Shadow Warriors

by Dick Camp

  Edson felt the crisis was near and called Colonel Thomas at the division command center. “About 0430 Edson told me, ‘I’ve been hit hard and I need more men,’” Thomas recalled. “I had a company about a hundred yards from there with Whaling [Lt. Col. William J.], and we started to feed them in … to strengthen Edson’s line, and they fought there till daybreak.” By dawn, Kawaguchi’s attack was over, but that didn’t mean the killing had stopped. Individuals and small groups of Japanese infiltrators were still active. A badly wounded Raider called for help. Hospital Apprentice First Class Robert L. Smith ran out to help. “The corpsman came over … and he got shot right through the heart … I grabbed him and carried him down the hill. I didn’t think he was going to die. When I got to the aid station, I saw one of the doctors cry—‘Smitty was my friend,’ he blurted, ‘a real nice guy’—I broke down also.” Three infiltrators made it to the division command post before being killed.

  Edson requested an airstrike on the Japanese position on the southern edge of Hill 80. “There was one little lip about a hundred yards that just dropped off for a hundred feet or so, and the Japs had gotten down underneath there,” Thomas recalled. “… they couldn’t get out nor could the Raiders get at them.” Three U.S. Army Bell Aircobra P-400s of the 67th Fighter Squadron made several passes with their 20mm cannon, and .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns. “… [T]he P-400s came in firing right down against that bank … and they killed those damned Japs … they wiped them out.” For all intents, the battle for Edson’s ridge was over. “At daybreak, Whaling went in with the rest of his men and took over from Edson,” Thomas said. “We pulled the Raiders and the Parachutists, what was left of them, and let them go back down into Whaling’s bivouac where they could get some breakfast.” The survivors of the 1st Parachute Battalion were evacuated from the island shortly after the battle. In Battalion of the Damned: The 1st Marine Paratroopers at Gavutu and Bloody Ridge, James F. Christ wrote that, “On 7 August, they [Parachutists] had numbered 397. Now on 18 September, they had 86.” The Raiders suffered 163 casualties—34 men killed in action and 129 men wounded.

  MEDAL OF HONOR EXCERPTS COLONEL EDSON

  “During the entire battle, Colonel Edson, continuously exposed to hostile fire of great intensity, personally directed the defense of his position. He displayed such a marked degree of cool leadership and personal courage that the officers and men of his command were constantly inspired by his example, and his personal influence over them kept the men in position throughout the night in the face of fanatical enemy of great superior numbers despite the severest casualties to his own men.”

  Both Lieutenant Colonel Edson and Major Bailey were awarded the Medal of Honor.

  Richard Tregaskis saw bullet holes in the colonel’s collar and side of his shirt. Captain “Tex” Stiff was close by Edson during the battle. “I can say that if there is such a thing as one man holding a battalion together, Edson did it that night. He stood just behind the front lines—stood, when most of us hugged the ground.…” Smith wrote, “… [E]ach side had its heroes, but none were bigger than Red Mike Edson. Fearlessly standing erect in his command post with two fresh bullet holes in his shirt, Edson coolly and calmly directed the battle, a mere twenty-five yards behind the front lines. …”

  CHAPTER 9

  Choiseul Coastwatchers

  Coastwatchers Lieutenant A. N. A. “Nick” Waddell and Sub-Lieutenant Camden W. Seton, Royal Australian Navy, M-Special Unit, climbed through the deck hatch of the half-submerged USS Grampus (SS-207) and made their way aft toward a group of darkened shadows busily launching two rubber boats. After only a whispered “Good luck,” the two men climbed down the slippery hull of the submarine and into the heavily laden craft. Holding lines were cast off and the boats floated clear of the sub as it gradually increased speed to clear the area. The two men took a last look at the darkened silhouette and dipped their paddles into the water—no time was to be wasted, daylight was but a few short hours away and they had to be ashore and out of sight .

