The Pacific

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by Hugh Ambrose


  The battalion's 37mm cannons and .50-caliber machine guns went to the most vulnerable spot, the left end of the line, where it met the First Marines' sector. A flat plain opened there that stretched southward well into the jungle. From the far end of that plain came a jeep track running due north directly at their line, taking a little jog west as it crossed the 1/7's line, before heading north again to Henderson Field. Any attack would certainly come down that road. At the junction of the road and their lines, the marines built a cheval-de-frise, a three-dimensional oblong of barbed wire. Sturdier than a double apron of barbed wire, the cheval- de-frise could be swung open with difficulty when necessary.

  The cheval-de-frise was to Basilone's left. The riflemen from Charlie Company dug foxholes along a line running from it to the ridge on his right. Manila ordered his men to begin digging two machine-gun pits, each large enough for two guns, about forty yards apart. The traverse of each gun would support the riflemen between them as well as a large area to either side. Other men hacked down trees and brush to clear fire lanes or strung barbed wire. The gap between the point of John's machine gun and the wall of jungle on the far side of the barbed wire did not provide the kind of range a machine gunner craved. Behind him, the battalion headquarters dug in and ran telephone wire. After a week they learned Chesty would soon take them back across the Matanikau River and onto the offensive.

  The 1/7 woke up to a big breakfast on October 7. At the battalion kitchen, they received meat and potatoes and fruit, beans, and bread in their mess kits, and cups of hot coffee to wash it down.88 For hungry men living in the boonies, the meal went beyond being a healthy start to something more like a reassurance. Everybody knew the IJN had landed a lot of men and equipment on the other side of the Matanikau River. At the prospect of going over there again, one private wounded himself badly enough to be evacuated.89

  The new attack included a lot of units, including most of the Seventh Regiment. The attackers would not only have air cover, but the big guns of the division's artillery would be on call as well. Topside, Manila noted, had learned "a costly lesson from our recent failure...."90 For Basilone and his friends, it boiled down to this: the 1/7 and two other battalions would cross the Matanikau well upstream, then sweep northward and hit the enemy troop concentrations from the flank. Unlike the first patrol, this time John's machine-gun section would accompany a rifle platoon of Charlie Company.91 While carting the machine guns through the jungle was tough, the earlier patrols had shown that anything could happen. If they engaged a large enemy force, the riflemen would need the support of Manila's heavy machine guns.

  As the 1/7 left the mess, every marine put some C rations in his pocket. The little gold cans contained meat with hash, meat and beans, or some other dreadful combination. The 3/2 led the way, followed by the 2/7, with the 1/7 in the rear. Chesty liked to have Fidel Hernandez, a big marine out of Dog Company, be his point man.92 Chesty called Fidel "Hombre," but John and the others often called him "Chief " because he had some Native American ancestry as well as Spanish. Not far behind Fidel came his platoon leader, his company commander, and the battalion commander himself. Chesty had always been clear about his expectations for his platoon leaders and company commanders: "You lead your men," he insisted, "you do not lag behind."93 Strung out single file, the three battalions made one long column snaking west from the airfield, then south into the island's interior.

  In the midafternoon, they came to a stream, one of the tributaries of the Matanikau. A single coconut log crossed it, with a length of communications wire as a handrail.94 Only a few men could cross it at a time, creating a bottleneck that made the 1/7 vulnerable. Lookouts were posted downstream and upstream and the process got under way. Charlie Company crossed, then began the ascent up the other side of the valley. Climbing the steep ridge was a backbreaker. Men slid, dropped equipment, and cursed eloquently. Those few hundred yards took an hour.95 Charlie Company set up their bivouac on top of the ridgeline and posted the guard. Well into the evening, the other companies were still gaining the ridge and joining them.

  Even before the men had risen in the morning, the first few drops of a downpour made the prospect of another day of slogging through the jungle less appealing. The rain grew into a torrent and forced a delay. On the morning of the ninth the 1/7 crossed the larger fork of the Matanikau. As it continued pushing west, the two battalions ahead of them had begun turning north. The 1/7 continued west before turning north, in order to guard the marines' left flank.

