Burial in the Aleutians

On Attu the fighting was over except for the last cleanup, and U.S. fighting men were getting soldiers' burial. TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod (one of nine correspondents officially commended for their behavior under fire), wrote the following description of the grim epilogue to one of the hardest battles U.S. soldiers ever fought.

All night long the caterpillar tractors have towed their trailers over the valleys and plateaus between Attu's high peaks. Today 125 of our dead are lined up for burial in the Little Falls Cemetery (named for a nearby waterfall) near Massacre Bay -- one of our two graveyards on Attu.

Mostly they are those who died in the Jap's mad fanatical rush of Saturday and Sunday. Many are horribly mangled by bayonets and rifle butts. Many were obviously shot and killed, then stabbed time after time by the strange little yellow men who then proceeded to die, as violently as possible, sometimes by their own hands.

More dead will be brought to the cemetery; it will take several days to collect all the Americans who died on the precipitous slopes of this grey little island. Fortunately, the 40DEG weather does not require that we bury the dead immediately. After we have finished burying our own dead, we shall collect the 800 or more enemy bodies still lying around and bury them too.

([Later]: More than 1,000 Jap bodies have been buried in one day, mostly by the troops who had slain them. Men who had killed Japs calmly and efficiently, who had picked up their own dead with tight-lipped calm, vomited as they collected the bodies of the enemy.)

Last Post. No nation handles its casual ties as carefully as we do. The 125 who lie in rows at the edge of the crude cemetery were examined meticulously. A medical officer (Captain Louvera B. Schmidt of Salem, Ore.) recorded the cause of death and the number and type of wounds as each body was unclothed. Members of the graves registration company cut open each pocket and placed the personal effects of the dead in clean wool socks for dispatch to the quartermaster depot at Kansas City. One identification tag has been left on each body, the other nailed to the cross which will be placed above the grave until a larger metal plate can be stamped. The graves are laid out in perfect geometrical pattern; they have been charted so that no mistake can be made in locating any body.

Three sets of fingerprints were made from the hands of each dead man. One set stays with the man's military unit, two will be sent to the Adjutant General in Washington. (If a soldier's "dog tags" are missing and his personal effects carry no absolute identification, his body is not buried until some men from his unit have made positive identification.)

After fingerprinting, the bodies were carried through the identification tent and wrapped in khaki blankets tied at three places: around the neck, the waist and the feet.

The graves are being dug now by bulldozers--there is no time nor labor available to dig them with shovels. The bulldozers plow back & forth until a space seven feet deep has been scooped out, which is long enough to place eight bodies 18 inches apart. Then into the collective grave small one-foot deep individual graves are scooped out by shovel. Thus, each man lies with seven of his comrades.

It is legend on Attu by now that the Chaplains have been as splendid under fire as any combat soldiers. Burying the dead is only a small part of the Chaplain's work, but nothing concerns them more than that each dead soldier shall have religious services before his cross is raised.

Last Psalm. Three Chaplains are standing over eight khaki-blanketed bodies. The bulldozers stop digging and their drivers uncover as the services begin. But the dozens of tractors on the muddy roads and beaches a few hundred yards away continue their clanking and chuffing.

The Chaplains begin to sing, the first verse, then the third verse of Rock of Ages, The ranking Chaplain (of 13) on Attu, Lieut. Colonel Reuben E. Curtis, a Mormon from Salt Lake City, opens his khaki Bible and reads "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. . . ." He prays: "O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, before whom we all are to appear after this short life to render an account of our works, lift our hearts, we pray Thee." Then he murmurs "I am the resurrection and the life," etc., followed by the plea for mercy.

The graveside is dedicated by extemporaneous prayer. Lieut. Francis W. Read, an Episcopalian from Glendale, Calif., and Lieut. Clarence J. Merriman, a heroic Baptist of Shawnee, Okla., who has been under fire as much as any soldier, alternate in reading the committal service.

Close by, two buglers play taps. The Chaplains put on their caps and the graveyard bulldozer huff-puffs again, pushing mounds of cold Attu earth over the khaki-clad bodies of eight U.S. soldiers.

At the graveyard, not all expressions were of grief and hope of eternity. There was also smoldering anger. Said one young lieutenant from Mississippi, as he saw the still line-up at the cemetery's edge: "I wonder if those sons of bitches holding up war production back home wouldn't change their minds if they could look at this."

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