On July 25 Admiral Mikawa arrived at Truk. He was aboard his flagship, Chokai, a powerful cruiser disfigured, in American eyes, by her bizarre silhouette described by a fat forward stack canted sharply back and a skinny second stack sticking straight up. Ohmae reported to Mikawa. Disturbed by what he heard, Mikawa requested an immediate conference with Vice-Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the Fourth Fleet. They met that afternoon and Inoue also laughed at Mikawa’s fears for the Solomons. The enemy, said Inoue, was still reeling from the shock of defeats from Pearl Harbor to Singapore. Neither admiral said a word about Midway, even though both of them knew all the details of that disaster. Inoue, it seemed to Mikawa, appeared anxious to have the new Eighth Fleet relieve Fourth Fleet of responsibility for that huge Outer South Seas Area centering at Rabaul. At midnight of the twenty-sixth the transfer was effected.
Next day Mikawa and Ohmae sailed south for Rabaul. Both sailors who loved the sea, they were happy to have the turbines of a ship turning beneath their feet again. They tried to take a more optimistic view of that exposed left flank in the Solomons. At least, as Ohmae had discovered, the new airfield suitable for sixty planes should lessen the danger of invasion there.
It should be ready by August 7.
August 7 was also the date for the American invasion.
Admiral King had set the new deadline. In early July the Joint Chiefs had received a report from Admiral Ghormley and General MacArthur, stating: “It is our joint opinion, arrived at independently and confirmed after discussion, that the initiation of this operation at this time, without reasonable assurance of an adequate air cover during each phase, would be attended with the gravest risk … It is recommended that this operation be deferred pending the further development of forces in the South Pacific and Southwest Pacific Areas …” King read the dispatch and snorted to General Marshall: “Three weeks ago MacArthur stated that, if he could be furnished amphibious forces and two carriers, he could push right through to Rabaul … He now feels that he not only cannot undertake this extended operation but also not even the Tulagi operations.”5 Unimpressed, Admiral King replied:
“Execute.”6
But then, after General Vandegrift had made it clear that he could not possibly invade by August 1, King agreed to a three-day postponement. After Ghormley and Vandegrift protested anew, he added three more days of grace. But that was it: it had to be August 7. Coastwatcher reports and reconnaissance flights of Army B-17s indicated that the airfield on Guadalcanal was nearly completed. To invade in the face of land-based air would be far too dangerous.
And so Archer Vandegrift went grimly ahead with the invasion which his staff was already calling “Operation Shoestring.”
The area Vandegrift hoped to seize centered around the airfield and ran about ten miles along the mid-northern coast and perhaps three miles inland. On its west, according to the details of an old marine chart, was the Lunga River and on the east was the Ilu River. Vandegrift had learned from Martin Clemens that this area was defended by from 2000 to 10,000 Japanese—a disturbingly loose estimate—and that there was a lesser force on Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo. Clemens had also reported that there were enemy guns emplaced on the beaches west of the Lunga, and so Vandegrift decided to land on the unprotected beaches east of the Ilu. The landings on Tulagi were to be made on its open western end, while the twin islets of Gavutu-Tanambogo, being so small and well-fortified, would simply have to be stormed.
Guadalcanal, of course, was to require the bulk of Vandegrift’s forces, and it was still the biggest worry. Information on the island’s terrain consisted of that old marine chart, a few faded photographs made by missionaries five years before the Japanese landed, and a short story by Jack London, as well as London’s personal anathema upon the entire group: “If I were a king, the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons. On second thought, king or no king, I don’t think I’d have the heart to do it.” To supplement this unspectacular hoard, Vandegrift sent Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge flying to Australia. Goettge conferred with Commander Feldt and his hard-bitten islanders. He brought back some helpful information on the target area’s terrain as well as eight islanders who had lived on Tulagi or Guadalcanal. The islanders—whose elephantine thirst made the purchase of Scotch whisky an acceptable military expense—were interrogated almost daily. Some of their information proved invaluable; some, just because it was thought to be invaluable, was to prove costly. One day General Vandegrift called for a plantation manager who had lived near Red Beach, the designated landing zone on Guadalcanal. Vandegrift pointed to the Ilu River on his chart, and inquired about the river’s characteristics.
