The Color of War Episode 3 Battleground
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LearningTranscript
00:00During the Second World War, an entire generation recorded their personal experiences for posterity.
00:08Combat cameramen braved enemy fire to send home moving images, many of them in color.
00:15They captured history, and in the process they captured ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events,
00:22bearing witness to the color of war.
00:30Music
00:49World War II was truly a global conflict.
00:53The fighting raged from the desert sands of Africa to the islands in the Pacific.
01:02Allied troops fought in every theater, exposing them to an extraordinary diversity of terrain and climate.
01:12Each theater could produce conditions of dreadful severity.
01:18While an infantryman was engaged in combat for an average of one hour each day,
01:23he was at war with the environment around the clock.
01:29Rain, mud, extreme cold, deserts, mountains, and jungles,
01:39each presented unique challenges and inflicted unique hardships on the servicemen who faced them.
01:46Soldiers confronted these obstacles with amazing fortitude,
01:50finding ways to endure while struggling to defeat the human enemies who also blocked their path to victory.
01:59The toll from this struggle was staggering.
02:03Music
02:12With the United States and Japan's entry into World War II in 1941,
02:17the scope of the conflict suddenly expanded.
02:21Previously confined to Europe, the war now encompassed the farthest reaches of the Pacific, China, and Southeast Asia.
02:30As thousands of American men were called to arms after Pearl Harbor,
02:34each serviceman wondered where he might be going in this vast new battleground.
02:41After their training, soldiers and marines were often moved halfway around the globe
02:46with little or no idea of where they were going or what was in store for them.
02:52One thing was certain.
02:54Many of these men would face extremely adverse fighting conditions
02:58in places that were so exotic that most servicemen couldn't even pronounce their names.
03:04Combat cameramen who accompanied the men endured the same hardships
03:08to record the experiences of their brothers in arms.
03:13Once the men arrived on the front lines of battle,
03:16their lives were quickly reduced to a few bare essentials.
03:20High among them was the infantryman's intimate relationship with the very ground upon which he trod.
03:27Not only did he march on it, he also ate on it, slept on it,
03:32and sought its shelter from the myriad enemy weapons that threatened his life.
03:37Because of the lethal environment above ground, the common task for all soldiers was to dig.
03:44Each man was given a shovel and told only one thing would save his life.
03:50Mother Earth.
03:52And every night, dig.
03:55Dig in case the bombs drop.
03:57Dig for discipline.
03:59Dig to save your skins.
04:01Dig through sand.
04:03Dig, if necessary, through rock.
04:06Dig for bloody victory.
04:10The nips hit here again today, and the dam's sewn so straight the line in the camp area.
04:14Talk about dig in.
04:16I buried my nose so deep in the slit trench, even an ostrich couldn't have found me.
04:22After his weapon, the most important tool a soldier carried was his shovel.
04:27Shovels were issued to all front-line American G.I.s during the course of the war.
04:32They were versatile and valuable, sometimes for more than just digging.
04:39At night, we stayed three in a foxhole, two on watch and one sleeps.
04:44One had his rifle, one a grenade, and the third had a shovel.
04:48Yes, a little old entrenching tool.
04:51It was used to bat down a Jap grenade or to scoop it up if it got in the hole.
04:55It was a very useful weapon, a shovel.
04:58While most soldiers disliked the drudgery of digging,
05:01it was much worse to be caught out in the open with no place to hide.
05:07Imagine if you can, lying on a field not daring to move a muscle for fear the sniper is throwing shots at you.
05:14You push your face down right into the earth as far as you can.
05:18Oh, how I wish I had a hole 20 feet deep.
05:23To the front-line soldier, his foxhole was both shelter and home.
05:31Even when the weather turned bad, he usually had no other place to protect himself from the elements.
05:38Among the best descriptions of the rifleman's day-to-day existence
05:42was the one written by American war correspondent and cartoonist, Bill Mauldin.
