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When 4,000 Japanese Charged His Battalion — He Grabbed 2 Pistols and Refused to Leave
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00:00June 20th, 1944. 0730. Lieutenant Colonel William O'Brien stood behind the front line on Saipan
00:08and watched three American Sherman tanks swing their guns away from the enemy and fire directly
00:14into his own men. 44 years old, 27 years in uniform. He had trained these soldiers since
00:231940. 32,000 Japanese defenders had fortified every cave, ridge, and sugarcane field across
00:31Saipan's 12 miles of jungle and coral. In the first five days of the invasion, they had killed
00:38or wounded thousands of Marines and Army soldiers. The landing beaches alone had cost hundreds of
00:44American lives in the opening hours. The island was devouring men faster than any battle in the
00:50Pacific. The crisis on this morning was simple and lethal. Japanese machine guns and mortars poured
00:58such intense fire that the three tank commanders sealed their turrets shut. With hatches bolted
01:05and periscopes fogged by tropical heat and coral dust, the crews inside lost all sense of direction.
01:11They could not tell American positions from Japanese ones, and they were pumping 75-millimeter high
01:17explosive shells into the infantry they were supposed to protect. O'Brien's men had no way to reach
01:24the tankers inside. No shared radio frequency linked foot soldiers to armor on Saipan. Hand signals were
01:31invisible through buttoned-up periscopes. Shouting was useless over engine noise and machine gun fire. Men who had
01:39survived five days of Japanese bullets were being torn apart by their own tanks.
01:45The 105th Infantry was a National Guard regiment from upstate New York. Factory workers, store clerks,
01:53and farmers from Troy, Cohoes, and Albany, who had been federalized in 1940 and shipped to the Pacific.
02:00Their first taste of combat came on Macon Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. That fight lasted four days.
02:08Saipan would last 25. And it would cost the regiment more men than anyone had imagined.
02:16O'Brien had risen from private to battalion commander inside the 105th. Enlisted at 18 in 1917. Sergeant by the
02:24end of the First World War.
02:26Commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1926. Lieutenant Colonel by April 1943. Commanding the same unit he had
02:34joined as a teenager, 26 years earlier. Saipan was the most heavily fortified island American forces had yet
02:41assaulted in the Pacific. Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito commanded the garrison, 26,000 Imperial Army troops and
02:496,000 naval personnel. Two years of preparation had produced concrete bunkers with interlocking fields of fire,
02:57artillery concealed inside natural caves that naval bombardment could not penetrate, and mortar coordinates
03:03zeroed on every open approach. Saito's orders from Tokyo left no room for interpretation.
03:10Hold the island. Kill every American. Die before surrendering.
03:17The Marines had hit the western beaches on June 15. The 27th Division landed the following day.
03:23By June 20, the pattern of this battle was set. Japanese soldiers fought from concealed positions.
03:30Caves, spider holes, bunkers carved into coral ridgelines. They let Americans cross open ground,
03:38then ripped into them with crossfire from two and three directions. At night came bayonet charges and
03:44grenades rolled into foxholes. Each dawn revealed fresh American dead in the cane fields and along the
03:52jungle trails. O'Brien's 1st Battalion had taken casualties every day since pushing inland from the
04:00ground. The soldiers picked off men from treetops and cave mouths at distances where the shooter was
04:04invisible. Mortar rounds found positions that appeared safely defilated. The advance was measured
04:11in yards per hour. The cost was measured in men per day. And on this morning, the three tanks sent
04:19forward to break a Japanese strongpoint had turned their blind guns on the Americans behind them.
04:25The turrets were sealed. The crews could see nothing. No one on the ground could make them stop.
04:32What O'Brien did next should not be forgotten.
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04:46Back to O'Brien.
04:48O'Brien drew his Colt .45. He left cover and stepped into the open. Fully exposed to Japanese
04:55machine guns, mortar fragments, and the wild shells from his own blinded tanks. Then he ran. Straight
05:04toward the lead Sherman across open, fire-swept ground. No radio. No signal flares. Just a pistol and the hope
05:13that he could reach that turret and pound on the steel hard enough for someone inside to hear him.
