It was a tidy plan.
On the morning of December 24, with five companies of the 127th in position, Eichelberger ordered a major attack. It began with artillery and mortars opening up on Government Gardens and the Government Station. Fifteen minutes later, the infantry moved out. What separated the 127th from its destination, though, was an obstacle course of thick, chest-high kunai grass, a swamp as wide as a football field, and a 300-yard coconut plantation. Eichelberger believed this to be the epicenter of the Japanese position. Captain Yasuda had prepared the entire area with bunkers, foxholes, firing pits, and snipers hiding in trees.
The regiment had advanced barely a hundred yards when it came up against blistering enemy fire that cut the companies to ribbons. Even with Eichelberger’s artillery officer directing mortar fire from a coconut tree not far from Yasuda’s lines, the Americans managed to carve out only another fifty yards. After being wounded in the back by a shell fragment, the artillery officer tied himself into the tree like a Japanese sniper and continued to direct the mortar fire until he lost so much blood that he lapsed into unconsciousness, and had to be evacuated.
Eichelberger, who was at the front for much of the day directing troop movements like a young lieutenant, was devastated by the failure of the attack. Christmas Eve day, 1942, he reported to MacArthur “was the low point of my life.” MacArthur, though, did not want to hear it. He wanted results. Earlier he had callously told an Australian officer, who had complained that Eichelberger would get himself killed if he insisted on leading troops into battle, “I want him to die if he doesn’t get Buna.”
Back at the evac hospital in Dobodura, which was nothing more than a big tent with rows of cots, Stanley Jastrzembski was riding out a fever. He knew that the Americans had made a big push that day by the number of casualties that kept coming in. The worst were the belly wounds; those poor guys would moan and scream out all night long. What had really gotten to him, though, was Jim Broner. Broner had been shot in the leg in the battle on November 30.
Jastrzembski did not know what to say to him. His brother, Willard, was already dead. Had he heard?
“How ya doing?” Jastrzembski said, avoiding the subject.
Broner was lying on a cot and fumbled for words. Then he blurted it out. “Tomorrow,” he said, “they’re going to take my leg off.”
What the hell for, Jastrzembksi thought to himself. The poor SOB is gonna lose his leg over some godforsaken island.
Toward evening, Jastrzembski’s buddy Chet Sokoloski came in with a big smile on his face. Jastrzembski sat at the side of his cot and grimaced. His feet throbbed. They were raw and inflamed, and the skin was peeling off in small sheets like waxed paper.
“Why the smile?” Jastrzembski winced. “Just because you ain’t dead, right?”
“Nope,” Sokoloski replied. “It’s Christmas Eve. Did you forget?”
“Christmas,” Jastrzembski groaned. “In this hellhole of a place.”
“I got you a package,” Sokoloski said.
Sure enough. Jastrzembski looked at the return address. It was from one of his sisters. He shook his head. “All the way from Muskegon.”
Jastrzembski was too weak to open the package, so Sokoloski did the honors. Tearing off the newspaper and opening the box, Sokoloski was dumbfounded. “Candy and cake,” he said.
You’re putting me on, Jastrzembski thought. Then Sokoloski passed him the box. There it was, a big Christmas cake.
“The damn thing’s full of mold.”
“Here,” Sokoloski said. Taking his bayonet, he cut off the top two inches. Then Jastrzembski and Sokoloski—a pair of Poles—devoured it on Christmas Eve in New Guinea.
On Christmas Day, instead of regrouping and allowing his men to rest, Eichelberger decided to force the issue, returning to the Urbana Front again to direct operations personally.
When a company of the 127th pounded its way over hundreds of yards through Government Gardens, ending up on the coast near the coconut plantation, Eichelberger thought that perhaps his luck was changing. The Japanese quickly rallied, though, and surrounded the company, inflicting heavy losses. When reinforcements attempted to come to its rescue, they were ambushed, and an entire platoon was wiped out.
Eichelberger’s Christmas Day attack had been a mistake, and he wondered if Buna would become “an American military disaster.”