05:47He wanted to give those sitting comfortably back at home some idea of what it was like for the boys at the front.
05:55Dig a hole in your backyard while it is raining.
05:59Sit in the hole while the water climbs up around your ankles.
06:03Pour cold mud down your shirt collar.
06:06Sit there for 48 hours and so there is no danger of your dozing off.
06:11Imagine that a guy is sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you on the head.
06:16Or set your house on fire.
06:21It was also part of an infantryman's duty to clear ground for heavy guns
06:27and to dig artillery emplacements.
06:31And when tanks were bogged down in rain-soaked ground,
06:34the shovel was often the tool of choice to dig them out.
06:39But, as always, the shovel's main use was as the infantryman's personal survival tool.
06:45This was never more the case than on Iwo Jima in the Pacific Theater.
06:54One of the men who took part in the battle was Marine Private First Class Robert Koster.
06:59His unit was ordered to spearhead and advance into enemy territory.
07:04They were told they would only be out one day.
07:09We arrived about 10 o'clock and were told to dig in on a right angle to our front lines.
07:15The ground was like rock and, by morning, we only had a hole large enough for one man.
07:22We all four got into it somehow.
07:26As soon as we would throw out the dirt, the nips would open fire.
07:31To make matters worse, Koster's squad had to dig a separate hole for their fallen comrades
07:37because nobody wanted to be in a foxhole alongside their dead buddies.
07:44By the end of our third day in this spot, we began to think our commanders had forgotten us.
07:50By the time we had spent five days in the hole, we were at each other's throats.
07:56As the days stretched on endlessly, the only thing that stopped the bickering was the constant Japanese attacks.
08:04Somehow Koster and his squad survived their ordeal.
08:08After seven days, they were finally relieved.
08:13I am sure we all prayed and dug more in those seven long days and nights than we ever did before in our lives.
08:21There are thousands of things that go through your mind when you believe you are going to die.
08:26It so happened the good Lord brought us out alive, and we will never forget it.
08:33There was one other task for which shovels were indispensable.
08:37It was the grimmest duty encountered in war.
08:41We have just come from digging our foxholes and from burying our dead.
08:50It was a mighty impressive ceremony.
08:53I don't know if you've ever stood out in the field with shells breaking all around you and burying good American Marines.
09:02It's something that reaches way down inside of you and gives you a tug at your heart that you can't understand.
09:14Just as individual infantrymen were at the mercy of hostile terrain and climate, so too were fighting units as a whole.
09:22Indeed, one of the most formidable obstacles faced by the vast armada invading Europe in 1944 wasn't the enemy.
09:33It was the weather.
09:42All morning of June 4th, we traveled east along the southern coast of England.
09:48The convoy stretched as far as the eye could see.
09:51The waves were high and the weather was foul.
09:54Low-lying clouds blotted out the sun.
09:58Night came early on the 4th.
10:00Wind, waves, fog and a mist blanketed out ships.
10:13In preparation for D-Day, the Allies had built up the mightiest invasion fleet ever assembled,
10:19including more than 4,400 ships carrying 154,000 troops and 1,500 tanks.
10:27Based on a careful calculation of the tides and weather, June 5th had been chosen as the date for the operation.
10:34But as the day unfolded, the commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Dwight Eisenhower, was faced with a difficult decision.
10:43A large storm had hit the invasion area.
10:47After a few hours of deliberation, he postponed the invasion.
10:52At noon, the fleet turned around and headed back to port.
10:59The huge armada of men and machines was now at a standstill, waiting for a break in the weather.
11:05With only a brief window of opportunity before unfavorable tides made landings impossible until the following month,
11:12Eisenhower ordered everyone to stay on board the ships.
11:16This created grueling conditions for the men.
11:22This turn of events was clearly a factor we had not considered.
11:27The air of expectancy which we had sensed that morning was frayed.
11:32Tempers were now short and everyone was irritable.
11:35Some of the men had become seasick in the heavy seas, and this didn't help matters any.