05:18Before a Japanese sniper put a bullet through him first.
05:22O'Brien reached the lead Sherman at a full sprint.
05:26He hammered the turret hatch with the butt of his Colt, pounding the steel until two crewmen cracked it open.
05:32He climbed onto the hull, fully exposed to Japanese machine guns and mortars, and began directing the tank by hand.
05:39He pointed toward the enemy's strongpoint. The turret traversed. The 75mm gun fired. This time, it hit the right target.
05:48He stayed on top of that tank until the Japanese position was destroyed.
05:53Standing upright on the hull with no cover, while mortar fragments sparked off the turret below him.
05:59The strongpoint fell.
06:01O'Brien's men moved forward. The immediate crisis was over.
06:04But Saipan still had 20 more days of killing ahead.
06:09What happened at the tanks told his battalion something they would remember.
06:12Their commander did not lead from a rear command post.
06:16He went to where the fire was worst.
06:18Over the next eight days, the 105th pushed north through terrain the Japanese had turned into a killing ground.
06:26Every ridgeline hid machine gun positions.
06:28Every gully, concealed mortar crews.
06:32Men were killed by fire they never saw coming.
06:36The battalion's casualty reports grew longer each evening.
06:39O'Brien walked the forward positions daily, checking fields of fire and repositioning squads before dark.
06:46He was a former store clerk from Troy, New York.
06:49Not a West Point graduate.
06:51His men expected a battalion commander to stay behind the lines and issue orders through runners.
06:56O'Brien went forward instead.
07:00In a National Guard regiment, sometimes dismissed as weekend soldiers by the regular army,
07:06that earned something no rank could buy.
07:09By June 28th, the advance had stalled at a fortified ridge near the village of Donne.
07:15The Japanese had packed it with machine gun nests covering every approach
07:19and at least one 77mm field gun dug into the reverse slope.
07:25Two attempts to take the ridge by frontal assault had failed.
07:29American soldiers crossing the open ground below were cut down before they reached the base.
07:35The ridge commanded the route north.
07:37Until it fell, the entire battalion was stuck.
07:41O'Brien rejected a third frontal attack.
07:44He planned a double envelopment.
07:46Two combat groups would swing wide around both flanks of the ridge
07:50and strike the Japanese from behind,
07:52while a holding force pinned the defenders from the front.
07:55On paper, a textbook maneuver.
07:58On Saipan, in dense jungle and broken coral against an enemy dug into caves with overlapping fire lanes,
08:05it required coordination that bordered on impossible.
08:09Both flanking groups had to push through thick underbrush without radio contact,
08:14reach their assault positions at the same time, and attack together.
08:17If one element hit too early, the Japanese would mass their fire against it.
08:22If either group got lost, the plan collapsed.
08:26And one critical platoon was already pinned down on the far side of 1,200 yards of sniper-infested terrain.
08:34Someone had to reach that platoon, take command, and lead them into position for the assault.
08:39The 1,200 yards between O'Brien and that platoon had already stopped every runner the battalion sent.
08:46Japanese marksmen controlled the canopy.
08:48They fired from treetops, from behind root systems, from spider holes, invisible until a man stepped over them.
08:57The underbrush was so thick that movement meant noise.
09:01Noise drew bullets.
09:04O'Brien did not send a runner.
09:06He did not call for a patrol.
09:09He would cross the 1,200 yards himself.
09:12Alone.
09:14A lieutenant colonel walking so low through jungle that snipers had turned into a shooting gallery.
09:20But his men were trapped on the far side.
09:23Without that platoon in position, the double envelopment would fail.
09:26Without the envelopment, the ridge would hold.
09:30And every day it held, more Americans died in frontal attacks that everyone knew could not succeed.
09:37At first light on June 28th, O'Brien stepped off the trail and into the underbrush.
09:43No escort.
09:45No covering fire.
09:46Gunshots would have marked his position for every sniper in the canopy.