That night, returning to the command post, he found Sutherland waiting for him with disturbing news. The Australians, Sutherland said, were again mocking MacArthur. Despite a distinct numerical advantage, American troops had been unable to take Buna Government Station. Eichelberger argued that he had whole battalions—Stutterin Smith’s Ghost Mountain boys and White Smith’s men—that were no longer capable of fighting.
Sutherland then handed him a letter.
“What’s this?’ Eichelberger asked.
“MacArthur,” Sutherland answered.
Later, Eichelberger sat down to read the letter. Although MacArthur had never visited the battlefield, he was full of “Ivory Tower” advice, all of which revealed his ignorance of frontline conditions at Buna. Urging Eichelberger to use his superior numbers, he wrote:
Where you have a company on your firing line, you should have a battalion; and where you have a battalion, you should have a regiment. And your attacks, instead of being made up of two or three hundred rifles, should be made by two or three thousand…. It will be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…. Your battle casualties to date compared with your total strength are slight so that you have a big margin still to work with.
I beg of you to throw every ounce of energy you have into carrying out this word of advice from me, as I feel convinced that our time is strictly limited and that if results are not achieved shortly, the whole picture may radically change.
With the memory of December 5 still fresh, Eichelberger must have been taken aback by MacArthur’s letter. The general clearly wanted to see more casualties. It was a bloody calculus: dead and wounded soldiers were a sign of initiative.
Eichelberger’s command was in jeopardy, and he knew it, so he sat down and penned a reply to the general. He was pushing the offensive, he wrote, with the kinds of numbers he felt the situation necessitated. And his men were indeed fighting gallantly. “I hope you will not let any Australian generals talk down their noses at you.” Then he assured MacArthur that his men would “push on to victory.” His earlier notion of letting attrition do the dirty work was no longer even a consideration.
Late on Christmas night a Japanese submarine, having escaped prowling American PT boats, unloaded rations and ammunition at Buna Government Station and shelled Allied positions on the Warren Front.
On the morning of December 28, Sutherland again showed up at Eichelberger’s command post. This time, though, he arrived with good news: The 41st Division’s 163rd Regiment, a unit of fit, superbly trained National Guardsmen from Montana, had just reached Port Moresby, and soon it would be sent to the Urbana Front. It was exactly what Eichelberger needed to hear. The previous night, he had read MacArthur’s latest piece of fiction. It had left him fuming mad. “On Christmas Day,” the communiqué read, “our activities were limited to routine safety precautions. Divine services were held.”
Together, Eichelberger and Sutherland visited Colonel Grose’s command post. Grose informed Eichelberger that he was pulling out the 127th’s exhausted 3rd Battalion, which had made the Entrance Creek crossing and had born the brunt of the battle in Government Gardens.
Eichelberger’s response shocked him.
“No John,” Eichelberger replied. “That’s not the plan. This afternoon I want you to attack the station.”
Grose could not believe his ears, and asked for confirmation. When Eichelberger told him that was indeed his plan, it was left for Grose to implement some kind of strategy.
Deciding that one prong of the attack had to come from Musida Island, which separated Buna Village from the Government Station, Grose sent out fi
ve boats. Their objective was to engage the Japanese east of the island while engineers repaired the bridge that spanned the creek between the island and the Government Station.
The boats pushed off in the late afternoon. Disoriented, they went west instead of east, and American troops who were dug in on the sand spit northwest of the island figured they were enemy boats and opened up on them. A lieutenant from the lead boat, which sunk immediately, struggled to shore and managed to reach the spit without being killed by friendly fire.
The lieutenant shouted, “You’re firing on Americans!” By the time the troops realized what they were doing and stopped, all five vessels had been sunk. Luckily no one had been killed.
Back at the bridge, 3rd Battalion troops tried to reach the station. At the far end of the bridge, though, the new pilings collapsed and the soldiers fell into the creek. Eichelberger, according to Grose, “ranted and raved like a caged lion.” He had hoped to impress Sutherland. Sutherland, though, left Grose’s command post in disgust. He had not been on hand to see the dramatic seizure of the Government Station, but instead witnessed the Keystone Kops in action.