  M-Special Unit—part of the Services Reconnaissance Department, a joint Australian, New Zealand, and British military intelligence unit—was used primarily to gather information on Japanese naval and troop movements around New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Small teams were inserted along the coast behind enemy lines where they could observe enemy movements and report back via radio. These Australian coastwatchers played decisive roles in the Solomons. Organized under Lt. Cmdr. A. Eric Feldt of the Royal Australian Navy in 1939, by 1941 there were one hundred of them in the island chain. They depended on the natives to help carry their heavy wireless sets, which could broadcast four hundred miles by voice, and up to six hundred miles by key. It was a risky assignment, far from reinforcements. If captured, torture was likely.

  2ND PARACHUTE BATTALION

  In October 1940, the commandant of the Marine Corps solicited volunteers from all units to become paratroopers. Requirements were strict: all volunteers (except officers of rank higher than captain), had to be 21 to 32 years old, be 66 to 74 inches tall, have normal eyesight and blood pressure, and be unmarried. In addition, applications had to include educational records and athletic background. The letter made clear that Parachutists would receive extra pay, although it didn’t include exact numbers. Eventually, Congress set the extra pay at $50 per month for enlisted men and $100 for officers. Regular pay at the time was about $36 per month for a private first class and $125 for a second lieutenant. The substantial bonus served as an incentive for volunteers and acknowledged the increased danger for the Marines.

  Although they started looking for paratroopers in 1940, the Corps didn’t formalize its airborne doctrine until late 1942. The twelve-page manual, “Parachute and Air Troops,” stated that airborne forces would deliver “a paralyzing application of power in the initial phase of a landing attack.” The manual noted that airborne forces could only hold small critical objectives, such as bridges and airfields, for a short time until joined by overland or seaborne forces. Small units of parachute troops could also gather intelligence and conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines.

  On 23 July 1941, Company “B,” 2nd Parachute Battalion was activated under the command of Capt. Charles E. Shepherd Jr. The company was attached to the 2nd Marine Division Special Troops. Company “A” was organized on 7 February 1942, followed by Company “C” on 3 September 1942. The battalion sailed from San Diego on 20 October 1942, and arrived at Tatahi Bay, fourteen miles north of Wellington, New Zealand, approximately three weeks later. After two months of training, the battalion shipped out for Noumea, New Calendonia, where it joined the 1st Parachute Battalion. On 1 April 1943, the two battalions were incorporated into the newly organized 1st Marine Parachute Regiment, under the command of Lt. Col. Robert H. Williams. Lieutenant Colonel Victor H. Krulak assumed command of the 2nd Battalion. Under the new organization, the 2nd Battalion’s letter designation was changed to “Easy,” “Fox,” and “George” Company. The 2d Parachute Battalion sailed to Guadalcanal in early September and then moved forward to a staging area at Vella Lavella on 1 October, 1943.

  On 27 October 1943, the 2d Parachute Battalion, reinforced with a machine gun platoon from Regimental Weapons Company, a boat detachment (4LCP (R) 8s), and an Experimental Rocket Detachment—a lieutenant and eight men with 40 fin-stabilized, 65-pound weapons that had a range of one thousand yards—landed on Choiseul Island. The battalion mustered 725 officers and men.

  Waddell and Seton were on a special mission to set up a coast watching station on the Japanese occupied island of Choiseul in the northern Solomon Islands. Choiseul was located forty-five miles southeast of Bougainville at the beginning of the slot, a narrow ocean corridor between several Solomon Islands that Japanese warships, known as the “Tokyo Express,” traversed to resupply their garrison on Guadalcanal. The two coastwatchers were assigned to provide early warning of Japanese ship movements coming down the slot.

  The two men got halfway to sh
ore when they were caught in a strong crosscurrent that began sweeping them down the coast. In Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons, Walter Lord wrote, “It took three hours of hard paddling to reach the reef, and then they couldn’t find the opening. Dawn was breaking, and in desperation they finally landed directly on the reef. Soaking wet, stumbling, and falling in holes in the coral, they carried their gear the last fifty yards to shore.” Unfortunately the yellow rafts were wedged in the coral. The two men had to hack the boats apart and drag them to cover. They finished just as the Japanese surveillance aircraft flew by on its morning patrol. Within days they had established contact with friendly natives, who assisted them in establishing their camp.

