by Dick Camp
13 September 1942
A very somber Edson gathered his officers the next morning. “They’ll be back,” he said, “But maybe not as many of them.” Colonel Alexander wrote, “He [Edson] thought about that for a moment, then shrugged, ‘Or maybe more. I want all positions improved, all wire lines paralleled, a hot meal for the men. Today, dig, wire up tight, get some sleep. We’ll all need it.’ He looked in the faces of each of his company commanders. ‘The Nips will be back. I want to surprise them.’”
Kawaguchi lamented that the night’s engagement was “a tragedy … a miserable failure.” He vowed to renew the fight. “On the morning of the thirteenth to the officers of each battalion I sent the order, ‘The Brigade will again execute a night attack tonight. The duty of each battalion is same as before.”
Private First Class Everett, although weak from loss of blood, had survived the night hiding in the brush. “I put on a tourniquet and tried to call for help.” At dawn, Pfcs. Robert S. Youngdeer and John D. Simonich went searching for missing Raiders. They heard a weak voice call for help, “Anyone from ‘C’ Company out there?”
“We could see a body on the ground lying still,” Youngdeer said. “He was dressed in Marine garb and from all appearances was one of us … He had removed his belt and used it to wrap around both legs to immobilize them and help cut down the bleeding.” Unfortunately, without realizing it, he had been very close to a Japanese machine gun position the entire time. The noise attracted enemy fire and the men were forced to try and drag Everett on a blanket. “Three of us, in a prone position, dragging a limp body, while he groaned and moaned, was no easy task.”
The shots attracted two other Marines, John W. Mielke and Leslie R. “Bear” Frink. As they ran to help, Frink pushed through the brush and ran head on into a bayonet-toting Japanese, who stabbed him in the chest. A sniper in a tree then shot Simonich in the leg and as Youngdeer rose to shoot, he was struck by a .25-caliber bullet. The round hit him in the left side of the face and exited under his right ear. He momentarily blacked out. Coming to, he took cover. “My teeth were shattered, my tongue was creased, I could not speak distinctly,” he recounted. Mielke took over behind a fallen tree that overlooked the machine gun position. “Their attention was in the direction of the shooting,” he explained, “and I had a clear shot at the machine gunner and another man nearest me.” In the next few minutes, Mielke expended every round in his cartridge, killing at least six Japanese and saving the wounded men.
Unfortunately Everett’s travails were not over. Colonel Joe Alexander wrote, “Everett was too exposed to be rescued—a sad fact which depressed Youngdeer for four decades—nor could they evacuate Bear Frink’s body … Charlie Everett knew he had been abandoned and understood why, but his spirits sagged. At one point he considered shooting himself—anything to keep the Japanese from capturing him alive. By a small miracle, a Raider patrol eventually found him, barely alive, and carried him out on a blanket.” Everett survived and returned home.
Kawaguchi’s attack on the twelfth had “alerted the whole division,” Major Griffith emphasized. “A battalion of the 5th Marines [2nd Battalion] was moved up behind us, and then the artillery was registered that afternoon, the air was alerted, everything was set for a big attack.” Colonel del Valle shifted a four-gun 105mm howitzer battery to a new position that could provide better support. Two artillery observers were sent forward with direct communication with the artillery fire direction center. The stress of combat, coupled with little if any sleep, was bearing heavily on the men. “I went to Edson’s command post at mid-afternoon to assess the situation,” Colonel Twinning said, “The constant enemy pressure was taking a toll on the hard-pressed Raiders [and Parachutists]. Edson seemed terribly fatigued, but he was in far better shape than anyone else up there. … [He] commanded a group of exhausted men. …”
Edson decided that something had to be done about the Japanese salient in his lines. The Japanese had dug in and fortified the ground they had seized from Charlie Company. If the lines could not be restored, Edson would be forced to pull back to the more defensible terrain on the slopes of Hill 120. Edson ordered Captain Antonelli to take the combined Able and Dog Companies to regain the lost ground. Antonelli’s force moved into the jungle along a dry stream bed. As they neared the front-line positions that had been overrun “we formed a skirmish line with two platoons on line and a platoon in support,” Platoon Sergeant Guidone recalled. “As we moved slowly into the jungle, loud, shrill Japanese voices broke the stillness.…” The skirmish line froze, holding their breath. It sounded like commands, as if the Japanese officers or NCO were placing their men into position. “I was on line with my squad, trying to stay on line with the squads on our flanks, but the thickness of the jungle made this difficult. We moved forward slowly, since we only had about thirty feet of visibility ahead of us. It was difficult to maintain silence because we were constantly brushing aside long stems and branches. … The Japanese were now quiet.”
