"Before the landing, you could barely tell an island was there because of all the smoke going up from the pre-invasion bombardment.
I was on the fifth wave to hit the beach. The Japanese held their fire until the landing sites were choked with Marines and equipment, then unleashed their deadly barrage.
Machine-gun fire ripped through our ranks and whenever that fire hit a body, it'd jump about six inches high. I glanced over and there was a piece of scalp about the size of my hand lying next to me. A 75mm cannon hit a Marine next to me and that was the only thing I saw that was left of him.
Griswald was right behind me and stepped on a land mine. Blew his legs off. What a horrible sight.
You can't imagine, I can't describe how horrible war is...even to myself, I have a hard time realizing how horrible it was.
As we moved inland, the Japanese put up stiff resistance. They had to be blasted or burned out from their emplacements with bazookas, grenades, satchel charges and flame throwers.
Killing Japanese soldiers never bothered me. I had heard all the stories about their atrocities. We all just viewed them as something like vermin. I killed a lot of Japanese. I mean a lot...and I never thought about it. I was kind-of numb. They were dead, and that was what I was there for." – Pvt. Tom Sherman, 5th Marines, Iwo Jima, Feb 19, 1945.
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