11:41The invasion cooped up like prisoners for several weeks, and everyone was anxious to get to France.
11:48On June 6th, the storm slightly subsided.
11:53With Eisenhower's meteorologists predicting more bad weather on the way, he carefully weighed his options.
12:00Then he turned to his staff and quietly said,
12:05No.
12:11By day's end, the Allied task force had slipped through the narrow window of opportunity the weather had provided.
12:18The battle for the liberation of France had begun.
12:25During this campaign, Allied armies traversed well settled terrain,
12:30dotted with cities and towns, and crisscrossed by rivers and roads.
12:36But to the soldiers, many of whom had never been out of the United States,
12:40they might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
12:45In order to find their way anywhere, they needed maps.
12:50Despite the best efforts of army cartographers, these maps were often inaccurate,
12:55requiring men to make their own judgments regarding where they were.
13:00Given the speed of the advance, sometimes the troops literally ran off their maps,
13:05forcing them to halt and wait for new ones to arrive.
13:09When all else failed, troops simply asked local residents for directions.
13:17In the late summer of 1944, the Allies liberated Paris.
13:24With the Germans in full retreat, they began to consolidate men and materiel
13:28for the drive into the heart of the Third Reich.
13:33But then, natural forces once more intervened.
13:39The winter of 1944 through 1945 in northern Europe was one of the worst on record,
13:45exceeded only by the extreme conditions found in Russia on the Eastern Front.
13:50Bitter cold and rain brought the Allied advance in France to a halt.
13:55The resulting mud stuck to everything and wreaked havoc with men and machines alike.
14:03Mud is a curse which seems to save itself for war.
14:07I'm sure Europe never got this muddy during peacetime.
14:11I'm equally sure that no mud in the world is so deep or sticky or wet as European mud.
14:19It doesn't even have an honest color like ordinary mud.
14:23By December 1944, the anticipation felt by Allied forces for imminent victory in Europe
14:29had melted away and morale began to sink.
14:34The constant rain and overcast skies seemed to prevent any evaporation.
14:40The earth was just plain mud.
14:43No matter how careful we were, our weapons became constantly clogged and jammed by the mud.
14:49It was combat under the worst possible conditions.
14:54Circumstances like these were more than just uncomfortable for the troops.
14:58They could also cause illnesses such as influenza and pneumonia
15:02and crippling injuries like trench foot,
15:05a circulatory condition very much like frostbite
15:08that was the result of the soldiers getting their feet wet
15:11and not being able to dry them for hours or even days on end.
15:17We're seeing the reality of war.
15:20We're starting to see mud.
15:22It's bitter cold and it's beginning to rain again.
15:26There's a group of medics and wounded men around a fire.
15:30There's a lad over here whose barefooted feet caked with mud.
15:35The medics tell me he has trench foot.
15:37He removed his shoes at the spot and couldn't put them on again.
15:41He walked that way almost two miles.
15:45By January of 1945, the 30th U.S. Division in France was losing 100 men a day
15:52from illnesses that resulted from the snow and cold.
15:57In the spring of 1945, with winter subsiding
16:00and victories at the Battle of the Bulge and the Siegfried Line behind them,
16:04the Allies encountered the Rhine River,
16:06which posed one of the most daunting natural obstacles to their advance into Germany.
16:12The Rhine runs the complete length of Germany,
16:15and Hitler seized on this obstacle as his last chance to stop the Allied advance.
16:21He ordered all bridges over the river to be destroyed.
16:25Crossing any river under enemy fire was dangerous,
16:28but due to its great length and breadth, the Rhine was even more formidable.
16:33There were numerous German fortifications,
16:36and the soldiers behind them were desperate to defend their homeland.
16:42We were under constant fire.
16:44I saw boats being hit all around me and guys falling out and swimming.
16:49I never knew whether they made it or not.
16:53The Allies were frustrated in their initial attempts to cross the Rhine
16:57until they managed to capture a railway bridge at Remagen,
17:01a small city in central Germany near Bonn.