The formation advanced cautiously—tense, expecting any moment to get hit. Suddenly automatic weapons fire erupted from the jungle foliage. “We could actually see the jungle foliage just above our position being moved by the Japanese bullets.” The Raiders took cover. “Their initial fire was ineffectual,” Guidone said. “We returned fire with our Springfields and BARs [but] there were no targets, we were only firing in the direction of the Japanese positions. We could not move to any upright position or we would have been cut down quickly. I remember off to my left someone tossed a grenade toward the Japanese positions. Suddenly we saw a tail of smoke heading toward us. It was our grenade coming back. We rolled around for cover and fortunately when it exploded no one was hurt. There was sporadic shooting and some more Japanese commands.” It was a stalemate. The Raiders did not have enough men to retake the position and the Japanese were satisfied to hold what they had. Captain Antonelli ordered a withdraw.
Edson was forced to reposition his units. “To avoid an exposed right flank, we withdrew our forward elements to the battalion reserve line of the twelfth,” Edson explained in a postwar interview. “This actually extended our lines at least five hundred yards, a gap partially filled by Company D, 1st Division Engineers. [I] ordered this realignment about 1500 on the thirteenth when it became definitely apparent we could not regain the position held the night before.” Major Griffith thought the positioning, “greatly improved fields of fire for automatic weapons and imposed upon the attacker a trip of about a hundred yards from the jungle’s edge before he could physically contact the battle positions. In traversing this open space they could be brought under killing grazing fire.”
The realignment positioned the Marine force several hundred yards to the rear with Baker Company (Parachute) tied in with Baker (Raider), Charlie Company (Parachute), and Able Company (Parachute) protecting the exposed left flank. Baker Company (Raider) tied in on the forward slope of Hill 123 with Dog Company (Engineer) on its right. Able Company (Raider) extended from the engineer’s position to the Lunga River with the 1st Pioneer Battalion positioned behind them. Major Griffith was placed in command of the right wing. “I had this little task group, and I was defending a position to the south of the ridge. The Japanese harassed us that night … but they didn’t cause us any trouble.”
Baker Company’s Captain Sweeney received a surprise. The company commander and executive officer were evacuated. “As of now,” Edson told him, “you’re now the B Company commander.” At the time, “I had no officers,” Sweeney said, “they were all gone, but the NCOs were all strong. At the time I was too tired to realize the situation I was handed, but as the sun was going down, I realized more and more what was given to me.” Edson returned just after dark. “John,” he told me, “this is it. We are the only ones between the Japs and the airfield. You must hold this position.” Night fell. “All was quiet except for the movement of small animals,” 1st Platoon’s Pfc. Edward Shepherd recalled. “Then we could hear the Japs cautiously advanc
ing. They reached the far edge of the lagoon. The word was passed to hold our fire until they started crossing.” Corporal Joe Sweeda in the 2nd Platoon said, “It seemed like only minutes when darkness fell and the jungle seemed to come alive in front of us. We could hear jabbering, then movement in the brush.”
Three veteran companies of Major Tamura’s 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry, and Major Kokusho’s 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry were crawling through the waist-high kunai grass trying to get as close to the Raider line as possible before starting their attack. Infantrymen from 1st Lt. Yoshimi Onodera’s 5th Company, 1st Lt. Tetsuji Isibashi’s 7th Company, and 1st Lt.. Kenji Matsumoto’s 3rd Company—over four hundred men—were determined to crack the Raider line.
Privates First Class Edgar Shepherd and Frank R. Whittelsey were crouched in a shallow foxhole just off a faint trail leading south along the western edge of the lagoon. The two waited as long as they dared and then Shepherd lobbed a grenade. It was a dud. Just then, First Lieutenant Matsumoto’s men opened fire at pointblank range, badly wounding Shepherd in the chest and arms. The Japanese surged forward shouting “banzai!” and “totsugeki!” (Attack!); some even chanted “Marine, you die!” and “Blood for the Emperor!” Corporal Ira Gilliand of 1st Raider Batallion recalled the terrifying sound. “The Japanese screamed a lot,” he recalled, “especially when they were charging. It made you alert in a hurry even after being up for two days and you’re ready to fall asleep.”
