Counterattack
Page 54
Operation PESTILENCE called for the invasion of Gavutu by the 1st Parachute Battalion at 1200 hours. The parachutists, once they had secured Gavutu, were to cross the causeway and secure Tanambogo.
The Raiders encountered no serious opposition until after noon. And 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, encountered no serious opposition moving in the opposite direction until about the same time.
Off Guadalcanal, at 0840, the destroyers of the Guadalcanal Fire Support Group took up positions to mark the line of departure for the landing craft, five thousand yards north of Beach Red.
Almost immediately, small liaison aircraft appeared over Beach Red and marked its 3,200 yard width with smoke grenades.
Immediately after that, at exactly 0900, all the cruisers and destroyers of the Guadalcanal Fire Support Group began to bombard Beach Red and the area extending two hundred yards inshore.
The landing craft carrying the first wave of the Beach Red invasion force (the 5th Marines, less their 2nd Battalion, which was on Tulagi) left the departure line on schedule. When the Landing Craft were 1,300 yards off Beach Red, the covering bombardment was lifted.
At 0910, on a 1,600-yard front, the 5th Marines began to land on the beach, the 1st Battalion on the right (west), and the 3rd Battalion on the left (east). Regimental Headquarters came ashore at 0938. Minutes later they were joined by the Heavy Weapons elements of the regiment.
Again, there was virtually no resistance on the beach.
As the landing craft returned to the transports to bring the 1st Marines ashore, the 5th Marines moved inland, setting up a defense perimeter six hundred yards off Beach Red, along the Tenaru River on the west, the Tenavatu River on the east, and a branch of the Tenaru on the south.
Once it had become apparent that they would not be in danger from Japanese artillery on or near the beach, the transports began to move closer to the beach, dropping anchor again seven thousand yards away.
At about this point, serious problems began with the offloading process on the beach. In many ways these duplicated the disastrous trial run in the Fiji Islands.
The small and relatively easy-to-manhandle 75mm pack howitzers (originally designed to be carried by mules) of the 11th Marines (the artillery regiment) had come ashore with the assault elements of the 5th Marines.
The 105mm howitzers now came ashore. But because there were not enough drop-ramp landing craft to handle them, they did not bring their “prime movers.” The prime mover intended to tow the 105mm howitzer was the “Truck, 2½ Ton, 6×6,” commonly called the “six-by-six.” Six-by-six refers to the number of driving wheels. The standard six-by-six actually had eight wheels in the rear, for a total of ten powered wheels. So equipped, the six-by-six became legendary in its ability to carry or tow enormous loads anywhere.
But the 11th Marines were not equipped with six-by-sixes. Instead, they had been issued a truck commonly referred to as a “one-ton.” It was rated as having a cargo capacity of one ton (as opposed to the two-and-a-half-ton capacity of the six-by-six), and it had only four powered wheels with which to move itself through mud, sand, or slippery terrain.
Since there were insufficient drop-bow landing craft to move this “prime mover” immediately onto Beach Red, when the 105mm howitzers arrived on the beach, there was no vehicle capable of towing them inland to firing positions—except for a few overworked amphibious tractors, which had a tanklike track and could negotiate sand and mud.
These were pressed into service to move the 105mm howitzers. But in so doing, their metal tracks chewed up the primitive roads—as well as whatever field telephone wires they crossed. That effectively cut communication between the advanced positions and the beach and the several headquarters.
Within an hour or so of landing on the beach, moreover, the Marines were physically exhausted. For one thing, the long periods of time they’d spent aboard the troop transports had caused them to lose much of the physical toughness they’d acquired in training.
For another, Guadalcanal’s temperature and high humidity quickly sapped what strength they had. And the effects of the temperature and humidity were magnified because they were slogging through sand and jungle and up hills carrying heavy loads of rifles, machine guns, mortars, and the ammunition for them.
And there was not enough water. Although medical officers had strongly insisted that each man be provided with two canteens (two quarts) of drinking water, there were not enough canteens in the Pacific to issue a second canteen to each man.
The Navy had been asked, and had refused, to provide beach labor details of sailors to assist with the unloading of freight coming ashore from the landing craft, and then to move the freight off the beach to make room for more supplies.
It was presumed by Naval planners that the Marines could provide their own labor details to offload supplies from landing craft, and that trucks would be available to move the offloaded supplies from the beach inland.
Marines exhausted by the very act of getting ashore managed slowly to unload supplies from landing craft, further exhausting themselves in the process. But then, at first, there were no trucks to move the supplies off the beach; and when the one-ton trucks finally began to come ashore, they proved incapable of negotiating the sand and roads chewed up by amphibious tractors.
The result was a mess. Landing craft loaded with supplies were stacked up three rows deep off the beach. They were unable even to reach the beach, much less rapidly discharge their cargoes.
(Five)
Aboard LCP(L) 36
Off Gavutu Island
1225 Hours 7 August 1942
First Lieutenant Richard B. Macklin, USMC, was unhappy with Operation PESTILENCE for a number of reasons, and specifically with his role in the operation.
