According to the army’s official history of the battle, the land was “utterly without pattern; it was a confusion of little, mesa-like hilltops, deep draws, rounded clay hills, gentle green valleys, bare and ragged coral ridges, lumpy mounds of earth, narrow ravines and sloping finger ridges extending downward from the hill masses.”2 For the Americans, control of the air and superior firepower were valuable advantages, but they were not decisive. The dilemma was similar to what the marines had faced on Iwo Jima, but on a larger scale. The Americans would have to use brute force, advancing
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