America's First Black Marines
by Melton A. McLaurin
The companion book to the American Public Television documentary
The following excerpt is from The Marines of Montford Point: America's First Black Marines published by The University of North Carolina Press
Steven Robinson
from the chapter World War II
We landed on Green Beach. I got to tell you about when we landed.We landed D-day was February 19, 1945. The landing date was supposed to been 09:00. But the sea was so rough, and we disembarked in Higgins boats from the aft of the ship. We had cargo and that’s going into the Higgins boats. One of the first people to go down into the Higgins boats were, of course, the platoon sergeants and platoon guide. We had to go down to secure the nets as themen came down the cargo net because you got to visualize that the barges are even, you know. As the waves go down, the barge drops. As the waves go up, the barge will rise. And he would have to tell the men as he lined up on the cargo net, tell him when to release to embark into the barge.
They had to release, when I say release, you had to release at that point in time because if they didn’t, they may fall another six or seven feet. All of them had probably, all together with the ammunition, I’m talking about the bandoliers of ammunition, hand grenades and packs and your rifles and shovels and this stuff. They had probably close to 135 pounds of gear on. You fall in that distance, six or seven or eight feet with that kind of gear, you’d break an ankle, break a leg.We had to be certain that they were able to get into the barges without being injured.
And once you got into the barge, the sea was still rough, we rendezvoused for maybe about ten or fifteen minutes, I guess, to the other people were down in their barges.We headed into the shore.We landed on Green Beach. Our group was assigned to what they call shore patrol, and I was 28th Marine 2nd Battalion. We were Able Company, Company A, and we landed, of course, we had to instruct the fellows as they come down to the barge, that was our first operation. Don’t harness up. Keep your harnesses open so then you think like you get a hit in the barge, turn over so you can just change, you can always get another rifle. Just change your gear, change your ammo, save your life. And then we had to instruct the other fellows that look, if your buddy get hit, just keep going, and find someplace safe, you know, until we regroup, until we move in further.
That was when we landed on Green Beach.Was February the 19th, 1945. When Jimmy lost his life, if it probably had not been Jimmy, it would have beenme ’cause hewas only two feet offmy right shoulder.We got this [Japanese] mortar and it hit us. Jimmy had gone down to the beach. Jimmy was looking for sandbags to construct this foxhole. I didn’t know where he was and he come past and I was chewing him off for not having dug this foxhole because I figured wewere going to get sit upon [by] the barrage pretty soon. Jimmy was on my right shoulder about two feet when he got hit. And he was killed. One of the, I didn’t know, I was blown up in the air about eight or nine feet. I remember being unconscious in and out of it. I would black out, come to, black out. I could smell the gunpowder in my nostrils and finally fell back to the deck. Corpsmen were running, people were screaming and hollering. And finally, the corpsman came to me and he checked me over. Found out I had some shrapnel on my left side. And found I had some shrapnel on my shoulder. And he kind of kiddingly said, well, he said, you’re okay, but I can’t send you back. I can’t write you up and send you back to the ship. He said, you’ll be okay. So I just consider you the walking wounded. And he looked down there for information, my rank and my unit and so forth, for a Purple Heart. And then I watched him. He took all this information down ’cause I said they’re [the Japanese] going to barrage.
And [the Japanese] dropped an 88, I guess it was 88 or 105 [mm shell] on a pack house unit of probably about twenty-five yards away at the most. And they took an awful hit, a direct hit. These guys and their guns took a direct hit. When I saw them, they were up in the air, some of the bodies were up and their body parts were up in the air fifteen, twenty, thirty feet. I thought they were sandbags. I didn’t know at the time, it was a body of Marines and they were blown apart. This corpsman, who had treated me and treated my foxhole buddy, he got over in time to get hit by one of these mortar shells and just, of course, completely devastated.
I think I witnessed the raising of the flag. It had to be about around the 23rd or 24th of February. I could see the men working away up the base at Mount Suribachi. You could see the artillery fire. You could hear the small arms fire. I said to, think it was my platoon guide. I said, they must be halfway up Mount Suribachi. They’re going to secure that mountain probably today sometime. And about that time I saw the flag go up.
As a matter of fact, the thing that interests me was, I didn’t know at the time, but I learned later that there was an Indian fellow. He was of Indian extraction, Native American. His name escapesme now. I saw him every day on the ship, we were on the same pa. I saw one of the corpsmen who was in the raising of the flag and another Marine. So there were two Marines who were on my pa and one of the corpsmen of the six to raise the flag on Mount Suribachi. I didn’t find that out until later. It was just something that we had secured [part] of the mountain at that point, because the front was very fluid. The Japanese, you’d be maybe a couple hundred yards in today and they’d push you back, maybe a 100 charge the next day. That’s the way it was. The front was just very fluid.
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Both the film and the book are based on more than forty-six hours of taped interviews with sixty Montford Point veterans. The film...uses thirty-five minutes of those interviews. The book...provides about five hours of the very best material from the interviews.
--Melton A. McLaurin, from the author interview