It was coming down The Slot again.
Once again the flares, the night aglow with muzzle blasting, the long sleek shapes in the lagoon, American feet pelting madly in the darkness—and 1,500 shells raining in upon Henderson and the perimeter from the heavies Myoko and Maya.
It went on for an hour, and then there was silence. Fearfully at first, then with growing confidence, weary Marines climbed out of their pits and foxholes and stumbled to rearward sleeping holes that were only better in that they had ponchos drawn across them. Along the airfield the pilots dragged themselves to tents and cots. Among them was Major Galer. He looked around for his friend, Major Smith. He had been talking to him when the shelling began, and they had raced for the dugout together. Galer was worried. He went outside the tent and began calling:
“Smitty? Smitty? Where are you, Smitty?”
There was a momentary silence and then, faintly, from the airfield dugout came the infuriated voice:
“Here I am, dammit! Somebody bring me my shoes, will you? I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk barefooted over all those sharp-assed stones!”
There was another silence, and then, snickering, from Major Galer this time:
“How the hell’d you get out there, Smitty?”
At daylight of October 16, General Geiger calculated that he had lost 41 bombers and fighters to Japanese guns in the past three days, plus 16 more aircraft damaged. He had 25 bombers left in flyable condition, once repairs were made to the victims of Myoko and Maya, but he had only nine fighters. Geiger signaled Efate in the New Hebrides for hurry-up help.
In came 19 Wildcats and seven more Dauntlesses, led by Lieutenant Colonel Harold (Joe) Bauer—rugged Joe Bauer who had shot down five Japanese aircraft while “visiting Guadalcanal.” Bauer’s Squadron 212 came in just as the Japanese launched a savage dive-bombing attack on the field and the American ships in the Bay. Bauer’s gas tanks were nearly empty, but there were eight enemy Vals plummeting down on a wildly zigzagging destroyer.
Bauer went after them alone. He pulled back on the stick and went slashing up through his own antiaircraft fire and then came snarling down again. He shot down four Vals before he landed and he saved the destroyer. It was swift, as aerial combat goes, but it was then, and has remained, the most extraordinary feat of individual heroism among the Henderson airmen, men who already acclaimed Joe Bauer as the best fighter pilot the Marines had produced. Bauer got a Medal of Honor for it, and it boosted his individual score to 11.
So ended the six-day ordeal begun with the arrival of Pistol Pete. But Pistol Pete was losing his voice. The airmen had put his shells on the bottom, and this would matter greatly in the tide of battle now flowing back to land.
13
By mid-October of 1942 the struggle for Guadalcanal had become the preoccupation of the Empire. It had long since overshadowed the offensive against Port Moresby in New Guinea, where, in fact, the Australians had not only held but had pushed the Japanese 18th Army back, and had finally been joined by American soldiers in a drive on Buna-Gona.
It was now the 17th Army of Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutate which was receiving most of the men, munitions, airplanes and ships. At the conference which Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had called at Truk, General Hyakutate was assured that he would receive the support of the Combined Fleet. Yamamoto was giving him four aircraft carriers, four battleships, eight cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers, four oilers and three cargo ships under the divided command of Vice Admirals Chuichi Nagumo and Nobutake Kondo. Haruyoshi Hyakutate was no longer displeased with the southern Solomons assignment, when, on the night of October 17, a lighter brought him to Guadalcanal to take personal charge of the campaign.
The general landed near Kukumbona and made straight for Maruyama’s headquarters there. He asked Maruyama for his battle plan. He read it carefully. In the dim light, with his thin face and great round eyeglasses, Hyakutate looked something like a lemur.
Maruyama’s plan was a good one. It dovetailed with the Truk strategy whereby the Army would capture the airfield, while the Combined Fleet swept the waters clear of Americans and flew off aircraft to occupy Henderson Field. Maruyama planned three thrusts, two from the vicinity of the Matanikau and a surprise attack from the south.
On October 20 Colonel Oka’s force was to cross the Matanikau far above Nippon Bridge and work down the east bank to be in position to drive behind the exposed American left flank on the night of October 21.