  By the sound of it, the lead battalions had met a large enemy unit. Amid the bombs from U.S. planes and artillery, the sound of return fire could be heard.96 About a thousand yards from the river, 1st Battalion gained a ridge where they could see the surrounding terrain.97 Squad leaders like Basilone were called forward and shown the lay of the land. To the north, they could see the 2/7 firing at the enemy to their left. They could see the ocean another two thousand yards beyond the 2/7. The distances, however, could not be understood in yards. The steep hills and dense jungle imposed limits on every consideration.

  Chesty gave Charlie Company a special assignment.98 He ordered them to flank the enemy position that was exchanging fire with the 2/7. Captain Moore led his men down into a ravine, first west, then hooking around to the north. Upon gaining the high ground, they had a beautiful view. Across a narrow valley, they looked into the enemy positions on the barren ridge opposite them. The enemy's attention was focused on the 2/7.

  No one fired before Captain Moore gave the order. The marines took their positions and set up their weapons. Basilone's machine guns joined in as Charlie Company began raking the enemy troops at close range. With their targets silhouetted against the sky, some marines thought it was a bit like shooting on a rifle range.99 Over the barrel of his machine gun, Manila watched as the enemy "bodies jerked in a crazy dance."100 The Japanese, of course, wheeled around to face this new threat, but they lacked cover. It also quickly became apparent that the main force of the IJA was congregated in the depression between the two opposing forces.

  Charlie Company's 60mm mortars began dropping rounds down there while guys on the ridge fired rifle grenades at likely targets. Then the 81mm mortars, back with the rest of the 1/7 a bit south and east of Charlie, joined in. The enemy found themselves trapped in the ravine. They could not charge Charlie Company's ridge. They could not remain in the ravine. They could not survive on their ridge, much less defend themselves. Several times the enemy tried to set up a machine gun in a large tree on the edge of the ravine. Each time, Charlie Company's machine gunners and mortarmen cut them to pieces.101

  For two hours, Charlie Company had them dead to rights. The marines kept most of the enemy soldiers trapped in the lowland. Artillery, fired from within the perimeter, began to explode in the valley.102 The relentless killing finally caused the enemy to break and run for their lives. Hundreds had died and more had been wounded. The carnage made some of John's section puke. Return fire started to come from the position occupied by the 2/7. A few men went down before it ended suddenly.

  Before all resistance had been extinguished and before Charlie Company had made sure every figure lying out there was dead, Captain Moore began ordering them to prepare to withdraw. That surely struck some of them as odd. They loaded their dead and wounded onto litters. The way led east, skirting the depression in front of them, of course. A few marines searched the dead--some for intelligence and some for souvenirs--and they found the bodies of large, well- equipped men. This IJA unit obviously had not been on Guadalcanal long. As rear guard for the entire mission, Charlie Company had to watch its back as it marched to the mouth of the river. A few shots rang out, but this harassment tapered off as they got to the beach. The other battalions had crossed. Charlie Company stood watch while the rest of the 1/7 crossed the Matanikau near its mouth.

  Trucks began taking the others back to the perimeter along the coast road, so Charlie began to cross. On the other side, the marines deployed along the bank,
ready for anything. The trucks drove slowly and the wounded went first, among them Steve Helstowski, one of Manila's gunners and a close friend.103 Full dark found a dozen men still waiting for their ride, including Captain Moore and Colonel Puller.

  At last a truck arrived and they loaded up. The truck broke down. The group started to hike back in the direction of the airfield. With no moonlight, it became so dark it turned black. Without flashlights, they got lost. They wandered around, in and out of the perimeter and through several company CPs.104 Everybody knew this was a good way to get shot by one of the many trigger- happy marines out there.105 Furious, Puller demanded guides from these other units, but the guides promptly got them turned around again. At last they stumbled into marines from the First Regiment. They knew that those men held the Seventh's left flank, so they followed the First's line to the right.

  Those taking their shift on guard after midnight watched as the final Charlie men stumbled into their positions. Next they heard the voice of Chesty, who was at his battalion HQ a few hundred yards away. Though he obviously had a phone in his hands, Chesty yelled, "I and the remnants of my battalion have returned!" Evidently the person on the other end asked for a repeat, so he bellowed the same thing even louder.106 Around him, the 1/7 shared a chuckle.

