Posted on 02/19/2015 4:19:00 AM PST by Kartographer
Hurtgen Forest - 50 Square miles, 30,000 casualties killed and wounded with some of the difficulty being inexperienced units who fell apart during their first severe combat. Approximately two months until secured.
Saipan - 44.6 Square Miles, 3,225 KIA, 13,061 WIA, approximately one month until secured.
Betio - 3.5 Square miles, 920 KIA, 2,200 WIA, secured after three days.
Iwo Jima - 8 Square miles, 6,000 KIA, 25,000 WIA, approximately one month until secured.
On a per square mile basis, Iwo was the clear worst place on earth in terms of dead and wounded. I'm not sure what is driving your stubborn insistence that "other battles were just as bad" but even though all of the battles you cited were hell on earth, Iwo was still the worst of them all. I encourage you to read more about it.
My dad was in the 4th also, but didn’t go to Iwo after being shot on Tinian. I think he as in F 24, but it’s highly unlikely they knew each other. He did say not many of his company made it off Iwo unscathed. I get the quarterly , Fighting Fourth Division of WW2, the newsletter of the 4th Marine Division Association’s survivors.I read it end to end .
We were blessed to have such men as parents.
Kind of a small little guy, aren’t you?
I used to think better of you.
Soooo, you lose the argument and turn to personal insults? I expected better.
No argument lost. Just friendship.
I wouldn’t say it denies the valor of the hard fought battles in Europe and the Pacific. The NVA were certainly a tough and tenacious foe. But consider that in Europe GI’s could be pulled off the line for some R&R, a warm bed, a hot meal, see a movie, even fraternize with women. On those Pacific islands there was none of that. The only way off any of those hell holes was to kill every stinking Jap on it. The Japanese didn’t surrender. They knew for them where ever they fought that would be their grave yard.
We certainly were. My late father-in-law was 4th. Marines, 27th. Regiment. I believe their objective was one of the islands airfields. He wasn’t on the island long, I think about four days and then he got that ‘’million dollar wound’’ a leg wound and that got him the heck out of there. Prior to Iwo he saw combat on Saipan, that was where he was first wounded, grenade shrapnel in the face, nothing too serious, just a cut lip and a few scrapes and he also saw combat on Tinian. He described watching in absolute horror as civilians on Saipan, convinced by Japanese propaganda that the Marines would rape the women , kill them and eat their bodies, flung themselves off cliffs to their deaths. That deeply affected him and he rarely talked about it. He also couldn’t eat spare ribs, couldn’t stand the sight of them and I think I know why. He sometimes had to provide cover for a flame thrower team. Think about about it. The human lungs inside the rib cage are really two bladders filled with air. When a jet of super heated flame at least four or five hundred degrees hits that,the air is super heated and a human rib cage explodes. God Almighty but war is awful.
My Dad was in the 3rd Marine Division and saw action in the South Pacific including Iwo Jima. He recently passed (Jan 27 age 93), at his memorial service a contingent of Marines presented the colors, paid tribute to his service and bid farewell to a brother Marine. Truly blessed to have such a man as a parent.
Makes you wonder why our commanders back then thought that that place, that time was important enough to push unsupported and inexperienced troops into battle. As an officer, I was always trained to push until you find the hard center and then work around the edges to find soft points or gaps to get around behind them.
Bad weather or not, artillery is what you use against strongpoints - not bodies.
my dad also seldom talked about it. Some time later, after my mother died, he would talk a little about it, and I met a man that was his foxhole partner,on saipan for a few weeks. I think they were in front of the massive banzai charge at night, and he was concerned he would be judged for how many japanese he killed. Mr Gentry sent me “the green book”, about the 4th in WW2 .
Inadequate leaders are the bane of our existence and so many good young men were squandered because of them.
People may say what they will about the idiosyncrasies of George Patton or Douglas MacArthur - but they would never have allowed this atrocity to happen the way that it did.
My many of the WW2 vets it’s been my privilege to know often felt their worst enemies weren’t the Germans or the Japanese, it was their own officers. I’ve never met any veteran of the ETO who had anything good to say about British General Bernard Montgomery. One vet who survived D-Day, the Hurtgen(where he was wounded) The Bulge and all the way to the Rhine told me flat out, “I’d a shot that Limey c***er quicker than I’d have shot Hitler’’.
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