by Hugh Ambrose
The continuous shelling gave way to the fits and starts of "mopping up operations," after another twenty- four hours on high alert, and the mortar squad heard some good news. Sealed orders had arrived, to be opened on September 18. The Seventh Marines were due to arrive at any moment. This surely meant they were going home. The rumors built daily, as the marines awaited the opening of the "sealed orders," and word came of a speech by FDR in which he promised "our mothers that we would be home by Xmas," and of the imminent arrival of forty thousand of "Dugout Doug's boys." A big sea battle had been fought nearby and it was said the battleship USS North Carolina had sunk twenty enemy ships. Sid's squad sat around their holes the next two nights singing folk songs and hymnals. Deacon took off his boots for the first time in nine days.
THE SEVENTH MARINES ARRIVED OFF GUADALCANAL ON THE MORNING OF September 18, a Friday. The sun ascended into a clear sky. From the ship, this island looked like Samoa: a mountain ridge running the length of it, though well back from the palm trees near the shore. The process of climbing down into the Higgins boats and riding to shore felt a lot like another practice run except for the navy destroyer off to their right, shelling an area of beach about a mile away.72
They walked off the ramp and into the friendly harassment of the marines on Lunga Point. Catcalls like "Where ya' been?" and "It's about time you got here, now that the fighting's over" welcomed them.73 John and his men dropped their packs in a heap along with the almost four thousand other members of the Seventh Marines. The word was the enemy could show up at any minute and that the only supplies the marines could count on were what they brought with them. The officers barked orders to the NCOs. John, J.P., and other NCOs yelled at the enlisted men. Confusion ensued.74 The marines had never been trained to unload ships and most rifle company commanders had only a basic understanding of logistics. The enlisted men grabbed boxes off the small lighters and humped them onto the beach. Cursing freely, they piled the stuff wherever it was handy.
An airplane did show up overhead after a time and things got lively. The AA guns began firing and it looked like some hits had been scored. The plane came racing for the beach. The marines started "running for the trees, for we were sure we were going to get strafed."75 Bracketed by AA fire, though, it swung around and landed in the water. A boat went out to check on it. The marines went back to their drudgery in the sand and surf. Word came later that the plane had been "one of ours"; the gunner had been killed, and the pilot was mad as hell.
The ships had not been fully unloaded when Topside realized it needed to shift the priority from unloading the boats to moving the piles of supplies off the beach and getting them organized into dispersed and covered dumps inland. That process had not been completed when it gave way to the necessity brought on by darkness. After a long day of drudgery, the eleven hundred men of the 1/7 and its attached units set up their bivouac under some coconut trees on Lunga Point, near the village of Kukum. The junior officers, despite being briefed on the situation, did not push the men to dig foxholes. Hours after sunset, an enemy ship came into the channel and shelled the area around the airfield, including Lunga Point, for two to three hours.76
During their first shelling, men from the 1/7 could be heard praying. The prayers "began in Polish, Italian, [or] German, and then they would switch back to English," observed one joker; "they was going to make sure old Allah understood them I guess."77 In the morning, the men of Dog Company could see gouges in the trees cut by ragged chunks of steel bigger than a man's hand. Two men of the 1/7 had been killed, two were wounded.78 One of the wounded men, the rumor had it, had started yelling "Help! Help! Help!" As the shells continued to fall, Lieutenant Colonel Puller walked over to him and said, "Son, try and keep quiet. The other men are going through the same thing. . . . I'll get you a corpsman to take care of you." The story of Chesty Puller under fire came with a kicker: "the poor guy had his foot blown off."79
The tropical heat they were used to; the destruction wrought by enemy shells they were not. The new guys noticed that men in the First Marines and Fifth Marines looked dirty, unshaven, and distinctly unimpressed by the previous night's action.
Around noon the men of the Seventh Marines were ordered to cease unloading. The 2/7 and 3/7 grabbed their gear and headed south, past the airstrip, to man a sector of the perimeter. The 1/7 was going on a patrol.80 That afternoon, Chesty Puller led them west to the Pioneer Bridge over the Lunga. On the far side of the river, a skirmish broke out in the thick jungle. Shots were exchanged with an unknown number of enemies. One marine fell. Chesty, at the point of attack, ordered his men forward. The resistance melted away and the 1/7 pushed a bit farther through the dense vegetation before digging in for the night. The jungle closed in. A few times they were awakened by their guards who, as John said, "got a little shadow happy," and fired at branches and bushes. In the morning, 1/7 headed back to the perimeter around the airfield. Another skirmish with the enemy broke out, leaving two marines wounded, before the battalion returned to the bivouac near the airfield.
Manila John and his friends got called out of their bivouac to the sound of gunfire that night. The IJA was attacking the 2/7 and the 3/7 and the regimental commander ordered the 1/7 to reinforce. The 1/7 scurried south in the darkness and heard a lot of firing, but eventually the word passed along that this was just trigger-happy marines firing at one another.81 Angry officers and NCOs cursed their men liberally and demanded fire discipline. Word came that General Vandegrift himself had ordered them to rely on their bayonets at night. One of the local experts, the Australian Martin Clemens, was brought in to brief the NCOs on jungle noises.
THE SEVENTH MARINES, IN THE ESTIMATION OF THE #4 GUN SQUAD, "IS A QUAKEY bunch. Too much so." It was neither a compliment nor a joke.
THE DAILY DEATH RATE IN CABANATUAN, WHICH HAD DROPPED IN AUGUST, dropped again in September to about fourteen men a day. The weaker men had died from malnutrition, diarrhea, or malaria. The stronger ones had been helped by the Red Cross, which had been allowed to send in quinine to combat malaria. Months of hunger, however, had debilitated the prisoners. Thoughts of food shut out memories of home and cut off desires for sexual intimacy. Hunger set the prisoners in competition with one another. Some men curried favor with the guards by supplying information. Some doctors sold medicines on the black market to those who had money. Whenever a prisoner became too sick to eat, the others made sure his portion did not go to waste.
By September the camp's guards had smoothed out the burial process. They allowed chaplains to hold services and grave markers to be placed. A bar of soap per man had been issued, although water remained in very short supply. The Japanese had also begun to allow prisoners, on occasion, to purchase food and medicines from them. The guards required the cash in advance. Being able to buy even small amounts of additional food meant the difference between life and death.
Austin Shofner had brought money with him. Before leaving Corregidor, he had rolled a number of $20 bills of Philippine currency into a roll of toilet paper because "I thought I might need it someday." A can of food sold for one peso from the guards, but they didn't always have anything to sell. Prisoners on working parties smuggled in cans of food, and some of these were also sold on the black market. These cans went for ten to twenty pesos apiece. In a good week, Shofner was able to buy two cans of food, usually of salmon or sardines.
Austin Shofner shared the extra food. He loaned money for food and medicine in a world where the concept of a loan made no sense. The grateful recipients in Cabanatuan POW Camp Number One did not regard the loans or the food as charity. It was heroism. He was risking his own life to save others.82
Of course he could not save many lives with two cans of food per week. The all-encompassing deprivation cut at their bodies. Survival required constant attention. The mental and physical demands, however, could be borne only so long as a man had hope, and hope had to be found outside the compound. The prospect of rescue receded, however, with each month of captivity
. If America was more powerful than Japan, why had they been lied to on Bataan about reinforcements being on the way? How could their country forget about them? The anguish persisted day after day as they tried to keep the flies off their food, tried to conserve their strength. Although every POW by this time knew how essential hope was to survival, that knowledge alone did not protect one from succumbing. When one of Shofner's friends told him, "Death isn't hard. Death is easy," he knew it would soon be over.
Like every prisoner, Austin Shofner had to gird himself for the mental challenge as well as the physical demands. With plenty of time on his hands, he did so. He thought about his father, who had played football for the University of Tennessee, just as he had. He thought about his football coach at UT, Robert Neyland, who had had as much influence on Shofner as his own father had. Coach Neyland had taught his team how to win. "You've got to play for the breaks," Neyland had always said, "and when you get one--score!" Neyland had toughened Shofner physically, but he also taught him to size up the odds, to know when a little trickery could shift the balance. Austin Shofner had found he had a gambler's eye. He had earned the nickname "Shifty." These memories reminded him of the energy and power he received whenever he felt like playing the odds and betting it all. After more than five months of being a POW, Shofner decided to look at the war as a football game. It was halftime. The other side had run up the score. But Shifty was getting back in the game.
JUST SHY OF TWO MONTHS ON THE ISLAND, HOW COMPANY AND THE REST OF THE 2/1 pulled out of their positions near Hell's Point at the mouth of the Tenaru River. Of course the order to move arrived just after Sid and Deacon had built themselves a nice new hut, so they were already angry when they heard they were taking over the 3/1's positions south of the airfield because the men in the 3/1 were in bad shape. " They are cracking up!?" demanded Deacon. "What do they think we are?"
The #4 gun squad had scrounged too hard and too long to leave anything behind. Scraps of lumber to build a hut, bedding liberated from the enemy stores in the early days--it all came with them, so they "looked like a bunch of gypsies moving out." Their new position had them tied in with the Tenaru well upstream, although now it ran on their left as they faced south.* The dense jungle opened into a large field in the center of the 2/1 section of the line; beyond the field to the right, dense jungle disconnected them from Bloody Ridge, where the Raiders and Parachute battalions had had the big battle a week earlier.
The condition of their new home outraged Sid's squad. No foxholes had been dug, no emplacements built. "We can plainly see the 3rd is a very inefficient bunch of men." Somebody else, at that very moment, was setting up shop in the "palace" left by the 2/1 on Hell's Point. Thankfully, Benson had already told them they would be moving to a new position very soon. Sid and Deacon cooked up some "Naisha Kaika" ( Japanese rice cereal) and were delighted to discover that while they could hear the shelling on the airfield, the bombs didn't go off near them anymore. The snipers in the jungle around them also seemed tame by comparison. The #4 gun squad got a good night's sleep.
ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 24, THE THREE RIFLE COMPANIES OF THE 1/7 stripped themselves down to essentials and walked west for another patrol across the Lunga. The word spread across the division that Lieutenant Colonel Puller would, in the words of Charlie Company's captain, "rather fight than eat."83 Most of Dog Company, including John's machine-gun section, stayed behind. Basilone found a piece of brown wrapping paper about this time and wrote his parents. "I have arrived safely on Guadalcanal," was all he said.84 As for his friends on the patrol, the first report came when Able and Baker companies returned a day later with some wounded. It sounded about the same as the first patrol: a series of short, sharp firefights with the enemy with a few losses and no clear resolution. Then Able and Baker departed again. A day later Charlie Company returned, and then Able and Baker came stumbling into camp in the middle of the night. Manila's friend Richard, who had been with Able Company, told him the patrol had become "a haul-ass retreat!"85
In the morning no one from the patrol eagerly shared details about it. The officers in battalion headquarters were angry. Regimental HQ was said to be angry. The 1/7 patrol had grown into a complicated offensive before degenerating into a mess. Able and Baker companies had found themselves on a hill on the far side of the Matanikau River, cut off from the marine lines, surrounded by enemy forces. No one had brought a radio. With the enemy closing in, they had taken off their T-shirts and spelled H-E-L-P. A pilot happened to see the sign and radioed in. Hearing the news, Chesty jumped aboard a destroyer and went racing toward the scene. With its five- inch deck gun, the destroyer Monssen had cleared a path from the Alamo to the ocean, and the boys had run for their lives following the line of explosions.