“Since this is the dry season,” the islander said, “you will have no trouble in fording it.”
“It won’t be an obstacle?”
“No, it will not be an obstacle.”7
It would be an obstacle, because it was raining this dry season and because the river was not the Ilu but the Tenaru. And because of this assurance, General Vandegrift would leave valuable bridging equipment behind.
Meanwhile, all other attempts to map Guadalcanal were meeting similar frustration. Although the Army’s 648th Engineer Topographic Battalion had obligingly put on a “red-rush” aerial photo-mapping of the island, a naval transportation officer saw to it that the finished mosaic was carefully filed at the bottom of a mounting pile of boxes in an Auckland warehouse. Vandegrift never got it. Nor did he get much help from Lieutenant Colonel Twining, who, with Major William McKean, had boarded a Flying Fortress at Port Moresby and flown over Guadalcanal. The plane had been jumped by three float Zeros over Tulagi Harbor, and Twining and McKean had understandably been more engrossed in the ensuing air battle than in Guadalcanal. They remained thus preoccupied while the Fort’s gunners sent two Zeros spinning down in flames and fought off the pursuit of the third. After the big bomber finally got back to Moresby, coming in with bone-dry tanks, all that Twining and McKean could tell Vandegrift was that the landing beaches he had selected seemed suitable. Still desperate for terrain intelligence, the general asked Admiral Ghormley to approve landing a scouting party by submarine, but Ghormley replied that this was “too dangerous.” In the end, the opening of the American counteroffensive against Japan was to be based on a map so sketchy that Archer Vandegrift might have been landing on the moon.
During the landings, Vandegrift naturally expected the support of carrier-based aircraft. But after that who would fly from the airfield which Admiral King wanted so badly? The choice fell upon Marine Air Group 23—two squadrons of fighters and two of dive-bombers—commanded by Colonel William Wallace. But this outfit was then back in Hawaii checking out on carrier landings and takeoffs. No one seemed to know how such short-range aircraft were to cross thousands of miles of water to Guadalcanal.
Supply was another headache. The ships could be loaded only with “items actually required to live and fight.” Seabags, bedrolls, tentage—hardly articles of luxury—had to be left behind. Considerable heavy equipment and motor transport was hauled off the ships and placed in storage. Bulk supply—fuel, lubricants, rations—was cut to sixty days. Ammunition was reduced from fifteen to ten days of fire. And so the work of unloading and sorting and combat-loading went forward in those cold drenching rains.
Wellington’s spacious Aotea Quay was turned into an ankle-deep marsh of tons upon tons of cereal, cigarettes, candy, and little cans of C rations, whatever had spilled out of sodden and burst containers and had been churned into a pulpy mass by the feet of thousands of toiling Marines or the wheels of flat-bedded New Zealand lorries laboriously crawling through drifts of cornflakes. Here was bedlam made more chaotic by the sense of urgency energizing all those scurrying men in tan helmets and brown ponchos, made more nightmarish by wharf lights glowing ghostly throughout mackerel day and streaming night, and more lunatic by the sound of rain striking steel decks to counterpoint, with the monotony of a monstrous metronome, the whining
of winches, the shouting of bosun’s mates, and the crying of Marines warning one another of huge hooks swinging free or of trucks, slung in cargo nets like toys, rising from the holds with dangerous rapidity and falling too quickly toward the dock. There were curses, too, yells of frustration whenever Marines stumbled over C-ration cans imbedded in the mess or sharp cries of pain uttered by men tearing their flesh on rolls of barbed wire.
“Goddlemighty damn! What’n hell we need barbed wire for? I thought we were going on maneuvers.”8
That was what they had been told. It was a necessary security precaution, and might also preclude against any of the unvaliant missing the outgoing ships. No leave was granted, of course, but almost all of the men managed to slip into Wellington to promenade the city’s quaint steep streets, to dance with New Zealand girls, to eat steak and eggs or to savor such exotic potions as rum-and-raspberry or gin-and-lemon. And as the rains continued, and order came marvelously out of chaos, General Vandegrift alerted the First Marines to stand by to transship upon arrival.
Clifton Cates commanded the First Marines. He was a man as trim as a whiplash, as suave as steel in his breeches and puttees and sun helmet, puffing calmly on a long cigarette holder with which he sometimes punctuated orders given in a pleasant Tennessee drawl. Colonel Cates was an Old China Hand who had fought in France in World War I. He had been wounded twice, gassed once, and had won seven medals for bravery. Having commanded a platoon, a company, and a battalion in battle, he now had this regiment—and he was both worried and enraged about it.
Colonel Cates was enraged because the ship John Ericsson carrying most of his men was little better than an African slaver. If Cates had had the power he would have put the ship’s owner and her master in their own brig and let them rot on what they fed the troops: spoiled meat, rancid butter, and rotten eggs without an ounce of fresh food.
John Ericsson stank like a floating head. Hundreds of nauseated men thronged her leeward rails and those who could not retch over the side vomited into their steel battle helmets. The heads belowdecks reeked like open cesspools. Men devoured by dysentery waited outside the heads in long lines; men who could not get to them in time also used their helmets. The war was just beginning and the profiteer was already battening on American misery like a leech sucking blood.
The worries which nagged Colonel Cates were of a less infuriating nature. He was concerned that the men might be going stale. From San Francisco to Wellington was a voyage of about three weeks, and that was time enough to soften muscles only recently hardened by a few months of training. The men were idle and bored. Either they played cards or lounged on top of covered hatches, sunning themselves and “batting the breeze,” or they lined the gunwales to watch the flying fish or stare vacantly into white wakes boiling off the fantails, their minds thousands of miles eastward among the scenes of childhood.
On some of the less crowded ships it was possible to organize calisthenics, and aboard the George F. Elliott the men of Cates’s Second Battalion held boxing matches.
Indian Johnny Rivers was frequently in the ring. He sparred lightly with his opponents, careful not to hit them too hard. But one day, as the convoy and its escort of circling warships plowed through the blue Pacific, Johnny Rivers heard his friend Al Schmid yelling, “Your right, Johnny—use your right!”
Rivers swung his right.
His opponent stiffened and his eyes became glassy and his knees buckled.
Rivers came back to his corner, ruefully shaking his head. “What’s the idea, Smitty? I didn’t want to hit him with my right.” Then the irrepressible Rivers grinned. “Boy, I sure hit him though, didn’t I?”9
So the men of the First Marines sailed on toward New Zealand, and far behind them came the men of the Second Marines under the formidable protection of the aircraft carrier Wasp. This great ship which Winston Churchill had hailed as the savior of Malta had been rushed from the Atlantic to the Pacific to escort this borrowed regiment to the First Marine Division’s rendezvous area in the Fijis.
Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher had sortied from Hawaii. His ships included carriers Saratoga and Enterprise, battleship North Carolina, one light and five heavy cruisers, sixteen destroyers and three oilers. After he had rendezvoused with Wasp and all the other warships and transports then at sea or in New Zealand, the force would number eighty-nine ships and 19,000 United States Marines. It would be the greatest invasion fleet yet assembled.
But Admiral Fletcher was not jubilant. He was thinking of the three carriers—all that America had in the Pacific—and how dangerous it would be to risk them in the narrow and uncharted waters of the Solomons. Admiral Fletcher did not like this operation at all. Back at Pearl Harbor he had openly predicted that it would “be a failure.”10 He had had nothing to do with planning it.
In such high hopes did Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher put out for the Fijis to take command of the entire Expeditionary Force.
Beneath Fletcher in the chain of command was Vice-Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner. He was a planner and perfectionist, Kelly Turner, a man of beetling brows and rimless glasses, of ferocious language and a tongue as caustic as a shaving stick; he was a leader so pedantic that he would not hesitate to tell a coxswain how to beach his boat. This was the admiral who was to command the Amphibious Force, and Major General Vandegrift who commanded only the Landing Force—that is, the 19,000 Marines who were to seize the objectives—soon found that this was also a sailor who often mistook his sextant for a soldier’s baton.
Of this Vandegrift was made aware on July 18, when, a few days after the First Marines had arrived in Wellington, Turner’s flagship McCawley sailed into the harbor and broke out the admiral’s two-star flag. Turner quickly told Vandegrift that he was keeping all but one battalion of the Second Marines for the seizure of unoccupied Ndeni in the Santa Cruz Islands east of the Solomons. Vandegrift replied that this was to be only a later phase of the operation, and that he was counting on the Second Marines for his reserve. If he could not have them, he said, then he would have to change his plans. The meeting ended on a note of impasse.
Four days later—July 22—Vandegrift and his Marines stood majestically out to sea, bound for the Fiji Islands.
On July 26, the top American commanders met.
Turner and Vandegrift risked a heavy sea to transfer from McCawley to the destroyer Dewey. Already aboard Dewey were Rear Admiral John S. McCain, who commanded all of Admiral Ghormley’s aircraft in the South Pacific, Lieutenant Colonel Twining, and Colonel Laverne (“Blondie”) Saunders, commander of the Army Air Force’s Flying Fortresses. Dewey made for Saratoga, Fletcher’s flagship, and came about beneath its towering beam. Admiral McCain seized a Jacob’s ladder and started up.
A garbage chute swung open and the little admiral was showered with milk.
It was an infuriating beginning foretelling an unfriendly conference.
Archer Vandegrift, who had once been startled to see the unruffled Ghormley acting like a drill sergeant, was now amazed to see that Fletcher looked tired and nervous, and he put it down to the admiral’s recent battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.11 Next, he was surprised to learn that Fletcher had neither knowledge of nor interest in the Guadalcanal operation.12 Finally, he was thunderstruck to hear him saying frankly that it would not succeed.13 Then, Admiral Fletcher turned on Admiral Turner and angrily accused him of “instigating” the Solomons invasion.14 Unimpressed by Turner’s indignant denial, Fletcher interrupted him to ask, “How many days will it take to unload the troops?”
“Five,” Turner replied.
Fletcher shook his head stubbornly. Two days, he said, were quite enough. He would not risk his carriers any longer.
Vandegrift struggled to control himself. He tried to explain that this was no mere “hit-and-run” operation. This was an expedition to take and to hold fortified enemy islands. He, Vandegrift, commanded a heavily reinforced division. There was going to be a fight. His Marines would need air cover. Even five days of air cover
was scarcely sufficient. Two was suicidal.
Admiral Turner agreed, with heat and with force.
Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher shook his head. He was leaving with his carriers on the third day.
“The conference is dismissed,” he said curtly.
The commanders arose. With them was Vice-Admiral Daniel Callaghan, chief of staff to Admiral Ghormley. He had been present at the entire conference and had taken notes on what was said.
But he represented the admiral who commanded the entire Area, as well as this first American counteroffensive, and he never said a word.
Two days later the First Marine Division attempted to practice landings on the beaches of Koro Island. In full battle gear, the men scrambled down the cargo nets into waiting Higgins boats to form in a circle, then to go monotonously circling, circling, circling, and to sail back to their ships and clamber back up the nets to return to their holds.
The maneuvers were a fiasco. Sharp offshore coral prevented many boats from landing on the designated beaches, other boats broke down, the naval gunfire was inaccurate and the dive-bombers missed their targets.
But Admiral Turner and General Vandegrift, who had begun to respect each other and who were both optimists in battle, agreed that at least the defects had shown up early and there would be time to rectify them. A poor rehearsal, they said, means a good show.
On the last day of July there was frustration of an entirely different order. Marine officers from Wellington had flown in and they brought with them copies of the July 4 edition of the Wellington Dominion, which said:
HOPE OF COMING U.S. THRUST
South Pacific Marines
Challenge for the Pacific Page 7