On the morning of April 27, the 381st started to move out. After a good night’s sleep, the Deadeyes were ready to rumble. Patrols started marching and the big artillery stood ready. I watched my men loading the shells and preparing for a constant barrage when the attack began. We knew that what happened during the next ten hours could prove crucial.
The Second Battalion took off with G Company and F Company coordinating the approach. The plan was for these two units to join in a unified front. As soon as they started up the escarpment, they ran into trouble. Their plan started going up in flames.
G Company called in on the walkie-talkie that they had a pillbox in front of them and the enemy was firing like crazy. They weren’t sure they could move.
F Company responded that they had the same problem and it looked like the enemy was cutting a swath between the two companies.
A blast of rapid machine-gun fire cut the conversation short.
Lieutenant Owen O’Neil crawled over to F Company’s Sergeant Elias Hill to ask if they could move at all.
Hill didn’t think so. The damned pillbox was dug into the cliffs. They couldn’t get to it without being out in the open and that was committing suicide. While they sat here trying not to get killed, the Japanese had a perfect view of their every movement. They were trapped.
O’Neil noted that F Company and G Company had the same problem. He wasn’t sure they could do anything right then except dig in.
The sergeant agreed. As I listened, I knew we had to respond effectively in some way.
On the right, Lieutenant James Ruth tried to lead G Company against the pillbox fortress.
Lying flat on the ground under a hail of bullets, Sergeant Jim Crowder pulled out a pair of field glasses and studied the situation. For a full minute, Crowder watched the shadowy outline of Japanese movement.
Crowder concluded that if they got any closer than thirty yards, they were dead. The boys back there on the ledge just weren’t gonna get any closer.
O’Neil thought it impossible to get out of there ourselves till nightfall. He thought the rest of the men should stay put.
O’Neil spoke softly but rapidly, telling the men to keep blasting those caves lining the escarpment. There was plenty to do keeping the enemy from making any kind of counterattack. He didn’t know when they would get out of there. Might be dark. Just keep shooting. O’Neil hung up and scrunched behind a boulder.
* * *
While the frontline action unfolded, another dimension rolled out with the 763rd Tank Battalion. These soldiers had been reinforced with flamethrowing tanks and looked awesome. But when they started rolling out, they hit marshy ground.
Captain Merrill Baker slung the steel door open and stuck his head out of the tank’s turret and wanted to know, “Why aren’t we moving?”
Lieutenant Leon Andrews was already standing on the ground. He roared that they were stuck in this shithole of soggy soil. Had to have assistance to get out.
Baker demanded they order it.
Andrews called in to get the Ammunition and Pioneer Platoon up there. The tanks had plowed into a hellfire marsh and were stuck in the mud. He hung up and stood there smoldering.
Captain Baker growled, “Somebody screwed up and they’re fouling up the entire operation!”
Andrews glared at him but said nothing.
While they were waiting, the infantry seized a hill in Maeda. Captain John Byers found Japanese in every crack in the ground. They were everywhere, as well as snipers firing out of the heavy undergrowth in a village in front of them. To make matters worse, American machine-gun bullets were ricocheting from our own units on the escarpment. The Japanese were bad enough without that added attraction that could kill you just as dead.
Finally, some progress was made on getting the 763rd Tank Battalion moving. By midafternoon, two tanks and a flamethrower pulled out.
The three tanks roared forward. For the first time, the Japanese on the south slope of the escarpment were in a position where they weren’t hidden in the caves and trees. The setting fit the tank battalion’s objectives to a T.
Andrews ordered into his intercom to hit ’em with everything they had.
The flamethrower tank roared forward, throwing a stream of fire that fried everyone in its path. The 763rd blasted everything in front of them. When the confrontation was over, they had killed around three hundred Japanese and knocked out fifteen to twenty machine-gun nests and four mortars.
Not a bad day’s work.
* * *
On the extreme left, the Third Battalion attacked against moderate resistance and drove four hundred yards. They were now in an excellent position to attack the town of Shuri, which was less than a mile away. No one had advanced further than the Third Battalion did that day. The problem was that everybody else ended up hog-tied by the bitter resistance of the advance on the Maeda escarpment. Hordes of Japanese appeared everywhere we turned. Incessant fire came from the front, the back, and the flanks. That’s hard to escape.
One of the big breakthroughs came when Captain Bollinger gambled that he could set up F Company in a different position from the usual. As darkness was falling, he knew that the night before the men had found it impossible to dig adequate foxholes in the rock and coral that surrounded the Needle. This problem allowed the counterattacking Japanese an open range on our men during the night. Bollinger decided he would scramble how the game was played.
Leaving the foxholes behind, the captain placed the men on top of the huge boulders that dotted the area and they waited. Sure enough, in the dark the Japanese came creeping in with their bayonets fixed. With a scream, they descended on the foxholes, jabbing away at what turned out to be nothing.
The men on the boulders started firing. The Japanese who came to kill were slaughtered. When the assault was over, the boys in F Company had killed forty-seven enemy.
The day had been tough and long . . . but much longer for the Japanese.