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The
training was over. A regiment of Marine Corps artillery stands its last inspection in the
Pacific before shoving off for combat. Combat troops have always christened the weapons
they fight with. So when an iron lady named 105 millimeter howitzer model M2A1 answered
roll call as glamour gal, she wasn't just part of another section in G battery anymore.
Ten men and a gun had become a team of 11. There was the section chief, Sergeant Pipes
from the Louisiana bayou country, and the gunner, an ex-bomber named Bill Smith, Jr.
Big Stoops Emulovich, a Wall Street clerk, fired glamour gal, and the loader was Chief
Jefferson, a Choctaw Indian. There was Furman Alfonso Martinez out of old Spain by way of
Montana, and from Cold Valley, Pennsylvania, a one-time welder named Tom Hanby. There was
Tommy Bratcher, ammo passer who dreamt of raising her foods back in Tennessee, and Tex
Kuhn who came strangely enough from Texas. Chris Benke, the Dutchman from DC with post-war
plans in South America, and the old man of the outfit, Pop Reynolds. These were the ladies'
escorts. They had bullied her and babied her from Camp Pendleton to Pearl Harbor. While
they often wished she'd look like the portrait painted on her shield, they were proud of
her. When the order finally came to shove off, everybody knew where they were going.
Trump, Formosa, Malaya, French Indochina, every place from Tokyo Yacht Basin to Bremerton
Dry Dock. They all had the straight dope except glamour gal. From here on out, the division
would be in its combat phase. Many of the men were already veterans, and many had never
smelled powder burning except in the range. The guns were arsenal tested and tried in
the field, but the ultimate proving ground of men and guns together would be the battlefield,
the secret destination sealed in the fighting orders of the task force. Down in the stuffy
hole of a transport, the artillerymen were just passengers, bored, breathing last week's
air and reading the print off last year's magazines, swapping lies about their hometown
girlfriends and comparing the artistic merits of oceanside tattooing with that of Honolulu.
But mostly, they wondered where they were going. One morning, they found out. The captain
gave them the scoop, showed them their objective. It was the island of Iwo Jima in the volcano
group, a godforsaken rock somewhere between the devil and the Dutch East Indies. He showed
them Green Beach where George Battery would go in. He showed them where glamour gal would
fire her first shot in anger. He showed them where some of them would die.
D-Day. Iwo had already gotten the roughest preparatory rubdown of any spot in the Pacific,
but it still crawled with jets, and it looked like the first wave was going to have to fight
with its feet wet. With their guns still below decks, the cannoneers of G Battery waited
for the word from shore, the message that would tell them that the infantry was beached
and wanted artillery support. Following the debarkation plan, Sergeant Pytons and half
the crew went in with glamour gal in an amphibious truck while the rest of the section clamored
down the scramble nets into landing craft. It was just like maneuvers except for that
funny feeling around their breakfast. Crossing the line of departure, the men of the assault
force realized that the Japanese artillery had good seaward observation. As the rain
shortened to include small arms fire, they knew the beach was still hot and that glamour
gal would be plenty welcome. Running a hellfire of sniper shots and mortar bursts, G Battery
hit Green Beach. It was shined deep with soft volcanic ash that rendered most towage vehicles
inoperable. There was no time to deploy inland. The order was to set them up on the beach,
which had already cluttered with traffic and supplies. It was exposed and enthralled, but
the infantry was in trouble. And as quick as they came ashore, the guns were met by
their crews, moved a few feet, and registered on their first combat target, menacing Mount
Suribachi, the main observation post of the Japanese defense system.
The Japanese fired her first shots like a veteran. There wasn't much to it, no mathematical
searching for an invisible target. She rifled them right over the heads of the infantry,
almost point blank range. The whole battery was in there pitching. And up on the rock,
the Japs could practically look down our barrels and read the few settings.
By evening, the casualties had started coming back. Glamour Gal hadn't lost any of her crew,
but some sections were going to start short-handed the next day.
The morning of D Plus One found Glamour Gal and G Battery still sighted in on the sullen
planks of Suribachi. The beach was still cluttered. The guns were crammed into a 20-yard front.
The range had dropped to 800 yards, matching trajectory with the M1s of the infantry. And
somewhere inside that 800 yards, the infantry was starting the assault that would put the
flag on Suribachi. But it took teamwork to put it there.
As fast as the firing data reached her pit, Glamour Gal slammed her 33-pound projectiles
into the caves and ledges of the big rock. But the ammunition supply had to be constant,
incessant. It came in a rotating flotilla of ducts and amtracks and was dispersed in
safe, separate, and convenient plans out of reach from Suribachi. There was more fire
pouring into that extinct volcano than ever came out of it when it was active.
Mountain fought back, but gradually the planes and ships and guns filled out the battle pattern
that would end with Mount Suribachi once again, an extinct volcano.
