Colonel Shoup, making the most of faulty communications and imperfect knowledge of his scattered forces, ordered each landing team commander to attack: Kyle and Jordan to seize the south coast, Crowe and Ruud to reduce Japanese strongholds to their left and front, Ryan to seize all of Green Beach. Shoup’s predawn request to General Smith, relayed through Major Tompkins and General Hermle, specified the landing of Hays’ LT 1/8 on Red Beach Two “_close to the pier_.” That key component of Shoup’s request did not survive the tenuous communications route to Smith. The commanding general simply ordered Colonel Hall and Major Hays to land on Red Two at 0615. Hall and Hays, oblivious of the situation ashore, assumed 1/8 would be making a covered landing. [Illustration: U.S. Navy Combat Art Collection _“The Wave Breaks on the Beach,” a sketch by Kerr Eby. The scene represents the unwelcome greeting received by LT 1/8 off Red Beach Two on the morning of D+1._] The Marines of LT 1/8 had spent the past 18 hours embarked in LCVPs. During one of the endless circles that night, Chaplain W. Wyeth Willard passed Colonel Hall’s boat and yelled, “What are they saving us for, the Junior Prom?” The troops cheered when the boats finally turned for the beach. Things quickly went awry. The dodging tides again failed to provide sufficient water for the boats to cross the reef. Hays’ men, surprised at the obstacle, began the 500-yard trek to shore, many of them dangerously far to the right flank, fully within the beaten zone of the multiple guns firing from the re-entrant strongpoint. “It was the worst possible place they could have picked,” said “Red Mike” Edson. Japanese gunners opened an unrelenting fire. Enfilade fire came from snipers who had infiltrated to the disabled LVTs offshore during the night. At least one machine gun opened up on the wading troops from the beached inter-island schooner _Niminoa_ at the reef’s edge. Hays’ men began to fall at every hand. The Marines on the beach did everything they could to stop the slaughter. Shoup called for naval gunfire support. Two of Lieutenant Colonel Rixey’s 75mm pack howitzers (protected by a sand berm erected during the night by a Seabee bulldozer) began firing at the blockhouses at the Red 1/Red 2 border, 125 yards away, with delayed fuses and high explosive shells. A flight of F4F Wildcats attacked the hulk of the _Niminoa_ with bombs and machine guns. These measures helped, but for the large part the Japanese caught Hays’ lead waves in a withering crossfire. [Illustration: _Readily disassembled and reassembled, the 75mm pack howitzers of 1st Battalion, 10th Marines, were ideal for Tarawa’s restrictive hydrography. The battalion manhandled its guns ashore under heavy fire late on D-Day. Thereafter, these Marines provided outstanding fire support at exceptionally short ranges to the infantry._ LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection ]