Marching north toward Point Cruz his scouts caught sight of large numbers of enemy soldiers at the bottom of a ravine. It looked like a bivouac area. Puller called for artillery fire and set his battalion on high ground to watch.
The Japanese were trapped.
Shells from the Marine 105-mm howitzers shrieked and crashed among them. They came without warning, and because they did they devastated the enemy and made terrified, milling cattle of them. They sprinted in terror for the sanctuary of a ridge behind them, but as they broke from cover the Marines drove them back into the ravine with mortars and machine-gun fire. Back they tumbled, back into thickets of flashing death. Up toward Puller’s position they flowed, and once again the mortars and the machine guns swept death among them.
And so it went, back to be blasted or torn apart, up to be riddled to pieces—and very few of them survived.
No less than seven hundred men fell in that slaughter-pen of a ravine, and General Maruyama’s first meeting with the Marines ended in sharp defeat. His 4th Infantry Regiment was shattered, for another two hundred men had been killed by the other American forces.
And so the Third Matanikau came to an end on a familiar critical note. With 65 dead and 105 wounded, Vandegrift’s battalions came back along the coastal road to resume positions along that Henderson Field perimeter that was now threatened as never before. As they did they heard airplane motors thundering overhead. Looking up they saw twenty Wildcats. Major Leonard (Duke) Davis was bringing his squadron into Guadalcanal. General Geiger would now have forty-six fighters to hurl into an aerial battle even then blazing up with unprecedented fury.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
We asked for the Doggies to come to Tulagi
But General MacArthur said, “No.”
He gave as his reason:
“It isn’t the season.
Besides, you have no U.S.O.”
THUS did the Marines on Guadalcanal bawl out their derision of the Army, singing, to the tune of “Bless ’em All,” an uncomplimentary and inaccurate estimate of why it was that they were still alone after two months of uninterrupted ordeal. For General MacArthur had nothing to do with Guadalcanal, except to mount formations of Flying Fortresses against the Japanese bastion at Rabaul, and Army troops had not been included in the operation in the beginning.
Yet, even as the Marines on Guadalcanal continued to sing so caustically, there were Doggies coming to Tulagi.
They were coming because their commander in the Pacific, Major General Millard Harmon, did not share Admiral Ghormley’s reservations about reinforcing Vandegrift. Moreover, Harmon thought that Kelly Turner’s continued insistence upon carrying out the occupation of Ndeni in the Santa Cruz Islands—over Vandegrift’s protests—would prove inimical to the entire campaign. On October 6, Harmon sat down and addressed an unsolicited recommendation to his chief, Admiral Ghormley. He said:
“The occupation of Ndeni at this time represents a diversion from the main effort and dispersion of force.…
“If we do not succeed in holding Guadalcanal our effort in the Santa Cruz will be a total waste—and loss. The Solomons has to be our main effort. The loss of Guadalcanal would be a four-way victory for the Jap—provide a vanguard for his strong Rabaul position, deny us a jumping-off place against that position, give him a jumping-off place against the New Hebrides, effectively cover his operations against New Guinea.
“It is my personal conviction that the Jap is capable of retaking Guadalcanal, and that he will do so in the near future unless it is materially strengthened. I further believe that appropriate increase in strength of garrison, rapid improvement of conditions for air operations and increased surface action, if accomplished in time, will make the operation so costly that he will not attempt it.”1
Harmon’s letter had the effect of tearing off Ghormley’s smoked glasses and letting him see the situation a little less darkly. Perhaps the admiral was stung by the general’s reference to “increased surface action,” or perhaps, as had happened in September when Kelly Turner argued strongly for dispatching the Seventh Marines to Guadalcanal, Admiral Ghormley’s hesitant nature, like a rundown battery, needed periodic recharging from the more volatile spirits around him. Whatever the reason, Admiral Ghormley became all energy and determination.
He postponed the Ndeni operation and alerted the 164th Infantry Regiment of the Americal Division for movement to Guadalcanal. On October 8 at Nouméa—the day on which the monsoon mired Vandegrift’s and Maruyama’s men in the jungle—the 164th’s soldiers began filing aboard McCawley and Zeilin. Next day—the one on which the Marines withdrew triumphantly and the Wildcat reinforcements arrived—Admiral Turner led these transports north. Escorting him were three destroyers and three mine layers.