09:50Just his 45 and 1,200 yards of jungle where the enemy was watching from the trees above.
09:57O'Brien crossed the 1,200 yards in just over an hour.
10:00Moving low through the underbrush.
10:03Stopping when he heard movement above.
10:05Pressing forward when the jungle went silent.
10:08Japanese snipers were in the canopy for most of the crossing.
10:11He reached the far side without being spotted.
10:14The pinned platoon was exactly where he expected.
10:18Caught between the ridge and the jungle.
10:20Taking fire from above.
10:21Unable to advance or pull back without exposing themselves to the machine guns.
10:26O'Brien took command the moment he arrived.
10:29From this angle, behind the Japanese line, he could see what the frontal assaults had missed.
10:35A narrow ravine cut up the back slope of the ridge, hidden from the machine gun positions that covered the
10:41front.
10:42The Japanese had built their defenses to face an enemy coming from the south.
10:46They had not expected anyone to approach from behind.
10:50O'Brien left a group of soldiers in position to keep the Japanese occupied with fire from below.
10:55Then, he picked four men and led them into the ravine.
10:59The five of them climbed in single file.
11:02The walls were steep coral, so narrow that two men could not walk side by side.
11:07The space gave them cover from the guns above, but if the Japanese heard movement and dropped grenades into that
11:13slot, there was nowhere to run.
11:16One grenade would have killed all five.
11:19They reached the top of the ridge.
11:21The Japanese defenders were still firing downhill toward the American holding force.
11:26Their backs were exposed.
11:28O'Brien and his four men hit them from behind.
11:38When it was over, O'Brien's five-man team had captured five heavy machine guns and one 77mm field gun,
11:46the weapons that had stopped an entire battalion for days.
11:50A position that cost dozens of casualties in two failed frontal assaults fell to five men approaching from a direction
11:58the enemy never anticipated.
12:00O'Brien wasted no time.
12:02He organized both platoons into a defensive perimeter on the crest of the ridge before dark.
12:08On Saipan, taking ground was only half the problem.
12:11Holding it through the night was the other half.
12:15The Japanese counterattacked that night, and the next.
12:19Waves of soldiers came up the slopes in the darkness, probing for gaps in the perimeter.
12:24O'Brien directed the defense through both nights, shifting men to meet each thrust, redistributing ammunition as supplies ran low.
12:33The ridge held.
12:36By the morning of June 30th, the position was firmly in American hands.
12:40The men of the 105th started calling it Obie's Ridge.
12:45What O'Brien had done in eight days—the tank, the crossing, the ridge—marked him as the kind of officer that
12:52combat soldiers talk about in whispers.
12:55A man who went forward, when everyone else was looking for cover.
12:59But Saipan was not finished with him.
13:01The worst was still ahead.
13:03By the end of June, American forces had compressed the remaining Japanese defenders into a narrow pocket along the island's
13:10northern coastline.
13:12Weeks of fighting had ground the garrison down to fewer than 4,000 effective troops.
13:17The rest were dead, scattered in caves, or too wounded to fight.
13:21The survivors were starving, ammunition was running short, medical supplies had been exhausted days earlier.
13:29But those 4,000 men were not surrendering.
13:32Japanese military doctrine offered only one option for troops who could no longer retreat and refuse to yield.
13:38A final attack.
13:40All out.
13:41No expectation of survival.
13:44Every man advancing until he was killed, taking as many of the enemy with him as possible.
13:50O'Brien's 1st Battalion received orders in early July to push north along the western coast toward the Tanapag Plain.
13:58The terrain was flat and open, a quarter mile of level ground between the ocean and the inland ridgelines.
14:06It was good defensive ground if the enemy came at them across that open space.
14:10It was a death trap if they came in numbers too large to stop.
14:15On the evening of July 6th, O'Brien's 1,100 men dug in along the Tanapag Plain.
14:22Japanese forces were massing somewhere in the jungle to the north.
14:26Intelligence estimated their numbers.
14:27What intelligence could not estimate was their intent, or the scale of what was about to come.