  It did not take the two long to set up their radio station called DEL about two miles in from the coast near the little village of Tagatagera on the northern coast, where they had a magnificent view of the Slot. Not only were they able to broadcast alerts—“Six fighters now going southeast, twenty-eight planes passing from north to yours, thirteen fighters going yours”—but they were also active in rescuing downed airmen. Corporal J. E. Hartman, tail gunner on a B-17, Marine SBD pilot H. J. Murphy, and his rear seater, Cpl. G. W. Williamson, were among the many that owed their lives to the coastwatcher/rescue network. In September 1943, American reconnaissance teams arrived on the island and Seton spent most of the month guiding them around. A month later, a new mission was added: the diversionary landing of the 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion on Choiseul Island.

  Choiseul Diversion

  In mid-October 1943, Maj. James Murray, 1st Marine Amphibious Corps (IMAC) staff secretary raised the possibility of a small-scale landing on Choiseul as part of diversionary effort to confuse the Japanese as to the true objective of the American campaign in the Solomons, the island of Bougainville. Code named “Operation Blissful,” the diversionary plan called for the 2nd Parachute Battalion under Lt. Col. Victor H. Krulak to make an amphibious landing near the village of Voza on the northern portion of Choisuel’s southwest coast. On 21 October, Lt. Cols. Krulak and Robert Williams, 1st Parachute Regiment were summoned to IMAC headquarters on Guadalcanal where they were briefed on the operation. “I reported to Colonel Thomas [Division G-3], who took me into their planning tent and had Maj. Jim Murray brief me,” Krulak recalled. ‘We’ve changed our plan,’ Murray said, ‘we want to encourage the Japanese to think that we are going to land [on Choiseul]. We want to make it about a week ahead of the Bougainville landing.’” Krulak was told that his battalion’s mission was to conduct raids along the northwest coast, select a site for a possible torpedo boat (PT) base, and withdraw after twelve days. “Make a lot of noise,” he was told, “but don’t get decisively engaged.”

  MAJOR BAILEY

  Completely reorganized following the severe engagement of the night before, Major Bailey’s company, within an hour after taking its assigned position as reserve battalion between the main line and the coveted airport, was threatened on the right flank by the penetration of the enemy into a gap in the main line. In addition to repulsing this threat, while steadily improving his own desperately held position, he used every weapon at his command to cover the forced withdrawal of the main line before a hammering assault by superior enemy forces. After rendering invaluable service to the battalion commander in stemming the retreat, reorganizing the troops and extending the reverse position to the left, Major Bailey, despite a severe head wound, repeatedly led his troops in fierce hand-to-hand combat for a period of ten hours.

  Murray and the intelligence staff briefed Krulak on the information that had been gathered by two amphibious reconnaissance patrols that had scouted the island. The patrols estimated that there were four to five thousand Japanese dispersed in small camps along the coast waiting for transportation to Bougainville. Seton verified the estimate volunteering that, “The Japanese are spooked; they’re shooting at their own shadows because of the patrol activity.” The coastwatcher and two of his best scouts were brought off the island by a PT boat specifically to brief Krulak. The intelligence staff thought the Japanese supply situation was poor, but they still believed they were a potent force possessing infantry weapons, mortars and even light artillery.

  Krulak said after the meeting that he “didn’t believe anybody went into an operation knowing as much as they needed to know as I did about Choiseul.” He was given a great deal of discretion in planning the operation. “I was told that I could select the landing area … the Navy didn’t have any interest in selecting it, they were just going to haul us over there … so I proposed to land where the enemy wasn’t, if possible.” Following the meeting, General Vandegrift, 1st Marine Division commander, had taken Krulak aside: “I desire an immediate and credible appearance of a large force. Take immediate action … [and he emphasized], Get ashore where there are no Japs!”

