The Battle of Iwo Jima is often recounted in terms of the spectacular ship-to-shore assault, the dramatic flag raising, or the vicious cave warfare. But for many of the quarter-million U.S. troops, the battle was remote; reality the task at hand. For the crews of the amphibious ships, reality meant delivering their “main battery,” the 1,000 or so Marines and their combat cargo, at the right place and time.—then recovering and treating a disheartening flow of casualties.
Two crew members of the Mellette (APA-156)—a 24-year-old lieutenant and a 19-year-old signalman— recorded their impressions of these momentous days. Their accounts, untouched for 50 years, were donated to the Marine Corps Historical Center by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph McNamara, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.
David H. Susskind was the lieutenant, whom the world would later know as producer of such movies as “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” and “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” and as one of the first television talk show hosts. Peter Van Metre was the first class signalman, assigned to the ship’s radio shack. “War can be so utterly real that it isn’t real at all,” he observed during the battle.
Iwo Jima, wrote Susskind, “was not all flaming spectacle and harrowing death. For this ship and this crew—for me—it was the end of one world and the beginning of the other. ... We were ‘young-in-war,’ and everything ahead would be the first for most of us.”
The attack transport Mellette embarked an unspecified battalion of the 4th Marine Division, probably one of the landing teams of the 24th Marines. Susskind immediately noted the inherent difficulties ships have faced since antiquity in loading large bodies of sea soldiers prior to an invasion: “It is not an easy thing for over a thousand men to come aboard ship and synchronize immediately with the crew and ship routine. . . . There was just so much space, and we all had to share in it.” Rehearsals grew tedious: “. . . boats in the water, Marines in the boats, cargo unloaded; then boats, Marines and cargo brought back aboard. Marines and crew had their fill of this game.”
As the task force neared Iwo Jima, Susskind was impressed with the professional zeal of the senior Marines: “When the history of the leathernecks in the Pacific is written, I hope it will do more than make them the magnificent physical heroes they are. It should give equal stress to the thoroughness of preparation, the sustained effort that is made to give every man the maximum information on the mission.”
Most amphibious ships served their embarked troops a special dinner the night before the landing, and the Mellette was no exception. Wrote Susskind: “We had a Thanksgiving dinner that would have done credit to the best New England tradition—turkey, cranberry sauce, nuts, ice cream, and candy.” Van Metre, however, saw a darker side. To him, it was “too much like fattening for the kill, or the last supper of the doomed.”
The amphibious task force arrived just as the final bombardment commenced. “I can’t see a thing,” said Van Metre, “but we are there all right. The thunder of the big guns has a ring of reality.” Susskind studied the island fortress through binoculars. “The ground was pock-marked with rocks, tough going for men and mobile equipment, and the beach so small it was almost invisible. Approaching the island from the sea it appears to be no more than a great rock, a freak land formation, too small and ragged to be of any value.” Van Metre marveled at “the vast sprawl of transports spreading for miles around, interspersed with fighting ships firing round after round into the hapless beach.” As the ship drew closer to the island, Susskind observed: “Only a geologist could look at it and not be repelled.”
One Marine officer told Susskind: “You won’t understand this thing until you’ve seen your first casualties.” The Mellette did not have long to wait. The same boats that delivered “their” battalion to the beach came back laden with the battle’s first wounded. To Susskind, soon “it seemed that all the wounded in the world must be here at I wo Jima. . . . men with shattered limbs, arms and bodies lay everywhere.” Van Metre watched as “boatloads of casualties kept coming. . . . they were placed on the tables of the once exclusive ward room, which now smells of blood and sanitation—a terrifying combination. . . . they say the beach is full of dead.” A Marine afflicted with combat fatigue remained in Van Metre’s memory. He was a shivering man who “stared ahead like a rabbit caught in headlights.”
Susskind felt uplifted by the positive spirit of the wounded Marines: “Here was heroism in its essence, selfless, stoical, real. These helpless, mangled, silent men were the reason we would win now and always.” Van Metre at least had access to the outside world. Returning to the radio shack, he heard Radio Tokyo proclaim that the landing on Iwo Jima had been repulsed. A San Francisco newscast announced that Marines had seized the first airfield. Said Van Metre, “A mile away and I hear this news from halfway around the world!”
For both men the battle then blurred into a kaleidoscope of days and nights. The crew worked around the clock to unload its combat cargo; casualties continued to come aboard. “There are no heroics in this job, just labor and fatigue,” wrote Susskind, “but in its own way it was important. It was our contribution to the history being made.” Upon leaving, Van Metre wrote, “Our job is done, and already there is a sense of letdown although there is still very much of a war going on only a couple of miles away.” Unknowingly, the young sailor spoke for the entire amphibious task force. It was time to prepare for the next great landing.
