The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  Two more air strikes hit them that day. Sid could not stop himself from watching them. Deacon counted twenty-three in one flight. With the falling bombs came word that Japanese ships were on the way. That night, a lot of marines fired at trees and bushes while others yelled the password "Malaria!" The sergeant of #4 gun squad, Karp, got so scared he could hardly move. He wasn't the only one around who looked "lumber-legged."

  After a difficult night, the squad relieved their hunger and their stress by going hunting and looting again. Everybody was doing it. They decided to kill another cow that day and kill the pigs they saw later. The enemy's supply dumps and buildings yielded all sorts of interesting military souvenirs, as well as more practical items like bedrolls, cigarettes, liquor, and canned rations. The #4 gun squad stole enough food to last three days. This came in handy, as the word came that the division only had enough rations for five days. On the roads and paths connecting Kukum to the airfield, marines drove around in captured vehicles. Sid roared with laughter at the sight of one grinning marine driving a Japanese steamroller, feigning a carefree indifference, smoking a cigarette. He had painted "Under New Management" on the side.

  The air raids continued to arrive a few times a day. When the Zeros came down low to strafe, Sid pulled his .45 pistol and returned fire. One night two submarines surfaced just offshore and shelled the area for half an hour. With all the flying shrapnel, the marines decided to dig their foxholes, bomb shelters, and mortar pits deeper into the dark rich soil. Working parties brought supplies back from Red Beach, where the landing had taken place, using captured IJA trucks. Other marines dug large supply and ammo dumps around the airfield. The marines' 90mm AA guns, emplaced around the airfield at last, began to return fire. The enemy's bombers flew higher. Marines on patrols began to exchange gunfire with the enemy in the jungle.

  The #4 gun squad took its turn on guard the night of the sixteenth, when they patrolled along the Tenaru River in "the densest jungle ever." Sometime after midnight, Deacon thought he heard "japs signaling with their coconut shells." He whirled around and pulled the trigger on his BAR, snapping off five rounds at an ambusher. They heard someone jump into the river, then grenades started going off. Sid and the guys spent the rest of the night standing guard, unable to see, "in terror of being bayoneted." In the morning they rewarded themselves with a breakfast of tomatoes, corn, fried potatoes, jam quiche, butter and crackers, and great coffee. They had to enjoy it while it lasted, because the battalion HQ had placed guards around the captured stores. All men would now receive their share of food at the battalion mess. The #4 gun squad knew that meant they would surely starve.

  In between the air raids, and the sickening terror they brought, and the working parties, the squad occasionally got a chance to swim in the warm ocean and throw coconuts at one another. The grueling pace allowed few such moments. A patrol on the eighteenth wiped out a reconnaissance patrol of eighteen Japanese officers and men. Well equipped, they were obviously scouts of a larger force that had just landed.57 Another patrol brought H Company to the remains of marines whose bodies had been savaged and desecrated by the Japanese. The horror underlined a fact that the enemy had made clear several times already: no prisoners, no rules, no mercy. Hearing about other patrols, however, had made less of an impression than seeing it up close.

  The sound of aircraft engines on August 20 turned out to bring joy, not pain. Two squadrons of U.S. planes circled the airfield and landed. These planes had the initials USMC on their sides, much to the delight of all hands. Bataan had never had reinforcements like these. On Guadalcanal, though, the news was never all good.

  On the same day the mortar section moved closer to the Tenaru because an attack was expected. The #4 guns ran in a row parallel to the ocean, still well back from the river, and the crew of #4 spent the afternoon digging a new pit and getting the weapon sited. The move did not mean Sid and Deacon had to abandon their "honey" of a bomb shelter, which they had constructed of logs and strung with netting to be both bombproof and mosquito-proof. The mortarmen spent their time in one of three locations: their mortar pit, which had some foxholes around it; their camp, where they slept aboveground; and their bomb shelter belowground, into which they ran when they were shelled by ships or bombed by planes. No one from the squad was at camp that night, however, since Benson had alerted everyone for night action. As had become usual, many men from the mortar squad manned their rifles in foxholes along the river, buttressing the rifle companies. This night Sid, Deacon, and two others manned the mortar pit. As usual, two men slept in the pit while the other two stood watch.

  At about three a.m. heavy artillery fire and MG and rifle fire woke Sid and Deacon. The hammering of weapons firing was sustained and concentrated at the intersection of the beach and the river on their right. This was not some jittery guy firing at iguanas in the bush. The foursome jumped up to prepare to fire the mortar. They made sure their rifle or pistol was handy, too. Behind them the 75mm cannons shelled the area across the river. It seemed like hours passed as real combat was waged close by. Word came for #3 and #4 guns to move up. The squad broke down the 81mm and moved up to within a hundred yards of the river, right into the battle, stumbling and cursing in the semidarkness. The machine gunners and the riflemen lined the bank, hammering away. At the point where the river met the sea, where a sand spit made it easy to ford, the 37mm cannons methodically pumped rounds. Dawn had broken when they set up the guns and, during a pause, they heard men cheer, "Hurrah, here comes the 81s."

  The #4 gun opened fire as soon as they could see the bubbles in their sights. Deacon had them fire their HE (high explosive) shells in a zone pattern on the other side of the river. The short range made for a high sharp arc before they burst amid the coconut plantation. Around Sid and Deacon, the ammo carriers broke down the cloverleaf shell containers, then opened the waterproof shell case and handed a round to the assistant gunner, Sid, who tore off excess increments and dropped the shell down the tube. W.O. cleaned up the excess increments (the small packs of gunpowder that propelled the shell) before they were ignited accidentally. The team got into a rhythm, not holding back. Their shells' launch could not be heard over the cannonading. The rending crash of their HEs' explosions marched among the rows of coconut trees, evil in its power. A few hours later, a heavy volume of fire cut into the line of marines. The enemy's mortars had found their range. Near Sid's position, a sliver of shrapnel sliced off a man's head. Another shell landed in a foxhole with four men. The smell of burned flesh and of sweet blood mixed with the cordite. The fusillade drove Sid and Deacon and others back from their guns.

  The team returned to the mortar amid the pieces of bodies. They began blasting away again, starting at one position and moving left or right. The riflemen and the machine gunners began waiting while the HE marched across the battlefield. The approaching blasts drove the remaining enemy from his cover and they would fire at the targets. The sense of urgency began to wane. Colonel Pollack, the CO of the 2/1, came over and directed them to fire at an amtrac that had been abandoned in the river. A Japanese machine gunner was using it for cover. It took a few rounds before #4 gun squad dropped a round into the amtrac. A cheer went up. Late in the afternoon, word came to cease fire.

  Standing next to #4 mortar and awaiting orders, Sid saw the horror of war up close in the sudden quiet. The corpsmen finished removing the wounded and started removing the bits and pieces of bodies. Beyond the marine line and to the left, on the point of the sand spit, the bodies of the enemy lay piled two and three deep. "The whole earth to our left flank," Deacon wrote in his journal, "was totally black with dead japs. The mouth of the Tenaru is nothing but a mass of bodies."

  A few survivors tried to get away by swimming out to sea, but "our men picked them off like eating candy." Others lay amid the pile, waiting only for a marine to get close enough for the chance to kill him with a grenade. One of those explosions taught every man to shoot into each body or else jab a bayonet to make certain all
were dead. It was easy to tell which ones needed another bullet, since so many of the enemy had been torn into pieces. They had run right into the hail of bullets and canister shot of the 37mm, which sprayed lead pellets like a giant shotgun, scything down men by the squad.

  The stupidity of the attack was self-evident. Without feint or forethought, heedless of the cost, the crack troops of the Imperial Japanese Army had rushed forward. The IJA had not known that an islander had tipped off the marines, but one of the Japanese soldiers had fired a flare before their first attack.58 Their bodies got ground into a meaty red pulp when the marines' Stuart tanks drove over the sand spit in the late afternoon as part of a pincer movement. A battalion of infantry had crossed the river well to the right and was advancing north to the ocean, flushing the remainder toward the Stuarts. Shooting the enemy across the Tenaru lost the heat of combat; it came to have the precision of the rifle range. Colonel Cates, CO of the First Marines, walked over to shake hands with the #4 gun squad and tell them they had laid down a perfect barrage. The cooks brought up hot coffee and C rations. Sid got into line. The marine next to him observed that "Marines would have to stand in line to get into hell."