On that same night the remainder of Colonel Nakaguma’s 4th Regiment was to cross the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanikau behind 11 tanks. The armor, drawn from the ist Independent Tank Company, was already hidden in a tunnel cut in the jungle on the edge of the sandbar. When the order came, the tanks would crash through the last few feet of underbrush like metal monsters bursting paper hoops.
On the following night, October 22, with the tanks safely across the river and firing at the Marines in the southern hills, with Oka sweeping around the American left to the airfield, General Maruyama would deliver the surprise crusher from the south.
He had already assembled his main body—the 16th and 29th Regiments of his own Sendai Division, plus part of the 230th Regiment from the 38th Division, some dismounted cavalry-men and a battery of mountain guns—and sent them to the headwaters of the Mamara River, which was about 10 miles south and a bit west of Kukumbona. From there they would march almost directly east until they were opposite the Marines in the hills behind the airfield. Then they would slip left or north to steal up on the Americans undetected. Engineers had already gone ahead of the foot troops to hack out the 35-mile jungle passage which the Sendai commander was already calling the Maruyama Road. The march was expected to take five days. Aerial photographs had shown no difficulties of terrain, and men as tough as the soldiers of the 29th—who had once marched 122 miles in three days, double-timing at the end—should be able to cover the distance easily.
General Maruyama not only counted on surprise but also hoped to pierce the enemy line without a fight. The Sendai intelligence officer, a Lieutenant Colonel Matsumoto, having failed to obtain intelligence of the enemy by torturing a captured Marine, had beheaded the American in the honorable way and turned to searching enemy bodies. He had found an American operations map which showed many gaps in the enemy’s southern line. The map had been reproduced for the Sendai’s officers.
Lieutenant General Hyakutate was pleased. He agreed, also, that the American, Vandegrift, should surrender his sword at the rivermouth.
Maruyama bowed and strode off to join his main body.
The following day, October 18, far to the southeast in New Caledonia, a stocky American admiral with a bulldog face led a force of carriers into the harbor of Noumea. The great ships dropped anchor. A whaleboat drew alongside the admiral’s flagship. A naval officer came aboard and handed the admiral a manila envelope. Inside it was another marked SECRET. The admiral ripped it open. It was from Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific. It said: “You will take command of the South Pacific Area and South Pacific forces immediately.”
“Jesus Christ and General Jackson!” the admiral swore. “This is the hottest potato they ever handed me!”
William Frederick Halsey was taking over—old Bull Halsey of the craggy bristling jaw, the creed of attack and the undying hatred of the enemy. The Marines on Guadalcanal now knew they had a fighting sailor behind them.
The day after Halsey took command in the South Pacific, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference in Washington to discuss the perilous situation on Guadalcanal. There was a direct question: Could the Marines hold?
“I certainly hope so,” the secretary replied. “I expect so. I don’t want to make any predictions, but every man out there, ashore or afloat, will give a good account of himself.”
Those Marines on Guadalcanal who had been jubilant to hear that Old Bull was taking over received the secretary’s shy little pep talk with the wonderful bad
grace which would always sustain them.
“Didja hear about Knox? It was on the ‘Frisco radio. He says he don’t know, but we’re sure gonna give a good account of ourselves.”
“Yeah, I heard—ain’t he a tiger?”
The Maruyama Road had run into unexpected roadblocks. Captain Oda’s engineers had slashed easily through the foothills of the Lunga Mountains, but then, three days and about 20 miles out, they had blundered into a maze of steep cliffs and a clutter of jungle-tangled ravines and gorges. General Maruyama chafed at the delay, but there was nothing he could do. A patrol might have moved along the Maruyama Road, but not almost a division of troops loaded down with burdens of 50 pounds each. Each man carried an artillery shell in addition to his own equipment. They had to cut footholds in the cliffs, haul the guns up by ropes. Rain fell constantly. Advance troops churned the underfooting into a mush which slowed the steps of following soldiers. Maruyama had to call repeated halts to close the gaps. His men were weakening, for Maruyama, having lost much food, had been forced to put them on one-third rations.
