Future Marine Corps Commandant David M. Shoup was not supposed to be heading toward the north shore of Betio Island on 20 November 1943. Until a mere ten days earlier, he had been serving as a lieutenant colonel and operations and training officer (D-3) of the 2d Marine Division. Yet now the success of the Marine Corps’ first major amphibious assault against a fortified position rested on his shoulders. The first 36 hours of a 76-hour ordeal—soon to be known as the Battle of Tarawa—would reveal Shoup to be so courageous and effective that he would earn the Medal of Honor.
By the time Tarawa was targeted, the Axis powers were on the retreat in most major theaters around the globe. In the Central Pacific, however, their forces had yet to experience a defeat on land. Operation Galvanic, the U.S. assault on the Gilbert Islands, would begin the long process of ousting the Japanese from the theater commanded by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Galvanic was designed not simply to maintain pressure on the Japanese, but also to inaugurate amphibious assaults against beaches they were determined to defend at all costs.
If the operation succeeded, it would evict Japanese forces from the Gilberts, end Japan’s easternmost threat to shipping between the United States and the Southwest Pacific, and demonstrate the viability of interwar Navy and Marine Corps planning for a future Pacific conflict. If, on the other hand, Galvanic failed, serious doubt would be cast on the wisdom both of approaching Japan through the Central Pacific and of giving a leading role to the Navy and Marine Corps in the final drive against Japan.
A Late Replacement
The most important objective in the Gilberts was the Japanese garrison and airfield on Tarawa Atoll’s Betio Island. Several thousand marines of the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces defended the island. If the airfield were captured, the United States would have a base for aerial reconnaissance and raids on the more heavily guarded Japanese strongholds to the northwest, the Marshall Islands. In August 1943, the 2d Marine Division, under Major General Julian C. Smith, was assigned the task of attacking and seizing Betio. Within the division, Combat Team 2 (CT 2) would comprise the initial assault waves on Betio. Under David Shoup’s command, CT 2 consisted of Shoup’s regiment—the 2d Marines—reinforced by the 2d Battalion of the 8th Marines (2/8).
Despite having become a second lieutenant in 1926, Shoup first witnessed combat in 1942 and 1943 as an observer on Guadalcanal and Rendova.1 He returned to the 2d Division as its D-3 and assumed much of the responsibility for the detailed planning of the Tarawa assault. He proved a strong proponent of transforming amtracs (landing vehicles, tracked, or LVTs), originally designed to bring supplies inland, into armored amphibious assault vehicles. His role likely would have been confined to serving as a staff officer at Smith’s side during the initial assault on Betio had not the commanding officer of the 2d Marines, Colonel William McNary Marshall, been deemed medically unfit to lead his men into combat only ten days before D-day.
Smith saw something special in Shoup. Rather than select one of the 2d Marines’ officers, he gave command of the regiment and CT 2 to Shoup, along with a promotion to colonel. While en route to Tarawa, Smith wrote matter-of-factly to his wife of his decision, as if no other option would have been appropriate.2 Shoup, who knew the ins and outs of the assault plan and the Japanese defenses better than anyone, would now have to go ashore with Marines trained by Marshall and motivate them to keep fighting despite fierce Japanese resistance and appalling casualties.
Blueprint for Betio
Shoup and Smith’s overall plan for the assault called for three of the four battalions of CT 2—2/2, 3/2, and 2/8—to land simultaneously on Betio’s northern lagoon-side beaches, which were designated, from west to east, as Red 1, Red 2, and Red 3. The 1st Battalion, 2d Marines, would be held in regimental reserve. The arrival of the initial assault waves in LVTs would be preceded by several hours of ferocious naval and aerial bombardment. The Marine planners had wanted days, not hours, of such bombardment, but Admiral Nimitz would not risk his ships for so long against an expected Japanese naval sortie from the Marshalls or Truk. Nor would Shoup’s request for 2,000-pound daisy cutter bombs, to be dropped close to the beach by the Seventh Air Force, be fulfilled.3
Even so, many planners believed the Japanese troops would be dead, wounded, or stunned into helplessness. The LVTs would be able to drive past any defenders left at the beaches and onto Betio’s airfield, where the Marines would disembark. The amtracs then would return to the water to shuttle in the remaining Marines from the edge of Betio’s fringing reef, since it was considered likely that the tide would be insufficient to allow Higgins boats (landing craft, vehicle, personnel, or LCVPs) carrying these subsequent waves to get closer than 600 to 800 yards from the beach.
