In the aftermath of the battle, the marines quickly learned that the enemy owed no allegiance to the norms of “civilized war.” Wounded Japanese soldiers would call for medical attention and then shoot the corpsmen who came in response. Others would pretend to lie dead, clutching a grenade, hoping to take a marine with them to the afterlife. “I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting,” Vandegrift wrote the commandant of the Marine Corps. “These people refuse to surrender. The wounded will wait until the men come up to examine them and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces
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