Most surviving senior officers agreed that the decision not to use the 3d Marines at Iwo Jima was ill-advised and costly. But Holland Smith never wavered: “Sufficient troops were on Iwo Jima for the capture of the island ... two regiments were sufficient to cover the front assigned to General Erskine.” On 5 March, D+14, Smith ordered the 3d Marines to sail back to Guam.
Marine Corps Historical Collection
“Turkey Knob,” the outcropping which anchored the positions of the Japanese 2d Mixed Brigade against the advance of the 4th Marine Division for many days, was sketched by Cpl Daniel L. Winsor, Jr., USMCR, S-2 Section, 25th Marines.
Weary troops of Company G, 2d Battalion, 24th Marines, rest in a ditch, guarded by a Sherman tank. They are waiting for the tanks to move forward to blast the numerous pillboxes between Motoyama Airfields No. 1 and No. 2.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 109666
Holland Smith may have known the overall statistics of battle losses sustained by the landing force to that point, but he may not have fully appreciated the tremendous attrition of experienced junior officers and senior staff noncommissioned officers taking place every day. As one example, the day after the 3d Marines, many of whose members were veterans of Bougainville and Guam, departed the amphibious objective area, Company E, 2d Battalion, 23d Marines, suffered the loss of its seventh company commander since the battle began. Likewise, Lieutenant Colonel Cushman’s experiences with the 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, seemed typical:
The casualties were fierce. By the time Iwo Jima was over I had gone through two complete sets of platoon leaders, lieutenants. After that we had such things as artillery forward observers commanding companies and sergeants leading the platoons, which were less than half-strength. It was that bad.
