Amidst all of this, a Marine demolition team threw a satchel charge of high explosive into a Japanese bunker which turned out to be crammed with torpedo warheads. An enormous blast occurred. From off shore, an officer watched as “the whole of Namur Island disappeared from sight in a tremendous brown cloud of dust and sand raised by the explosion.” Overhead, a Marine artillery spotter felt his plane catapult up 1,000 feet and exclaimed, “Great God Almighty! The whole damn island has blown up!” On the beach another officer recalled that “trunks of palm trees and chunks of concrete as large as packing crates were flying through the air like match sticks.... The hole left where the blockhouse stood was as large as a fair-sized swimming pool.” The column of smoke rose to over 1,000 feet in the air, and the explosion caused the deaths of 20 Marines and wounded 100 others in the area. [Illustration: ROI-NAMUR ISLANDS PREPARED BY HISTORICAL DIVISION U. S. MARINE CORPS] Finally, at 1930, Colonel Franklin A. Hart, commander of the 24th Marines ordered his men to dig in for the night. The troops had come across a good portion of the island. Now they would hold the ground gained and get ready for the morrow. One rifleman, Robert F. Graf, later wrote about that time: Throughout the night the fleet sent flares skyward, lighting the islands as the flares drifted with the prevailing wind. Ghostly flickering light was cast from the flares as they drifted along on their parachutes. Laying in our foxhole, my buddy and I were watching, waiting, and straining our ears trying to filter out the known sounds. Our foxhole in that sand was about six feet long by two feet in depth and just about wide enough to hold the two of us. Since I had eaten only my “D” ration since leaving the ship, I was hungry. “D” rations were bitter-sweet chocolate bars about an inch and a half square and were supposed to be full of energy. I removed a “K” ration from my pack and opened it. “K” rations came in a box about the size of a Cracker Jack box and had a waterproof coating. These rations contained a small tin of powdered coffee or lemonade, some round hard candies, a package of three cigarettes, and a tin about the size of a tuna-fish can containing either cheese, hash, or eggs with a little bacon. We dined on our rations, drank water from our canteens, and prepared to settle in for the night.... After finishing chow we elected to take two-hour watches, one on guard while the other slept. Also we made sure we knew where our buddies’ foxholes were, both on the left and right of us. Thus we were set up so that anyone to our front would be an enemy. Our first night in combat had started. [Illustration: Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 70694 _Landing Vehicles, Tracked (LVTs) equipped with rocket launchers new to the 4th Marine Division, churn towards the assault beaches of Roi-Namur on D-Plus One._]