A letter from the past

One of the most graphic letters to come out of this war recently was received in The Dalles by Mrs. Robert Gales, from her husband Sk./2c Robert Gales, now in service in the South Pacific. He enlisted in the navy in April, 1942, and since completing his preliminary training he has been in service almost continuously in the Pacific battle area.

The letter follows:

March 21, 1945.

Now it can be told—the navy has loosened censor restrictions so that the men involved in certain operations may write of their experiences after a thirty day “security period” has elapsed.

I think you guessed that we were on the Iwo Jima operation we were and it was the roughest operation in the history of the navy and marines—not to mention my own! We can’t tell everything but can tell our own part in the operation.

From the time we left Honolulu we knew where we were going and that “D” day was planned for February 10th and that “H” hour would be at 9900. Every move we made from that time on was a step closer to the actual invasion. We underwent training, dress rehearsals, mock invasions, general quarters, plane recognition classes and everything else that would help prepare for Iwo. Finally we were fully “combat loaded” and sailed with our section of the “— Task Force.” It turned quite cold on our way up to Iwo Jima—foggy and a chill rain fell most of the time. On the night of February 18th we neared our objective and by two or three in the morning of the 19th—“D” day—we could hear the big wagons bombarding the islands and see the glare of fires and exploding shells in the sky. We were soon within a mile or so of the beach—near enough that we could see the constant criss cross pattern of heavy shells tracing their way to the island. That morning we had breakfast very early—around 0300 and were back at our battle stations—ready for anything that might happen. At 0600 we set up condition “I-A (that’s battle condition while debarking troops) and awaiting “H” hour. At 0900, or “H” hour, the first wave went ashore and for the next countless hours wave upon wave of landing craft made their way ashore—through the rain and the enemy fire. As long as I live I shall remember this day—I’ll never forget the shape of the island from Mt. Suribacki at the south end to the low cliffs at the north and the long, low “saddle” between. And as long as I remember this scene I shall see it in my minds eye as a calm, rocky island whose sky is always filled with great black puffs of bursting shells—for we lay off Iwo over ten days and never, at any time, day or night, was there a second of time when there were no explosions to be sen. I’ve seen a little of the rest of this war, but nothing to compare with Iwo Jima. This was even worse than Tarawa!

My condition 1, or general quarters (battle station), is now and has been for some time—before Iwo—Gun Captain on a 20mm A. A. gun. I wear head phones and relay orders from main control to my gunner and the loaders. There are four of us on my gun crew. As soon as we secure from Condition 1 we usually set 1-A (one able) then I change to talker on a debarkation net where I again relay orders from the main control to the boat crew and the officer sand men who are debarking and heading for the next wave to go ashore. When all of our boats are loaded and away we secure and are free to watch the battle until any more boats might return for more people or bring casualties aboard. Needless to say, almost all general work ceases during such an operation and we who are free spend all our spare time up on the weather deck watching the island.

We lay so close to shore that we could see the men and boats hit the beach with our naked eye—about like standing on the lawn at the high school and watching people down town or out at the Port of The Dalles dock. Only, of course, we were on the level with the beach. It’s hard to describe watching a battle such as this—from even a short distance everything seemed slow and unreal—the landing craft seemed only to crawl, and the men on the island seemed almost rooted—huge tanks would inch along and suddenly be blown to almost nothing. The Japs were well prepared, almost every yard of Iwo Jima was fortified—pill boxes of reinforced concrete, four feet thick, were all over. There is very little vegetation and from almost the center for the north end of the island is a series of rocky cliffs—one above the other. In each of these many cliffs were thousands of caves and in every cave were guns and Japs—so well dug in and so well fortified that the most intensive shelling and bombing attacks of history could not dislodge the men or knock out all the enemy fire. That job was left to the men ashore—the poor devils—but they finally did it. I take my hat off to them.

