Peleliu Medical Group

1st Medical Battalion (- Companies A-C; - detachment, Company D)

Charles C. Byrd, E Company, 1st Medical Battalion

"After a few days of the terrible killings on both sides, E. Med. put up a field hospital just below Bloody Nose Ridge. We would get the wounded just off the front lines, patch them and send them onto the hospital ship. There was so much coral we could hardly get a hole in ground to bury the penicillin and pour water on it.

There was a road that passed the blockhouse and hit the road from the airport. That was a pick up point for the wounded, before we put up our tent hospital. Later on they put MPs there to stop souvenir hunters, but they would slip around the guards and get up in the cave area and get killed or wounded. We took turns being litter bearers and then [the Japanese] would get some more shots in. I dreaded it. One day we got two [souvenir hunters] that was shot up real bad and we fixed them up. I heard one of them tell the other one he was sorry he talked him in to going. The other reached his hand down for a shake and said he wouldn't have missed it for nothing."