Morris William Skinner

Sergeant Morris “Red” Skinner served with How Company, 8th Marines in the campaign for Guadalcanal and the battle of Tarawa. He was specially trained as a mortarman, and may have been a squad or section leader with the company’s 81mm “tubes” at the time of the landings.

The amphibious assault on Betio, Tarawa atoll – Operation GALVANIC – commenced on 20 November 1943. The Second Battalion 8th Marines was given the job of assaulting the easternmost of three landing beaches – “Red 3” – and, once ashore, moving inland to quickly secure the airfield that covered much of the tiny island’s surface. A heavy and morale-boosting naval bombardment convinced many Marines that the task would be a simple one, and spirits were high at 0900 when their amphibious tractors started paddling for the beach.

The Japanese were quick to recover. Shells began bursting over the LVTs. “As the tractors neared the shore the air filled with the smoke and fragments of shells fired from 3-inch guns,” notes A Brief History of the 8th Marines. “Fortunately, casualties had been light on the way to the beach, but once the men dismounted and struggled to get beyond the beach, battle losses increased dramatically.” Most of the beach defenses were still intact, and these were supported by row after row of pillboxes, rifle pits, and machine gun nests.

Sergeant Skinner was one of hundreds of Marines to lose his life on the first day of the battle. Officially he was killed in action by gunshot wounds, but Lee Weber  – a fellow Galvestonian and former How Company Marine – told a different story in a 1999 interview.