  Lieutenant Colonel Victor H. Krulak was born in 1913 to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. He was commissioned a Marine second lieutenant upon graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in May 1934. His early Marine Corps service included sea duty aboard USS Arizona, an assignment at the U.S. Naval Academy, and duty with the 6th Marines in San Diego and the 4th Marines in China (1937–1939). During the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Krulak served as an observer in Shanghai, where he took telephoto pictures of a Japanese landing boat with a ramp in the bow. Krulak sent the photographs to Washington, convinced that a similar craft would prove useful to the U.S. armed forces, but at the time the photos were dismissed as being from “some nut out in China.” Later Krulak discussed the concept with boat builder Andrew Higgins and even built a model of the Japanese boat to demonstrate the retractable ramp. Higgins incorporated Krulak’s thoughts into his design of the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) or “Higgins boat.” The LCVP was a critical part of the Normandy landings on D-Day as well as other amphibious assaults across the Pacific.

  Upon his return to the United States, he attended the Junior School at Quantico, Virginia, and following completion in 1940 was assigned to the 1st Marine Brigade, FMF, which later became the 1st Marine Division. At the outbreak of World War II, he was a captain serving as aide to the Commanding General, Amphibious Corps, Atlantic Fleet, Gen. Holland M. Smith. He volunteered for parachute training and on completing training was ordered to the Pacific area as commander of the 2d Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Amphibious Corps.

  Now, while waiting for the plane to take him back to Vella Lavella, Krulak “… sat down and wrote the operation order on the back of a set of travel orders. I flew up to Vella, got my staff together and set the wheels in motion. We had about seventy-two hours to do it.” In Mustang: A Combat Marine, Gerald P. Averill, who had been a platoon commander in Easy Company during the landing, wrote that operation was “the kind that everyone wanted to be in on, the kind that movies sometimes were based on. The news set the battalion afire with anticipation!” Camden Seton and two of his native scouts were brought in to provide detailed information to help Krulak in the planning process. “We had about thirty-six hours with the coastwatcher [Seton] and his two guides, who could only speak a tiny bit of pidgin, but they were useful to answer the very questions that we wanted to know. The result was that, while their information was a little stale, they did know a lot. They answered my questions, as it turned out, very accurately.” One important item that was not accurate was the maps of the island, which played havoc with navigation once the Parachutists were on the island.

  For the next four days, the Parachutists labored to assemble equipment—“The G-4 gave me what I wanted,” Krulak said. “They took me to the Navy. I had asked to have some boats attached to my battalion—[and I] got the boats …” The Navy provided eight LCMs and four APDs—Kilty, Ward, Crosby, and McKean. Krulak had his men organize the supplies and equipment in four separate stacks on the beach to facilitate loading. Late in the afternoon of 27 October the LCMs were loaded, and at dusk, the small craft lay alongside the larger APDs. Parachutist working parties turned to with a ven
geance and within forty-five minutes had loaded their supplies and equipment. “One of the requirements was that the APDs … could not load until after dark because there were too many Japanese eyes around to see them,” Krulak recalled. “It had to be done quickly because they had to sail by about 2300 in order to make it across Vella gulf and conduct the landing under cover of darkness. We had staged and concealed all of our material over the preceding night or two, so it was easy to embark. The four ships got underway in plenty of time.”

  The four APDs took station under the watchful eye of the destroyer USS Conway (DD507) and proceeded in column through the darkness. “It just happened,” Krulak said, “to be a very still night, in which the phosphorescence from the ship’s wake was very visible.” Suddenly, without warning, a Japanese aircraft swooped in and dropped a single bomb near the rearmost APD in the column. The bomb landed close enough to cause the ship to shake but did not do any damage. In Bougainville and the Northern Solomons, Maj. John N. Rentz wrote that “[a] young Marine standing near the ship’s rail, thinking as many other Marines aboard that the ship’s guns were firing, asked, ‘What are they shooting at?’ ‘My boy,’ answered one of the battalion’s officers, ‘you have just been bombed.’” The incident happened so fast that the ship’s antiaircraft gunners were not able to get a shot off.