Original subtitles

Previously, on World War II in HD.

Never before have been called upon for such a prodigious effort...

America goes to war.

Never before had we had so little time, in which to do so much.

The allies take on Hitler's forces in North Africa and Sicily, and push them out.

If we can stand up to him, then Europe may be free.

While in the pacific, reporter Richard Tregaskis is embedded

with the Marines as they take the fight to the Japanese.

I came here to see some action,

and I intend to go with the first assault wave.

His unflinching account of the battle on Guadalcanal brings

the reality of the war home to millions of Americans.

I pass bodies of Marines, Japs, sometimes tangled,

as they had fallen in the death struggle.

I get the awful feeling of being pitifully small, just a

tiny particle, caught up in the gigantic whirlpool of war.

Grant us a common faith that men shall know bread and peace,

that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security,

and equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best,

not only in our own lands, but throughout the world.

My fellow Americans, this war has reached a new critical phase.

We have moved into the active and continuing battle with our enemies.

We are pouring into the world wide conflict everything that we have:

Our young men and vast resources of our nation,

Making airplanes, guns, ammunitions.

The fall of 1943, nearly 2 years after the attack in Pearl Harbor,

America's war machine is operating at maximum capacity.

Running for 24 hours a day, American shipyards

are turning out warships at an incredible pace.

The American Pacific Fleet is now larger than the navies of all the warring powers.

The American people have accomplished a miracle.

Americans don't realize it,

that we are losing the war.

I know we have the machines to fight this war,

but the question is: Do we have the guts?

34-year old "Time Life" magazine correspondent Robert Sherrod

is on a transport with over 1,000 Marines steaming west through the pacific ocean.

Only 4 years earlier, he helped to establish the magazine's Washington bureau.

Working in the capital, he developed a personal relationship with

President Roosevelt.

All during 1942, he witnessed the ferocity the Japanese

military has had advanced through the Pacific.

Now as he heads toward his next assignment,

Sherrod worries that America's youth lacks the will to fight our enemies.

This generation isn't mentally prepared to bridge the gap

between the comforts of peace and horrors of war.

In the 8th month following their victory at Guadalcanal,

US forces have pushed the Japanese back in Solomon Islands and New Guinea.

The time is now right to begin attacking the chain of remote island

outposts that allow Japan to project its air power deep into the central pacific.

Sherrod and the 2nd Marine division are steaming

toward a atoll, called Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands,

captured from the British, just 3 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Tarawa is situated just 1 degree off the equator, and

consist of 24 islands enclosing a central lagoon.

The main Japanese base at Tarawa is the on the island of Betio,

but had build a 4,000-foot long runway for the land based twin-engine bombers.

Although grips strategic importance, Betio is as small as New York City's Central Park.

Despite its size, the island is heavily fortified with

500 bunkers, lock houses, and other emplacements,

and it is defended by almost 5,000 well-trained

and well-equipped Japanese Imperial Marines.

Tomorrow, I will take 2 fresh notebooks.

If I am killed, I don't want the Japs to learn anything

about us from the notes I've made during this convoy trip.

I am told by the time this thing is over,

our ships would fire 2,000 tons of shells, and the planes would drop 900 tons of bombs.

The Admiral in charge of the shelling is confident

we will bomb the place, cleaning off the map.

All around me, the Marines are cheering in approval.

It's a good feeling to watch our ships deal the merciless blows to the Japs.

No mortal man could live through such destroying power.

Betio and the neighboring islands are rocked by the bombardment.

The first waves of Marines climb into their amphibious tracks, known as Am-tracks,

and strike out for the shore.

Sherrod is part of small band of reporters

and Marine combat cameramen following flat bottom Higgins landing craft.

These marine cameramen have been assigned to document the

invasion using handheld eyemo cameras and color film.

Since this will be the Marine's first amphibious

landing against the heavily defended Japanese island,

Marine Corps leaders want a record of what happens.

The mood is optimistic, a young lieutenant asks me why I haven't written a book yet.

I tell him:" I am just waiting for a real story."

My buddy looks at me and says:" Well, Marb, just remember to use your head

for something besides a helmet holder, and you will make it out of this war alive."

20 year old Marine Nolen Marbrey, has just landed on the

island of New Britain with the 1st Marine Division,

on loan to the army as part of America's southwest pacific offensive.

Over a year ago, Marbrey signed up with the Marine as

way to get out of his hometown, Huntsville, Alabama.

This is his first time in combat.

I can hear the sound of artillery and small arms fired in the distance.

