Combat Report

MARINES

Since June 1942, when the Marine Corps broke with 167-year tradition, and began recruiting Negroes, the marines, white and black, have carried on with none of the public race troubles that beset the vastly larger U.S. Army (TIME, July 10). Said one white Marine officer of this phenomenon: "We take only the cream of the crop, and they are all so damn proud to be marines."

The Corps still has no Negro officers. But it has 16,000 strapping Negro enlisted men. Some of them have become hard-boiled drill instructors in the classic mold and some have reached the top enlisted grade--sergeant major.

Most Negro marines are in service companies, but all marines are combat-minded. Last week, as a footnote to the invasion of Saipan, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod wrote about the first to see action:

"Negro marines, under fire for the first time, have rated a universal 4.0* on Saipan. Some landed with the assault waves. All in the four service companies have been under fire at one time or another during the battle. Some have been wounded, several of them have been killed in action.

Cool in Combat. "Primarily they were used as ammunition carriers and beachhead unloading parties, but on Saipan some were used for combat. When Japs counterattacked the 4th Marine Division near Charan Kanoa, twelve Negroes were thrown into the defense line. Their white officers said they accounted for about 15 Japs.

"One Negro jumped into a foxhole already occupied by a wounded white marine, who handed him a grenade. 'I don't know how to use this thing,' said the Negro. The wounded man showed him how. The Negro--named Jankins--threw the grenade, knocked out three Japs manning a machine gun.

"Said Lieut. Joe Grimes, a white Texan: 'I watched those Negro boys carefully. They were under intense mortar and artillery fire as well as rifle and machine-gun fire. They all kept on advancing until the counterattack was stopped.'

Normal Duties. "But Negro marines were at their best while performing their normal duties. Credited with being the workingest men on Saipan, they performed prodigious feats of labor both while under fire and after beachheads were well secured. Some unloaded boats for three days, with little or no sleep, working in water up to waist deep. Some in floating dump details were the first men to pile off their ship toward the beach.

"On an open transport, where a detachment of Negroes was left to load small boats, they volunteered to unload and tend the wounded who were brought back to the transport. They handled stretchers, washed the wounded and even wrote letters for them."

* Annapolis mark of perfection.

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