_Time_ correspondent Robert Sherrod was no stranger to combat, but the landing on D-Day at Betio was one of the most unnerving experiences in his life. Sherrod accompanied Marines from the fourth wave of LT 2/2 attempting to wade ashore on Red Beach Two. In his words: No sooner had we hit the water than the Japanese machine guns really opened up on us.... It was painfully slow, wading in such deep water. And we had seven hundred yards to walk slowly into that machine gun fire, looming into larger targets as we rose onto higher ground. I was scared, as I had never been scared before.... Those who were not hit would always remember how the machine gun bullets hissed into the water, inches to the right, inches to the left. [Illustration: Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 63956 _Maj Henry P. “Jim” Crowe (standing, using radio handset) rallies Landing Team 2/8 behind a disabled LVT on Red Beach Three on D-Day. Carrying a shotgun, he went from foxhole to foxhole urging his troops forward against heavy enemy fire._] Colonel Shoup, moving slowly towards the beach along the pier, ordered Major Ruud’s LT 3/8 to land on Red Beach Three, east of the pier. By this time in the morning there were no organized LVT units left to help transport the reserve battalion ashore. Shoup ordered Ruud to approach as closely as he could by landing boats, then wade the remaining distance. Ruud received his assault orders from Shoup at 1103. For the next six hours the two officers were never more than a mile apart, yet neither could communicate with the other. Ruud divided his landing team into seven waves, but once the boats approached the reef the distinctions blurred. Japanese antiboat guns zeroed in on the landing craft with frightful accuracy, often hitting just as the bow ramp dropped. Survivors reported the distinctive “clang” as a shell impacted, a split second before the explosion. “It happened a dozen times,” recalled Staff Sergeant Hatch, watching from the beach, “the boat blown completely out of the water and smashed and bodies all over the place.” Robert Sherrod reported from a different vantage point, “I watched a Jap shell hit directly on a [landing craft] that was bringing many Marines ashore. The explosion was terrific and parts of the boat flew in all directions.” Some Navy coxswains, seeing the slaughter just ahead, stopped their boats seaward of the reef and ordered the troops off. The Marines, many loaded with radios or wire or extra ammunition, sank immediately in deep water; most drowned. The reward for those troops whose boats made it intact to the reef was hardly less sanguinary: a 600-yard wade through withering crossfire, heavier by far than that endured by the first assault waves at H-Hour. The slaughter among the first wave of Companies K and L was terrible. Seventy percent fell attempting to reach the beach.