14:35In a few hours, O'Brien would face more enemy soldiers in a single assault than most American officers encountered
14:42in the entire war.
14:43On the evening of July 6th, inside a cave on Saipan's northern coast,
14:49Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito knelt on the stone floor and dictated his final order.
14:54Every soldier, sailor, and able-bodied civilian, still alive in the Japanese pocket, would attack the American lines before dawn.
15:03There would be no retreat. There would be no surrender.
15:07Each man was expected to kill at least seven Americans before dying for the emperor.
15:13Saito drew his sword and committed seppuku.
15:16Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the same officer who had commanded the carrier strike force at Pearl Harbor two and a
15:22half years earlier,
15:23shot himself in an adjacent cave.
15:26The two senior Japanese commanders on Saipan died within minutes of each other,
15:30having set in motion the largest bonsai charge of the entire Pacific War.
15:35The order filtered through what remained of the Japanese command.
15:39Surviving officers gathered their men in the jungle north of the Tanapag plain.
15:44Soldiers who could still walk formed ranks.
15:48Wounded men who could not walk strapped grenades to their bodies.
15:52Sailors with no infantry training picked up rifles from the dead.
15:56Civilians were handed sharpened bamboo poles.
16:00Sake was distributed to those who would drink it.
16:04The force that assembled in the darkness numbered between 3,000 and 5,000.
16:09Many carried no firearms.
16:12Some had only bayonets lashed to wooden poles.
16:16A few held officers' swords.
16:19What they lacked in weapons they intended to replace with numbers and the absolute willingness to die.
16:26Directly in their path sat the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 105th Infantry,
16:31dug into foxholes and fighting positions across the Tanapag plain,
16:35roughly 250 yards inland from the beach.
16:39The defensive line had a critical weakness.
16:42A gap existed between the two battalions.
16:45A seam where the 1st battalion's right flank and the 2nd battalion's left did not fully connect.
16:52In daylight, overlapping fields of fire could cover that opening.
16:56In darkness, against a mass charge, the seam was a door the enemy could walk straight through.
17:04O'Brien understood the risk.
17:05The plane was flat and open, good for shooting, but with nothing to fall back to once a position was
17:11overrun.
17:13Behind the infantry sat jeeps with mounted .50 caliber machine guns.
17:18Further back, artillery batteries were positioned for fire support.
17:22But if the Japanese breached the infantry line and reached those guns, the batteries would be lost.
17:29Everything depended on the riflemen holding their ground in the dark.
17:32The men of the 105th tried to sleep that night.
17:36Most could not.
17:38Sounds drifted across the plain from the north.
17:41Movement in the jungle.
17:42Voices chanting.
17:44The scrape of metal on metal.
17:46Something was building out there.
17:49The soldiers in their foxholes checked their ammunition, fixed bayonets, and waited.
17:55At 0445 on July 7th, the jungle exploded.
18:00Thousands of Japanese soldiers burst from the tree line and charged across the open ground toward the American foxholes.
18:05The first wave came shoulder to shoulder.
18:08A wall of screaming men, some firing rifles from the hip, some swinging swords, some clutching sharpened bamboo.
18:17Behind them, a second wave.
18:19Then a third.
18:20The sound drowned out the opening volleys of American rifle fire.
18:24A continuous roar of human voices rolling across the plain like nothing these soldiers had ever heard.
18:30The American line opened up with everything it had.
18:34Machine guns, rifles, grenades, mortars.
18:37The front ranks of the charge fell in heaps.
18:40But the men behind them did not slow.
18:43They climbed over the dead and kept coming.
18:46The sheer mass of the assault absorbed losses that would have shattered any conventional attack
18:51and still carried enough momentum to keep surging forward.
18:55The Japanese found the seam between the battalions.
18:58Hundreds poured through the gap.
19:00Splitting the American line in two.
19:02Forward positions were cut off from the rear.
19:05Within minutes, the organized perimeter collapsed into dozens of isolated pockets.
19:11Clusters of Americans firing outward in every direction,
19:14surrounded by enemy soldiers flooding past them in the dark.