17:06After a faulty German explosive charge failed to destroy it,
17:10a steady stream of men and supplies flowed across the Rhine.
17:15U.S. Army combat engineers struggled to repair the bridge
17:19while under constant attack by German aircraft and artillery,
17:23determined to stop the Allied advance.
17:27Black stone towers at each end of the bridge have been torn by our shells.
17:31The span itself has suffered some damage.
17:33Remagen. Destination Berlin.
17:44That rain you just heard was the real McCoys.
17:46The firepower was terrific and the sky was hot with tracer bullets and good Yankee steel.
17:50But the work on the bridge went on.
17:52Those Luftwaffe men had anything to drop. They didn't get near enough to let it go.
17:57Just ten days after it was taken, the already weakened Remagen Bridge collapsed
18:03due to the tons of American equipment that crossed it.
18:07Afterwards, Army engineers built more than 60 of their own bridges across the Rhine.
18:16These bridges, and the men who built them,
18:18conquered the natural defenses of the Rhine
18:21as surely as Allied combat forces triumphed over German armies in the field.
18:26Across them flowed the river of men and supplies that ultimately engulfed the Third Reich.
18:37While the natural conditions caused untold miseries for the soldiers in Europe,
18:42their comrades in North Africa faced environmental challenges of their own.
18:47Challenges that were every bit as grueling as those faced by any servicemen in World War II.
18:57The sun was a burning metallic monster in a cloudless blue sky,
19:02under which you perspired until the moisture dripped from nose, chin, and elbows.
19:08And the sand, the sand that blew about nearly all the time
19:13and penetrated your throat and eyes
19:15and caked itself upon the sweaty wetness of your face and whole head
19:19and turned you into an all khaki figure.
19:34When American troops landed in North Africa in 1943,
19:38they were confronted by conditions that were more extreme
19:41than anything they had ever experienced in the United States.
19:48Temperatures fluctuated as much as 60 degrees between day and night.
19:53Sand that was as fine as talcum powder routinely clogged the soldiers' rifle breeches
19:58and inflamed their eyes.
20:00Many of the men were equipped with sand goggles to protect them from the blowing dust.
20:06But even on clear days, mirages played tricks with the soldiers' vision.
20:11And because of the flat, treeless landscape,
20:14it was extremely difficult to camouflage or conceal troops and equipment.
20:22American forces were not completely unprepared for this challenge.
20:26This training film, shot in the California desert,
20:29detailed several techniques the troops could use
20:32to hide themselves from the prying eyes of the enemy.
20:36Realistic-looking artificial rocks are made to provide concealment
20:40for observation posts and machine gun emplacements.
20:44In camouflaging a vehicle, a pattern is first outlined in chalk.
20:49The entire vehicle is covered with a pattern which obscures its regular form
20:54so that it will be difficult to recognize in local terrain.
20:58Unfortunately, the pressures of actual combat operations
21:01usually prevented the troops from taking such elaborate measures.
21:07Yet even when the troops were prepared,
21:10it didn't help much against the veteran German Afrika Korps,
21:13which had been fighting in the desert for over a year
21:16and knew how to use the unique desert landscape to its advantage.
21:21Lieutenant J. Gordon Peltier,
21:23who served in the artillery of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division,
21:27wrote about the experience of attacking a German unit
21:30that had meticulously hidden itself among the rocky ridges around Tunisia.
21:38Nine of our medium tanks had gone across the open plain.
21:42The Germans had waited until they got within a thousand yards,
21:46and then they had opened up with murderously accurate fire from guns,
21:50which were in pits blasted from the solid rock of the mountains.
21:54The result was our tanks never had a chance,
21:58and their scarred hulks were mute evidence of their unsuccessful attack.
22:05The Germans continued their dominance of North Africa's high ground
22:09throughout the opening stages of the campaign.
22:14It was decided that the whole battalion would be moved into Fayyid Pass.
