Hester Scott Webb

Corporal Hester “Bucky” Webb served with Company C (Medium), Second Tank Battalion, during the Tarawa campaign. He was assigned as the driver for an M4A2 medium tank nicknamed “COBRA” – the command vehicle for the company’s Second Platoon.

On 20 November 1943, Webb’s tank left the USS Ashland aboard an LCM and headed for Betio’s Red Beach 2. The boat hit a coral reef and dropped its ramp about a thousand yards from shore; the tanks would land too far to the east, on Beach Red 3. Guided, literally, by the kicks and nudges of platoon commander Lieutenant Richard Sloat, Webb drove COBRA safely through the water and along the beach, searching for a breach in the sea wall. COBRA was the only Second Platoon tank to complete its assigned mission of driving all the way across Betio, and the crew spent a very long day shelling any enemy targets they could find. As the day drew to a close, they withdrew back across the airfield to find a safe space and parked along the northern taxiway for the night.

For reasons unknown to the rest of the crew, Corporal Webb decided to get out of the tank through the bottom escape hatch. Within a few minutes, a bullet struck “Bucky” in the neck. His buddies managed to pull the stricken Marine back inside; Lieutenant Sloat administered morphine, but could do little else. “He was pretty bad hit,” recalled radio operator Bill Eads. At some point during the night, Bucky Webb died of his wounds.