General Haig is reviled for the number of soldiers he sent to their deaths, but little is said about the willingness of American generals, to sacrifice the troops under their command.
A short example from the battle for Palau. General William Rupertus, commander of the First Marine Division, gave the go-ahead for a battle he had announced would take "no more than three days, tops".
Jimbert
The Marine losses in the withdrawn battalions had now reached 60%. In the first week of battle, Marine losses reached 4,00 men. And it was only the beginning.
The bravery of the Marine infantry was matched by the egomania and stupidity of their commanders. Marine doctrine states that when a regiment is reduced in number by 15% it is no longer considered a battle capable unit, and yet by D-Day plus 7, many units were down to 40%. The blame for this must rest with General Rupertus, who had the 81st US Army Division sitting offshore, and with Colonel Lewis P. "Chesty" Puller, commander of the First Marine Division, who sent his depleted infantry regiments to their deaths in hopeless assaults. Rupertus stubbornly refused to call in the Army reinforcements, and Puller, a man of courage but questionable judgment refused to ask for them (a deadpan Captain Everett C. Pope called Colonel Puller "the best platoon leader in the history of the Marine Corps").
There is an area against the ridges called "The Horseshoe" a low spot ringed by high hills and sheer cliffs, an area where American troops fell by the hundreds, that was the scene of desperation caused by such command attitudes. Hill 100 sits on the right as you enter the Horseshoe from the invasion beach side, and from the bottom, seems to have a commanding view. It was thought that Hill 100 may have given the Marines high ground to provide fire support for troops attacking the Horseshoe. To this hill, on the orders of Chesty Puller, Captain Everett Pope led the remnants of Company C, now only 90 men, with orders to take and hold the hill. As it turned out, Hill 100 was a trap, completely covered by Japanese artillery, mortars and rifles. Joseph Seifts, a survivor, remembers it this way:
"We started up the slope with about 30 men left. By the time we got to the top, there were only about 20 of us left...we had no machine guns or mortars. The Japs hit us at 11 o'clock that night. We had to hold the hill. Because at the bottom lay all our wounded. We stopped attack after attack...I was never so glad to see daylight."
At daybreak, Pope had a defensive perimeter the size of a two car garage. His men were throwing rocks along with an occasional grenade in an effort to save what little they had left (a rock hitting the coral sounded just like a grenade and would slow the Japanese for a few seconds). Out of ammunition, and with only eight men left, he struggled back down the hill. Pope recalled that:
"My most vivid memory, after being driven off the hill, is that Puller would have me court-martialed for having failed to hold. Late that afternoon, Puller ordered what was left of us (with replacements, there now twelve in Company C) to take the hill again. Since there were only a few of us left, it was clearly to have been a suicide mission."
At the very moment Pope prepared to lead his men to their certain deaths, the order was remanded. Puller would subsequently try, and fail, to keep Pope from getting the Medal of Honor for his heroism. Hill 100 would not be taken until two weeks later, and the mutilation of the American dead would make it difficult for the survivors to forgive even the Japanese of today.
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