I got a tight feeling in my stomach.

Located over 1,000 miles southwest of Tarawa, New Britain is one of the most

important length in Japan's chain of island outposts in the south pacific.

Their sprawling air and naval base complex at Rabaul on the island's northeastern tip has

been the nervy center for Japanese combat operations in that region since early 1942.

The American plan is not to storm Rabaul, but to encircle it,

cutting off supply lines, and rendering the stronghold militarily irrelevant.

If the two-pronged Ally sweep through the central

and southern pacific is to be successful, New Britain, like Tarawa, must be taken.

It's a hell of a time to make new friends, but the

lieutenant paired us up with the new foxhole buddies,

he wants rookie like me with the experienced vets.

My new partner is a guy named Les, he saw lots of action on Guadalcanal.

That should come in handy.

It's our first night on the island. It's hard to sleep.

We hear rifle fires somewhere ahead of us.

And the Japs making noises in the jungle,

even yell out the perfect English: "Bob Hope go to hell. Fuck Babe Ruth."

Try to piss us off, hope we fire at them and give away our positions.

Les tells me, if I see a Jap, to use my knife,

and go for the throat.

We keep pushing forward, but theses grasses are so thick and barely go anywhere.

Rookie Marine Nolen Marbrey and his veteran comrade

Les trudge deep into the jungle of New Britain.

Marbrey has survived his first several nights on the enemy held island.

He and his platoon are now setting out on their mission.

The objective is to secure a nearby hilltop where Japanese

observers are calling down artillery on the surrounding area.

We are falling behind the tanks, and they blast our

path forward with round after round of shells.

And Les tells me, just keep firing. Don't matter if you

don't hit anything, just keep firing and keep moving.

But as the tanks move deeper into the jungle,

they get bog down in New Britain's dense undergrowth and muddy streams.

The men will have to face the enemy without the protection of their armor.

We are running into bunch of 7th Marines heading into the opposite way.

Man, they look beat.

One of them looks at me and says:" Good luck..."

As we get closer in, I can see there are no Higgins boats on the beaches.

Something is not right.

Should be hundreds of them by now.

"Time Life" correspondent Robert Sherrod is on

a landing craft with the 2nd Marine Regiment,

headed toward the Island of Betio in Tarawa Atoll.

An officer on another boat shouts the shelf around

the island is too shallow for our Higgins boats.

The Marine's old plan is based on a deadly miscalculation.

The Higgins boats need 4 feet to clear the coral reef

surrounding the island, but the tide is only 3 feed deep.

The boats are getting stuck, forcing the Marines to

jump into the surf and wade hundreds of yards to shore,

but the Japanese are waiting for them.

Only lightly armored Am-tracks which can crawl up and

over the coral are able to make it pass the reef.

Sherrod transfers from a Higgins boat to an Am-track and moves towards the beach.

Our Am-track squad yells he can't get any closer.

He can't risk losing the craft. Too many of them are getting hit already.

We have to jump off, 700 yards from shore.

I look around, and I see fear.

Machine gun fires are getting thicker, mortars wind overhead

targeting the Higgins boats still struggling out on the reef.

A Jap shell makes a direct hit,

and parts of the boat fly in all directions.

Bullets hit six inches to my left, six inches to my right,

and I swear I can reach out and touch a hundred of them.

Using a peer as cover, Sherrod makes it to the beach, and ducks behind the sea wall.

Anyone going over that wall is raped by machine guns and snipers.

Men are getting killed and wounded every minute.

Casualties are piling up on the beach, then there is nowhere to put them.

I have been ashore less than an hour, and already I can smell the death.

With the death toll rising rapidly, the ranking officer

in charge of the assault calls off further landings.

He then sends an urgent message to command, stating that

he will have to send in the reserve troops the next day.

He ends with the ominous words: "Issue, in doubt."

The marines already on shore will have to hold

their small strips of sand through the night.

My knee shake, my whole body trembles like jelly,

and I am quite certain, that this will be my last night on earth.

Corporal says he needs 4 guys to go with him on a patrol to see what the Japs are up to.

Private Nolen Marbrey and the 5th Regiment of the 1st Marine

Division have been in the jungles of New Britain for over 1 week.

They've secured their objective, a hilltop position from

which Japanese forces were directing artillery fire.

But they know the enemy has taken up defensive positions somewhere in the jungle ahead.

Marbrey's platoon leader wants to send a patrol out to find them.

Corporal calls out two guys who are on the canal.

A guy named luck, my buddy Les, ain't calls my name.

This other rookie Benson actually volunteers.

Hell, I am not even in the same classes with those guys.

The five-man patrol descends the hill, probing for the enemy.

But after several hours, they realized they have become hopelessly disoriented.

Les finally mutters what we are all thinking.

We are lost.

The corporal was shot!

I spot the Jap bastard about 100 yards away, and open fire.

He topples to the ground.

Lucky fires. Rounds start running, screaming over his shoulders, for us, do the same.

Japs are coming from everywhere.

Benson gets hit, he is down, he is yelling.

But there is no time to stop.

I turn and look for Lucky.

But he stopped a bullet. He's dead.

There is nothing we can do.

Les and I duck behind a tree, and load up for our last stand.

The sound of firing and artillery are getting launder.

My head is starting to feel weary, my body can't stop shaking.

The Japs are fading back into the jungle. Why?

You can't believe it, a battalion of Marines is right behind us.

It must be the 7th.

Les and I hug each other, and the tears start flowing.

When we get back to K company, we are greeted by the

slaps on the back, calls of "enjoy your vacation".

But they get real quiet, when we told them about Ray Benson and Lucky.

After 2 long weeks in the jungle,

Marbrey and 5th Marine Regiment are ordered back to the

beaches, and told their mission on New Britain is over.

The coral flats are a sad site.

The smell of death.

That sickly sweat odor of decaying human flesh ... is impressive.

"Time Life" correspondent Robert Sherrod surveys the blood-soaked beaches

of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll in the central pacific.

Less than 24 hours ago, the Marines launches an amphibious

assault on a heavily defended Japanese garrison.

Of the 5,000 Marines to hit the beaches, 1,500 are now dead or wounded.

I wish this could be seen by all those silken-voiced radio announcers back in the States.

This, is what war really is.

Death.

All three assault battalions from yesterday are groggy, if not

completely knocked out. Our organizations have been ripped off pieces.

They have to have more men, and fast.

Although they have held the beach throughout

the night, Marines there are in dire straits.

They need the reserve forces, stationed on the ships 2 miles offshore.

Command makes a difficult decision: commit the floating

reserve force in attempt to land using Higgins boats.

Knowing full well that, like the day before, they might not

be able to clear the coral reef that rings the island.

Thousands of lives, if not the fate of the entire operation are on the line.

This is far worse than it was yesterday.

Combat reporter Robert Sherrod is pinned on the beach of

Betio as the 2nd day of the American invasion begins.

Desperate to land more troops on the beaches, the

core commander has decided to send in reinforcements.

Even though the landing boats may not be able to make

it though the coral reef hundreds of yards off shore.

That's hard to stomach.

Here I am, scribbling notes on my pad,

where men are being killed around me.

Mortars blast boats stuck on the reef, the men have to

wade to shore, right into the teeth of Jap machine guns.

Within minutes, I count at least 100 dead Marines.

But they just keep coming.

Although the initial waves sustain staggering casualties,

by late afternoon, the Marines finally have the

numbers to begin overwhelming the Japanese defenses.

Marines on the beach, push over the seawall,

and begin to knock out the Japanese firing positions, paving the ways

for more reinforcements, armors, and artillery to land on the beach.

We are winning, but we still have to dig out every last Jap from every last pillbox,

and that will cost us a lot of marines.

The Jap's only chance now is our men being soft.

That we'll grow sick of our losses.

This I am certain, these Marines are not too soft to fight.

I want to report on the drama of men lock into the death struggle.

The life and stake, not this.

"International News Service" correspondent, Richard Tregaskis is in Sicily.

Just over a year ago, he completed his first combat reporting assignment,

covering the heroine battle on Guadalcanal.

Since then, he has been obsessed with returning to the front.

He arrived in Sicily weeks after a tremendous Allied

invasion force landed on the island's southern coast.

But before he can reach the front,

the Allies chase the Germans and Italian forces north to

Messina, where they cross the strait and escape into Italy.

Now, the Germans are dug into Italy's mountainous terrain, awaiting the Ally's arrival.

This morning, the radio announces the Ally

troops have landed on the southern tip of Italy.

This machine may be the hottest in the history of

the world, and I damn well better be a part of it.

For me, the lure at the front is like an opium.

It's just something about being in the middle of the battle,

,alive.

Yet inches from the death.

The thought of the danger itself stirs the imagination.

On September 3rd, 1943, the British 8th Army cross

the Strait of Messina, and lands at Calabria.

Five days later, Italy officially surrenders to the Allies.

