MOP-UP ON KWAJALEIN

Three days after the Kwajalein Island assault, the Army's 7th Division had driven the enemy into the northern corner. For the final mop-up, TIME Correspondent William Chickering joined a tank crew, radioed this tank's-eye-view account:

Baby Satan already had its motors running and was veiled in blue exhaust smoke. Five of us wormed our way through the hatches into the seats, adjusted our crash helmets and plugged in our earphones.

In that moment we entered a new world. The first words I heard were: "Goddam, the Japanese are running around by the dozens out there. Go ahead and fire. Watch out for the infantry. Look at those bastards! Goddamit, fire!"

Baby Satan lurched and grumbled on the way up to the fight. We left the hatches open to get our last breaths of hot fresh air. Passing the end of the airstrip, we entered an area which looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane.

"Better Button Up." The sound of rifle and machine-gun fire was loud and close by. Casualties were lying in the dust with medics bending over them. The medics had red crosses painted on the sides of their yellow-and-green camouflaged helmets; otherwise they looked the same as infantrymen.

We began seeing dead Japs along the roadside, many of them with their clothes blown off. Over the radio: "Hello, Louis, this is Jack--better button up."

We lowered our seats and pulled down the hatches. Now our vision was limited by the slits of our periscopes. The noise of battle was fainter in our ears, but it was still perfectly audible. Sweat began to etch rivulets down dusty faces and clot in the stubble of three-day beards. With brows pressed against the rubber cushion above the periscope we watched the battle panorama unroll. The smell of cordite and the smell of dead bodies filtered through the vents and seemed to enter our pores.

"Look, there's one of our guys--there on the right. See him, quick." Periscopes swiveled jerkily. We saw him, lying huddled on his belly, his head bent under to one side.

The Blessed Infantry. On our right was a group of infantrymen maneuvering around an area of thrashed foliage. We passed so close we could look into their eyes as though it were in a movie closeup. Not seeing the periscopes, they were unaware of our scrutiny. They seemed even unaware of the tank. Their eyes were sharp, wary, tired, but not alarmed.

There were Japs in that tangle. One infantryman suddenly stood up and calmly fired his Tommy gun downward into the brush. Two others stood by with bayoneted rifles poised. A grenade went off in a puff of smoke. Other soldiers around seemed inattentive, looking off across an area of broken palms where heavy firing was going on.

Infantrymen were running and crouching, circling around a large mound. Three or four mounted the grassy parapet and jumped down on the other side. There was a burst of fire, and another, as grenades went off. In the foreground a soldier wearing glasses and holding an unlit cigaret between his lips sprang from the concealing greenery and ran at half speed for about ten yards to a palm tree. He landed behind this tree with his feet forward in a sitting position and his head turned mechanically to look back over the field. After two or three seconds, he lit the cigaret.

Baby Satan rumbled on. Suddenly there was a searing flash of fire ahead. The ammunition dump had gone up. Thin flame and black smoke licked hungrily along the ground, reached up and scorched the broken trees.

"Get That Guy--Get Him!" The radio was never still. It was like listening to a football game and prize fight at the same time. "Get that guy--get him! Over there, dammit, over there! What the hell is the matter with you, Number 43? To your right, to your right! That's got him."

Through this the calm voice of one of the tankers in Baby Satan was striving to be heard "Hello, Jack, this is Louis. Hello, Jack, this is Louis. There is a tank oh our right, Jack. Move over a little. A little bit more, Jack. I am going to try an H.E. on that pillbox."

The turret machine gun riveted a few bursts and felt his way up to the target. A greasy, sweating youngster rammed the 75-mm. shell into the breech. The tank jolted back and the shell casing clanged. The shell cracked against the concrete; a jagged seam appeared.

"I'm going to try it again, Jack." Another hollow jolt and bang on metal. Inside, the tank was thick with smoke and the boys were coughing, but their eyes were at the periscopes. We saw the concrete crumble into slag.

One Man and the Tanks. Like hail on a tin roof the machine guns from other nearby tanks opened up. "What are they shooting at?" A crouching figure emerged from the pillbox and started to run across a small open area.

"Lookit, Louis. Louis, there's one coming out. Get him!" And then: "There they go. There's two of 'em, no, three." Other tanks were firing. Baby Satan's bow gun and turret gun had opened up. A Jap dropped. We held still for a long time.

Then: "Jack, this is Louis. Jack, this is Louis. Back up, Jack, back up." I swiveled the periscope far around in time to see our tank hit a 20-foot pandanus tree and knock it flat. Some 15 yards behind us was a row of green clad infantrymen standing up and firing. Shots were bouncing off the tank. The infantrymen had been behind us all the while, picking off scattered Japs we could not see.

It was a curious feeling to look down the barrels of these rifles, and see the bursts coming right at you. You felt invisible. The infantrymen's eyes were intent; they seemed to be looking through the tank as though it weren't there.

Forty yards ahead loomed what appeared to be a two-story concrete building covered over with brown coconut-frond camouflage. There were grassy mounds buttressing it. In the foreground was a shattered truck. Its tires were burning briskly. On the right was an oblong structure--a bomb shelter--on the left a round house of concrete shot full of jagged holes, near it a low-slung, square pillbox.

The ground was covered with blackened sections of corrugated iron from the roof of a demolished house.

Bits of lumber lay about, an iron bedstead, broken boxes of ammunition, two or three bodies torn apart and oozing black blood.

The tank on our right opened up with a 75. Our turret machine gun started its exploration again, burning a path of sparks across the corrugated iron, up the truck, over the concrete wall and on up to the grassy mounds below the two-story building. Other machine guns wove patterns across the same ground. One tank pumped in a 75-mm. shell. Others threw in more.

Fires flared up. Some sort of scaffolding collapsed. Among the concrete foundations of the house in the foreground a Jap rose up. Baby Satan's turret gun swiftly pulled down on him. His grey-green-clad back seemed to soak up the bullets.

The Stout Fortress. Baby Satan was behind the big bomb shelter, which hid it from the infantry. Infantrymen were dynamiting the structure; a shower of sand and concrete blocks bounced off the tank. We did not move.

Ahead was a huge crater filled with matting, cloth, Jap foodstuffs, and a great quantity of indeterminate matter. Near by was another square pillbox with a dead Jap lying on his back before it. His face had a black stubble of beard, but his ivory brow was calm. Machine-gun bullets were knocking chunks of concrete off the pillbox; they toppled and seemed to bounce off his head.

"Hey, there's a live one over there by the pillbox right next to the dead one. See him? There--see him move?" In the rubble the man was invisible to me but the machine-gun tracers found him.

The head and shoulders of the Jap rose up and collapsed. Then all we could see was one leg kicking in the air, kicking, kicking, as bullets poured relentlessly into his body. Finally it stiffened, dropped. The gun was silent.

The cleanup went on to its inexorable end.

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