GONE TO EARTH

Saipan's snipers were the meanest yet. In this cable, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod tells how the marines went about one job of mopping up these fanatical, last-ditch fighters.

We had been inspecting four Jap tanks, which were still burning. One of the tankers' crisp, upraised hands stuck out of his turret as if in supplication to a power beyond his reach.

Then three of us sat down in a sacred park near by on the edge of a cement fence built around a pedestaled, steel-shelled Buddha which had suffered considerably from shell fragments--hits in the chest and behind the right ear. We opened a pack of K rations for breakfast.

We had hardly dug into the can of pork and egg yolk when a bullet whizzed close overhead. We hit the dirt behind the cement fence. A marine yelled: "I saw him. He jumped into a cave over there in the rock quarry." Several other marines ran toward the quarry--one of several dozen on Saipan. Caves in the sides of these scooped-out affairs are favorite hiding places for Japs. Then began the familiar game of "flush the sniper."

Step One. A marine sergeant took charge of the dozen or more men participating. First he handed a marine a hand grenade. The marine jumped into the quarry and began to edge toward the cave while one of his pals covered him with a Garand. The grenade was tossed into the cave. It burst with a muffled thud. In a movie version of killing Japs, the incident might have ended at this point. But marines have long since learned that one grenade does not always finish off the occupants of a cave or pillbox; almost invariably there are five to 20 Japs in whatever hole you might expect to find one. Besides, the Japs often dig trenches within the caves to avoid the grenade explosions.

Step Two. One of the marines who fancied himself a linguist--he had been studying the posters labeled "combat language"--took over after the grenade burst. "High de koy!" he shouted into the mouth of the cave.

One of the other marines explained to me, "That means 'come out.' " "High de koy!" the linguist repeated, holding his rifle at the ready. But the occupant or occupants of the cave made no move.

"Shippee shenoddy," said the linguist, trying a new tack. I asked him what he was saying now. He said:

"That means, 'don't be afraid.'" That seemed a loose choice of words when I looked at the dozen marines surrounding the quarry, with Garands and Browning automatic rifles poised.

Step Three. "Somebody go get a four-block charge of TNT," said the marine sergeant, who hadn't put much faith in his linguist's coaxing ability in the first place. At this point an armored bulldozer, piloted by a young Seabee, rumbled through the underbrush. The sergeant explained the situation to him. The bulldozer man drove his blade into the earth and started to push dirt from the ground level into the quarry where it fell across the mouth of the cave.

But there was hard coral rock only six inches under the surface and the bulldozer driver finally gave it up. Then the TNT arrived. The sergeant was pretty mad by this time. He snatched it up savagely and said to the spectators: "A lot of muck is going to fly, so all of you people stand back. There's no telling how many bastards may pour out of it."

Step Four. One of the marines kept on talking about coaxing the Jap or Japs out of the cave. Said he somewhat wistfully: "I wish we had somebody that knew enough Japanese to fetch him out." He said this in a low voice so the sergeant couldn't hear him. Another private first class observed that he didn't believe the Emperor himself knew enough Japanese to coax anybody out of that hole.

The four-block charge of TNT blew black dust high into the air and made a terrific noise. Big waves of black smoke and debris billowed out of the cave. But this was a well-constructed hole which went deep into the earth and heaven knows how far back. About all that came to the surface was the wooden framing of two-inch planks and a cheap suitcase filled with shirts and silk underwear and an empty cloth pocketbook.

The bulldozer driver eyed the result with disappointment and then determination. "Hell, I'll fix him," he said and swung his snorting machine around. He went around to another side of the cave and dipped his blade into the earth. This time he found soft dirt. He scooped bladeful after bladeful against the mouth of the cave until it was blocked with at least a five-foot thickness of earth. It all ended there. It was not very satisfactory because we never found out what was in the hole. Maybe some day somebody will dig into this piece of earth, and into hundreds of similar pieces of earth on Saipan, and find some answers.

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