Close by Glamour Gal's gun pit was the surf-washed wreckage of hundreds of our landing craft,
many of them gunned to pieces, bringing shells to the artillery. When they were hit, the
debris wounded our gunners. The litter of derelicts made subsequent landings dangerous. But we
owned the beach, an unshakable foothold on Iwo Jima.
With the southern spit of Iwo in our hands, we still had to blast the Japs from the remaining
three quarters of the island. The action was moving northward toward the Jap-held airfields,
and there was no rest for G Battery.
No place on the island was safe from the searching Jap fire, so Glamour Gal had to be dug well
in in her new position. The men moved cautiously because the sniper fire was heavy, and besides,
the infantry was waiting. A change of positions meant an uneasy lapse in artillery support.
The firing lag had to be kept to the absolute minimum.
The enemy was expert at infiltration, and local security was important. While Glamour
Gal was digging in, her little sisters carried the ball. Traditional to the Marine Corps,
the highly mobile 75-millimeter Pak howitzers delivered continuous fire to the north in
the face of heavy losses from Jap counter-battery fire.
Any level ground that the Japs weren't using served as an airstrip for our grasshoppers.
Local observation aided the ground batteries by identifying targets, spotting bursts, and
radioing corrections back to the guns.
At the southern approach to the first airstrip, another battalion of 105s was set up on Glamour
Gal's flank. Since the afternoon of D-Day, these two outfits had shared range and target.
When Glamour Gal was properly emplaced in a well-protected pit, her alignment was checked.
All guns in the battery had to be as parallel as an aiming circle and a lieutenant's mathematics
could make them.
Forward observers landed with and deployed ahead of the infantry, spotted a large concentration
of Japanese. They phoned the target data back to the regimental
fire direction center, who would pass it down to battalion and battery positions. From the
front to the gun pits, the Japanese troops and installations traveled down the chain
of artillery command, acquired a jumble of grids and decimal points, and emerged at G
Battery as a fire mission.
A synchronized barrage, with the entire regiment backing up Glamour Gal as she blistered with
the paint off her tube to get her quota of effective rounds into the target area.
The forward observers kept each section supplied with fire data. On this mission, the gun crews
couldn't observe the effect of their own fire, but they knew that within 25 yards of every
one of their bursts, no Jap could live.
Up ahead, the infantry watched the smoke and bursts of the barrage. When it lifted, they
were going in.
The area neutralized, our riflemen moved in, but the Japs had managed to pull a few of
their cliffside guns back out of our barrage. Enemy mortars and artillery were still zeroed
in on the path of our advance. Rockets and tank teams delivered direct artillery and
flame against the fortified bridges and into the firing ports and embrasures of the Japanese
caves.
From the air, observers directed the execution of the order that came down through the division
to burn out the entire area.
A lull in the fire requests meant no rest for the gun sections. Glamour Gal had to be
cleaned and ready for the next mission the infantry might call for. And the ammunition
had to be unpacked during spare moments, for there would be no time when the firing started.
Whenever possible, it was prepared in advance as well. The shell casings were loaded with
powder bags, the number depending on the probable charges to be used. On the projectiles, fuses
had to be set, set for everything from super quick to come next Sunday. Everything was
prepared swiftly and with mathematical precision. Anything else might mean the loss of seconds
in serving the guns and seconds counted on Iwo Jima, where the Japanese in the desperation
of their last ditch were pouring everything they had into our lives. They tried to stop
us. The air was full of hot iron and purple hearts. Our advance continued on.
A few days after Glamour Gal had hit the beach, the core artillery had landed its 155 millimeter
howitzers. Not as fast or as mobile as the 105s, they had greater range and destructive
power, and they were just the answer to the long-range JAP coastal guns. The nights were
often very warm for February when a high trajectory artillery duel was on. It was give and take
until the JAPs had a lucky shot in the division ammo dump. After that, things got strictly
high trajectory, and the division and core artillery threw everything but the galley stove
and the general's jeep into the JAP battery. In the morning, the Japanese guns were scrap
ironed. All over the island, the enemy defenses were crumbling. For the first time in almost
a month, the artillery could stop to pick up its brass. The campaign was over. After
28 bloody days of fighting, the name of Iwo Jima went into the battle honors of three
Marine divisions and into the glorious traditions of the United States Marine Corps. Glamour
Gal was now a veteran. It had taken a paintbrush to name her and 28 days of blood and fire
to baptize her. Now she and the boys were getting ready to shove off again, getting
ready for the next operation. This time, too, everybody knew where they were going. Korea,
Homo, Melea, French Indochina, but they didn't know that their next landing would be on Japan
itself. They didn't know that inside of seven months, the war would be over and that Glamour
Gal's next mission would be as a policeman's club to help keep order in greater East Asia.
Some of them would never know. Pop Reynolds, the old man, was still back there, back on
Iwo and so was the captain. They will be there forever. Just a small part of history, the
story of ten men and a gun.