  In the morning, there was time to piece together the story. Sergeants tallying the men for their muster rolls reported to the battalion HQ that the 1/7 had lost five killed and more than twenty wounded on the patrol. Charlie Company and the attached men from Dog Company had carried their dead out, but Chesty had ordered others buried where they fell, on the IJA side of the river.107 Manila's friend Steve had been wounded in the leg bad enough to be evacuated.

  The emperor's troops had paid dearly. Manila could tell his friends in Dog Company that they had gotten the Japanese dead to rights and hundreds of them had dropped and then, all of a sudden, orders came and C/1/7 had pulled out. Marines who had been up to battalion would have added the missing piece: Charlie Company's flank had been left wide open when the 2/7 had been ordered to pull out. The move had been ordered by the regimental commander, who had been well to the rear of Chesty's command post (CP). Chesty had yelled over the phone to regimental HQ something about getting off their asses and getting up to the front before issuing orders, but it had been too late to stop the pullout. No wonder Chesty had blown his stack when he finally made it back.

  Manila and the rest of the returnees also got some news from the men who had stayed behind to hold the 1/7's front line: a convoy of IJN ships and transports had been spotted sailing toward the Canal.

  W.O. HAD NOT ONLY RECOVERED FROM HIS DYSENTERY, HE ALSO HAD BECOME adept at theft. The rest of the #4 gun squad paid no attention when he slipped off, leaving them to dig emplacements, because he returned with goodies: four pounds of bacon on one trip, and a few days later, almost two gallons of dough. As if to put W.O.'s skill in proper perspective, that same day the battalion PX issued to each squad "one package of gum, 1 and 3/4 ounces of candy, four cans of tobacco," to complement each man's allotment of Japanese rice. Deacon happily took the dough and made biscuits; the next day he added jam to bake pies, and later slathered it in syrup for pancakes. The cook's biggest challenge was keeping W.O.'s dirty hands out of the process.

  As their new positions took shape, the company commander ordered the mortars to have gun drill with live rounds. The first section of 81mms opened up and rained shells down near Fox Company. No one was hit. Deacon muttered something about Duffy in first section being a "crackpot." Second section, which included the Rebel squad, laid down a systematic barrage that earned the praise of the platoon's officers.

  With their emplacements dug and their aiming stakes in, the work tapered off for the 81mms. Aside from the occasional working party down at the beach, Sid's squad waited for the next battle. Out beyond their lines, patrols from the 2/1 often ran into enemy patrols; they found two Japanese 75mm guns about eight thousand yards from the 2/1's lines, and someone said a patrol had captured two Japanese women snipers. The two or three air raid alerts a day seemed normal. Above their gun pit, "planes fought like wild men right over our heads." In one raid, they counted "17 zero fighters and 23 bombers" shot down, and they calculated the "approximate loss to the Nip was $6,770,000, the loss of the bombs not included."

  Totaling up enemy losses felt good, so during one three- hour-long air raid they moved on to enemy ships. Using the best scuttlebutt available, they calculated the IJN had lost "60 ships in 60 days." Positive rumors fed their hopes. Word came that forty-five thousand of "Dugout Doug's boys" (the U.S. Army) had landed on the island of Bougainville, on the western end of the Solomon Island chain. The rumor that fresh army regiments would replace marine regiments in the next few days, allowing the marines to return to San Diego, recurred regularly, so it had some credibility. Sid's squad also continued to augment its rations. When the barley they received "smelled like japs," Deacon traded his IJA bayonet to some swabbies in Kukum for cheese, beans, Spam, and bread. Another night he managed to create hole-less doughnuts before the squad began another of their sing-alongs.

  Humor moved Sid more than songs, though. On the night of October 12, he heard the guns of the Seventh Marines banging away and someone say it "must be some starving japs trying to give up." The next day, the army landed at Kukum, some thirty-five hundred strong. The first air raid siren sounded at ten thirty, the second at noon. Both waves of planes dropped thousands of pounds of high explosives. Sid's squad sent W.O. and others down to Kukum to see what could be stolen or traded from the doggies and the swabbies.

  THE PROSPECTS FOR SWINDLING AND STEALING ALSO ATTRACTED MANILA JOHN. He and his friend Richard walked down, hoping to trade some "jap booty" for "torpedo juice" (grain alcohol). "Let's start a rumor," John said.