Then, with thousands of Marines quickly ashore, the Americans would be in possession of the western half of the island. The Marines could turn to their left and drive to the pinpoint eastern tip of Betio, annihilating the remaining Japanese as they went. Marine amphibious doctrine would have been proved sound, even against a heavily defended small island surrounded by a coral reef. Marine casualties—and individual heroics—would have been kept to a minimum.
Leading by Example
Shoup’s movement from the transport USS Zeilin (APA-3) to the predetermined location for his command post on Red 2, a mere 15 yards from the water’s edge in the center of expected Marine positions, turned into an odyssey. His first, albeit minor, wounds were inflicted when Japanese shells, overpacked with explosives and evidencing what Shoup called “poor metallurgy,” took small chunks out of his nose and wrists as they impacted like supersonic grains of sand rather than as large chunks of metal.4 In its lack of precision, the Navy’s preliminary bombardment had left many Japanese positions fully operational. LVTs, LCVPs, and Marines in the water were facing heavy fire from many directions and a variety of weapons. Shoup’s planning was beginning to unravel.
Like all of the LCVPs, the one carrying Shoup grounded where the water over the reef was only four feet deep—hundreds of yards offshore. Shoup ordered a returning LVT to take his team from the Higgins boat to shore. Betio’s long, wide northern pier offered the only limited protection from Japanese fire. Shoup’s LVT first went down the eastern side of the pier, until it ran into such heavy fire that it had to return to the end of the pier and travel down the western side. The vehicle was disabled some 400 yards out, and at about 1030, Shoup ordered his men into the water next to the pier.5
Then and there the legend of Shoup was born. He halted several leaderless and weaponless Marines who were heading back into the lagoon, ordering them to turn around and take weapons off the dead. In so doing, he gave the men a purpose and a leader, both of which he believed to be keys in surmounting the fear of combat.6 The retreating Marines complied.
Shortly thereafter, on the verge of drawing his sidearm to brandish at a group of stopped Marines, Shoup barked: “Are there any of you cowardly sons of bitches got the guts to follow a Colonel of the Marines?”7 These men, too, came along behind him. Later during the battle, perhaps reflecting on this powerful experience, Shoup would advise officers who were bemoaning the lack of courageous Marines: “You’ve got to say, ‘Who’ll follow me?’ And if only ten follow you, that’s the best you can do, but it’s better than nothing.”8
As he approached Red 2, a mortar shell exploded near Shoup. He was knocked down in the water, his knee nearly dislocated. His dungarees were shredded and covered in blood (a gaping wound, caused either by shell fragments, coral shards, or both, would become infected over the coming days). Still under fire, he emerged from the water and made his way to the predesignated spot for CT 2’s command post, against the lagoon-side wall of a Japanese bunker on Red 2 that held active enemy troops. Shoup reached the post at about noon with only four of the officers originally assigned to serve as CT 2’s headquarters staff. In time, he would marvel: “to think that the show was run” with only his operations officer, the commander of an artillery battalion, the communications officer, the regimental surgeon, and whichever stray Marines Shoup commandeered for special missions.9
While coming ashore, Shoup had been in intermittent radio contact with his battalion commanders and those of the reserve battalions. At 0958, he ordered his regimental reserve (1/2) ashore on Red 2 to help 3/2, which was being mauled in the lagoon and on Red 1. At 1018, General Smith ordered one battalion of the division reserve, 3/8, to the line of departure in the lagoon, and at 1103, Shoup radioed its commanding officer to land on Red 3 and aid 2/8 on the Marines’ left flank. These battalions also suffered heavy casualties and loss of cohesion.
The Crucible of Battle
Shoup’s first day was plagued by serious radio difficulties. This communications breakdown made Smith’s job coordinating the efforts of the entire division more challenging, thus rendering Shoup’s role all the more important. In the absence of a direct link to Smith on board the battleship Maryland (BB-46), Shoup would spend the remainder of D-day, and all of the daylight hours of D+1, “consolidating information, preparing requests for naval gunfire and bombing, receiving information from the different units,” and building ad hoc groups to perform limited missions he deemed especially important.10 Like all the Marines around him, he constantly had to improvise in the absence of precise instructions.
