The Marshalls were the forefront for the drive, and there, the Marines would participate in their first combat operation.  The objective: defeat the Japanese forces and establish a base for operations.  The Battle for Roi-Namur was one of the four stepping stones in the island-hopping campaign that would bring the United States within reach of the Japanese mainland (Proehl).

During the spearhead operation of the Pacific drive, the Marines of the Fourth Division set three new military wartime records, including the first division to leave the United States combat-loaded and enter immediately into a battle, the first to capture a Japanese mandated territory in the Pacific, and the shortest length of time taken to secure an objective since the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Proehl).

The islands of Roi and Namur were merely 1200 by 1250 yards and 800 by 900 yards wide, respectively, at their widest points, but over 3000 enemy troops were waiting to defend every inch of them.  The Americans were prepared though, for the task force that accompanied the Fourth Marines and an Army division was the largest ever assembled for a Pacific invasion up to that time.  Two days before the infantry landed on the islands, the ships of the Naval Task Force and aircraft of the Fast Carrier Force bombarded every square yard of the islands, dropping more than 2655 tons of steel (Proehl).  After such a heavy onslaught, it was thought there was nothing left alive on the island, but Phil, Mr. Ralston and the others who landed on Namur learned those assumptions were horribly inaccurate (Ralston).

A majority of the Japanese troops had fled Roi because Namur offered better protection against the shelling, and they proceeded to establish a strong fortified line of trenches and pillboxes in the dense vegetation and underbrush.  However dazed and confused the enemy troops were from the assault, they vehemently defended their position on the beachhead.  Men of the Third Battalion, Twenty-Fourth Marines, ran into trouble from several of the well-camouflaged pillboxes, many of whom did not ever make it off of their landing boats before sustaining injuries or even being killed (Proehl).

The Second Battalion, which included Phil, Mr. Ralston, and Mr. Gammill among others, landed further down the beach by the pier and was able to move inland rapidly.   However, its progress was not without tragedy or losses either.  As the troops advanced, a large enemy blockhouse that stored aerial bombs and torpedo warheads exploded without warning, sending an immense tower of smoke and rubble skyward.  Many men were injured and killed by the shrapnel and metal that radiated outward in all directions from the blast site (Proehl).  Mr. Ralston remembers the explosion rocked the entire island and everything was black from the smoke and debris.  In that one moment, the Battalion suffered more than one half of its overall casualties (Proehl).

An officer with the Battalion vividly described the scene that followed:

An ink-black darkness spread over a large part of Namur such that the hand could not be seen in front of the face. Debris continued to fall for a considerable length of time which seemed unending to those in the area who were all unprotected from the huge chunks of concrete and steel thudding on the ground about them.  Before the explosion, the large blockhouse was conspicuously silhouetted against the skyline.  After the explosion, nothing remained by a huge water-filled crater. Men were killed and wounded in small boats a considerable distance from the beach by the flying debris.  Two more violent explosions, but lesser in intensity than the first, occurred among the assault troops during the next half hour (Proehl).

Later, according to Mr. Ralston, another Lieutenant wrote an article for the Leatherneck – a Marine Corps magazine – about Phil and his marksmanship where he compared him to a character in the old World War I movie Sergeant York, released in 1941.  The movie depicted the "true story of a hillbilly sharpshooter from Tennessee drafted in WWI despite his claim to be a pacifist and ends up becoming a war hero" (IMDB).   The nickname 'Zeke' just seemed to fit him and became his legacy during the war (Garcia).

The next day, after their heroics, 'Zeke' and the other men of the Second Battalion, were finally able to take a breath and survey the destruction that surrounded them. The ruins through which they had fought were indescribably fascinating.  The island of Namur and all signs of civilization had almost ceased to exist.  Only three structures, all severely battered, had survived the shelling, including a large administration building, a concrete radio station and an ammunitions storage building.  On Roi, the gaunt skeletons of the hangar of an airfield and an operations building were all that remained amongst the rubble and twisted palm trees. There were thousands of dead soldiers, both friendly and enemy, horribly mutilated by the bombardment littering the islands, sprawled in shell holes, ammo dumps and in the ruins.  Corrugated metal and concrete pilings stuck out of the earth like tombstones.  In all directions, the Marines saw death and destruction (Proehl).

Despite the two days of saturation bombing and the strong advances of the Marine troops, the battle was not yet over.  Around 100 Japanese soldiers, in hiding on the northern shore of the island, were determined to die a traditional, honorable Japanese death.  Under the cover of darkness and rain, the tattered remnants of the island's initial 3000 troops, staged a Banzai attack on the Third Battalion.  The attack lasted on and off for several hours, but after feats of heroism and selfless acts of bravery, the enemy was defeated.  Twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes after the first wave of assault troops landed on the beaches, the islands of Roi and Namur were declared secure (Proehl).

On February 13, 1994, the Marines of the Fourth Division left Kwajalein Atoll for their base camp on the island of Maui.  With the capture of the islands of the Atoll, the United States had gained strategic control of the Marshall Islands, severing ties of Japanese garrisons on neighboring four islands.  From south of Wake Island, the Japanese lines of communication had been cut off, and the US drive in the Pacific had achieved the first stepping stone (Proehl).  When the losses were counted, 190 American troops had "placed themselves on the altar of freedom" (Saving Private Ryan) in the Marshalls and 547 were wounded.  For the Japanese, the defeat wounded a mere 264 while a staggering 3472 were either killed or committed suicide, rather than fall prisoner to the American soldiers (Proehl).