The First Armored Amphibian Battalion was activated at Camp Pendleton, California, on August 20, 1943, less than four months before we were to ship out overseas. Some of the men were recruited right out of boot camp, a few from overseas duty in Shanghai, "Gitmo," or Guadalcanal, but most came from training centers or schools, for tanks, ordnance, radio, motor transport, leadership, and other specialties. None of us had any idea what armored amphibians might be. They turned out to be amphibious tanks, also called amtanks, or LVTAs (for Landing Vehicles, Tracked, Armored). The battalion commander was Major Louis Metzger, just 26 years old then, but already a veteran of overseas duty and land tank and artillery schools. We were all young in those days; any man in his thirties was apt to be called "Pop."
The Table of Organization for the battalion called for 830 to 850 men but, with turnover, more than 1100 men served at one time or another with us. The battalion consisted of four line companies—A, B, C, D— and an H&S Company. Each line company had 18 amtanks, H&S 3, making a battalion total of 75. We were a unit of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, and as FMF troops were assigned to a different Marine Corps division for each landing operation. The First Armored was a part of Nimitz's drive across the Central Pacific toward Japan.
We trained intensively in the last months of 1943, practicing both land and water operations— driving, firing, landing on beaches, boarding LSTs from the sea, and debarking from them. There was no doctrine for amtanks. We had to learn on our own, for we were the first battalion of our kind (the Marine Corps actually had only three amtank battalions in the entire war), and neither the Marine Corps nor the Navy knew just how to use this new weapon, the amtank. Major Metzger worked hard in the short time available to prepare us and our untried vehicle for combat.
On January 1, 1944, we loaded on LSTs in San Diego and did practice landings on San Clemente, an island off the coast of California. These maneuvers were a disaster. The weather turned bad, the seas were rough, and the LST skippers didn’t know what to do with our strange vehicles. Several tanks sank, and one man, Sgt. Strothers, was lost at sea when his tank went down.
After repairs and replacements, we sailed on January 6 for our first combat, the invasion of Roi and Namur, two islands of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls. That operation began on January 31 and was soon over. For two days of landings we led troops of the Fourth Marine Division as planned. On the first day, however, the surf was fearsome. Several of our 16-ton tanks were flipped right over, and we lost more men to drowning than to enemy action. Kwajalein was considered a light operation, and casualties were light.
The battalion and its surviving amtanks boarded LSDs and were taken by way of Funafuti to Guadalcanal. There we hacked out a camp in the jungle at Tetere Beach and spent four months training for our next operation.
On May 31, 1944, we embarked for the invasion of Guam in the Marianas. For Guam we were operating with the 3d Marine Division and the 1st Marine Provisional Brigade. The plan for the Marianas was to take both Guam and Saipan, first Saipan, then Guam. The Saipan landing was on June 15, with the Guam force, including us, acting as floating reserves for the Saipan invasion. The assault on Guam was to come three days later, on June 18.
But the Japanese Imperial Navy broke up that schedule. They sailed out of the Philippines to challenge the invasion, and ran head on into disaster for themselves.. In the Philippine Sea, Adm. Marc Mitscher's carrier planes shot down 243 Jap planes. That was the famous "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." But our schedule to hit Guam on June 18 was disrupted. The Japanese naval challenge and stiff resistance on Saipan kept us on tap as reserves for another two weeks. Our convoys had been hit twice, with minimal damage, by Jap torpedo bombers. But the real problem was that, after many weeks at sea, the LSTs, which had not been designed as troop transports, were running low on fuel, food, and water. The Guam force was ordered to Eniwetok for restaging, and then back to Guam for the invasion there on July 21, over seven weeks after our Guadalcanal departure.
Following the battle plan, two separate simultaneous assaults were made, one on the beaches near the village of Asan by the Third Marine Division, the other near the village of Agat by the First Provisional Marine Brigade. Amtanks from our C and D Companies, plus three amtanks from our H&S Company, led the attack on the Asan beaches. Amtanks from our A and B companies led the attack on the Agat beaches.
In terms of casualties and tanks lost, those landings on Guam were our most costly in the whole war. Jap 75mm guns positioned on high ground could fire down directly on both the amtanks and the troop-laden amtracs as they crossed the reef. It was like shooting ducks on a pond. The reef was soon littered with burning vehicles and dead Marines.
After the main assault, we made a few follow-up landings, some of them bloody. But mostly we did beach defense against counterattack from the sea, and even there on the beach we lost men and tanks from mortar and artillery fire. The Guam operation was over in three weeks. On August 12, with half the battalion afflicted with dengue, we boarded LSTs for our return to Guadalcanal.
Our second stay on Guadalcanal lasted about five months, in which time we received a new amtank model. The LVTA-4 replaced the old LVTA-1. It had a 75mm howitzer mounted in an open turret instead of the 37mm cannon. This not only gave us more fire power, but made possible a new mission. Beach assault would remain our primary mission, but we would also be able to operate as artillery.
After large-scale naval and troop maneuvers in Guadalcanal waters, we left Guadalcanal for the last time on March 12, 1945, bound for Okinawa. For this invasion we were operating with the Sixth Marine Division. The Okinawa assault was on April 1, 1945, and that happened to be both Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day. Happily for us, Japanese General Ushijima played an April Fool's trick. Contrary to previous Japanese strategy, he elected not to defend the beaches to the death—as we had expected—but to concentrate his forces in strong defensive positions in the southern part of the island. Our landings were unopposed.
The First Armored engaged primarily in artillery and beach defense, and by all accounts we were very effective. At first we were in the northern parts of the island supporting the Sixth Division as artillery, but also by firing into caves on Motobu Peninsula and helping take small offshore islands.
After the 6th Marine Division had secured northern Okinawa, the Division, and we with them, transferred south, where the Japanese were staging their main defense. We worked as artillery by day, beach defense by night, and sometime led minor landings in support of the push southward. It just happened that 75mm ammunition was in more plentiful supply on the island than the heavier stuff. So we never ran out of ammo. We moved often, digging new foxholes, under fire much of the time, and living in rain and mud. Okinawa lasted three months, for us from April 1, 1945 to July 4.
After Okinawa we were transported to Saipan, our second and last rear area, much different from Guadalcanal. We were there in August, training for the invasion of Japan, when the atom bomb ended the war. High-point men began to leave very soon after, but most of us returned by troop transport in November. The First Armored Amphibian Battalion was deactivated at Camp Pendleton, California, on 30 November 1945. After 27 months and 12 days of very active service, the battalion ceased to exist.
After more than two decades, First Armored Marines began to gather annually for reunions, each year in a different U.S. city. In 1992 they decided to support the publication of a battalion history. The result, in 1996, was the book, Hitting the Beaches, a 446-page anthology of personal reminiscences of the men of the First Armored. Our story can be found there in the men's own words.
--Dale Barker