By evening of October 20 the Sendai was still far short of its intended position to the south. General Maruyama signaled his superiors by portable radio. Would the Navy hold off its sweep until October 26? The photographs made by the naval fliers had been imperfect. There were difficulties of terrain. Also, had he remembered to point out to General Hyakutate that General Vandegrift’s surrender offer must be accepted at once, that he must come from his headquarters alone but for an interpreter?
Alexander Vandegrift was not at his headquarters that evening. He was in Noumea, conferring aboard the U.S.S. Argonne with Bull Halsey, Major General Millard F. Harmon, the Army’s South Pacific commander, and Major General Alexander M. Patch, who would one day relieve Vandegrift. Even the commandant of the Marine Corps, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, was present at this dramatic shipboard conference.
Vandegrift told his story. The facts marched forth as gaunt and unpolished as his Marines. Halsey asked:
“Are we going to evacuate or hold?”
“I can hold,” Vandegrift said. “But I’ve got to have more active support than I’ve been getting.”
Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner was stung. He commanded the Amphibious Forces Pacific, and Kelly Turner could not accept that Marine rebuke without reply. He spoke quickly in the Navy’s defense. There were getting to be fewer transports and cargo ships, fewer warships to protect them. There were no sheltering bases at Guadalcanal, and the Solomons’ landlocked waters were too narrow for maneuver. There were enemy submarines.
Halsey heard him out. But he had made up his mind.
“All right,” he told Vandegrift. “Go on back. I’ll promise you everything I’ve got.”
Even as Vandegrift flew back to Guadalcanal, Lieutenant General Hyakutate had decided to press the attack on the Matanikau. His irritation had not been mollified by Maruyama’s nice touch about the surrender. The Navy had grown churlish. Kondo and Nagumo were badgering him: would soldiers never learn that ships sail on oil? The Combined Fleet could not remain much longer at sea. Hyakutate had better get on with it.
He did. On the afternoon of October 21, he ordered Pistol Pete to begin pounding the Third Battalion, First Marines, atop the ridges overlooking the sandbar at the rivermouth. With night, the tanks would roll.
But that afternoon Pistol Pete found himself in a fight with the five-inch rifles of the Third Marine Defense Battalion. Two of the Japanese 150’s were silenced, and the others were forced to change position.
When Colonel Nakaguma’s 4th Regiment came at the Marines that night with their tanks and their gobbling cries of death, the big howitzers joined the lighter ones to destroy the lead tank and send the remaining ten rumbling back into the jungle with the 4th’s infantrymen swarming after them.
The Japanese repulse was so swift, the flare-up so brief, that General Vandegrift considered the entire engagement a patrol action.
It had not been, of course, it had only been Colonel Oka again. Not ten minutes after the tanks had rolled, Lieutenant General Hyakutate had learned that Oka was twenty-four hours behind schedule. He not only had not gotten into position east of the river upstream, he hadn’t gotten over the river.
Hyakutate quickly called off the attack.
Next day the commander of the 17th Army arrived at the Matanikau front in a rage of command. He signaled Oka and told him that he had better get across the Matanikau and be prepared to attack the exposed left flank of the Marine line by the night of October 23. Men who malingered were to be dealt with ruthlessly.
The assault was going to be made the night of the twenty-third no matter what, and with any luck, it might just happen that Maruyama—from whom nothing had been heard since October 20—would strike at the same time.
But General Maruyama had not yet reached his point of attack on that black night of October 23, and Colonel Oka was still dragging his feet. Only Colonel Nakaguma attacked, and it would have been better for the Japanese cause if he had not. For Nakaguma was another of those Japanese officers who pressed home attacks that were no better than massed deathswarmings. They could not fight and run away, these commanders. They would not fight another day. They would look on death before defeat.