With the enemy running hard to cut the marines off, John's good friend, Platoon Sergeant Anthony P. Malanowski, Jr., of Able, had picked up a BAR and covered the retreat. The marines reached the beach under heavy fire. Puller had some Higgins boats waiting for them, manned by coastguardsmen and navy coxswains brave enough to be sitting ducks. The loaded boats had only just gotten away; three coxswains had been wounded. No wonder the rifle platoons of the 1/7 had returned in a foul mood. After ten days on Guadalcanal, the battalion had suffered 10 percent casualties, including nine officers.86 No one wanted to think about what the Japanese were doing at that moment to the marines who had been unable to make the run to the boats--men like Tony Malanowski, who had given them time to get away. So they stopped talking about the mission entirely. The battalion moved across the airfield area, south, to the jungle beyond the airport.
ISOLATED IN A THICKET SOUTH OF THE AIRFIELD, SID'S SQUAD HEARD AN ABBREVIATED report: "1st Battalion, 7th, surrounded in ambush. 2nd Battalion sent up to their aid." The mortarmen had also heard that all of the ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy were sailing toward them--nothing new there. They had managed to augment the spoonfuls of rice served at battalion with steak and beans cooked by Deacon. One of the mortarmen standing guard, Lester, heard a column marching toward them on the trail and, as ordered, Les stepped forward and challenged. A raspy voice replied: "This is Lieutenant Colonel Puller, Commanding Officer of the First Battalion, Seventh Marines: the best damn outfit in the United States Marine Corps."87
"Pass, friend," Lester stammered as Chesty Puller stalked past, the barest glimmer of a wink in his eye for the young marine on guard. The marines marching behind "the living legend," as Les later described the colonel, had just grinned at him.
SHIFTY KEPT HIMSELF AS CLEAN AS POSSIBLE. HE BOUGHT FOOD ON THE BLACK market as he could, but he ate the worms in his rice. He ate grass, leaves, whatever would fill the void. He told jokes, played softball, teased his friends, and kept an eye out for others, like him, who were playing to win. Shifty knew he needed a team of men whom he could trust--for survival, if not escape. Two likely fellows, Mike Dobervich and Jack Hawkins, bunked in his barracks and they were both marines, which was important. The three men had all heard a rumor that one thousand prisoners would be sent to another camp. They discussed the idea of volunteering to go. In the past each prisoner had endeavored to miss such shipments; some of those POWs had reportedly been sent to Japan. However, they agreed no place could be worse than Cabanatuan. To stay was to die.
On the morning of September 26, the prisoners learned that the guards had foiled an escape attempt by three officers. The circumstances of the escape seemed a little odd. No trial was held. Just outside the fence in full view of all, the guards tied the wrists of each of the three escapees behind them. A rope from the post above them was tied to their wrists and suspended each body just enough so only their toes could touch the ground. Under the supervision of their officers, the guards beat them until their faces were unrecognizable. The men hung there for two days, bleeding, their shoulders wrenched by their weight. They received no food or water. The IJA medical personnel revived them so they could be beaten again. The guards required any Filipinos using the road near the men to strike
them. If a Filipino did not strike the escapees severely, the Japanese struck the Filipinos.
"I had never imagined," Shofner wrote in his diary, "that such punishment could be taken by the human body, nor that man could endure such pain." At the end of the second day, the guards cut them down and compelled them to walk into the brush. One man with a broken leg could not walk, even when stabbed with a bayonet. They dragged him maybe fifty yards, until they reached three shallow graves. Two of them were shot and the third beheaded. All the men in the barracks where the escapees had lived, of which Shifty was a member, were immediately confined to barracks unless they were getting food or relieving themselves. The punishment would last for one month. Shifty wondered if he and his two friends had just missed their chance to get out of Cabanatuan POW Camp Number One.
THE 1/7 MOVED INTO A LINE OF HALF- FINISHED FOXHOLES AND BUNKERS FACING south. The 3/7 held the sector to their right, up on Bloody Ridge. On their left, the line ran into a sector held by the First Marines. Without the benefit of either a commanding height or a river, the 1/7 had a lot of work to do to create a defensible line across this area of flat, somewhat swampy jungle.