Veteran's Day

November 20, 1943.  17 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers and 66 destroyers bombard Tarawa atoll for 3 hours.  At the lifting of the fire, the Marines are sent in.  Expecting 5 feet of water over the coral, the Higgens boats grounded in 3 feet of water.  A New Zealand expert was ignored when he told them of the neap tides and exactly what would happen.  The island had 500 pillboxes and most had survived.  When Tarawa was secured on the 23rd, all but 1 Japanese officer and 16 men were taken alive.  The Second Marine Division lost over 900 dead, with a total of 3166 casualties out of 12,000 men, 25 %.  Other than the Japs, our leaders were the worst enemy out there.  The Marine Commander, Holland Smith, blamed the Navy, but Smith was a paranoid and a liar who ruined Army-Corps relations for decades.  But the Navy did fuck up, and badly.  The bombardment should have gone on for three days, and the planning staff responsible for the neap tide thing punished.  After Smith relieved a competent and experienced Army general on Saipan, essentially for cowardliness, he never commanded again*.  Tarawa turned out to have been ripe for just letting the Japanese starve.  All our men were killed for very little in gain.  

And I have never done a thing to help my country.

Ebb Tide, Kerr Eby

  There are photos aplenty but this seems to get the message across as I want it seen.

 

* Holland Smith was in charge of the land forces at Iwo Jima, but it was a paper designation and he did not run the battle.  While Smith had the authority to relieve any officer he felt less than adequate, he insulted the Army and Ralph Smith, who was a good if not spectacular commander.  In addition, the Army's 27th Division was given the middle of the battlefield with a Marine division on each side of them.  This guaranteed problems and slow movement.  27th Division was a national guard formation, they had nothing like the training and experienced officers and NCO's the Corps had.  Holland Smith wrote a memoir after the war, Coral And Brass, and it was so replete with outright lies and distortions his fellow generals tried to get him to not publish it.