The following day, Eichelberger’s command was saved by a patrol’s discovery: Captain Yasuda’s men had evacuated the Triangle.
Later, on the same morning, the original Urbana Force—White Smith’s 2nd Battalion 128th, and the Ghost Mountain Battalion, minus Gus Bailey—was pulled out of reserve again and sent forward.
For Stenberg, being sent back into battle was a blow. At the battalion’s bivouac site, he had sweated out another fever, and his left ear was worthless. He wondered now if he could hear well enough to save his own life. Would he be able to hear a stick crack just before a Jap gashed open his belly, or the shifting of a sniper hiding in the crook of a tree? He had been lucky on December 19, and he knew it. Now, he was being sent back in two days before the end of the year.
Stenberg and what remained of the 126th’s 2nd Battalion took up a holding position at the southeast end of Government Gardens. White Smith’s men moved into the Triangle. While the two battalions were en route, a company of the 127th pushed past the Government Station and established a pivotal two-hundred-foot frontage along the beach just west of Giropa Point.
While the Americans had finally fixed their supply problems—two hundred tons of cargo were coming in via freighter and lugger—the Japanese garrisons were being bombed into oblivion. At Girua, at the head of the Sanananda truck, Kiyoshi Wada, a member of the signal unit, chronicled the garrison’s collapse.
On December 20, Wada wrote, “At this rate I’ll become a dried-up human being.” Three days later, he wrote again, “When we made our first attack I had no consideration for life or death…. However, nowadays, somehow I am full of the desire to go back home alive just once more.”
The day after Christmas, Wada again found time to write: “The area around our tent is a desolate field. At about 8 o’clock, Hagino [Wada is referring to Private Mitsuo Hagino of the 144th Infantry Regiment’s 3rd Battalion] next to me, was hit. Since so many patients came pouring in, the medical men are shorthanded and I was forced to stop the bleeding and bandage Hagino outside in the pitch dark.” On December 28, Wada wrote despairingly. “Went to get water from the stream. On the way the jungle was full of dead, killed by shrapnel. There is something awful about the smell of the dead…. Everyone has taken cover in the jungle, but since there is no one to carry Hagino and take care of him, I cannot leave him behind. I have decided to stay…. All officers, even though there is such a scarcity of food, eat relatively well. The condition is one in which the majority is starving. This is indeed a deplorable state of affairs for the Imperial Army. I took out a picture of my parents and looked at it.”
The next day, Wada continued, “What a discouraging and miserable state of affairs—and too, when the New Year is just ahead. What is going to happen to us? I pray to the morning sun that our situation of battle be reversed. All of the patrol (guard) unit has fled and at the present time, there are only four of us…. I pray with the charm of the clan deity in my hand.”
On the Warren Front, a Japanese soldier read a leaflet dropped by Allied planes: “SOLDIERS OF THE JAPANESE ARMY,” it said, “Our Allied Forces are steadily advancing on all fronts…. You are already doomed. Your situation is hopeless.”
When he read the leaflet on December 21 the day it was dropped, he scoffed at it. The Old Strip was surrounded by swamp and littered with trenches and bunkers. The Japanese believed it was unassailable. Colonel Yamamoto’s men were also heavily armed with machine guns and mortars, two 75 mm guns, two 37 mm guns, automatic cannons, and 3-inch naval guns. A week later, though, as Allied forces bore down on Japanese positions in the Old Strip and on Giropa Point, he was forced to take its message seriously. Officers continued to promise reinforcements, but even the lowliest Formosan conscripts knew what was happening.
Masaji Kohase, a First Class Seaman with the Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force, watched the Allied advance. “The enemy,” he wrote, “is trying to squeeze us out of our vital position by shelling the whole of Buna with mortar and artillery fire. Their tanks came rumbling forward and finally the time has come when we may meet our end any day, but we will fight till the last as our commander has ordered.” As he wrote in his diary, his buddy may have been reading a letter from his twelve-year-old sister, and dreaming of home. Dated October 15, her letter read, “In the place, where you are now, there will be plenty pineapples, bananas, coconuts and other fruits, I think. I want to go and see the South Seas myself, sometime.”
