Hard Facts

TARAWA: THE STORY OF A BATTLE--Robert Sherrod--Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($2).

Between the water and the sea wall on Tarawa atoll, there was 20 feet of sand and brown-green coral; those 20 feet (for a distance of about 100 yards) were the U.S. beachhead. With the 3,000 Marines, dead and alive, on that tiny beachhead was TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod, who went ashore with the first waves. Notebook in hand, Sherrod crouched behind the sea wall and jotted down notes for a notable close-up of war:

P: A Marine flung TNT into a pillbox. When a Jap dashed out, a flamethrower caught him and he "flared up like a piece of celluloid."

P: "The wounded go walking by. . . . Some have bloodless faces, some bloody faces, others only pieces of faces. . . . I wish it could be seen by the silken-voiced, radio-announcing pollyannas back home. . . ."

P: "Thirty-one Marines are . . . laid out in a line. . . . Some are bloated, some have already turned a sickly green. Some have no faces, one's guts are hanging out of his body. The eyeballs of another have turned to a jellied mass." A bulldozer lumbers up, scoops a trench three feet deep; the bodies are pushed in and the bulldozer casually shoves the dirt back.

It was the bloodiest beach in U.S. history, and sharp-eyed Bob Sherrod has recreated it in a sharply etched picture. More than that, his book records the simple, human qualities of the fighting Marines. Sherrod watched them give away their last drops of precious drinking water to wounded men, saw them in the thick of battle giving away their last cigarets and bulging out the empty packs so their buddies wouldn't suspect it was the last one. They joked incessantly. In the face of whistling sniper-fire one boyish Marine was seen dashing madly across the beach--he was chasing a chicken for supper.

Author Sherrod doesn't try to hush up the plain, stark fear that even Marines may give in to under fire. "Colonel," cried a young major desperately, on the second day, "there are a thousand goddamn Marines out there on that beach, and not one will follow me across to the air strip." Replied the Colonel: "You've got to say, 'Who'll follow me?' And if only ten follow you . . . it's better than nothing."

So many Marines followed so many charges that by the third day even the Japs knew that they were licked. The last gasp was a desperate "Banzai" attack; the Japs charged, screaming "Marine, you die!" and "Japanese drink Marine's blood!" The Marines' line wavered, then held. By next day Tarawa was won.

Readers will find Tarawa the work of a crack reporter, the most vivid book on the Pacific war since Ira Wolfert's Torpedo 8. Many will find it stomach-turning in its horrifying depiction of battle. That was Author Sherrod's prime objective: "Our information services [have] failed to impress the people with the hard facts of war. . . . There is no easy way to win. . . . [There will] be many other bigger and bloodier Tarawas. . . ."

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