The 4th Regiment rushed into the massed fire of 10 batteries of Marine artillery, into the murderous interlocking fire of machine guns, rifles and automatic weapons. They were like moths, seeking to obliterate the light with their exploding bodies. They matched flesh against steel and were torn apart.
Only one of Nakaguma’s 10 medium tanks succeeded in crossing to the east or Marine bank. It held the tank company leader, Captain Maeda. It raced over the sandbar, rolled over the barbed wire, crushed a pillbox and swung right to come clanking down on a foxhole held by Private Joe Champagne.
Champagne ducked. He fumbled for his grenade. The tank’s underbelly blotted out the night. Champagne reached up, slipped the grenade into the tank’s treads. He huddled down again.
Wham!
Captain Maeda’s tank sloughed around out of control. A Marine half-track rolled out on the sandbar. Its 75-millimeter rifle flashed. Maeda’s tank lurched. The half-track fired again.
A sheet of flame gushed from Maeda’s tank. The half-track had hit the ammunition locker and the tank was blown 20 yards into the sea, where it was finished off.
Now, one by one, Marine half-tracks rolled down to the sandbar and destroyed the remaining tanks.
The attack which had begun with dark was over by ten o’clock in the night. Morning revealed a hideous spectacle on that sandbar. Nothing moved among jagged coconut stumps, twisted blackened tanks, whole tops of trees lying in broken-headed ruin among the heaps of dead—nothing moved but the bloated crocodiles swimming lazily downstream.
14
The day after the 4th Regiment met zemmetsu or annihilation on the Matanikau, Colonel Akinosuke Oka explained his own unit’s failure to attack with this report:
“The Regiment endeavored to accomplish the objective of diverting the enemy, but they seemed to be planning a firm defense of this region.”
It was not true, there was no defense on the left of the Marines opposite Nippon Bridge, and Lieutenant General Hyakutate could not accept Oka’s alibi. The colonel had again played the part of Ferdinand the Bull. But by late afternoon of October 24 the general was at last able to goad Oka into getting across the river and moving down toward that exposed left.
Oka did and moved too far.
Men of the Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, on top of the ridge where the Marine left was refused spotted Japanese soldiers moving across a lower ridge to their left. They reported it to headquarters.
General Vandegrift acted quickly. The Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, was even then moving out of reserve to relieve the Third Battalion, First, which had fought at the rivermouth the night before. Vandegrift turned this battalion south and sent it up to the undefended high ground lying about 1,000 yards
east of the refused left flank.
The Marines of the reserve began moving south just as the sun began to fade from the sky to their right.
The dying sun of October 24 was on the left of Lieutenant General Maruyama’s main body as it at last moved north on its march to battle. Maruyama’s men had made their left turn, had quit the tortuous ravines, and were coming in undetected on the Marines who held the hills between them and Henderson Field. They could hear their own bombs exploding within the Marine perimeter a few miles in front of them. Maruyama was pleased that radio contact was being renewed with Hyakutate and that the naval liaison officer present at the Kukumbona headquarters would be able to relay news of the airfield’s capture to Admiral Yamamoto, thus sending the Combined Fleet into action.
General Maruyama was confident of victory. Like Colonel Oka, he believed that he was moving on a weak point in the enemy lines. He trusted in the map provided by Matsumoto. There was no reason not to. How could Maruyama know that the map taken from the dead Marine was an American copy of a map taken from a dead Japanese early in August? How could he suspect that the American lettering on it marked positions held by the Japanese prior to the Marine landing?
Maruyama, like Oka, was not moving against a gap. He was approaching the low-lying jungle to the east of Bloody Ridge, a point held by the battalion commanded by Chesty Puller.
The sun was down.
It was dusk of Saturday night, October 24.
A young Marine on patrol outside Puller’s line in the southern hills stopped dreaming of the delights of Saturday night back home and hurried to catch up with comrades who had left him behind. He paused. Behind him, just silhouetted on a low ridge, he could see a Japanese officer studying the line through field glasses. The officer disappeared. The Marine rushed on to report to his patrol leader.
Strong Men Armed Page 10