UNITED STATES. MARINES

Southland Times, Issue 24869, 8 October 1942, Page 4

UNITED STATES. MARINES

LANDING DESCRIBED Taking beaches, deepening and 'widening beach heads* opening the holes in the enemy line through which the Army can carry the ball—that is the great job of the United States Marines, writes Eldon R. Lindsay in The Christian Science Monitor. It has been the Navy’s job to escort them there. Off the enemy shore will stand the fleet. Up into the air from aircraft-carriers, from catapults on battleships and cruisers, will roar a crowd of fighting American pilots. The first part of the job is to shoot the enemy out of the air and maintain air supremacy at the point of attack. ELUSIVE METHODS Shoreward from the fleet races a tiny fleet of patrol boats, their speed better than 60 miles an hour. They zigzag. They are hard to hit. The enemy does not know just at what point they will strike in force, either flanks or centres. Inshore they race to a predetermined point just off the beach. Then spinning to starboard and to port, still zig-zagging, they emit a great smoke screen. That smoke screen is the invention of Alonzo Patterson, of New Orleans.' Patterson gave it to the United States Government and would not take a cent for it. And he gave permission to America to give it to the British, although he could have sold his formula to foreign Governments for a fortune. Through that smoke screen come tearing the “Eureka” landing boats. They are packed with Marines armed with Garand semi-automatic rifles, bayonets fixed. Those landing boats ram the beach at top speed. Their hull design runs them far up on the beach. RUSH UP BEACH Like a football team smacking into play, the Marines literally spray out of the forward half of that landing boat to starboard and port, land dryshod, spread out in a line of skirmish hard to hit, advance up the beach by short rushes, firing prone at every human target in sight as they drop flat to the beach between rushes. Now come the crocodile boats, officially known as tank lighters. They too, ram the beach at top speed, their steel hulls grinding. A lever is pulled. Forward, downward, comes the whole back structure. Now it is a slanting steel ramp. , Down those ramps and up the beach roll 13 i-ton tanks, guns blazing. Alongside them race armed cars and trucks packed with armed Marines. Off the crocodiles come the guns, 75 mm. field artillery with caissons and limbers hauled by armed “prime movers” with powerful motors. Out of that smoke screen, too, come the “alligators.” These are steel armed tanks that can be lowered from a ship’s deck by cargo spring. On their trackless treads are great curved metal cleats that are paddles in the water and hobnails on land. They come packed with armed men, their 37-mm. guns and machine-guns ablaze, or they come packed with tons of supplies and ammunition. USE OF TANKS Up the beach this deadly attack surges. Tanks and alligators smash through barbed wire, break trees six and eight inches in diameter as one snaps a match stick, climb down into ditches and climb out the other side. But this is only part of the Marines beach attack. Overhead are roaring Marine Corps bombers guarded by Marine Corps fighting plane-. Tons of high explosives rain down on the enemy’s strong points. Portable wireless installations have been set up ashore by now. High over head Marine observers are cruising, in constant radio communication with the fleet offshore. Should there be any enemy strong points that need special treatment, the big guns of the Navy can let fire a thundering load of steel and high explosive shells at any moment. That is the beach attack of the United States Marines in 1942.