  "What the hell do you want . . . ," Richard began, before the two came upon another marine. John said, "Hey, they found Amelia Earhart and her navigator and four kids on an island." The two walked on, sharing a laugh. The trip did not prove successful and they returned to camp and learned the 1/7 would go in reserve near the airport and the 3/7 would replace them. They also heard a pilot had been dispatched to the far side of the island to pick up Amelia Earhart and her family.n

  The shelling began with the IJA's artillery firing from the other side of the Matanikau. It moved around methodically, saturating the marine perimeter in general and the airfield in particular. Heavy shelling cued the arrival of Jockstrap to Dog Company. A Dalmatian, Jockstrap belonged to the assistant division commander, General Rupertus, who likely had named his dog something else. Jockstrap, however, preferred to be with Dog Company, particularly Sergeant Conrad Packer, when the shit hit the fan. Each explosion caused the dog to dig deeper underneath Packer.108 Tonight's shelling had Jockstrap digging hard when Washing Machine Charlie appeared overhead and dropped flares. Flares provided an aiming point for the enemy's ships.

  It started with what sounded like a door slamming. Somewhere out in the channel, a door hanging ten thousand feet in the air had just slammed. In the moment it took to realize how preposterous the notion was, the whistling of the first shells began to grow in pitch and volume until it sounded like a subway car entering a station. The detonation thundered like nothing the marines had ever heard. Well back from the airfield and in a bunker, John felt the threat turn to panic around him as colossal eruptions wiped other thoughts and concerns from his consciousness. In an hour and a half, the ships fired about a thousand shells into the area of the airfield. "The din and concussions were unbelievable. Good brave men gave way and sobbed."109

  In the morning of October 14 they learned the shelling had come from two enemy battleships firing fourteen-inch shells. Each shell weighed more than two thousand pounds. No one in the Fifth Marines or in the First Marines denied that what they had all endured had been the worst ever. John could only say it had been "an ordeal of torture."110 Two Dog Company second lieutenants, Richards and Iseman, had been killed by a direct hit o
n their bunker.111 Ten men from Charlie Company, who had been on a working party unloading ships, had been killed in the shelling. The 1/7 moved down to the airfield, in reserve off the front line, but in the target zone. Fires raged. The largest came from the gasoline storage areas. Great holes had been torn into the runway. In the afternoon, the enemy artillery across the Matanikau began shelling them. Dog Company and their dog Jockstrap started digging again.

  ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 14 THE PILOTS OF BOMBING SIX LEARNED THAT the night before the Imperial Japanese Navy had shelled Henderson Field and the marine positions around it. Some forty men had been killed, most of the planes had been rendered inoperable, and a big gasoline dump had gone up in flames. The IJN had prepared the way for another push to take the island. The need was great. The eight planes of Bombing Six, along with a like number of spare Dauntlesses, were the last reinforcements immediately available in the South Pacific.112 Bombing Six, the briefing concluded, will depart for Cactus today.

  It would not have taken them long to get ready for takeoff. They had been expecting to go into action and they did not have very much with them. Micheel, who had been promoted to lieutenant junior grade two weeks earlier, took off with a new gunner in his rear seat, Aviation Machinist's Mate Second Class Herman H. Caruthers. The flight lasted more than four hours. As they neared the airfield, they would have seen plumes of smoke, some of which were rising from the airfield. From a thousand feet up, a pilot could see two airstrips. The larger one, Henderson, ran east to west in a wide plain. The western tip ended just short of a river.

  Almost 4,000 feet in length, 150 feet wide, and mostly covered by a steel mat, the gravel airstrip had been created by the Japanese for their big land- based bombers. After the last month on Efate and Espiritu Santos, Mike had become accustomed to the dust and gravel kicked up during a squadron landing. Following his skipper, he would have turned off the landing strip onto the taxi strip. The ground crews directed the airplanes to parking areas, or hard stands, spaced out in intervals along the edges of the runway. Some of the coconut trees had been left in and around the hard stands in order to obscure the planes from above. It was rough terrain to move a plane around in. Mike would have seen a fair number of wrecked planes scattered about, some perhaps still smoldering.

 

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