No assault units found it easy going to move inland, but the 25th Marines almost immediately ran into a buzz-saw trying to move across Blue Beach. General Cates had been right in his appraisal. “That right flank was a bitch if there ever was one,” he would later say. Lieutenant Colonel Hollis W. Mustain’s 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, managed to scratch forward 300 yards under heavy fire in the first half hour, but Lieutenant Colonel Chambers’ 3d Battalion, 25th Marines, took the heaviest beating of the day on the extreme right trying to scale the cliffs leading to the Rock Quarry. Chambers landed 15 minutes after H-hour. “Crossing that second terrace,” he recalled, “the fire from automatic weapons was coming from all over. You could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by. I knew immediately we were in for one hell of a time.” [Illustration: Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 110128 _Tracked landing vehicles (LVTs), jam-packed with 4th Marine Division troops, approach the Line of Departure at H-hour on D-day. In the center rear can be seen the control vessels which attempted to maintain order in the landing._] This was simply the beginning. While the assault forces tried to overcome the infantry weapons of the local defenders, they were naturally blind to an almost imperceptible stirring taking place among the rocks and crevices of the interior highlands. With grim anticipation, General Kuribayashi’s gunners began unmasking the big guns--the heavy artillery, giant mortars, rockets, and anti-tank weapons held under tightest discipline for this precise moment. Kuribayashi had patiently waited until the beaches were clogged with troops and material. Gun crews knew the range and deflection to each landing beach by heart; all weapons had been preregistered on these targets long ago. At Kuribayashi’s signal, these hundreds of weapons began to open fire. It was shortly after 1000. [Illustration: _H-hour at Iwo Jima, 19 February 1945._ Department of Defense Photo (USN) NH65311 ] The ensuing bombardment was as deadly and terrifying as any of the Marines had ever experienced. There was hardly any cover. Japanese artillery and mortar rounds blanketed every corner of the 3,000-yard-wide beach. Large-caliber coast defense guns and dual-purpose antiaircraft guns firing horizontally added a deadly scissors of direct fire from the high ground on both flanks. Marines stumbling over the terraces to escape the rain of projectiles encountered the same disciplined machine-gun fire and mine fields which had slowed the initial advance. Casualties mounted appallingly. [Illustration: Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 110109 _Marines of the 4th Division pour ashore from their landing craft on Yellow and Blue Beaches on D-day. Enemy fire had not hit this assault wave yet as it landed._]