19:18Communications collapsed.
19:20Company commanders lost contact with platoons.
19:24Platoon leaders lost contact with squads.
19:26The battle dissolved into a hundred separate fights scattered across the Tanapag plain.
19:32And in the middle of it all stood O'Brien, right at the front, exactly where the wave hit hardest.
19:39O'Brien did not fall back when the line broke.
19:41He did what his men had seen him do at the tanks and on Donne Ridge.
19:46He went forward.
19:47With a pistol in each hand, he walked the shattered American line, not crouching, not running for cover, walking upright,
19:57firing at Japanese soldiers as they poured through the broken perimeter, stepping over the fallen, moving from one cluster of
20:03survivors to the next.
20:05His presence changed the calculus for the men around him.
20:09In the chaos of a shattered defense, no radio, no chain of command, no way to know who was alive
20:15and who was dead, each foxhole was making its own decision.
20:19Hold or pull back.
20:21Fight or run.
20:23The only thing keeping them together was a man walking upright through the gunfire, shooting with both hands, and telling
20:30them to hold their ground.
20:32Don't give them a damned inch.
20:34The words carried between the gunshots and the screaming and the crack of bamboo spears against rifle stocks.
20:42Men who had been seconds from breaking heard their battalion commander's voice in the dark.
20:47Some stopped falling back.
20:49Some turned around and fought.
20:52Around O'Brien, the battle had become something most American soldiers had never experienced.
20:58Close-quarters combat against an enemy not trying to take ground, but simply to kill as many men as possible
21:05before dying.
21:07Japanese soldiers threw themselves bodily at machine gun positions.
21:11They grappled with Americans in foxholes.
21:14The fighting was hand-to-hand, bayonet against bayonet, rifle butt against sword.
21:20The darkness made it worse.
21:23Men could not tell friend from enemy until close enough to touch.
21:27The 1st Battalion's perimeter was collapsing inward.
21:31Positions on the flanks were overrun one by one.
21:34Soldiers on the edges were killed or pushed back toward the center.
21:39Some men from the 2nd Battalion, completely cut off, fought their way to the beach and swam through the surf
21:45to American destroyers offshore.
21:47The only escape left.
21:50Artillery batteries behind the front tried to respond.
21:53Gun crews leveled their howitzers and fired canister rounds, shells packed with hundreds of steel balls,
21:59directly into the onrushing mass at point-blank range.
22:03Each round tore a hole in the Japanese ranks.
22:06Each hole filled within seconds as more men surged through.
22:10O'Brien kept walking the line, firing at Japanese who broke through, shouting over the noise,
22:16pulling wounded Americans behind cover, directing survivors into improvised positions.
22:22Then a bullet hit him in the shoulder.
22:24He stumbled, caught himself, and kept firing.
22:28A medic reached him.
22:30O'Brien waved off evacuation.
22:32The medic bandaged the wound while O'Brien continued shooting with both hands.
22:37Blood soaked through the dressing within minutes.
22:40He ignored it.
22:43Across the Tanapag Plain, the attack had been raging for nearly two hours.
22:47The Japanese had pushed more than a thousand yards through and beyond the American positions.
22:53Scattered pockets of resistance dotted the battlefield.
22:56Some holding, some being overwhelmed, some already silent.
23:01The 105th was being torn apart.
23:05Private Thomas Baker of the 105th was among the surrounded.
23:09Baker had fired every round in his rifle, then swung it as a club until the wooden stalks shattered against
23:14a Japanese soldier's helmet.
23:16Badly wounded and unable to move, he told the men carrying him to prop him against a tree facing the
23:22enemy.
23:23He asked for a loaded pistol and a cigarette.
23:27They found him hours later.
23:29Dead.
23:30The pistol empty.
23:32Eight Japanese soldiers at his feet.
23:35O'Brien's ammunition was nearly gone.
23:37Both colts were running dry.
23:39The Japanese were still pressing in.
23:42Not in organized waves now, but in a continuous flood of men pushing past every position that still held.