22:18Came the dawn, and we saw to our consternation
22:22that we were right in the middle of an open field and full view of the enemy.
22:27The position was a good one, all right.
22:30Good for the enemy to look right down our throats.
22:35Allied troops had to constantly be on the lookout for air attacks as well.
22:40If spotted from above, there was no place to hide.
22:45Many times, the German Stuka dive bombers would wait till high noon
22:49so they could attack straight out of the sun.
22:53J. Gordon Peltier wrote a poem that reflected his feelings about these attacks.
22:59When it's Stuka time in Tunis, and the planes are all around,
23:03and the boys aren't out of drilling, they're digging in the ground,
23:07when you hear that great Amen, and he makes his final dive,
23:11then the heads pop out, and the boys all shout,
23:14Thank God, I'm still alive!
23:18U.S. Army combat cameramen were even able to capture one of these attacks on film.
23:27At times, the desert conditions made it impossible for any unit to fight.
23:33The sand was blown up by a hot desert wind, the Khamsin,
23:37of which the Arabs said,
23:39When the Khamsin blows, even murder is justified.
23:44The wind raised temperatures by as much as 35 degrees.
23:49Visibility often dropped to zero, and men gasped for air,
23:53while wind gusts of hurricane force drove the choking dust into engines,
23:58carburetors, and the eyes and lungs of the servicemen themselves.
24:04Anyone who has not been in a sandstorm
24:07cannot visualize how annoying and uncomfortable it can be.
24:12On this occasion, far away in the distance,
24:14could be seen a wall of sandy dust about 100 feet high coming towards us.
24:20It struck us with terrific force, and it turned day into night.
24:26The empty landscape of the North African desert
24:29also had an emotional impact on those who served there.
24:33Many of these men considered the desert's dull sameness a curse,
24:37and they coined a term for the effect it had on them.
24:42There's a sort of psychological complaint some chaps get after long exposure
24:47called desert weariness.
24:49The desert, omnipresent, so saturates consciousness
24:53that it makes the mind as sterile as itself.
24:57It's only now that you realize how much you normally live through your senses.
25:02Here, there's nothing for them.
25:06The North Africa campaign ended in the mountainous terrain of Tunisia.
25:11British and American troops finally broke through the German defenses,
25:15and by May 13, 1943, all enemy resistance had ended.
25:21Over 250,000 German and Italian troops surrendered.
25:26The desolate landscape contributed to this as well.
25:30Many of the battles in North Africa resulted in high numbers of casualties,
25:34resulted in high numbers of POWs,
25:36because there was no food or water available in the barren countryside.
25:42There was little chance of survival and no other choice but to give up.
25:51Meanwhile, halfway around the world, another conflict was still grinding on...
25:58in the dark and fetid jungles of the South Pacific.
26:10Fighting erupts so fast, without warning,
26:13but then it always does in the jungle, the stinking jungle.
26:18Here, all is cramped, narrow, turned in upon itself,
26:22an inward spiraling darkness.
26:25Here, a man hasn't a chance to brace himself against shock,
26:29and the decision goes not to the fairest and bravest,
26:33but to the liar, the sneak, the cheat.
26:47In many ways, jungle warfare was the antithesis of fighting in the desert.
26:52It was oppressive, claustrophobic.
26:55Nothing was ever out in the open.
26:59Many soldiers talked and wrote about the terror of moving through dense jungle terrain,
27:04not knowing where the enemy might be.
27:07At any moment, a sniper's bullet could rip through their bodies.
27:11The irony was that most jungle fighting took place in picturesque South Pacific locations
27:17that had the aura of a tropical paradise.
27:21Guadalcanal was a beautiful island at first glance,
27:24with coconut groves about a mile deep from beautiful sandy beaches
27:28to a very thick jungle at the back.
27:39On August 7th, 1942, over 11,000 Marines,
27:43On August 7th, 1942, over 11,000 Marines landed to take Guadalcanal from the Japanese.