He had arrived at the 1st Parachute Battalion three weeks earlier after long and uncomfortable voyages, first aboard a destroyer from San Diego, and then a mine sweeper from Pearl Harbor. When he had finally reached the 1st Parachute Batallion, the commanding officer, Major Robert Williams, had promptly told him that he hadn’t expected him and frankly didn’t know what the hell to do with him.
“I had rather hoped, Sir, that in view of my experience, I might be given a company.”
Macklin felt sure service as a company commander would get him his long-overdue promotion.
“Company commanders are captains, Macklin,” Williams replied.
“Company ‘C’ is commanded by a lieutenant,” Macklin politely argued, “one who is junior in rank to me.”
“I’m not going to turn over a company to you at this late date. They’re a team now, and I don’t intend to screw that up by throwing in a new quarterback just before the kickoff,” Williams said. “Sorry.”
Not only was what they were about to do not a football game, Macklin fumed privately, but refusing to give him the command was a clear violation of regulations, which clearly stated that the senior officer present for duty was entitled to command.
Williams seemed to be one of those officers who obeyed only those orders it was convenient to obey. In this regard he had obviously been influenced by the Army paratroopers with whom he had trained. Macklin had seen enough of that collection of clowns to know that any resemblance between Army paratroop officers and professional officers was purely coincidental.
They thought the war was a football game, and acted like it. Macklin had actually witnessed Army paratroop officers drinking, and probably whoring, if the truth were known, with their enlisted men in Phoenix City, Alabama, across the river from Fort Benning. If the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division was ever sent into combat, there was no question in Macklin’s mind that it would fail, miserably, to accomplish its mission. Discipline was the key to military success, and Army paratroop discipline was a disgrace.
But insisting on his legal rights would not have been wise, Macklin concluded. There was no doubt in his mind that if he appealed to the proper authorities, Williams would be ordered to place him in command of “C” Company. But
if he did that, Major Williams would from that moment just be looking for an excuse to relieve him. And being relieved of command was worse than not being given a command at all.
So here he was, in a landing craft, about to assault an enemy-held beach, having been officially designated a “supernumerary officer.” Supernumerary was a euphemism for “replacement”—an officer with no duties, waiting to replace someone wounded or killed.
Meanwhile, the First Parachute Battalion, the “Chutes,” was obviously being improperly employed, that is to say as regular infantry. The rationale for that was that there were no aircraft to drop them.
Macklin personally doubted that. He had seen ships in San Diego loaded with partially disassembled R4Ds, for instance. Perhaps they were Air Corps C-47s, destined for China or Australia, as he had been told; but the planes were identical, only the nomenclature was different. If the senior officers had wanted to use Para-Marines, they could have gotten the aircraft somewhere.
And if aircraft were truly not available, then the obvious thing to do was not commit the Para-Marines. It made no military sense to waste superbly trained men, the elite of the elite, as common infantry, sacrificing them in assaulting a beach on an island that had no real military importance that Macklin could see. It was only five hundred yards long and half that wide!
What they should have done, if they really thought the island was a threat, was to shell or bomb it level. Not send Marines to throw away their lives and all their superb training to occupy it. All the Japanese were using it for was a seaplane base. By definition, seaplanes could be used anywhere there was enough water for them to land and take off.
Probably the whole thing was regarded by the brass as a live-fire exercise, to give the Para-Marines a blooding and Naval Aviation some practice. Navy SBD dive-bombers had attacked Gavutu for forty minutes, starting at 1145.
Ten minutes after the dive-bombers started their attack, the Navy started shelling the island, a barrage that lasted five minutes, causing huge clouds of smoke and dust to rise from Gavutu.
Macklin reminded himself of what he knew of the explosive force of one-hundred-pound bombs and Naval artillery. It was awesome. It was reasonable to assume that, on an island only five hundred yards long, very few Japanese soldiers, much less their armament, could survive forty minutes of dive-bombing and an intense five-minute Naval barrage.
Macklin was close enough in the landing barge to hear the Coxswain when he muttered, with concern and resignation, “Oh, shit!”
“What’s the matter?”
The Coxswain took his hand from his wheel long enough to point ahead, at the beach. Macklin was reluctant to raise his head high enough over the bow to look—doing so would make his head a target—but curiosity, after a moment, got the best of him. He raised his head, kept it up long enough to look around, and then ducked again.
Either bombs from the dive-bombers or shells from the Naval artillery, or maybe some of each, had struck the concrete landing ramps used by the Japanese to get their seaplanes in and out of the water. Huge blocks of concrete had been displaced.
The Operations Order called for this landing craft and the landing craft to each side to run aground on the concrete ramps. But that would not be possible.
Aware that his heart was beating rapidly and that his mouth was dry, Macklin considered the alternatives. The Coxswain could continue on his prescribed course until the landing craft ran into one of the huge blocks of concrete and had to stop. There was no telling how deep the water would be at that point; it was even possible they would be in water over their heads when they went over the side of the landing craft. If he had to jump into water over his head with all the equipment he was carrying, he would drown.