In the meantime, an overarching emphasis on momentum that Shoup had settled on after reviewing the assault plans on D-1 would pay dividends. While still on board the Zeilin, Shoup had reversed previous planning that instructed CT 2’s Marines to advance to predetermined phase lines to await further orders.11 They instead would be directed to advance the full one-third of a mile to Betio’s southern shore without pausing. While Shoup may have been thinking that giving priority to preserving momentum would increase the odds of quick victory, its actual effect was to focus his attention on establishing momentum in the first place.
For example, at 1400 on D-day, he ordered the shattered remnants of 2/2 to combine with units from 1/2 and attack to the airfield to expand the beachhead.12On D+1, he ordered these same units to the southern shore, even if it meant crossing the airfield while exposed to machine-gun fire. They did, in fact, reach the south coast, where they would form an isolated pocket for the time being.13
Two events on the night of D-day further contributed to Shoup’s image as Tarawa’s indispensable battlefield commander. First, he originally was to have been relieved as overall ground commander by Brigadier General Leo D. Hermle, the assistant division commander. On the afternoon of D-day, Smith sent Hermle to the pier to gather information and then radioed the general to continue ashore and take command from Shoup. But Hermle never got the message, spent the evening coordinating resupply and casualty evacuation on the pier, and proceeded back into the lagoon to reestablish radio contact with Smith.14 As a result, Smith left Shoup in command through the daylight hours of D+1.
Second, Shoup held the Marines together the night of D-day, when a Japanese counterattack against the thin U.S. lines was believed imminent. In the end, this attack did not materialize, most probably because of the earlier disruption of Japanese command and control from the naval bombardment. During this respite, Shoup saw to the continued movement of reserves and artillery ashore. Despite darkness and a wrecked pier, he ensured that 75-mm pack howitzers were carried in. Early on D+1, therefore, Marine riflemen had extensive artillery support as they began to silence the fire from fortified Japanese positions.15
Tipping the Balance
The next day, Shoup was not immediately optimistic. Horrific scenes continued, especially as 1/8’s Marines waded ashore at dawn on Red 2 under full Japanese fire. At least twice that morning of D+1, Shoup expressed misgivings about the overall position.16 Nonetheless, the efforts at his command post and elsewhere were beginning to pay off. Most important, a disparate group of Marines under Major Michael Ryan of 3/2, with whom Shoup had been in only sporadic contact and would later term “fighting fools,” were about to clear the entire western end of Betio (Green Beach), opening it for landings by the 6th Marines.17 At 1600, he radioed Smith: “Combat efficiency: we are winning.”18
Shortly thereafter, Smith ordered the division chief of staff, Colonel Merritt A. Edson, to Shoup’s post. He arrived at 2030 to take overall command on the ground, leaving Shoup to direct the 2d Marines.
Shoup had overseen a series of events that had tipped the balance of the battle inexorably toward the Marines. The airfield had been crossed, the southern shore of Betio had been reached by the combined remnants of 1/2 and 2/2, and the Japanese forces on the island had been split. The Marines’ left flank, on Red 3, had held on and possessed the men and equipment necessary to move against the most hardened Japanese fortifications to the east. Green Beach had been cleared by Ryan’s men, and a battalion from the V Amphibious Corps reserve, 1/6, was ashore intact. Although it never had been Smith’s intention to entrust Shoup with ground command for so long, it had worked out that way to the great benefit of all concerned, except the Japanese.
The Highest Honor
Smith and Edson thought Shoup worthy of the Medal of Honor for his conduct on Betio (though it took Edson a little time to come around to this opinion).19 By early January 1944, Smith had submitted his first recommendation, complete with a sample citation. Ultimately, his recommendation reached a Navy review board in Washington, which downgraded Shoup’s award to the Navy Cross. Smith was upset and reported that Shoup himself was “much disgusted” as a consequence.20 The 2d Division commander had to counsel Shoup to accept the Navy Cross and await Smith’s further action.21Upon inquiring of the review board why his recommendation had been disapproved, Smith learned that nowhere had he mentioned how Shoup’s conduct was “above and beyond the call of duty,” a legal requirement for the Medal of Honor.22
Smith had been interested in how conspicuous Shoup’s actions had been in saving the day for the 2d Marine Division. In the chaos of battle and its aftermath, he never learned of Shoup’s wounds and so had not mentioned them in his recommendation. When told that Shoup’s persevering despite serious wounds might have swayed the review board, he wrote a new recommendation stating that Shoup’s wounds were painful and infected and would have justified evacuation.23
This new information was effective, and the Medal of Honor was approved. The citation explained the real reason Shoup had been so irreplaceable: “Upon arrival ashore, he assumed command of all landed troops, and, working without rest under constant, withering enemy fire during the next two days, conducted smashing attacks.”24Still, because of the prolonged review process, it would be 22 January 1945 before Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal presented Shoup with the Medal of Honor in a quiet ceremony in Washington.
