The Limey what wrote this story needs to pull his head out of his arse. Look at the dungarees. That ain’t a soldier- that’s a Marine, by Gawd.
I dunno about the dungarees, but he’s carrying a K-Bar.
The Saipan operation involved the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions. An Army division, the 27th, was held in reserve and eventually fed into the fracas.
One of them is a soldier, and not a Marine. For decades people thought he was named Underwood. Actually it was Angelo Klonis: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0510/swanson.html
My uncle a member of the 2nd Marines was 18 years old during the fight for Saipan. He later took part in the fighting on Tinian and Okinawa.
He like all the Marines I have talked to have a deep respect for Corpsmen, no inter-service rivalry there.
He said that if you heard the yell "Corpsman! Corpsman!" it was repeated up and down the line, there was not mistake about who was needed. As he once said "if you get hit a corpsman is your best friend".
He has never talked about the fighting. Until the last 2 or 3 years he and his wife have driven half way across the United States to attend Marine Corps reunions.
About a month ago he told me about a company commander that sent a few marines to check the packs of dead Marines for gun oil. Gun sounds like a small item but even a M1 needs some oil from time to time.
After the battle of Okinawa 2nd Marines were moved back to Tinian to rest and train for the invasion of Kyushu the southern most island of Japan. While they were there the atomic bombs were dropped.
In 2005, 50 years after the bombs were used my uncle said "the Marines on Tinian thought Truman did the right thing". He dryly added "of course where we were and what we were about to do had a lot to do with how we felt about dropping the bomb".
An interesting book about the plans and the weapons to be used in the invasion of the Japanese homeland is Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan and Why Truman Dropped the Bomb by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen