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STORY OF HISSiiTDrarhatio Account of Bad 30 Hours Related by Wounded Waterloo Youth.Admittedly “lucky to get hpmc at all,” Marine Pfc. Charles R. Hermann, 26, of Waterloo, yesterday unfolded one of the more dramatic stories of the war here as he described his “30 hours of living hell” in the marines’ heroic attack on Tarawa island in the Pacific.Now home on a 30-day leave to visit his parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Hermann, 8D6 Hammond avenue, the private shunned anyCHARLES R. HERMANN.reference la him as a hero and. .with a smile, let it be known he-*! wanted ho pity for the sacrifice he made.Private Hermann, who gave his left leg as his share of the cost of winning Tarawa, is lucky to be home,” lie says, because there are many others who served in his outfit —two of them from Waterloo—who will never. return,During the 18 months which Hermann spent overseas, his outfit suffered 75 per cent casualties in ,killed, wounded or missing, including five of its six officers in action nn Tulagi in the Solomons, at Guadalcanal and at Ta-Timc Was Precious. i v«In his own words, this is IhejH story of what happened on the. fi morning of Nov. 20, 1943, when;O but a split second meant the difference between the loss of a leg and the loss of his life to Private Herman:We were in the first wave of troops landing on Tarawa and the Japs seemed to hold their fire until our amphibious tractors got in close.The driver of our tractor, which holds about 19 men and operates with a crew of three, drove in against a sea well, about five feet high, and we—those of us who were left — piled out.“We had been under heavy machinegun fire for the last 200 yards of our journey and about one-half of our original number were killed or wounded before we ever reached shore.The Japs were only about 10 . or 15 feet away on the other side of the sea wall, mostly In machinegun nests.Felt Fairly Safe.There were several machine-guns on top of the wall, loo. All we could do was hug the wall and throw grenades.Wc were fairly safe if close to the barrier, but the Japs could still fire at us from the flanks. We were standing in five or six inches of water.I noticed a Jap off to my right and kneeled to fire at him, I don’t know if I got him or not, blit just as I stood up straight again I was struck with four machinegun bullets, three of them entering my left leg near the knee and the fourth breaking the skin on my right leg,“Had I still been kneeling when the blast came, the bullets would have gone through my chest.It was about 10 a. m. Saturday when I was wounded and with three other fellows, two of whom were wounded, I stayed hugging that sea wall until 4 p. m. Sunday when some tanks came down from our beachhead just a little way up the shore and wiped out the machinegun nests.• By 5 p. m. Sunday. I had been evacuated to a ship off shore and was being operated upon.Companion Was Green.“One of the three fellows I was with, Pfc. John Finitzo of Chicago, who suffered a broken hip when struck by machinegun fire, was(Continued on page 17)
Newspaper Details
Waterloo Daily Courier
Waterloo, Iowa, US
Sun, Apr 09, 1944
Page 24
Full Page
Clipped by
Midpointe L.
OH, USA 22 Aug 2023
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