When we first went in it was with a lot of optimism—72 hours or perhaps 5 days and we figured the island would be ours. How wrong we were! It was D-plus 4 before the volcano—Mt. Suribacki— and the highest point on Iwo—was taken, and it was then we realized that the battle had only started. The first night or so we would pull out to sea in convoy hoping to evade the inevitable air raids. I’ve lost track of the number of times we were called to GQ—always at night—when our own planes were back aboard their ships. After reaching our battle stations we would hear the same words over and over—“Bogey coming in fast at 180 or 270 or some other point of the compass—8 miles away—20 miles away—” and etc. Twenty miles in a medium Jap bomber or fighter is only a matter of minutes, very short ones at that. It’s the seconds that they’re overhead that are long! The next thing we’d see the tracer fire of a ship ahead or behind us or one side reaching up trying to find some Jap and his load of bombs—nothing is more thrilling or more frightening than an air raid at sea! The next thing all our guns would be chattering along with all the ships around us. Noise, smoke, and the smell of cordite—tracer fire from hundreds of guns at the same time and at night is beautiful to watch—almost a solid wall of fire, each tracer a long graceful arc and at the end a vivid burst. Like a hundred Fourth of July’s rolled into one. Only you know damned well it’s no celebration, and you know that the plane overhead has to either be hit or driven away. You know that you’re playing for keeps. I was scared every time and I guess every one else was, too. But everyone did what had to be done. One night I was called from my I-A debarking net just as we were getting ready to debark a batch of troops. By the time I manned my gun the raid was on. A whole load of bombs fell between our ship and the one off our starboard side—a near miss and no damage—but it was a hell of a thing to see. After the first two days a big full moon was with us every night—moons are pretty but we all hate them during a night raid—utter darkness is our best friend. In the ten days and nights we were at Iwo Jima I think only two nights were without raids—that’s too many. I guess if it weren’t for the pounding our planes were giving the Jap mainland we’d have taken a far worse beating by those night raids. Our ship was lucky—no one hurt and no one killed. I hope our luck holds—!

Day after day the battle went on—men, men and more men were sent ashore—over 40,000 fighting around 20,000 Japs on a little speck of land less than five miles long. The noise was terrific—and incessant— everything from huge battle ships to little L. C. M.’s—throwing everything they had into that rocky patch of land and, overhead, navy carrier based planes by the hundreds strafed, bombed and rocheted the enemy positions. The shelling was so intense that actually the rocky faces of the cliffs and almost the entire contour of the island would change overnight—a high point here and a cliff face there would suddenly disappear—a tiny hole in the side of a hill would be blown open to expose a huge cavern and then another and another. It seemed impossible for human life to exist, but it did for almost a month. Japs are tough—and they’ve been taught to fight to the death. Capture is a disgrace for them and very few are ever taken alive. Many times during the time we were there mortar fire from the Jap guns would be turned on the ships—more than once we sightseers would flatten out on the deck, behind any object we could find, while shell fire fell all around us. It was dangerous to watch the battle from the weather decks but so fascinating that few could resist. Whenever I could bum a pair of glassed I’d glue them to my eyes and never move for hours. It was while I had glasses that I saw one of our planes take a direct hit—it swung around and headed out to sea where it burst into flames. When it was almost directly over our ship and only a few hundred feed high it dived toward our foc’sle—you should have seen us all hit for cover!— and the pilot brought it back under control before it crashed and he maneuvered it away from us and other ships then crashed a few hundred yards away from us in a mass of flame. Whoever the pilot was he did a good job of flying it away from us and crashed it in an open section of that crowded sea! He lost his life but he was careful not to endanger the lives of the rest of us.

“Hitting the beach” was made exceptionally difficult due to rather heavy surf and the unusually abrupt shore, deep water only a few feet out—the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicles and Personnel) would hit bow on, lower the ramp to unload and then the surf would pound the hell out of the stern—often capsizing and always water logging the boat—many boats were lost. From the beach the men had to dig in almost immediately and then inch their way up the gradual, smooth incline to the ridge which marked the closes edge of the first airfield, as this was open terrain it was almost impossible to take cover from the raking enemy fire and consequently the loss of life was very great. All along the shore were the remains of wrecked Jap ships both large and small—each of these burnt out masses of steel afforded excellent vantage points for the enemy. We could see our men sneak up on these “forts” and with hand grenades and flame throwers blast them out of commission. It was a rough, hard job, though, and we lost a lot of men in clearing out all those derelicts. Day after day the battle raged on and night after night the air raids hit at us aboard and after a week we had a scant half or less of that five mile long island! The Japs were still fighting back almost as furiously as from the very first—they were still throwing nckack at our planes at our planes and shell fire at our troops. The Japs are particularly adept at Mortar fire—they have a huge 10-inch mortar and it’s accuracy was unbelievable. Apparently they had the entire island calibrated down to the very foot and threw their mortar shells accordingly.

