Throughout the long day Colonel Hall and his regimental staff had languished in their LCVPs adjacent to Hays’ LT 1/8 at the line of departure, “cramped, wet, hungry, tired and a large number ... seasick.” In late afternoon, Smith abruptly ordered Hall to land his remaining units on a new beach on the northeast tip of the island at 1745 and work west towards Shoup’s ragged lines. This was a tremendous risk. Smith’s overriding concern that evening was a Japanese counterattack from the eastern tail of the island against his left flank (Crowe and Ruud). Once he had been given the 6th Marines, Smith admitted he was “willing to sacrifice a battalion landing team” if it meant saving the landing force from being overrun during darkness. [Illustration: LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection _Marines try to drag a wounded comrade to safety and medical treatment on D-Day._] Fortunately, as it turned out, Hall never received this message from Smith. Later in the afternoon, a float plane reported to Smith that a unit was crossing the line of departure and heading for the left flank of Red Beach Two. Smith and Edson assumed it was Hall and Hays going in on the wrong beach. The fog of war: the movement reported was the beginning of Rixey’s artillerymen moving ashore. The 8th Marines spent the night in its boats, waiting for orders. Smith did not discover this fact until early the next morning. [Illustration: _Col Michael P. Ryan, USMC, wears the Navy Cross awarded to him at Tarawa. Ryan, the junior major in the Division, was instrumental in securing the western end of Betio, thereby enabling the first substantial reinforcements to land intact._ Marine Corps Historical Collection ] On Betio, Shoup was pleased to receive at 1415 an unexpected report from Major Ryan that several hundred Marines and a pair of tanks had penetrated 500 yards beyond Red Beach One on the western end of the island. This was by far the most successful progress of the day, and the news was doubly welcome because Shoup, fearing the worst, had assumed Schoettel’s companies and the other strays who had veered in that direction had been wiped out. Shoup, however, was unable to convey the news to Smith. Ryan’s composite troops had indeed been successful on the western end. Learning quickly how best to operate with the medium tanks, the Marines carved out a substantial beachhead, overrunning many Japanese turrets and pillboxes. But aside from the tanks, Ryan’s men had nothing but infantry weapons. Critically, they had no flamethrowers or demolitions. Ryan had learned from earlier experience in the Solomons that “positions reduced only with grenades could come alive again.” By late afternoon, he decided to pull back his thin lines and consolidate. “I was convinced that without flamethrowers or explosives to clean them out we had to pull back ... to a perimeter that could be defended against counterattack by Japanese troops still hidden in the bunkers.”