  The members of #4 gun who had fought as riflemen arrived with tales of killing enemy soldiers at close range. They also told of how the squad had lost their sergeant, Karp. A Japanese colonel had sliced his face open with his sword, then opened his chest and stomach, then ran him through. The colonel had wounded another marine before someone shot him. Dusk came. The mortar squad began filling sandbags and preparing to spend the night at their new position. The storytelling continued throughout H Company. Lucky Leckie, one of the machine gunners, said his friend Chuckler had seen lights across the river and had been the first to shout, "Who goes there?"59 After the firing started, Lucky and Chuckler had had to move their weapon several times to keep from being hit. At the point where the river met the sea, Hell's Point, as the sand spit was being called, machine gunner Johnny Rivers had held fast. It was said he killed one hundred of the emperor's troops after he died. His dead fingers had frozen on the trigger.

  Stories like Johnny Rivers's, who had been called Chief because of his Indian heritage, formed the core of the men's understanding of the Battle of Hell's Point.m The next day, everyone started looting the bodies, trying not to breathe through their noses, with the knowledge that the First Marines had done it. They had stood up to the vaunted Japanese army. Inside the packs they found hand grenades, American money, and lots of condoms. Estimates of the enemy dead ran from 750 to more than 1,000. Fourteen had been taken prisoner, although not by How Company marines, adding to the 300 in the stockade. Sid found USMC emblems, snapshots of marines with their girlfriends, and a wooden cigarette case with the word "Guam" printed on it; these men had looted the marine barracks on Guam.60 The Japanese had been equipped with ten heavy machine guns, many more light machine guns, grenade throwers, and a few flamethrowers. The latter had not been used. The tally for his company's losses ran to four killed in action and eight wounded. His battalion lost thirty-four killed and seventy-five wounded. Occasional shots still rang out through the day. Some came from enemy snipers. Others came from marines finding and killing wounded enemy soldiers.

  Across the river, bulldozers dug pits for mass graves. An orderly column of Korean and Japanese POWs marched passed Sid's mortar squad on their way to the pits to help bury their comrades. One of the MPs guarding the work detail called out as if on parade ground, "In cadence count!"

  "Roosevelt good man, Tojo eat shit!" yelled his charges. Sid fell over with laughter, in love with the magical power of humor. The men of the #4 gun squad felt a deep pride in their role in the victory. The stovepipe boys had proven themselves and their weapon. Sid and the squad collected the photos of the marines and their girlfriends taken from the dead bodies and burned them. In his evening service, Deacon prayed, "Oh God, that our own men never fall into the same trap as these japs."

  ON AUGUST 22 THE THREE CARRIERS AND THEIR TASK FORCES HEADED NORTH to the Solomon Islands. The infamous Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, had sent down a great fleet to wipe out the U.S. forces on Guadalcanal. Saratoga, Enterprise, and Wasp sailed throughout the night to meet it even as an enemy scout plane betrayed their location.61 The next morning they had taken station about seventy miles to the north and east of Guadalcanal when word came of enemy transport ships steaming down the channel formed by the twin lines of Solomon Islands to Guadalcanal. The Big E, as the task force's duty carrier, provided the search planes while the pilots on the other carriers stood ready. Ensign Micheel was among twenty-three scouts that took off at first light, trying to find the bad guys first. With each pilot on a separate leg, they covered 180 degrees of the ocean. Mike saw nothing and returned a few hours later. Two scouts reported submarines. Later that afternoon another Dauntless patrol found a sub and claimed hits. All three enemy subs had been headed south at high speed toward them, so the assumption was they represented the vanguard of Yamamoto's surface fleet.62

  In the afternoon a scout reported finding an enemy flattop and her escorts. Saratoga launched her bombing, scouting, and torpedo squadrons against the light carrier Ryujo. The Sara's planes found nothing and bad weather forced them to land at Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal. Word came later that the enemy carriers were still well north of them. With that reversal, Wasp and her escorts sailed south out of the combat zone to refuel. Her departure left the Sara and the Big E on the front line.