27:50It was the Americans' first taste of jungle combat,
27:54and the Marines quickly realized it wasn't the paradise it seemed to be.
28:02We called this hell on Earth.
28:04Temperatures were always high, many days over 100 degrees.
28:08It rained every afternoon, which turned our valley into mud hole.
28:13It rained every afternoon, which turned our valley into mud hole.
28:18While the Japanese had prepared themselves to do battle in Guadalcanal's jungles,
28:23the Marines hated fighting in its dark depths.
28:27They preferred the island's high ground, where they had clear fields of fire.
28:31They called the jungle below Jap country, gloomy, mysterious,
28:36full of sickness and the possibility of sudden death.
28:40It was an attitude that was partly shaped by American propaganda,
28:44which characterized the Japanese as being something less than human.
28:51They climbed trees like monkeys and even swung on jungle vines like Tarzans
28:55in order to get around the enemy.
29:02We cannot compete with Japs in jungle conditions.
29:05It's truly a white man's graveyard.
29:10This outlook was reinforced by the Japanese tactic of sneaking up on American positions at night
29:16and silently killing as many men as possible before the alarm was sounded.
29:23We were told that we should sleep with our rifles at the ready
29:26because the Japs would try to snake into our tents during the night and do us in.
29:30Last night, Japanese infiltrated and started to come down into this position.
29:38Now, I would like to be able to speak louder,
29:42but unfortunately, the slightest noise, the slightest rustle,
29:48will draw fire not only from the Japanese,
29:54but from our own Marines who were heading nearby in foxholes like this one.
30:02Another problem encountered in the South Pacific was torrential rain.
30:07In New Guinea, 170 inches of rain fell in 1943.
30:12On Leyte in the Philippines, invaded in October 1944,
30:1735 inches of rain fell in the first 40 days of the campaign.
30:23But most of all, the Marines hated the unrelenting tropical heat.
30:30Author James Jones, who served on Guadalcanal,
30:34remembered the high temperatures with searing clarity.
30:39The sun blazed down on them, heating their helmets to such temperatures
30:44that the steel shells actually burned their hands.
30:48It brought the sweat starting from every pore at the slightest exertion.
30:53When it had saturated their clothing, it ran down into their shoes
30:58so that they sloshed along in their own sweat
31:01as if they had just come out of wading a river.
31:04Conditions were similar on all the islands of the South Pacific.
31:09In the Philippines, it became so hot
31:11that steam rose like gray smoke in the dark undergrowth.
31:17On Leyte in December 1944, the heat, humidity, and heavy fighting
31:22caused scores of men to collapse from heat exhaustion.
31:27The Japanese were keenly aware that their opponents
31:31had not adapted to the jungle as readily as they had.
31:35Many of their tactics were deliberately designed
31:38to play upon the Allied soldiers' sense of insecurity.
31:44The fear that there was at first of the Japs in the jungle
31:49was partly a feeling that you were being watched all the time.
31:54In the dark, dead silence,
31:57the patter of huge drops of dew from the forest trees
32:01sounded like footsteps creeping nearer and nearer.
32:05Silence was an absolute essential if you wanted to stay alive,
32:10for the slightest noise might give away your position
32:14and draw a burst of automatic fire from the unseen lurking Japs.
32:23As the South Pacific Campaign ground on,
32:26American soldiers were able to develop their own techniques for jungle fighting.
32:32One method was simply to destroy.
32:35The Marines used flamethrowers to burn large areas of jungle
32:39so the enemy had no place to hide.
32:42A stream of fire from the barrel of a flamethrowing Sherman tank
32:46could reach 100 yards.
32:49The Marines called it the Ronson, after the cigarette lighter of the same name.
32:54In many other cases, the Marines learned from their previous mistakes.
33:01Jap snipers would climb in the top of coconut palms
33:04and strap themselves in for the night.
33:06And then, when you were on the way to chow or the head,
33:09they'd pick you off.