23:48Then O'Brien saw the jeep.
23:51Sitting behind what had been the forward command post.
23:54Mounted on its back was a Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun, the heaviest weapon within reach.
24:01The gun was loaded.
24:02The belt was full.
24:04The position was completely exposed with no cover from any direction.
24:08And the Japanese were less than 50 yards away.
24:11O'Brien climbed onto the jeep.
24:14The Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun was bolted to a mounting post behind the driver's seat.
24:19No gun shield.
24:21No armor plate.
24:22No sandbags.
24:24Standing upright behind it, a man was visible from the chest up to every rifle and machine gun on the
24:30Tanapag plane.
24:31O'Brien gripped the spade handles, charged the bolt, and pressed both thumbs down on the butterfly trigger.
24:38The Browning fires half-inch rounds at nearly 3,000 feet per second.
24:43At the range O'Brien was shooting, 10 yards, 20, 30, each round tore through the charging soldiers with enough
24:51force to pass through multiple bodies.
24:53The effect on massed infantry in the open was devastating.
24:57He swept the gun across the Japanese ranks, surging past his position.
25:02The muzzle flash lit the pre-dawn darkness in rapid strobing bursts.
25:07Brass casings cascaded off the jeep's hood.
25:09The barrel glowed white with heat.
25:12The Japanese saw him.
25:14An American officer, standing fully upright on a jeep, alone, firing a heavy machine gun directly into their ranks at
25:22point-blank range.
25:23They turned toward him.
25:25Rifles cracked.
25:27Bullets punched into the jeep's fenders and hood.
25:29O'Brien did not stop.
25:32He traversed the gun in wide, sweeping arcs, pouring half-inch rounds into the mass of soldiers surging around him
25:39from every direction.
25:40His stand at the gun bought time that saved lives.
25:44Behind him, survivors from both battalions, who had been driven from their foxholes, used those minutes to fall back, regroup,
25:52and form a second defensive line.
25:54Men who had been fighting alone in the dark now had somewhere to go.
25:58O'Brien's .50 caliber was the only barrier between the Japanese flood and the Americans retreating behind him.
26:06The men who pulled back were the last to see William O'Brien alive.
26:11He was standing upright behind the browning, firing into the wall of soldiers closing on him from three sides.
26:18The gun was still hammering when the wave swallowed his position.
26:22The battle raged across the Tanapag Plain for 12 more hours after O'Brien was overrun.
26:29By mid-morning, the Japanese charge had begun losing momentum.
26:33The waves thinned as their casualties mounted beyond anything even a suicide attack could sustain.
26:40American artillery hammered the open ground.
26:43Destroyers offshore poured naval gunfire into the Japanese flanks.
26:48Marines from the 4th Division counterattacked from the east.
26:52By 1,800 hours on July 7th, every yard of ground lost at dawn had been retaken.
26:59Then came the count.
27:01Japanese dead covered the plain in rows and heaps.
27:05Burial teams worked for days.
27:09In front of the 105th's original line, they counted 2,295 bodies.
27:14Behind the line, across the ground the charge had overrun, another 2,016.
27:224,311 Japanese soldiers killed on a single day.
27:27It was the deadliest Banzai attack of the war.
27:31The 105th paid a price that nearly erased two battalions from existence.
27:38406 soldiers dead.
27:40512 wounded.
27:42More than 900 casualties out of the men who had held the line at dawn.
27:47The regiment lost over 80% of both battalions in 15 hours of fighting.
27:54One of the highest single-day casualty rates of any American unit in the Pacific.
28:00O'Brien's body was found near the jeep.
28:03He was still behind the gun.
28:06Around him lay roughly 30 dead Japanese soldiers.
28:10Men he had cut down in his final minutes before the position was overwhelmed.
28:15His body bore multiple bullet wounds and bayonet marks.
28:19He had not left the weapon.
28:21He had fought until there was nothing left to fight with.
28:25Two days later, on July 9th, Saipan was declared secure.
28:29But for the survivors of the 105th, the 7th of July would define their regiment forever.