But when the US 5th Army cruises into the Bay of Salerno

on September 9th to establish a beach head in central Italy,

the Germans put up an unexpectedly strong defense.

Hitler has no intention of giving up Italy without a fight.

His reinforced armies starts setting up strategic defensive

positions in the mountains throughout central Italy.

As the American troops push north, toward Naples, Tregaskis follows closely behind.

I enter a small village. There is destruction everywhere

from artillery fire and German demolition crews.

The Germans blew up whole buildings in an effort to hold up the Allies progress.

Town's people pick bodies out of the wreckage.

A man in broken English tells me the Nazis are "animali tutti", all animals.

For the first time in a long while, I have a bang up eye-witnessed

story of an action in a crucial section of the front.

After pursuing the front for weeks,

combat reporter Richard Tregaskis joins the action

near the Volturno River, northeast of Naples.

There, Allies para-troopers and mortar men

are trying to dislodge German artillery spotter from mountain cave

Our every mortars are giving the Germans help.

A major turns to be and says: "It's great fun as

long as we are dishing it out and not taking it."

I hear the scream of something coming.

Everything is all wrong.

Strange.

My helmet is a few feet away.

I can see men running in half crouch.

I try to shout, but strange sounds come out my mouth.

I know what I want to say, but I can't say it.

Everything sounds unreal.

Like a movie,

with a feeble sound track.

A medics gets to a hull next to me.

I watch his morphine needle slide in. Then, he's gone.

I try to dictate a story about being wounded,

but the effort of concentration is so great that after 4 attempts, I give up the idea.

One month after getting hit by a German mortar round,

Richard Tregaskis is in an evacuation hospital near Naples.

Shrapnel and bone fragments have penetrated his brain,

affecting his speech, his motor skills, and his thought processes.

How can I be a writer with a self-expressive power of an idiot.

A journalist who can't talk, write, or read.

There are just no shortcuts to healing, so I have to be patient, not my long suit.

What occurs to me is just like this war.

It will take time, determination and persistence to restore

this mutilated world of ours, to a semblance of order.

The fire from a burning pile of rubble has reached six Jap bodies.

They sizzle and pop as the flame consumes the flesh and gases

After 76 hours of brutal close quarters combat,

correspondent Robert Sherrod is surveying the aftermath on what, only days before,

was one of Japan most formidable garrisons in the central pacific.

Nearly each of the Japanese imperial marines has been killed in action,

and most of those who were not committed suicide.

The island, which is less than one square mile,

is littered with the bodies of over 6,000 American and Japanese troops.

Bodies are scattered around the food dump.

They're blown to a hundred pieces.

A hand here,

a head there,

a hobnailed foot farther away.

While Sherrod continues to cover the action for another four days,

the marine combat cameramen who also came ashore document the aftermath.

This is footage of marine sergeant Norman Hatch, the ranking combat cameraman on Tarawa.

In all, Hatch and his crew of motion picture cameramen shoot 37,000 feet of film,

vivid, moving images of the invasion, the combat, and the carnage.

World news today, brought to you by "Continental...

Within the past hour, our army and navy announced new

air blows against the Japs in the north and south...

But the base will be of no use, unless we can get the supplies to it...

In the months following the Tarawa battle,

final casualty reports of almost 1,000 Marines killed and more than 2,000 wounded,

prompt Americans to ask why so many had to die invading

such a tiny atoll when it could have been bombed into oblivion.

The implications of all this are enormous.

At the same time, the Marines edit the footage shot by Norman Hatch and his team,

turning it into a documentary film.

But the pictures are far too graphic to meet the

standards set by Hollywood producers and distributors.

Only president Roosevelt can grant permission for its release.

To help him make a decision, the President seeks counsel from the only man

who was there that he personally knows and trusts, Robert Sherrod.

I tell the President the truth.

Our soldiers on the front want people back home to know

that they don't knock the hell out of them every day of every battle.

They want people to understand that war is a horrible, nasty business.

And to say otherwise is to do a disservice to those who died.

These are the men of the 2nd Marine division.

At Sherrod's prompting, Roosevelt agrees to release the film uncensored.

Suddenly we're met by heavy machine gun and mortar fire.

Takes a heavy toll of our boats and men.

It doesn't stop us.

"With the Marines at Tarawa" wins the Academy

Award for best documentary short subject in 1945.

The film also boosts the sales of war bonds and galvanizes

the public support for the American war effort.

I have a suspicion that when this war does end,

we shall not be in a very celebrating mood, a very celebrating frame of mind.

I think that our main emotion will be one of grim determination

that this shall not happen again.