The following day the Allies captured the Old Strip. Now only Giropa Point remained.
On December 30, Eichelberger found out that Blamey had petitioned MacArthur for the 163rd and MacArthur had buckled. Reversing his earlier decision, MacArthur now agreed that the regiment should go to the Sanananda Front. From General Herring, Eichelberger also learned that the Australians were in no hurry to see the Americans capture Buna Government Station before Wooten took Giropa Point.
Eichelberger was mad as hell, and though he had planned to rest his troops on December 31, he called for an all-out attack that would precede Wooten’s offensive. His troops would seize the Government Station first.
Counting on the element of surprise, Eichelberger’s troops jumped off well before the sun crested the horizon. When they spotted two Japanese landing barges stranded on the beach, however, a number of men disregarded the strict “no fire” rule and tossed hand grenades at the barges. It was a stupid stunt, and gave away their position. The Japanese immediately lit up the area with flares and fired on the Americans wading through the shallows northeast of Musida Island.
Abandoning the attack, the Americans retreated as fast as they could. Colonel Grose intercepted them and ordered them forward. The attack had failed in general, but thanks to an alert company of 128th Infantry troops that had dug in at the sand spit, the Americans had their first real grasp on the Government Station. Eichelberger knew now that it was only a matter of time. The Japanese were caught in the Allied vise.
That night, Eichelberger wrote a note to Sutherland. “Little by little,” he said, “we are getting those devils penned in and perhaps we shall be able to finish them shortly.”
Glory was not to be Eichelberger’s, though. By dusk on New Year’s Day, as a terrific lightning storm bore down on Buna, Wooten’s tanks were clearing out the last pockets of enemy resistance on the Warren Front. On patrol, Stenberg and the small reconnaissance group he was a part of met up with a patrol from there. They exchanged greetings and smiles and then went about the dirty business of clearing out pockets of Japanese resistance. All could sense that the end was near.
Simon Warmenhoven had been moving between the Triangle and the Sanananda Front, stitching up troops and supervising the portable hospitals, making sure that they were performing as intended. For the last month and a half, he had only had one break and that was when he himself was hospitalized with a temperature of 105 degree
s. Now, he finally had a moment to write home again.
Dearest Lover:
And how’s my Mandy to-day? Been patiently waiting for the letters that just don’t come any more lately? Well, honey, from now on they’ll be coming in like old times. I’ll be writing at least three a week again. It just couldn’t be helped for awhile, and I’m sure you realize the reason. Hope you didn’t worry too much about it. I’ll assure you I’m safe and sound for which I’m very thankful. Will say that I’ve said plenty of prayers. I assure you on that point too that if anything happened, I wouldn’t be afraid, but I do hope that we all may be together again…. I sure want to see my Mandy again, and Muriel and Ann, and also Simon Jr. I’ll bet he’s getting to be quite a boy already. Another two months and he’ll be sitting at the high chair pounding with a spoon for his meals…. I had the lovesick dream last night…. when I woke up…. I found myself lying in my cot in our native hut. I dreamed that I’d returned back home, and that we didn’t get along…. Wish I could dream that I was making love to you…. Remember New Year’s Eve last year? Walking in New Orleans…. Well, Goodbye darling. Love to the children.
All my heart’s true love.
Sam
Flashes of lightning lit up the coast. Before dawn on January 2, Japanese troops were fleeing any way they could. Twenty Japanese soldiers, carrying heavy packs, food, medicine, and three machine guns, tried to make a run for the stranded landing barges, hoping to somehow get them into the water. A company of 127th soldiers caught them in the act, and cut them down with machine guns and rifles.
Not long after, as the first rays of sunlight filtered through the clouds and splashed across the sea, White Smith’s troops and the men of the 128th Infantry’s 1st Battalion, which had established a stronghold between the Government Station and Giropa Point, saw Japanese soldiers swimming up the coast.
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