Running In to the Beach

The tracked landing vehicle — the amtrac — was built to cross the one thing a Higgins boat could not: a coral reef. At Tarawa on November 20, 1943, the reef stopped the boats several hundred yards short and Marines waded in under fire. The amtracs got through.

Every island assault after that went in behind them. Marines rode low behind the armored sides, twenty or more to a vehicle, while the naval bombardment lifted off the beach ahead. In the water an amtrac made about seven knots, and there was nothing to do but sit.

The scene is a representative one, repeated at Saipan, Peleliu and Iwo Jima: tractors running in toward a palm line already burning from the bombardment, heads down. Once the tracks touched sand the vehicle kept going, straight up the beach.

A column of amtracs cuts diagonally through the picture from lower left toward a low island under a sky that is two thirds smoke. The nearest vehicle is close enough to see the tread and the spray it throws; the helmets inside are a row of dull domes, faces hidden. Light comes from the left, low and yellow, and catches the wake. The island is a thin green line with black smoke rising from it. Nothing in the composition offers shelter.