Shoemaker: Jap snipers slow Marines but not for very long
Enemy troops move out of Peleliu caves to seek to disrupt U.S. landings
By Lisle Shoemaker, United Press staff writer
In a foxhole on Peleliu Island, with Marine assault forces (UP) – (Sept. 16)
Jap snipers, emerging from their caves, infiltrated the left flank of our newly-won beachhead and kept the Marines here discouragingly pinned down last night. Today the snipers are being mopped up, slowly.
Bill Hipple of Newsweek and I spent the night in this hastily-dug two-man foxhole and throughout the hours of darkness tracers and bullets whined overhead.
The enemy, blasted but unbroken by our tremendous pre-invasion bombardment, came out of hiding places in a small, wooded section.
The Marines assaulted and won this beach by sprinting directly toward a blanket of Jap mortar fire. Now advance units are clamping a three-way pincer on the airfield, sole invasion objective on this island.
75 men wounded
It was mortars yesterday, and last night it was small-arms fire. A Marine doctor told us 75 men out of one company had been wounded. Nobody reached the wounded during the night.
“I would hate to talk about what happened to them if the Japs got to them,” the doctor said.
The front along the left flank of our beachhead was 250 yards long. A colonel, who arrived hastily in a foxhole near ours, said an amphibious vehicle blew up along the flank, giving the Jap snipers an opportunity to sneak toward this spot during the night.
Late yesterday, 12 Jap tanks attempted to fight their way to the beach from the air field. Objective of this armored column was to drive the Marines from their sandy beachhead back into the surf.
Three of the tanks actually broke through our lines, but they were knocked out by bazookas, rifle and grenade fire, and our Sherman tanks.
It is now 9:00 a.m. and sorely-needed artillery is whooshing big shells into the hill on the left, while assault troops inch their way forward, still subjected to sniper fire.
Corpsmen praised
The corpsmen and litter bearers have performed magnificently under fire. One corpsman was warned not to expose himself too much.
“To hell with the snipers.” he said. “I’ve got to take care of six wounded men up there.”
Yesterday some of the amphibious vehicles were left blazing on the beach by the initial salvos of fire from the Jap defenders.
The alligator in which I came ashore crawled and crashed over a 350-yard reef to the shoreline after a thundering bombardment of shells, rockets and bombs halted temporarily to permit the Leathernecks to storm the beach.
Wave after wave of alligators, following the amphibious tanks, crept crablike up the shore, bumping and grinding into a shambles of jungle vegetation only 10 yards from the waterline.
It seemed impossible there could still be Japs close enough to man weapons after that torrent of bombs and shells from our ships and planes had done its work.
But our burning vehicles are proof enough that the Japs were able to crawl out of their caves and put up a fight against the invading Marines.