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US MARINES ON THE BEACH AT PLELIU

He laid a hand on each man as he moved down the line of stretchers.

Before us stood the island of Peleiu, a jewel of the Pacific. One of the remote Palau islands, 500 miles east of the Philippines, its coral beaches glistened white in the September sun. The day was hot and dry; the island lush; its beaches dazzling. But behind the dunes, the 6.5 mm Nambu machine guns of the Japanese awaited us.

It was 1944 and the world was at war. I was sailing with a shipload of Marines. Months earlier, in 1943, they had bloodily secured Guadalcanal from the Japanese. Their assignment now was to go ashore and take this island.

I had been trained as a hospital corpsman. My job was to bandage wounded troops under tire on the front lines, to keep injured men alive until we could get them to the Navy hospital ship anchored offshore, where surgeons waited.

On this day in mid-September, as one of several Pharmacist's Mates, I was poised at the ship's rail ready to land with the Marines. "God," I prayed, "please protect me so I can tend to the injured." It was my constant fear that I'd get wounded and not be able to care for the men.

"Okay, Doc," I heard, "let's go." I scrambled over the rail and onto the cargo netting that formed a ladder down the side of the ship. Amphibious vehicles-"ducks" we called them-waited below. I was 33 years old, five feet nine inches, 150 pounds, but not the most agile sailor to participate in the landing, particularly with 120 pounds of medical supplies on my back. When the ship rolled, my foot missed the netting and I fell down toward the sea. Then I felt myself being pulled up short. A combat hardened Marine had grabbed my pack in midair; he held me until the ship rolled back and I was able to regain my footing and hurry down. Piercing screams out on the water sent chills down my spine. Men were being massacred as they landed. Again I asked God to help me handle whatever awaited me onshore.

Our duck steamed a zigzag course toward the beach head under the thunder of enemy fire. The noise deafened us. Geysers of seawater erupted everywhere. Enemy shelling intensified. The duck beside us was hit while I watched helplessly-its occupants never reached the beach. Bodies floated all around us. The water surged with explosives. The air was thick with the screams of the wounded and the dying.

Half of our troops were killed on the way to shore. Amazed to still be alive, I joined a patrol party on the beach. Their original Pharmacist's Mate had been killed. Forty-eight of us crawled from tree to tree, hiding among the brush to assess the situation. After only one hour our patrol was reduced to eight.

We were told by the brass that the island was expected to be secured within 24 hours. By nightfall, the fierce fighting had subsided, but it was obvious someone had miscalculated. Our troops had pushed back the Japanese only about a mile-and at great cost in men and materiel. Later we heard of the intricate system of tunnels the Japanese had burrowed beneath the island's coral surface. Their troops hid in these, and even heavy naval bombardment failed to make a dent in the Japanese defenses.

Now, left on the beach with men of an engineering battalion, I furiously scraped away at the hard coral, trying to help carve out a foxhole large enough to protect us during the night to come. Others worked with picks and shovels while a bulldozer dug a long trench parallel to the water's edge. We remained ashore to hold the beach, but as we watched the U.S. ships disappear over the horizon, none of us expected to be alive when they returned in the morning.

Ammunition was so low that we had only about four rounds per man-hardly enough to hold off the Japanese, who even now were reclaiming the territory won that day by our men, All night the Japanese could be heard passing among the shallow foxholes as we silently hunkered down to await the dawn…

Seven engineers and I tried to fade into the coral walls of our foxhole-eight feet square and three feet deep. As noiselessly as possible, we burrowed our way deeper into the strange island coral. The men began to tell stories about their wives and children. Photos, damp from sweat and saltwater, were pulled out of pockets and passed around, "Nice-looking kids." . . . "The boy's you all over again." … "She looks like a good woman," Nods and looks took the place of conversation. I had no wife or children. Right then, my family were those men and my duty was to take care of them-to listen, to encourage and to bind them up if they got hit on this night of terror.

Hearing Japanese troops pass close by, we held fingers to lips and pressed ourselves into the hard coral. Shells bursting in the black sky lit the enemies' silhouettes. We breathlessly waited to be discovered, to be shot, to be blown to bits by the grenades that continued to be lobbed into our foxhole. But incredibly, every grenade was a dud.

By morning we were all still alive. And at dawn we heard the Navy guns starting to bombard the island again. They were back! And we were caught in the crossfire. More Marines, bent on retaking the beachhead that had been won and lost the day before, were loading into landing craft. As they came ashore, I raised my Red Cross armband on my bayonet and was relieved to hear, "Hey, hold your fire! He's one of ours!"

