The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-02-22
Marines Paid
 'Heovv Price
By S/SGT. DAVID DEMPSEY Marine Corps Combat Correspondent lNiSirihuied hv limited PrnSSl

Marine Corps Combat Correspondent
 Distributed by United Press)
 Two Jima, Feb. 22-CUP)-The invasion beach of this island, storm ed four days ago by Marines in the face of blistering Japanese nor tar and artillery fire, today is a scene of indescribable Wreckage- all of it ours.
 For two miles extending north from Mt. Suribachi at the southern 1 tip of the island is a thick layer of debris Wrecked hulls of scores of boats testify to the price we paid to get our troops ashore on this vital island.
 For two continuous days and nights, Japanese artillery, rockets and heavy mortars laid a curtain of fire along the shore. Their weap- ons had been aimed at the beach long before we landed. They couldn't miss and they didn't.
 Volcanic sand on this beach is so soft that many of our vehicles were mired down before they had gone 10 feet. In addition, ter race few yards from the water hampered their movements so that they became an easy prey for Japa- nese gunners.
 Only few trucks got ashore and for two days practically all sup plies moved by hand to the front Even the unconquerable jeep was stuck.
 One can see amphibian tractors turned upside down like pancakes on griddle; derricks brought ashore to unload cargo are tilted at in- sane angles where shells blasted them; anti-tank guns were smashed before they had chance to fire shot. Even some bulldozers landed too early to clear a path for following vehicles. Artillery could not be landed for 24 hours.
 Packs. clothing, gas masks and toilet articles, many of them ripped by shrapnel, are scattered across the sand for five miles. Rifles are blown in half Even letters are strewn among the debris as though the war insisted on prying into a mans personal life.
 Scattered amid the Wreckage is death. Perhaps the real heroes of this battle for Two Jima are the boys who sWeated out the invasion They are the coXsWai1Is who Steered the landing boats through a gantlet of fire and who didn't get back. They are the unloading parties who for one entire day unloaded hardly a boat because few boats made it.
 Instead they hugged the beach while hit into the sand all around them.
 On D-Day beach parties suffered heavy casualties in killed and wounded
 And there were the aid and evacu- ation stations which couldn't move up to tSle comparative safety of the forward area. Our battalion aid sta tion lost II of it's 26 corpsmen in the first two days.
 Death is not pretty sight, but 1t has taken possession of our beach. An officer in charge of tank landing boat received a direct shell hit while trying to free his boat from the sand. He was blown in half. A life preserver supports the trunk of his body in the water.
 Marines killed on the beach were buried under the sand as the tide came in.
 On the third day we began to get vehicles and supplies ashore in quan- tity Wire mattiro; made the beach passable and naval gunfire knocked out most of the Jap artillery.
 The miracle was that we were able to suply our troops at all during the two days of increasing sht ling on this beach.
 The boys who did it, as the saying goes, deserve a medal, but a lot of them won't be around when the medals are passed out.