, a yard there.” It was enough. Hoffman was soon able to see well enough to call in naval gunfire support 50 yards ahead. His Marines dug in for the night.
West of Crowe’s lines, and just inland from Shoup’s command post, Captain William T. Bray’s Company B, 1/2, settled in for the expected counterattacks. The company had been scattered in Kyle’s bloody landing at mid-day. Bray reported to Kyle that he had men from 12 to 14 different units in his company, including several sailors who swam ashore from sinking boats. The men were well armed and no longer strangers to each other, and Kyle was reassured.
U.S. Navy Combat Art Collection
“The Hard Road to Triumph,” a sketch by Kerr Eby. The action shows Maj Crowe’s LT 2/8 trying to expand its beachhead near the contested Burns-Philp pier.
Altogether, some 5,000 Marines had stormed the beaches of Betio on D-Day. Fifteen hundred of these were dead, wounded, or missing by nightfall. The survivors held less than a quarter of a square mile of sand and coral. Shoup later described the location of his beachhead lines the night of D-Day as “a stock market graph.” His Marines went to ground in the best fighting positions they could secure, whether in shellholes inland or along the splintered seawall. Despite the crazy-quilt defensive positions and scrambled units, the Marines’ fire discipline was superb. The troops seemed to share a certain grim confidence; they had faced the worst in getting ashore. They were quietly ready for any sudden banzai charges in the dark.
Offshore, the level of confidence diminished. General Julian Smith on Maryland was gravely concerned. “This was the crisis of the battle,” he recalled. “Three-fourths of the Island was in the enemy’s hands, and even allowing for his losses he should have had as many troops left as we had ashore.” A concerted Japanese counterattack, Smith believed, would have driven most of his forces into the sea. Smith and Hill reported up the chain of command to Turner, Spruance, and Nimitz: “Issue remains in doubt.” Spruance’s staff began drafting plans for emergency evacuation of the landing force.
The expected Japanese counterattack did not materialize. The principal dividend of all the bombardment turned out to be the destruction of Admiral Shibasaki’s wire communications. The Japanese commander could not muster his men to take the offensive. A few individuals infiltrated through the Marine lines to swim out to disabled tanks and LVTs in the lagoon, where they waited for the morning. Otherwise, all was quiet.
Marines of Landing Teams 2/8 and 3/8 advance forward beyond the beach.