BEACH ATTACK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 October 1942, Page 4

BEACH ATTACK

UNITED STATES MARINES IN SOLOMONS FAST HARD-HITTING MOVE. HOW TASK WAS ACCOMPLISHED. “The fastest, hardest-hitting manoeuvre in modern war is the beach attack of the United Slates Marines’ landing party, 1942 model,” declares Major’Meigs O. Frost of the Public Relations section of the United States Marine Corps, Southern Recruiting Division, with headquarters in Atlanta, writes Eldon R. Lindsey in the “Christian Science Monitor.” 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. 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’re hard to hit. The enemy doesn’t 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 zigzagging, they emit a great smoke screen. That smoke screen is the invention of Alonzo Patterson of New Orleans. Patterson gave that smoke screen to the United States Government and wouldn’t take a cent for it. And he gave permission to Uncle Sam 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 semiautomatic rifles, bayonets fixed.

Those landing boats are modelled on the body lines of the sulphur-bottom-ed whale. They ram the beach at top speed. Their hull design runs them far up on the beach. Like a football team smacking into play, these 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 those rushes. CROCODILE BOATS. Now comes 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 13J-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. .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 othei’ side. OVERHEAD GUARDS. But this is only part of the Marines’ beach attack. Overhead are roaring Marine Corps fighting planes. Tons of high explosives rain down on the enemy’s strong points. And overhead, too, are roaring Marine Corps transport planes guarded by more fighting planes. Here come the “Leatherneck” parachute troops. They are headed for the rear to hit the enemy from behind. Each man lands, belted with a 45calibre automatic pistol with extra clips; slung with a sack of hand grenades, and in its sheath between knee and ankle of the right leg of his coverall is a long straight-bladed heavy knife, razor sharp of edge, needlepointed. If the wind lands him tangled with the parachute shrouds, he can slash free in an instant. If he lands I in the midst of the enemy, he is a trained knife fighter when his pistol' is empty and his grenades are gone, i Down out of the sky in their own parachutes are coming Garand rifles, heavy and light machine guns, ammunition. even anti-tank guns. But these men are trained to take apart i and reassemble blind-folded, or in the darkest night, just by feel. Portable wireless installations have been set up ashore by now. High overhead 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’s the beach attack of the United States Marines in 1942.