Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by Jose Campos
The wounded were stacked shoulder to shoulder on the aid station floor, their uniforms covered in blood and dirt. Some called out for morphine. Outside, rifle fire cracked through the darkness, coming closer. The line had broken.
Captain Ben L. Salomon moved from man to man, working quickly, hands steady despite the chaos pressing in from every direction. He was trained to repair teeth, not shattered bodies.
It was July 7, 1944, and the Battle of Saipan had reached its most desperate phase. American forces had torn through much of the island, but the Japanese garrison was far from finished. That morning, thousands of Japanese troops launched a massed banzai charge, the largest of the Pacific war. They hit U.S. positions with rifles, bayonets, and grenades in a final attempt to break the invasion.
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Salomon had entered the Army as a dentist, drafted in 1940. But he trained as an infantryman, and qualified expert with the rifle before being assigned to the Dental Corps. On Saipan, there were no clean clinics or routine procedures. He volunteered to replace a wounded battalion surgeon, and established an aid station just behind the front lines, treating the steady flow of broken men coming off the ridge.
The Japanese attack overran the forward companies and spilled into the rear areas. Suddenly enemy soldiers were inside the perimeter. The aid station was no longer behind the line. It was the line.
Japanese troops burst into the tent. Salomon met them head-on. He shot one attacker with his pistol, then another. When they closed the distance, he fought with his hands, stabbing and clubbing in the tight space between stretchers. Around him, wounded Americans struggled to crawl away.
Salomon ordered the wounded who could move to get out. Others were dragged or carried into the darkness by walking wounded and medical orderlies. Every second mattered.
Outside, he saw the body of a dead machine gunner beside an unattended weapon. Beyond it, shapes were moving through the smoke. Enemy soldiers were advancing at speed.
He took the gun.
When the first wave appeared in the open, he fired. Japanese troops fell. Others kept coming, pushing forward over the bodies of their dead. Salomon kept firing. He had one job now: hold long enough for the wounded to escape.
The banzai charge continued to surge toward him, wave after wave. There was no relief coming. No fallback position. Only time measured in seconds and ammunition belts.
The citation for Salomon’s posthumous Medal of Honor reveals gritty details as enemy soldiers closed in.
“Rushing them, Captain Salomon kicked the knife out of the hand of one, shot another, and bayoneted a third,” the citation reads. “Captain Salomon butted the fourth enemy soldier in the stomach and a wounded comrade then shot and killed the enemy soldier.”
When American troops later retook the position, they found Salomon slumped over the machine gun. His body had been hit repeatedly by bullets and bayonets. In front of his position lay 98 dead enemy soldiers, cut down at close range.
He arrived on the island as a dentist. He died a lone man behind a machine gun, buying time in the dark while the wounded crawled to safety.
Jose Campos writes frequently for Soldier of Fortune.