Ranging ahead of him went a Covering Force of two heavy and two light cruisers and five destroyers under Rear Admiral Norman Scott. Two Striking Forces, one built around carrier Hornet and the other around battleship Washington, also sortied north.
Vice-Admiral Robert Ghormley was giving Guadalcanal everything he had. The island was going to be reinforced at all costs, and the United States Navy was at last sailing toward The Slot with open guns.
It was pitch black at Aola, but Martin Clemens knew the coastline as well as he had known his “digs” in Cambridge. Besides, three scouts and three Americans were stationed along the shore. All seven men held hooded flashlights. Hearing the murmur of motors offshore, they began to signal with them.
The murmur rose, then lessened. Clemens heard the lapping of wavelets against a hull, and then, the scraping of a keel on sand. One of the Marines called “Halt!,” and an American voice answered with the password. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hill of the Second Marines came out of the darkness. With him was his staff. He told Clemens that his two companies of Marines were enroute to Aola in Higgins boats towed by a pair of Yippies. Unfortunately, one of the Yippies had towed one boat under at a loss of fifteen men drowned. But there would still be about 500 rifles available for the attack on Gurabusu and Koilotumaria, the villages to the west of Aola in which the Japanese radios were located.
Clemens assured Hill that the enemy was unaware of their presence. Two nights ago he had come to Aola with three scouts and three Americans. They had spent the intervening days mapping the target area and alerting village headmen to provide scouts and carriers.
Clemens thought there would be no difficulty surprising the Japanese and destroying the radios as General Vandegrift had ordered. He also thought, although he did not say it aloud, that he would find Ishimoto among the enemy.
Far to the west on the darkness of that same night—October 9—a destroyer put Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutake ashore on Guadalcanal. With him were his senior staff officer, Colonel Haruo Konuma; Major General Tadashi Sumuyoshi, commander of 17th Army Artillery; and Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi, who had been to Rabaul to brief staff officers on the difficulties presented by both the Americans on Guadalcanal and the island’s terrain. Like Maruyama before them, the staff officers could not believe that any terrain or any enemy could deter Japanese soldiers. And yet, the moment Kawaguchi set foot again on the island which had taught him otherwise, he heard himself vindicated: an officer from Maruyama’s staff stepped forward to tell Hyakutake that the American artillery had “massacred” the 4th Infantry that very day.
His face bleak, Hyakutake followed Kawaguchi to his 17th Army command post, which had been established “in the valley of a nameless river about three kilometres west of Kokumbona.”2 There, he immediately called for a daybreak meeting with Maruyama.
The conference convened and Hyakutake heard additional recitals of defeat. The Sendai Division had been forced to retreat for the first time in history, the east bank of the Matanikau had been lost as a platform from which to bombard the airfield and to launch an offensive, and both the Ichiki and Kawaguchi remnants were of more use to the enemy than the Emperor. Moreover, food and medicines were scarce,
the roads and trails were hardly passable, and there was a shortage of artillery shells.
Hyakutake sat listening, his small face and large round glasses giving him the look of a preoccupied lemur. Then he announced that the attack was to proceed as planned, and turned to issuing orders and making his own report.
He notified the 38th Division in the Shortlands to send down the 228th Infantry Regiment and the 19th Independent Engineer Regiment. He told Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo: “The situation on Guadalcanal is far more aggravated than had been estimated.”3 He called for reinforcements.
And so, Admiral Gunichi Mikawa in Rabaul began collecting ships again, and Pistol Pete was readied for a voyage south.
Pistol Pete was the name which the Marines were to confer on all of Hyakutake’s artillery. Actually, the guns were six-inch howitzers. Eight of them, plus a few guns of smaller bore, with their ammunition and tractors, medical supplies, sixteen tanks, miscellaneous equipment and a battalion of troops, were loaded aboard seaplane carriers Chitose and Nisshin. Another thousand men were placed on six destroyer-transports. Three heavy cruisers and two destroyers were formed as a covering force.
