However, Zhang Chi knew that the battle on Makin Island was not as simple as MacArthur imagined, so Zhang Chi said to MacArthur: "General, as far as I know, Makin Island is still in the hands of the Japanese army. It is not too late to be happy when your army completely occupy Makin Island!"

MacArthur spread his hands and replied in a pretentious manner: "You are right, let's wait and see! And I believe we don't need to wait too long to know the answer!"

"This is the situation!" At this time, Halsey was no longer available to have any quarrels. He pointed to the map of Tarawa and said: "It was mainly a matter of water depth. Our landing craft was stranded, which caused a large number of casualties and equipment loss. At this time, more than 3,000 soldiers from the 2nd Land War Regiment were trapped on the island..."

"I have already understood the situation of Dale!" Zhang Chi replied.

"Oh..." Only then did Halsey react: "I forgot that you also have an army involved in this attack! I think they have lost contact with you too!"

"Yes!" Zhang Chi nodded.

Halsey smiled bitterly: "So, we know nothing about the situation of the island-based troops! We can only guess that they are in a state of lack of equipment, especially drinking water."

After pausing, Halsey sighed and said, "The last information we received was from the Kingfisher reconnaissance plane. The pilot saw our troops jumping out of the landing craft and charging towards the shore. The original words were: 'The people in the water are too small, I can't see clearly. They waded slowly towards the shore with rifles on their heads, and in front of them were bullets and shells fired from the enemy's direction. God, I want to cry! We should do something to get them out of this hell!"

Zhang Chi couldn't help but feel silent.

War is so cruel. The commander's decision-making mistakes often require soldiers to make up for with their lives.

At this time, a correspondent hurried into the conference room and reported: "General, we are in touch with the landing force!"

"Turn the communication!" Halsey ordered immediately.

It turned out that it was Colonel Xiaopu, the commander of the 2nd Land War Regiment. He sent his subordinates to look for radio stations that could contact the command center. After losing dozens of people, he was lucky enough to find a useful radio station on a destroyed landing car.

The first thing Zhang Chi and others heard was a noisy sound of gunfire, which also shows how intense the battle on Bito Island was.

Then I heard Colonel Shopp's report: "General, the situation is very serious. We are short of water and ammunition... Damn, we lack anything. Our casualties may exceed 50%, and it is still increasing. I cannot assemble my own troops, and I even doubt whether we can withstand any attack from the Japanese..."

Listening to Colonel Shopp's report, Halsey and others couldn't help but look at each other. The situation seemed to be much worse than they thought.

"What do you think?" Halsey asked Zhang Chi.

"First of all, I think we should first figure out the law of 'avoiding' tides!" Zhang Chi said: "For example, when does it ebb and when does it ebb!"

Halsey didn't think much about it and quickly asked the intelligence forces to investigate.

This is not difficult to do, you just need to contact Major Haaland, so you will soon get the tide situation... "Avoid" it is when the tide is high at dusk and the tide is low in the early morning.

In other words, the US military happened to launch an attack when the tide was in low.

"That means..." Halsey frowned and said, "If we attack at high tide, we will lose the cover of fighter jets and naval guns!"

This may be a characteristic of US military operations. Without the cover of fighter jets and artillery, they would not have fought.

There are more serious situations in some troops.

Immediately afterwards, a communication soldier ran in and reported to MacArthur: "General, Colonel Hall has died!"

"What?" Hearing this, MacArthur couldn't help but jumped up from the chair like a spring, and asked in surprise: "How did this happen?"

Colonel Hall was the commander of the 165th Regiment of the 27th Division of the United States and the supreme commander in charge of the battle in Makin Island, but he was shot dead by the enemy shortly after the war began.

"The troops' attack on Makin Island was blocked!" The correspondent replied: "The tank troops were unwilling to advance, and Colonel Hall was shot dead by Japanese snipers when he ordered them!"

It turned out that the troops of the 27th Division of the US were accustomed to advancing under the cover of artillery fire. Once they encountered Japanese attacks, sometimes they were even just a few Japanese snipers, and they stopped moving forward.

All they did was wait for the artillery fire to eliminate the blocking Japanese troops before advancing.

The Japanese army built a large number of machine gun fire points and permanent launch points on Makin Island, and the US military's advancement was stubbornly resisted. Due to the low accuracy of the fire of the naval gun, it was impossible to effectively destroy the Japanese underground bunkers. The only way was to use tanks.

But the tankers were unwilling to do anything in this situation... The infantry seemed to have just followed the tank and did nothing, just waiting for the tank artillery and machine gun to level the road ahead, and then the infantry followed the tank to receive the position. Isn't this completely putting the tank under the Japanese artillery?!

So the tank was willing to accept such command, so Colonel Hall had to go and discuss with the tank soldiers himself, but was killed by Japanese snipers. This was also the highest rank of officers killed by the US military in ground combat.

In fact, to be more precise, the US 27th Division is that MacArthur should not be proud of the achievements made in this battle, but should be ashamed of it.

The reason was that the Japanese army had very weak defenses on Majin Island. After the war, they found that there were about 690 defenders on the island, including 340 engineer troops, 110 aviation ground crew members, and only 240 combat troops.

Apart from a large number of warships, the US military escorted aircraft carriers, and there were two regiments of 6,400 people on the ground troops that were put into combat on the front line.

This should have been taken down Makin Island in just a few seconds like the wind swept the broken clouds, but the 27th Division of the US was unable to move on Makin Island... More than 6,000 people and more than 6,000 people with a large number of tanks and artillery were blocked and moved tightly by more than 600 Japanese soldiers, mainly non-combatants, on the flat terrain. This is a strange story in the world.

MacArthur looked at Zhang Chi with some embarrassment, then lowered his voice and ordered: "Order the commander of the 105th Regiment to command the troops and take down Makin Island in the shortest time!"

"Yes!" the correspondent responded.
Chapter completed!