FLAME THROWERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 303, 22 December 1943, Page 4

FLAME THROWERS

USED AGAINST JAPS. THE TARAWA ISLAND BATTLE How United States Marines used flame throwers, T.N.T. charges, grenades and big 75-mm. guns to blast out Japanese troops from Tarawa Island, is related by Tech-nical-Sergeant G. Ward, a United States Marine Corps combat correspondent in a recent dispatch from Tarawa: "At dawn I hit the beach of this Japanese stronghold with a battalion of men reinforcing the initial landing party. Many gallant Marines now lie dead," he writes. "I was with a company pinned down in the shallow water off shore for over an hour. We were caught in machine-gun cross fire, one gun having been set up in a derelict hull during darkness. What the machineguns missed the snipers tried to care for. "Men with whom I'd eaten, smoked, and played cards were killed on my right and left. The entire trip into that beach, under the slight protection of the seawall, was made crawling on our bellies through the shallow water and over the jagged coral. These boys with me there in the water never quit working toward the shore. None turned back unless hit, although they could have dropped their weapons, unshouldered packs and equipment and made a swim for it back to the Higgins boats. Snipers Are Deadly "After a while—time is impossible to estimate when each moment may be your last —dive bombers knocked out the machine-gun in the derelict and we had only the snipers left. They were deadly, and it wasn't until 35 yards from the beach that we found protection and a brief breather behind concrete tank traps. From here those with enough strength made a dash for it," adds Sergeant Ward.

"One man went through that hell with a heavy machine-gun tripod and brought it safely to shore. I saw Marine after Marine run back into snipers' fire to help wounded to the shore. When you re half-dead with exhaustion, that is courage of the highest order. "One man with me was Private Rufus Abbe of Oklahoma. When half-way into the beach, a bullet ripped through his helmet, tearing a jagged hole in the crown. It took a few locks of his hair. He kept going. But the others aren't even names or faces to me. Just wet, bearded, tired - eyed American Marines, undertaking and completing one of the toughest assignments ever asked of any fighting man. "I spent the next morning with Marine Major Lawrence C. Hays, jun., of Georgia, and his men as they cleaned the final Japanese out of their holes, to secure the western end of the atoll. We used flame throwers, T.N.T. charges, grenades and big 75-mm. guns mounted on half-tracs to blast them out. Twice a hidden sniper held us up, once for over an hour before one of those invaluable half-tracs was brought up to put an end to the nuisance. "Those half-tracs continued to be worth their weight in gold, and when one arrived, it was met with a cheer from all. The big blast of the 75-mm. invariably silenced the hidden sniper. The Marines with us wanted to advance faster than it was safe to."