33:11So it became a duty to fire a rifle shot into these treetops each morning,
33:15where many times you would hear a noise or groan from a sniper being hit.
33:23As the campaign in the South Pacific was winding down in the fall of 1943,
33:28the Pacific Offensive began to move north.
33:33Here, the Marines would face new challenges from the environment
33:37as they leapfrogged from island to island across the Central Pacific.
33:46Our company is to spearhead the first assault wave on the beach,
33:50called Red Beach on D-Day.
33:53Hope it is not red with blood.
34:07Every island attacked during the campaign in the Central Pacific
34:11required an amphibious assault.
34:14Like the landings at Normandy in Europe,
34:17these were huge logistical undertakings
34:19that were often complicated by the sea, the wind, and the weather.
34:26One mistake by those planning the attacks could cost thousands of lives.
34:33The enemy's defensive positions had to be taken into account.
34:36But just as important was the terrain of the beach and surf line.
34:42Most islands were surrounded by coral reefs,
34:45and the tides had to be high enough so the landing craft
34:48could float across them to the beach.
34:54D-Day was here.
34:56Reveille 0400, steak and eggs, battle breakfast.
35:01Line up, check your gear.
35:04Now the usual D-Day routine.
35:07Climb into your assigned LVT.
35:10Become somewhat asphyxiated when they rev up the LVT engines.
35:15Bow gates open.
35:17Wait your LVT's turn to go out into open water.
35:24An amphibious assault had to be as well choreographed as a ballet.
35:28The Navy fleet would sail towards an island,
35:31dispersing hundreds of small landing craft filled with Marines.
35:36Meanwhile, the gunfire support ships would move close to shore
35:40and shoot it out with Japanese artillery,
35:43which was skillfully entrenched in positions that took full advantage
35:47of the Central Pacific's unique terrain.
35:52As they approached the shore, the landing craft would assemble in rows.
35:56If the seas were rough, this maneuver could take hours.
36:00The Marines inside could do nothing but wait.
36:03Alone with their thoughts, an eerie calm before the storm of battle.
36:11Now our LVTs are lining up in a straight line, and here we go.
36:16If anyone thinks I was thinking of apple pie, motherhood, patriotism,
36:21and all that other bullshit, well, I wasn't.
36:26The LVT, or landing vehicle tank,
36:29The LVT, or landing vehicle tank,
36:32was the Marines' most valuable tool in the initial stages of a Pacific assault.
36:37These armored amphibians were perfectly suited to the terrain of the islands
36:41they were attacking, with the ability to move across both land and sea.
36:46Their treads allowed them to crawl across shallow reefs.
36:50Their one drawback was their slow speed in water.
36:55Our LVT is getting closer now.
36:59I can hear rifle fire.
37:01A little closer, I hear shells exploding and splashes,
37:04which means the Japs are registering in on our LVTs.
37:07Now we wish that the damn LVTs could go faster.
37:11Our LVT driver shifts gears and we jerk ahead on Coral.
37:15Now he's on land and is still going.
37:18The LVT stops, we scramble over the side.
37:22We're getting a lot of fire.
37:27This is when my friend Don gets hit in the head by a bullet.
37:34The most disastrous example of the problem with barrier reefs
37:37happened early in 1943 on the small Pacific atoll of Tarawa.
37:44The pattern of reefs that surrounded the island was extremely complex.
37:48In combination with the unpredictable tides,
37:51this made it difficult to estimate when the landing craft
37:54could get across the obstructions and make it up to the beach.
37:58When the attack was launched, the tides were too low.
38:02Thousands of Marines had to unload from the boats offshore
38:05and wade across 500 meters of waist-deep water
38:09into murderous Japanese fire.
38:14Many of them were caught up in barbed wire,
38:17drowned in shallow water and cut down.
38:21The few men who did reach the beach
38:23huddled behind a coconut log seawall that was about four feet high.
38:28Then the Coral of Tarawa presented another problem.