With a less certain Marine in command on Betio for those harrowing first 36 hours, the Marines’ effort might have collapsed, and with it, an avenue toward Japan and speedy victory. The Medal of Honor that recognized these facts would be one of the keys to Shoup’s subsequent career advancement, his self-assurance on the Joint Chiefs of Staff while Marine Corps Commandant from 1960 to 1963, and his later credibility as an outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.25 Seldom has a Medal of Honor meant so much, for so long.
1. Frank Wallace, Kennedy’s General, A Story of Uncommon Courage: The Remarkable Life of David M. Shoup (Berkeley, CA: Minuteman Press, 2013), 5–9; Howard Jablon, David M. Shoup: A Warrior against War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 7–34; Joseph H. Alexander, “David Shoup, Rock of Tarawa,” Naval History, December 1995, 20.
2. Julian Smith to Harriotte Smith, 14 November 1943, Julian C. Smith Personal Papers Collection, Coll/202, Box 22, Folder “Letters Received, 14 November–28 December 1943,” Marine Corps Archives, Quantico, VA (hereafter MCA).
3. In his field notebook, Shoup wrote: “Request: Daisy cutters all along Red beach. Center between airfield and north edge of island,” Coll/2972, David Shoup, Folder “Tarawa Notebook,” MCA.
4. David Shoup, as told to James R. Dickenson, “Why Did Two Nations Spend So Much for So Little? General Shoup Returns to Tarawa,” National Observer, 2 December 1968, 20.
5. James R. Stockman, The Battle for Tarawa (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1947), 17.
6. Shoup, “Why Did Two Nations,” 20.
7. Joseph H. Alexander, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 136–37.
8. Robert Sherrod, Tarawa: The Story of a Battle (New York: Pocket Books, 1944), 105.
9. “Command Group CT 2,” and Shoup’s handwritten comments thereon, David Shoup Papers, Box 21, Folder “Tarawa Material 1943,” Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, CA.
10. Shoup, “Why Did Two Nations,” 20.
11. Shoup, “Why Did Two Nations,” 1, 20.
12. Earl Wilson, et al., Betio Beachhead: U.S. Marines’ Own Story of the Battle for Tarawa (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945), 53.
13. Alexander, Utmost Savagery, 167.
14. Alexander, Utmost Savagery, 141, 145–46.
15. Derrick Wright, A Hell of a Way to Die: Tarawa Atoll, 20–23 November 1943 (London: Windrow & Greene, 1996), 77–78.
16. Alexander, Utmost Savagery, 164; Sherrod, 100.
17. Sherrod, 92.
18. Joseph H. Alexander, Across the Reef: The Marine Assault of Tarawa (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1993), 33.
19. Merritt A. Edson to Gerald C. Thomas, 25 January 1944, Coll/202, Box 16, Folder “January 1944 (3 of 3)” Smith Papers, MCA; Edson’s initial hesitation about Shoup’s Medal of Honor, as expressed to Julian Smith, is documented in Jon T. Hoffman, Once a Legend: “Red Mike” Edson of the Marine Raiders (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994), 257.
20. Julian Smith to Leo D. Hermle, 19 June 1944, Coll/202, Box 16, Folder “May 1944 (1 of 2),” Smith Papers, MCA.
21. Julian Smith to David Shoup, 27 July 1944, Coll/202, Box 17, Folder “July 1944 (2 of 2),” Smith Papers, MCA.
22. Selden B. Kennedy, HQ USMC, to Julian Smith, 9 May 1944, Coll/202, Box 16, Folder “May 1944 (1 of 2),” Smith Papers, MCA.
23. Julian Smith to Chester Nimitz, 9 May 1944, Coll/202, Box 16, Folder “May 1944 (1 of 2),” Smith Papers, MCA.
24. George Lang, et al., eds., Medal of Honor Recipients 1863–1994, vol. 2, World War II to Somalia (New York: Facts on File, 1995), 574–75.
25. In remarks prefacing Shoup’s testimony to a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after his retirement, chairman Senator J. William Fulbright read Shoup’s full Medal of Honor citation into the record. “Present Situation in Vietnam,” 20 March 1968 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), 1.