This combat photo, taken during the Battle of Peleliu, depicts a U.S. Marine who weeps after killing a Japanese opponent. Online via the U.S. Naval Institute.
Word filtered along to us that quite a number of casualties had been caused by the terrible point-blank fire of the enemy cannon.
As the days dragged on, and the island's smell worsened (due to so much heat impacting so many dead bodies), Captain Andrew Haldane (beloved commander of K/3/5) and his Marines took over at Hill 140. It was the 12th of October, 1944, and the area was filled with Japanese snipers.
The only way for K/3/5 to assess their new situation was for some of the men to fleetingly look over the hilltop. Not one to send his men to do something he would not do himself, Haldane (affectionately known as "Ack Ack") was among those who crawled to the top of the ridge.
The cost in casualties for a tiny island was terrible. The fine 1st Marine Division was shattered. It suffered a total loss of 6,526 men (1,252 dead and 5,274 wounded). The casualties in the division's infantry regiments were: 1st Marines, 1,749; 5th Marines, 1,378; 7th Marines, 1,497. These were severe losses considering that each infantry regiment started with about 3,000 men. The army's 81st Infantry Division [who relieved the Marines at Peleliu] would lose another 3,278 men (542 dead and 2,736 wounded) before it secured the island.
...Company K, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines went into Peleliu with approximately 235 men, the normal size of a World War II Marine rifle company. It left with only 85 unhurt. If suffered 64 percent casualties. Of its original seven officers, two remained for the return to Pavuvu.
Eugene Sledge - who later married Jeanne Arceneaux (with whom he had two sons) - was one of the men from K/3/5 who survived the war. He earned a PhD and became a much-loved professor of biology at the University of Montevallo.
The Third Amphibious Corps reported ... that it had made extensive use of the famous Navajo Talkers in their radio communications.
Bos, Carole "CASUALTIES at PELELIU" AwesomeStories.com. Jun 01, 2002. Apr 26, 2019.