38:34It was about this time that a shell landed next to me.
38:38It was a dud and it threw up shrapnel.
38:41Not shrapnel, but coral.
38:44It was very sharp and it hit my ear.
38:47It went into my eardrum and caused me excruciating pain.
38:52As the battle raged, the Marines found themselves enveloped in a fine coral dust
38:57which jammed their weapons and got into their noses and throats,
39:01causing considerable discomfort after long hours of exposure.
39:07Finally, after four days of bloody fighting,
39:10the Japanese garrison was blasted out of the coral catacombs of Tarawa.
39:18Of the 5,000 Marines who landed on the island,
39:21nearly 1,500 were killed or wounded.
39:24But the landings had provided the Marines with a costly lesson
39:28in how to cope with the distinctive terrain of the central Pacific.
39:32It was a lesson they would apply in future island battles.
39:40One of these campaigns occurred on Iwo Jima.
39:43A desolate volcanic island about 5 1⁄2 miles long and 2 1⁄2 miles wide,
39:49Iwo Jima's one dominant feature was Mount Suribachi,
39:53which the Japanese transformed into a honeycomb of caves and concrete bunkers.
40:01Before the invasion, the Navy bombarded the island with 20,000 rounds of heavy shells
40:06to neutralize these defenses.
40:09They had little effect.
40:22After the Marines landed on the beach,
40:24they encountered a kind of terrain that was different from anything they had faced before.
40:29Volcanic sand.
40:32It clogged the Marines' weapons, as this original combat camera footage reveals.
40:40It was also extremely difficult to dig into.
40:44It was quite impossible to dig a hole.
40:47The gravel was too slippery, too shifting in powder light, too formless.
40:54It was dry, as quicksand that sucked at anything touching it,
40:59filling every hole as soon as it was formed.
41:03The shells beat against the beach.
41:07Gravel patterned over the silent, strangely motionless bodies of the wounded,
41:12who lay on their backs facing the sky.
41:15After the first assault wave, there were 9,000 men trapped on the beach
41:20under a hail of Japanese mortar and machine gun fire.
41:26As the men of the 5th Marine Division struggled to get off the beach,
41:29their advance was blocked by a succession of 15-foot sand ridges.
41:35One Marine said climbing over them, weighted down with all his combat equipment,
41:40was like trying to crawl in a bin of loose wheat.
41:46Once off the beaches, conditions scarcely improved.
41:50Iwo Jima was a treeless moonscape of dark sand dunes and steaming volcanic hot springs.
41:57This bizarre setting provided virtually no natural cover for the Marines.
42:02They had no choice but to slowly advance across open ground
42:06and blast the Japanese from their subterranean bunkers, one bunker at a time.
42:16They were dug in, and we had artillery fire on them.
42:20Our airplanes were dropping napalm bombs to burn them out.
42:24That had very little effect, because they were like a bunch of rats in a hole.
42:29You couldn't get them.
42:31When our fire stopped, they'd come out and start shooting at you.
42:39Few, if any, Japanese were ever seen.
42:42While the assault troops were attacking one fortification,
42:45the Japanese would scamper and fire on them from the rear.
42:48It was a case of one army entirely above ground and the other below.
42:56It took five weeks of relentless fighting to secure the island.
43:00In all, it was the fiercest battle of the Pacific War,
43:04costing over 6,000 American lives and nearly 21,000 Japanese.
43:16In all the battles of World War II, terrain was paid for in blood.
43:25This has been the cost of war throughout history.
43:29Thousands of men found their final resting place in the ground for which they fought.
43:35Their memorials still commemorate the sites where they paid
43:38the ultimate price for victory so many years ago.
43:43But the example they set remains undiminished by the passage of time
43:47and still stands today as a model of courage and sacrifice.
44:28World of Warships
44:31World of Warships Action Stations
44:34World of Warships Action Stations
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44:40World of Warships Action Stations
44:45World of Warships Action Stations
44:58World of Warships Action Stations