This was to be the largest Sendai movement so far, and Admiral Mikawa demanded ample aerial protection for it.
The Tokyo Express, now run by Rear Admiral Shintaro Hashimoto, had not lost any troops so far this month; but its ships had been battered. Since the night of October 3, when Ramada and the cruiser Sendai crossed contradictory courses, American bombers from Henderson Field had been appearing over The Slot in growing numbers. On October 5 they severely damaged destroyers Minegumo and Murasame, on October 8 they had so blasted northern terminals in the Shortlands that traffic down The Slot was snarled for twenty-four hours, and on the night of October 9 they struck at Tatsuta and other destroyers carrying Hyakutake south.
Admiral Mikawa asked Admiral Tsukahara to do something about it. Tsukahara promised that he would neutralize Henderson Field on October 11, and Mikawa gave the order for the Tokyo Express to move on that date.
It did. The first to leave was the Covering or Bombardment Force composed of big destroyers Hatsuyuki and Fubuki and heavy cruisers Aoba, Kinugasa, and Furutaka, veterans of the Battle of Savo Island. Commanding was another veteran of that great victory: Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto, the first admiral from either side to sail into Iron Bottom Bay.
Rear Admiral Norman Scott had been in the Bay on that momentous night of August 8–9, but he had been in command of the Eastern Defense Force and had been unable to sail to the aid of Admiral Crutchley in the west. Nevertheless, Scott, an aggressive and thorough sailor, thirsted for revenge.
For three weeks prior to departing Nouméa, Scott had been training his men in night fighting. He drove them without stint, and he insisted that his commanders teach themselves the proper use of radar. When Ghormley chose him to lead the force covering the 164th Infantry Regiment which Turner was bringing to Guadalcanal, Scott regarded the mission as an opportunity to avenge Savo.
Twice, on October 9 and 10, Scott led his ships toward Cape Esperance. But General Geiger’s bomber pilots had cleared The Slot. Aerial reconnaissance reported no suitable targets.
On October 11 a Flying Fortress from the New Hebrides reported Goto’s force sailing south. Two more aerial sightings were made, and at six o’clock that night Goto was reported a hundred miles north of Cape Esperance.
Scott eagerly signaled his approach order to his ships. He calculated that the enemy force should appear west of Savo just before midnight.
But Norman Scott would be there first.
There was a sudden rain shower at dawn of October 11. Martin Clemens, lying on a slope outside the Japanese encampment at Gurabusu, felt the water being dammed against his body. He hunched up slightly to release it—and then the Marines around Gurabusu attacked.
The Japanese fought back. They opened fire and Captain Richard Stafford raised his head above his coconut log to see what was happening. He fell back with a bullet between the eyes.
Clemens jumped up and joined the attack. A Japanese officer swung a saber at him. The Japanese missed and a Marine shot him dead. The other enemy soldiers turned to flee and charged straight into the bullets of American machine guns. Suddenly, it was quiet. The skirmish was over. Thirty-two enemy had been killed with only Captain Stafford lost.
Clemens went through the Japanese encampment. He found a gold chalice belonging to the missionaries. It was being used as an ash tray. One of the dead enemy soldiers lay wrapped in the altar cloth he had been using for a blanket. Then Clemens found vestments and the unmarked graves of the priests and nuns whom Ishimoto had murdered. Clemens watched his scouts. They prowled among the bodies, turning them over and shaking their heads in a disappointed negative.
Colonel Hill came back from Koilotumaria. The action there had not been successful. The enemy had run off into a swamp. Only three of them were killed, and two Marines were lost.
But one of the dead Japanese, according to a native scout, was Mr. Ishimoto.
Clemens could never be sure. The wounds inflicted by modern arms tend to make identification difficult. Nevertheless, the former carpenter from Tulagi was never heard from again.
The skies were still overcast when the men aboard Admiral Goto’s ships heard the thundering of aircraft motors above them. They were momentarily fearful, but then, realizing that they were still about two hundred miles north of Guadalcanal, they decided that the unseen planes were their own.