Private First Class Whittelsey was able drag Shepherd into the brush before he was shot and killed. Terrified, Shepherd lay quietly in the brush as the Japanese surged past him in the darkness. Weak from loss of blood, he nevertheless crawled painfully though onrushing enemy soldiers to seek help. Pharmacist Mate Third Class Karl B. Coleman found him and assisted him to the forward aid station, located only a few feet from Edson’s exposed command post. Major Griffith said it was “a primitive dressing station where two Navy doctors [Lts. Edward P. McLarney and Robert W. Skinner] and their men, flashlight beams shielded by ponchos, applied tourniquets, gave transfusions, cleaned wounds.” In all the two doctors and corpsmen, nine of whom received the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism, treated over two hundred casualties during the night-long battle.
The fierce Japanese assault overran Baker Company’s 1st and 2nd Platoons and threatened to cut them off. There was only one place to go and that was up the ridge. “Individuals and squads were scattered and ended up as lonely, scared individuals or in small groups,” Sweeney said. “Those lucky enough remained intact as squads. The goal of all was to reach Hill 120.” Privates First Class Dave “Tabe” Taber and Herman “Ike” Arnold were communicators attached to Baker Company. “When the Japs attacked, we were throwing grenades,” Taber said. “There was a lot of shooting going on, a lot of action: rifle fire, grenades moving fast.” Suddenly Arnold said, ‘Tabe, I’ve been hit … in the throat.’ He no more than said that, and he was dead … I looked around, and I was all by myself.” Taber decided to “get back and make contact with the others.” It was pitch black and difficult to see. At one point, a Japanese hand grenade exploded at his feet, wounding him. “I was a little stunned but got up. I was in shock … and walking along slowly [I] heard a Japanese voice behind me … I had an .03 rifle and I swung around and shot, and he dropped. I kept on going.” Taber made it to the top of the hill and was evacuated the next morning but not without another close call. The truck he was riding in was hit by a hidden machine gunner and two of its passengers were killed.
At the start of the attack Edson’s two artillery observers, Staff Sgt. Robert Delanoy and Cpl. Thomas Watson, started calling in devastating artillery fire. Before they were through, the 11th Marines fired almost two thousand rounds of 105mm shells in defense of the ridge. Captain Sweeney recalled, “Colonel del Valle’s howitzers went into action with preplanned concentrations when the battle erupted. The initial impact areas were well forward of the action, but as it turned out they did extensive damage to a Japanese battalion in an assembly area preparing to attack Hill 120.” Captain Sweeney had 1st Sgt. Brice Maddox call in the artillery. “I handed the radio to Maddox, who had been in mortars and artillery in his career … and he relayed it to Corporal Watson, who was on the ridge with Edson. For us it was most effective. He began firing 200 or 300 yards in front of us and fired across until he brought it down to 100 to 150 yards. I remember him saying, ‘That’s right, now walk it back and forth across the front.’ That’s what he did. They fired, fired, fired, fired barrages, and that I think broke up the people in front of us that we were almost eyeball to eyeball with.”
Sweeney was still in a tough predicament. Two of his platoons had been forced to withdraw and the other was about to be overrun. “About 2230 two red flares arced above the 3rd Platoon position and impacted on Hill 120. The whole area was made plain to the oncoming Japanese at the jungle’s edge. Edson, near his forward CP, did not want to use the radio, so he ordered Burak [his runner] to get a message to me. Burak crawled out to the frontline, cupped his hands and yelled, ‘John Wolf! This is Burak. Do you hear me?’ … ‘Red Mike says it’s OK to withdraw!’” Burak’s shout was welcome news but difficult to do in darkness under fire. “I had the first sergeant work with the FO to lay down a covering barrage in front of our company position and await further orders.” Sweeney crawled along the lines to notify his squad leaders and then signaled them to withdraw to the reverse slope. “… [T]he enemy raked the position with rifle and machine gun fire [but] miraculously none of our Marines were hit.” His men threw their remaining hand grenades, took off through the kunai grass to Hill 120. “As we moved, the artillery let loose a hellacious barrage that rolled across the spine of the ridge and into the adjoining jungle not more than a hundred yards forward of the abandoned position.”