The eight of us crouched low in the foxhole until the Marines overran us. Then, wearily we pulled ourselves out and scattered to perform our various assignments amid earth shattering blasts and shrieks. It was another day of flying bullets and horrible bloodshed.

I had set up my first-aid station at the end of the landing strip near Bloody Nose Ridge. Bushes and trees offered some cover, but the strip itself was a barren expanse, 1500 yards long and 400 yards wide. About a half dozen stretcher bearers worked with me. As fast as they brought in men torn apart by shrapnel and bullets, I applied sulfa and battle packs, but Japanese snipers began picking off the stretcher bearers. They were easy targets, darting into the open to retrieve the wounded. Confusion reigned. Shells exploded around us, and screams echoed from the victims as they lay in pools of blood, dismembered, entangled in their gear. Men fell faster than we could reach them.

Hopelessness overwhelmed me; the line of stretchers at my station seemed to extend into infinity. "God, help me," 1 gasped. "I don't know if 1 can do anything for these men."

And then, one after another, four men were gunned down trying to reach a Marine who looked like he would not make it. Finally, I ran to the wounded man myself. His condition was desperate. The hole in his middle was the size of my fists held side by side. His stomach leaked from the hole.

"I've got his feet, Dodd" an assistant yelled. We carried the Marine's blood-spattered body back to the station and set him down at the end of the line. There was nothing 1 could do for him. He was dying. 1 had been trained to give my attention first to those who had the best chance of living. That's how we set up the line of stretchers; so this man, mortally wounded, was placed last.

Every one of these men-bleeding, going into shock-needed me at once. 1 couldn't move fast enough.

Just then, a Marine stopped by my station. "Doc, 1 heard you were on the island last night" And then he hesitated. "Hey, Doc, those men in your foxhole. . . they didn't make it They got cut down moving equipment up to the front. . . . "

That finished me. 1 had prayed that God would sustain me, but now 1 began to crumble. Death pressed in on me. The horror was brutal, unbearable. Tears welled up, tears for my friends of the night before, for their families, and for these men waiting in agony for me to help. It all seemed too much-more than 1 could handle, even with God's aid. I was going to lose these men; they would never see their families, just like the guys in my foxhole. 1 tried to hide my face so the injured wouldn't see the extent of my despair.

A hand on my shoulder startled me. I looked into the calm face of a middle-aged man. He gazed at me with kindly eyes. Sand kicked up everywhere. Guns blasted at the front and from the battleship offshore, but the man seemed unfazed. His words puzzled me: "Don't worry, son. These Marines are going to be all right. You aren't going to lose any of them."

He was of average height, with a clean-shaven, ordinary-looking face. His dress was unusual, though. He was not wearing battle fatigues, but rather a dark gray suit-a suit without lapels or buttons and made of sweater like fabric. It was unlike any outfit I'd ever seen, and seemed odd in the midst of battle. He was not Asian, or of any other culture from that part of the world, nor did he appear to be an American.

His words gave me a surge of energy and I turned my attention to the wounded. As I patched one, and then another, I glanced up to see the man who had comforted me. He preceded me down the line of stretchers, bending over each Marine. "Hold on, son. Doc is on the way. He'll be with you soon." He laid a hand on each man as he moved down the line of 25 to 30 stretchers. The men must have thought he was a chaplain, but he wasn't. I knew that. He wasn't part of the military operation.

Then, as he paused over the last man-the Marine with the huge hole through his belly-he lingered for a few moments. When I next looked up, he was gone. But where? In front stretched the airstrip, a long open expanse-too long to cross in a few seconds. Strange, I thought. I glanced around in all directions. He had disappeared. Yet I knew that was not possible.

It would be 74 more grueling days before the island would be completely captured by the Marines. But this day would stay with me forever, because after I passed down that line of men, working over each with renewed strength and purpose I stopped short at the last stretcher

I could hardly believe what I saw It wasn't possible, and yet there it was, reminding me of a power greater than war, greater than anything we can imagine-God's power. I was staring at the Marine who should have been dead. In possible as it seemed, what had been an enormous perforation in his midsection was now a small manageable wound. In fact, it was no bigger than the tip of my thumb. As for the rest of those men, ever one of them lived and was transported to the hospital ship, just as promised by the mysterious comforter on the island of Peleliu.