There was a concrete pier extending maybe two hundred yards from shore. The Coxswain could run the landing craft against that, and the Marines could then climb onto the pier and run down the pier to shore.
But, he realized with alarm, if the Naval artillery had hit the concrete ramps, it probably had hit the concrete pier as well. There was a good possibility that at least a portion of the pier was destroyed, and that it would be impossible to run all the way ashore.
And in the moment it occurred to him that even if the pier was intact, anyone running down its length would be like a target in a shooting gallery for riflemen and machine-gunners defending the beach, the Coxswain throttled back his engine. A moment later, the landing craft grated against the concrete pier.
Now it was quiet enough for the Coxswain to shout to the senior officer in the boat, the Captain commanding Able Company, “There’s debris in the water by the landing ramps; this is as close as I can take you!”
Macklin could tell by the look on the Captain’s face what he thought of this news.
“Everybody out of the boat!” the Captain shouted. “Follow me! Let’s go! Get the lead out!”
He clambered up onto the side of the landing craft and from there onto the concrete pier, and vanished from sight.
Lieutenant Macklin decided that in the absence of orders to do something specific (his orders had been, “Macklin, you go in with Boat Nine.”) it behooved him to remain aboard the landing craft to make sure that everyone else got off.
He did so.
Then he climbed onto the pier, on his stomach, with his Thompson submachine gun at the ready. He heard the engine of the landing craft rev, and knew that the boat was backing away from the pier to return to the transport for the second wave.
When he looked down the pier, the last of the Marines reached the end of it, turned to the left, and disappeared.
There was the sound of small-arms fire, but it was, as far as Macklin could tell, the familiar crack of .30-06 rifles and the deeper-pitched boom of .45-caliber submachine-gun and pistol ammo. He had been told that the sound of the smaller-caliber Japanese small arms would be different.
That means we’re not under fire!
He got to his feet and began to trot down the pier toward the shore. Once erect, he could see Marines on the beach, moving inland through the vegetation and around the burned and shattered buildings of the Japanese seaplane base.
He started to run, to catch up.
Near the shore, he saw that his initial assessment of probable damage from the bombing and shellfire had been correct. A bomb, or a shell, had struck the pier about fifteen yards from shore, taking out all but a narrow strip of concrete no more than three feet wide.
As he made his way carefully across this narrow strip, he felt as if, in the same moment, someone had struck his leg with a baseball bat and slapped him, very hard, in the face.
And then he felt himself flying through the air. There was a splash, and he went under water. There was a moment of abject terror, and then his flailing hand encountered a barnacle-encrusted piling. He clung to it desperately, to keep himself from slipping off and drowning.
Then he became aware that his foot was touching bottom. He straightened his bent leg, and found that he was in water about chest-deep.
Where the hell is my weapon?
I dropped it. It’s in the water. I’ll never be able to find it. Now what the hell am I going to do?
What the hell did I fall over? I must have slipped. No. I was struck by something!
He put his hand to his face. His fingers came away sticky with blood.
My God, I’ve been shot in the face! I’ll be disfigured for life!
And then he remembered the blow to his leg. He felt faint and nauseous, but finally gathered the courage to try to find some damage to his leg. He became aware of a stinging sensation. Salt water, he realized, was making an open sore—a wound!—sting.
He couldn’t bend far enough over to reach the sting without putting his face into the water. Gingerly, he raised the stinging leg. He couldn’t feel anything at first, and only after a moment detected a swelling in the calf.
But then he saw a faint cloud of red oozing out of his trouser leg.
I’ve been shot in the leg!
But why doesn’t it hurt?
Shock! It doesn’t hurt because I’m in shock!
I’m going to pass out and then drown!
A glob of blood dropped off his cheek into the water and began to dissolve as it sank.
I’m going to bleed to death!
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed by Thy Name…
What the hell is the rest of it?
Dear God, please don’t let me die!
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
“Move your ass! Run!Run!Run!Run!Run!Run!”
It’s the second wave!
Now there was small-arms fire, single shots and automatic, and it didn’t sound like .30-06s or Thompsons, and then there was a whistling sound followed by a crump and then a dull explosion, and he felt a shock wave and then another and another in the water.
“Get your dumb ass up and off the pier, or die here, you dumb sonofabitch!”
He saw, vaguely, figures running across the pier above him.
He found his voice.
“Medic! Medic! Medic!”
There was no response, and there didn’t seem to be any more movement on the pier above him. The strange-sounding—the Japanese—smalls-arms fire continued, and there were more mortar rounds landing in the water.
“Medic! Medic! For Christ’s sake, somebody help me!”
Now the leg started to ache, and his cheek. He put his hand to his face again, and the fingers came away this time with a clot of blood.
“For the love of Christ, will somebody help me? Medic! Medic!”
There was splashing in the water from the direction of the shore.
It’s a Jap! It has to be a Jap! The invasion failed, and now I’m going to die here under this fucking pier!