At the same time as Sweeney’s company was undergoing its trial by fire, Baker Company (Parachute) was under heavy pressure from Major Tamura’s 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry. Despite being pummeled by del Valle’s artillery, Tamura sent Onodera’s and Isibashi’s companies into the attack. An intense mortar barrage hit the Parachutists just as the Imperial infantry swept out of the jungle screaming their battle cries. Baker Company reeled under the assault … and then gave way. Charlie Company (Parachute) decided its position was also untenable and joined Baker in a withdrawal to a position behind Hill 120. In the darkness and confusion of the battle, the withdrawal quickly became confused and disorganized. Someone yelled “Gas!” after the Japanese threw several smoke grenades. “It contributed to some temporary panic because we didn’t have any gas masks,” Sweeney said. “Up along the ridge, both paratroopers and Raiders intermingled in the dark. Somehow the word was passed to withdraw and the scramble began.”
It appeared that the Marines on the hill were about to break. Raider Mielke described it as “[a] moment of panic.” Edson made it known in no uncertain terms that there would be no more “back peddling.” Sweeney explained that “[t]he 1st Parachute Battalion had stragglers—not stragglers in the sense they were lagging behind but a few men that were leading a charge to the rear.” Colonel del Valle said that, “Sometime after midnight, the artillery forward observers phoned in that the infantry was falling back and they were alone on the ridge, whereupon I ordered them to retire and gave the order for the final protective fires by the 105 battalion,” he said. “The twelve howitzers of that battalion covered the front of that ridge, firing so fast that we were afterwards reported by the Japanese to have had automatic artillery. The gun tubes got so hot they had to be swabbed continually.”
Captain Sweeney recalled stemming the withdrawal. “That’s where Edson, Bailey, myself, and several NCOs were able to quell the panic. … We quelled it by shouting, challenging, cursing—‘Act like Marines! You call yourself Raiders? Get back in there!’” Bailey was particularly effective according to Colonel Alexander. “Bailey was big enough to collar retreating Marines and shake some sense into them.” Another Marine admitted that “[i]t
was hard to stop the stampede … but Bailey waved his pistol menacingly and the men stopped and went back.” At this point, Edson’s final defense was a horseshoe-shaped line wrapped around the slope of Hill 120—three understrength companies arrayed from left to right, Able (Parachutist), Baker (Raider) and Charlie (Raider)—maybe three hundred men in all. Edson called division and told Twinning that he had withdrawn to his final defensive position.
Edson had to do something about the exposed left flank. He couldn’t find the parachute commander, so he grabbed fiery Capt. Harry L. Torgerson and ordered him to restore the line. “He told ‘Torgy’ to counterattack to regain the left flank position,” Sweeney recalled, “and to tie in with the Raiders’ defensive line on Hill 120.” Torgerson reorganized Baker and Charlie Companies (Parachute) and personally led them into the attack against Lieutenant Colonel Watanabe’s battalion. “The counterattack by two understrength companies, launched just after midnight, sputtered initially and then gained momentum urged on by Torgerson,” Sweeney explained. “The nearly exhausted and bloodied paratroopers soon succeeded in checking and then throwing back the renewed Japanese assault on the left. The fighting was particularly heavy and costly to … our paratroopers.” Edson noted that 40 percent of Torgerson’s men were casualties but completely stopped, “a flanking movement initiated by the enemy which if carried to completion would have resulted in the loss of the battalion reserve line.”
Captain William J. McKennan, Baker Company (Parachutist), described the fighting. “The [Japanese] attack was almost constant, like a rain that subsides for a moment and then pours the harder. … [W]hen one wave was mowed down—and I mean mowed down—another followed it into death. … Some of the Jap rushes were now carrying them into our positions and there was ugly hand-to-hand fighting.” Ira Gilliand recalled, “They kept charging, but that’s where the grenades came in. We threw grenades all night long. I remember rolling the grenades down. We were up on the hill and they were below us.” Lieutenant Onodera’s 5th Company tried to infiltrate the line but the Marine fire was too much. Two platoon commanders were struck down and when Onodera continued the attack with his remaining men, he too was killed. Major Kokusho was also killed while leading his men. A Japanese NCO wrote in his diary, “We attacked the American position, but Lieutenant Matsuyama [2nd Company] and about a hundred men of the company were killed.”