  THE 2/1 REMAINED AT HELL'S POINT BECAUSE ITS REGIMENTAL COMMANDER expected another attack either from across the Tenaru or on the beach near it. Sid and Deacon lived near the carcasses. The two 81mm mortar crews had been given a lot of credit for the slaughter; the obscenity of it was inescapable and soon became chilling. One corpse made them both laugh: he "was ripped wide open from his loins up to his chin and his chest laid open and his ribs broken back like a chicken, no entrails, heart, lungs or anything laying in him. He looked like a gutted possum. . . ." The radio that night carried a program from San Francisco celebrating their victory. Visions of their families hearing the news brought a moment of joy. A heavy rain fell. No one in the squad could relax enough to sleep. The prolonged tension had given them all diarrhea.

  The worry that more of the enemy were coming became specific in the morning with news that four IJN transports, four destroyers, and two cruisers were sailing toward them. Sid's squad bolstered themselves with eggs, bacon, and good coffee. They watched planes from the two squadrons based on Henderson Field fly in and out. Before lunch, the First Marines buried their dead. They sang "Rock of Ages" and "America." The trumpeter played taps. Afterward they dug more holes in the ground--new positions for themselves. Word came that the navy had sent some ships, submarines, and some planes to protect them. At four p.m. Lieutenant Benson called the 81mm to alert. The #4 gun squad received fifty rounds of HE and twenty rounds of the light. The Imperial Japanese Navy would arrive in force at four a.m. Warned that this was the big one, the squad expected another sleepless night. Around them, men test- fired their weapons to set ranges and calibrations. Even the nonbelievers in the squad, Deacon noticed, joined in the nightly prayer. Ready at last, Sid's squad "lay in wait for action now. So beware Mr. jap for the U.S. Marines."

  THE CLOUDY MORNING OF AUGUST 24 WIDENED INTO A BEAUTIFUL CLEAR DAY. Micheel and twenty-two other dive-bombers took off at six thirty a.m. to find the IJN fleet fanning out over the ocean in every direction but to their southeast, which the PBYs from Efate and Espiritu Santos covered. Mike's search pattern, flown through dark clouds, took him well over four hours to complete. He saw lots and lots of ocean, its waves large enough to help him navigate. When he came back aboard, there was news of an enemy carrier sighting and of IJN submarines near his task force. Yamamoto knew their location. His dive- bombers were on the way. All available Dauntlesses were prepared for another search to the north and east of their position. The two carriers churned southward, getting a
good wind over the flight deck. After takeoff, the twenty-three planes swung north and fanned out.

  Mike's dogleg search took almost five hours to complete. He had not been given an exact spot for Point Option; he had simply been told to expect Enterprise to steam due north, on a heading of 000 degrees (True), advancing about ten kilometers for each hour of flight.63 His navigation proved adequate. He saw the Saratoga's massive square frame break the skyline first, steaming along about fifteen miles from his carrier. He approached the task forces from a particular heading, in order to identify himself as a friendly plane. Black puffs exploded near his plane, jarring him. The AA gunners on the Sara were shooting at him. He broke away quickly, checking to make sure his IFF system was on; the signal it transmitted identified him as a friendly. He came around again to the correct bearing. The Sara's gunners cut loose on him. "So I went back out and came in the place we weren't supposed to come in. Nobody shot at me!"

  The overzealousness of the antiaircraft batteries became more understandable when he entered the Big E's landing pattern. Air ops radioed him that the ship had been hit. Plumes of smoke rose from her. More than twenty aircraft were flying circles around her, waiting. Mike found a place in the circle and waited while the crew repaired the Big E's flight deck. Once again, he found himself running out of fuel. It gave him the nagging worry he called "puckering." Enterprise began receiving her planes at last, though. Weary after nine hours of total flight time, he made his fiftieth carrier landing and let the plane handlers take it from him. Walking the flight deck he noticed a patch of metal boiler plating covering a large section. He walked over to where another bomb had hit, on the starboard side of the stern. The bomb had exploded next to a five-inch antiaircraft gun, setting off the gun's ammunition as well. Mike looked "in that turret and those guys were cooked right at the turret, right at their positions, just fried like an egg or like a piece of toast."