DON had a transmission problem when touching ground:
"The tracks were mushed down in pumice, a soft ash which we mistakenly assumed was sand."-Feeling like "plowing through knee deep mud, pulling one leg at a time free from the gripping volcano ash."
Then, increasing shell-fire. Heading "to the right toward a destroyed blockhouse some twenty yards away", he "barrelled in". -Three dead Japs in there.-Sitting on one of them he noticed he had a shirt of his size:
"I thought, why not?"-So he replaced the shirt he left behind.-Enemy fire zeroing.-Their shelter taking direct hits.-Telling Stoney goodbye, he looked outside seeing many tractors being "bogged down and out of commission"-"crawling up a small revetment"-Reaching the top, "sand erupted alongside my head".-"A machine gun had me pinpointed."-He warned a lieutenant who was "struggling up" with his squad "about the gunner".-"...but he wouldn't listen. He and two of his men fell back dead."
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photo 1: showing Don's way to a smashed pillbox-"a shell exploded nearby and a piece of thigh and buttocks landed in the hole."-"I threw it out. Then I left the hole."-almost getting "machine-gunned", he "backed down"-"moved to the left and then over the top terrace and forward"-
photo 2: taken by Bob Campell "about three quarters of an hour after the first wave landed."- "wrecked Jap cargo ship" in the background-his "disabled amtrac partially obscured by the bunker."-"Corporal B. K. Eagan's tractor is behind me near the surf line to the left of the picture."
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AFTER THE BATTLE 84
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