They were. Thirty-five Bettys escorted by thirty Zeros were flying at 25,000 feet. They came over Henderson Field shortly before four o’clock and found, to their dismay, that a shift of clouds had covered the target. More, scores of enemy Wildcats were growling and slashing among them. The bombers fled east, dropping their explosives in the sea.
And some of the bombs fell right in front of the landing boats bringing the Marines from Gurabusu to Aola.
It was as though a Martian cornucopia had been overturned, showering these returning victors with geysering bombs, spurting bullets and cartridge cases that fell on water like pebbles or rang sharply on steel decks.
Suddenly there was a terrible rising scream and a Wildcat came plummeting straight down. The pilot cleared his plane at about a hundred feet above the water and he struck it with such force that his clothing was torn off. He was rescued, but he died ten minutes later. Another Marine pilot crashed into the Bay. He was hauled into Clemens’s boat with an eye hanging out. He was taken to Aola where the efficient Eroni put the eye back in and bandaged it, and the pilot was back in action within a month.
And so Admiral Tsukahara’s stroke to neutralize Henderson Field was a failure. At the cost of these two Wildcats shot down, the Marines had destroyed seven bombers and four Zeros. Henderson had not been harmed. Yet, General Geiger’s fliers had been kept so active that Admiral Goto was able to steal safely down The Slot.
That was why, that midnight at Aola, the Marines and Martin Clemens saw a flashing and heard a rumbling that was neither thunder nor lightning.
There had been glimmerings of true lightning over the dark horizon that night as Admiral Scott’s ships formed into battle column and sailed for Savo.
Three destroyers—Farenholt, Duncan, and Laffey—held the lead, followed by four cruisers, Scott’s flagship San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Helena, with the tail of the column formed by two more destroyers, Buchanan and McCalla. They swung wide around Guadalcanal’s west coast, moving at top speed. Conical Savo loomed grimly ahead and speed was dropped to twenty-five knots, then to twenty. Scott prepared to launch planes. As Mikawa had done two months ago, so would Scott do on this dark breezy Sunday night.
Catapults flashed aboard San Francisco and Boise and two Kingfishers swooshed off into the black. Helena, which had not been notified, dumped hers overboard as inflammable material. Salt Lake City attempted to launch hers, but the plane was set afire by her own flares and was also jettisoned.
The burn
ing aircraft’s flames could be seen fifty miles to the north by men aboard Admiral Goto’s ships. Goto thought it was Hyakutake signaling from his beachhead or else the seaplane carriers carrying Pistol Pete. He ordered replies blinkered. When no answer was forthcoming, some of Goto’s officers aboard flagship Aoba were suspicious. But Goto continued to flash his signal lights, hoping to lure any American ships in the vicinity away from the landing area. Goto did not really expect to find any, The Slot and Iron Bottom Bay having been such incontestable Japanese preserves during the past few months.
His column sailed on—cruisers Aoba, Furutaka, and Kinugasa, with destroyers Fubuki and Hatsuyuki off Aoba’s beam—a giant T speeding south to shell Henderson Field.
Below, Scott got his first scout-plane report: “One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal.” Could this be the big force reported earlier that day? It did not seem so. Nor was it. It was part of the Supply Force. Scott continued to sail to the west of Savo on a northerly course. At half past eleven he ordered a countermarch to the south.
Goto still rushed toward him.
Inadvertently, Norman Scott had “crossed the T.” His ships were sailing broadside to the approaching enemy column: all his guns could be brought to bear to rake Goto stem-to-stern.
Helena got a radar contact!
Fifteen minutes before midnight Captain Gilbert Hoover broadcast a two-word signal: “Interrogatory Roger,” which meant, “Request permission to open fire.” Admiral Scott thought he meant “Roger” as employed to acknowledge receipt of a previous message. He replied, “Roger,” which also meant “Commence firing!” But Scott did not want to commence firing. Hoover was uncertain. With unsuspecting Aoba closing the range to a mere 5000 yards, with Helena’s gunners fingering their mechanisms in agony, Hoover repeated his former inquiry and Scott repeated his former, “Roger.”
Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War Page 25