The worst part of war is the casualty list—starting shortly after “H” hour, boats flying the casualty flag began bringing their loads of tortured humanity to the ships. Men, who a few short hours before were husky laughing boys, but when they were brought back—God! It’s then one realizes how unspeakably horrible war really is—all the glamour and heroics are dwarfed by the sight of a boat full of broken bodies and dazed, shocked minds. These casualties have all received only first aid on the beach and are then rushed out to the ships for real medical attention. A boat pulls alongside rising and falling in the heavy sea. We man our nets and then begins one of the meanest jobs of all—getting seriously wounded men aboard in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of roughness. If possible the whole boat is hooked to the blocks and brought up—this operation in a rough sea is rough and dangerous—if it’s too rough a small sling is dropped over and secured to the four handles of a stretcher which is then pulled aboard. At the very best it’s damned rough and awfully hard on a man whose guts are held in with a piece of gauze and a strip of tape. Even the trip from the beach to the ship is hard on a man who had just lost an arm or leg of a kid who has to lie on his stomach because he’s packed with shrapnel from his ankles to his neck. It’s hell to hear a man scream but you know he can’t help it because his body is one terrible mass of burns—and the last shot of morphine had worn off and another would probably kill him. It makes you unutterable sad to see a young good looking kid—without a scratch— sitting in a corner with his hands like claws and his face gray as death and his eyes staring—at nothing—and his tortured mind struggling with the nameless terror he’s just left. He just sits there while the other, more urgent, cases are taken away—he sits there and stares and sees nothing and is finally led, or carried, away. You wonder if these shock cases will ever get well—or if the rest of their lives will be an unending series of nightmares—and if they will go on and on seeing that awful burst that killed their buddies within an arms reach of themselves and left them miraculously alive—when they’d rather be dead. Yes, this part of war is by far the worst and is one of our jobs. The ones who come back with only a flesh wound are the “lucky” ones—they were all glad to leave that island and really thought they were “lucky” if all they had was a concussion or perhaps a small caliber bullet through their lung!

Believe me, everyone “turns to” when these casualties are brought back—especially the doctors and pharmacists mates and corpsmen. They, in particular, have a tremendous job—sometimes they have to go for fifty or sixty hours with no sleep—if it weren’t for the rest of the crew helping out they’d never make it. It’s amazing to see some of the big hulking seamen off the deck force turn nurse. Some kid who’s big and tough and proud of it can be as gentle as a woman with the wounded. I guess it takes something like this to bring those hidden qualities out of most of us. After a nightmarish night of receiving casualties and fighting off air raids and helping clean up the surgery time after time it’s pretty tough to see the grey canvas shrouds go over the side — taking those who couldn’t be saved to their last resting place. You’ve helped bring these men aboard and worked like hell to save them and their life or death has become a personal thing. Then those grey bags mean you have failed. I’m glad I’m not a corpsman.

This, my darling, is what I remember of the battle of Iwo Jima. Of course there are many other things—some of which I have already forgotten and others we can’t tell.

As I’ve told you we were almost in at the start of Iwo Jima and stayed there longer than almost any other ship. When we did leave, the island was over two thirds secure and the most terrible part was over. I suppose I look a bit older—most of us do—another wrinkle here and there and there will probably be more before long. The long, long hours of strain, the air attacks, the broken sleep, the constant string of casualties is a bit wearing. During the operation our biggest happiness was when a Jap plane was shot down in flames. That particular happiness was enjoyed a number of times!

When I started this letter I hardly realized how long it would be—you’ll probably wear yourself out reading it, but there was so much to tell that I simply couldn’t make it any shorter—and you know how I like to chatter.

 — The Dalles Daily Chronicle, April 17, 1945