28:35Three of their dead were put forward for the Medal of Honor.
28:38O'Brien, Baker, and a regimental dentist named Captain Benjamin Solomon,
28:43who had manned a machine gun over the bodies of his patients until the Japanese killed him at the gun.
28:49Whether those three men would receive the nation's highest honor was a question that would take months to answer.
28:54And in one case, more than half a century.
28:58The Medal of Honor for Lieutenant Colonel William J. O'Brien was approved on May 9th, 1945,
29:04ten months after his death on the Tanapag Plain.
29:08The award was authorized by Act of Congress and signed by President Harry Truman.
29:13The official citation recognized all three engagements across 18 days on Saipan.
29:18It was one of the rare awards in the war earned for sustained heroism over multiple separate actions rather than
29:26a single moment.
29:27The public presentation ceremony took place on May 27, 1945, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York,
29:36O'Brien's hometown, the city where he had enlisted at 18, and served for nearly three decades before shipping out
29:43to the Pacific.
29:45Hundreds of residents from Troy and the surrounding towns attended.
29:49Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson placed the medal around the neck of O'Brien's widow, Marjorie.
29:56Their son, William Jr., stood beside her.
29:58He was six years old.
30:01He had been five when his father left for Saipan and never came home.
30:06The boy would grow up knowing his father only through the stories of the men who fought beside him and
30:12survived.
30:13Private Thomas Baker received his Medal of Honor the same day.
30:18Baker, the soldier found dead against the tree with an empty pistol and eight Japanese at his feet,
30:24had been killed within hours of O'Brien.
30:26His family received the medal at a separate ceremony.
30:30Recognition for the broader sacrifice of the 105th was complicated by inter-service controversy.
30:37During the Saipan battle, Marine Lieutenant General Holland Smith had relieved the 27th Division's commanding officer,
30:43Army Major General Ralph Smith, accusing the Army troops of advancing too slowly.
30:48The resulting dispute, known among military historians as the Smith vs. Smith affair,
30:54cast a shadow over the division's combat record that lingered for years.
30:59The men who had held the Tanapag plane and buried 80% of two battalions felt the criticism was a
31:05bitter insult to their dead.
31:08Captain Benjamin Solomon's case was more painful still.
31:11Solomon had been the regiment's dentist.
31:13When the battalion surgeon was wounded, he volunteered to run the aid station.
31:19During the Banzai attack, Japanese soldiers broke into the tent where he was treating casualties.
31:24Solomon killed the first attacker with a medical instrument, shot a second with a wounded man's carbine,
31:30then ordered every patient evacuated.
31:32He seized a water-cooled .30 caliber machine gun and covered their retreat, alone.
31:38His body was found at the gun.
31:41He had died stopping the Japanese from reaching the men he was sworn to protect.
31:46But Solomon's Medal of Honor recommendation was denied.
31:49The Geneva Convention restricted medical officers to pistols or rifles in self-defense.
31:55Solomon had fired a crew-served machine gun, classified as an offensive weapon.
32:00The Army ruled that honoring a medical officer for manning a heavy weapon would set a dangerous precedent.
32:07The paperwork was shelved.
32:10For decades, surviving veterans of the 105th petitioned to reopen the case.
32:15Letters went to Congress.
32:17Military review boards examined the record.
32:20The argument never changed.
32:23Solomon gave his life to protect men who could not protect themselves.
32:27At Fort Drum in New York, the O'Brien Readiness Training Center was named in his honor.
32:34The facility were soldiers of the New York National Guard's 27th Infantry Brigade trained to this day.
32:41The Army transport ship USAT Colonel William J. O'Brien carried his name across the Pacific after the war.
32:50In Troy, a memorial honoring O'Brien and Baker was installed in the Rensselaer County Office Building in 2009.
32:59Two Medal of Honor recipients from the same small city killed on the same island within hours of each other.
33:07But by the turn of the century, the survivors of July 7th were nearly gone.
33:13The men who had watched O'Brien walk the line under fire were in their 80s and 90s.
