The second desperate day on Tarawa

21st November 1943: An account of the heroic fight to secure the beachhead - as yet more assault waves are forced to come in under fire

This was the scene on Betio Island after the 2nd Marine Division forced back the Japanese in November 1943. Dead bodies and wrecked amphibious tractors litter the battlefield.

Against the withering fire of the numerous Japanese machine guns in pillboxes, bunkers, and dugouts on Tarawa, US Marines climb over the coconut-log barricade to attack from their beachhead in November 1943.

On Tarawa the assault by the US Marines still lay in the balance. Journalist Robert Sherrod had arrived on the island the first day, in the fifth wave. It had been expected that the beaches would have been secured by then and that it would be relatively safe. Instead he had found himself wading ashore under fire like every other Marine.

By the end of the first day the beach had still not been secured - and he spent the night on the beach in a slit trench next to four dead Japanese.

… at least two hundred bodies which do not move at all on the dry flats, or in the shallow water partially covering them. This is worse, far worse than it was yesterday.

Bodies sprawled on the beach of Tarawa Atoll testify to the ferocity of the battle for this stretch of sand .