33:20The men who had seen Solomon drag patients from the aid station were dying of old age without seeing him
33:26honored.
33:27And the question of whether a dentist, who gave everything at a machine gun,
33:32would ever receive the nation's highest military decoration was still unanswered,
33:3756 years after he had earned it.
33:40In 2002, 58 years after Captain Benjamin Solomon died at his machine gun on the Tanapag Plain,
33:49the United States government corrected the record.
33:52On May 1st, Solomon was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
33:56The Geneva Convention objection that had blocked the award for more than half a century was finally set aside.
34:04The review board concluded that Solomon had acted as a medical officer, defending his patients,
34:10and that the weapon he used did not diminish the sacrifice he made.
34:14By then, nearly every man who had fought beside Solomon on July 7th, 1944, was gone.
34:22But the handful of survivors who remained, men in their 80s and 90s,
34:26the last witnesses to what happened on the Tanapag Plain,
34:30lived long enough to see all three of their brothers recognized.
34:34Three Medal of Honor recipients from a single regiment, in a single battle, on a single day.
34:39O'Brien, Baker, Solomon.
34:42A battalion commander, a private, and a dentist.
34:46Each faced the same impossible choice on the morning of July 7th.
34:50Fall back or hold.
34:52Each chose to hold.
34:54None survived.
34:56The battlefield on Saipan's Tanapag Plain is quiet today.
35:00The flat ground where the charge swept through the American lines before dawn is covered in tropical vegetation.
35:06The foxholes have filled in.
35:08The shell craters have softened into the earth.
35:11The jeep where O'Brien fired his last rounds is long gone.
35:14But for anyone who knows what happened here on the morning of July 7th, 1944, the ground still speaks.
35:23The 105th Infantry, the National Guard Regiment from upstate New York that held the line against the largest bonsai charge
35:30of the Pacific War,
35:31never fully recovered from that morning.
35:34The regiment was reorganized after the war.
35:36The men who survived carried July 7th with them for the rest of their lives.
35:41Most never spoke about it publicly.
35:43Some could not bring themselves to try.
35:46William O'Brien Jr. grew up in Troy without his father.
35:49He carried the name and, through the veterans who visited the family over the years,
35:54learned the story of what his father had done across 18 days on Saipan.
35:59The Medal of Honor that Marjorie received in 1945 became a family heirloom,
36:04a piece of medal that held the full weight of a sacrifice a five-year-old could not have understood
36:09when his father said goodbye.
36:11Most Medal of Honor citations describe a single act, one moment of extraordinary courage under fire.
36:18O'Brien's covers 18 days in three separate engagements, each more dangerous than the last.
36:25Each time, he had a reason to stay behind the lines.
36:28Each time, he went forward.
36:31That pattern, the absolute refusal to lead from safety when his men were under fire,
36:36is what sets his story apart from nearly every other citation of the war.
36:40He was not reckless.
36:43He was not seeking glory.
36:45He was a 44-year-old former store clerk with a wife and a young son waiting at home.
36:51But every time his soldiers were in danger,
36:54he placed himself between them and whatever was trying to kill them.
36:58On the tank.
36:59In the jungle.
37:01Behind the machine gun.
37:03Until there was nothing left.
37:05Lieutenant Colonel William Joseph O'Brien died on the Tanapag Plain on July 7th, 1944.
37:12He had spent 27 years in the United States Army.
37:16He had risen from private to battalion commander.
37:20And on the last morning of his life, he gave every round, every breath, and every second he had left
37:26so that the men behind him could survive.
37:29You just spent 44 minutes with a man who gave everything for his soldiers.
37:35That means something.
37:37If this story stayed with you, please hit like.
37:40It is the single best way to help more people find it.
37:43Subscribe and ring that notification bell so the next story lands right in your feed.
37:48Drop a comment and tell me where you are watching from.
37:51I read every single one.
37:53And if someone in your life served, or simply loves history, send them this video.
37:58O'Brien, Baker, and Solomon never made it home.
38:03Keeping their names alive is the one thing we can still do for them.
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