Guadalcanal Diary

by Tregaskis, Richard;

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 18

  The time was about 12:45 this afternoon, and I was preparing to go to Kukum to join Capt. Hawkins’ troops for the excursion to Matanikau, when the air-raid alarm sounded. We took cover, and at about one o’clock the anti-aircraft guns on the airfield began firing.

  It was the first time that I had seen all the enemy planes clearly; they came in two shallow V’s of four each, forming two silvery white lines against the cloudless sky, and it was a sort of shock to see them coming so deliberately and steadily in the open.

  But our anti-aircraft fire was coming close. The puffs of ack-ack blotted the sky almost directly in front of the leading wave. And suddenly a spurt of smoke came from one motor of the plane on the left flank. Then the spurt became a slender white plume trailing out behind. But the plane did not drop out of its place, and the formation droned steadily on its course. It had not been hit badly.

  Then we heard the guttural whisper of the sticks of bombs coming, and all of us who had been watching hit the ground and rested the brows of our helmets against the earth. That was as close to digging in as we could come at a second’s notice.

  The noise of the falling bombs was louder this time than last, and the carrump-rump-rump of the explosions came close enough to seize and shake the earth under us. There were two sticks, two definite sets of explosions.

  The bombs had struck the edge of the airfield, perhaps a half mile from where we lay. We saw dark-brown columns of dust and smoke rising, and the flames of a small fire, apparently in a field of brush.

  The Jap planes were swinging in a wide circle toward the south, taking their time, flying steadily. The anti-aircraft fire followed, but it was not close. We watched the plane whose motor was trailing smoke, watched dismayed while the smoke plume grew thinner and then disappeared.

  “They’re coming back for another run,” said somebody, as the planes continued their curving course. But they did not return.

  Jim Hurlbut (Sgt. James Hurlbut of Washington, D.C.), the Marine Corps Correspondent, Bob Miller and I set out in a jeep, immediately after the raid, for Kukum, there to join Capt. Hawkins’ expedition to Matanikau. The air raid had slowed preparations a bit, and it was two o’clock before we started.

  We traced our previous route almost identically, pushing through the same evenly spaced cocoanut palms toward the same grove of white breadfruit trees, and the same little bridge leading to the same thick jungle, as on my last excursion to Matanikau. This time our plan is to march to a spot a few hundred yards from the grove of white trees and the bridge leading to the jungle, and bivouac for the night. Tomorrow morning we will push forward beyond the white trees and several hundred yards through the jungle, to a point near Matanikau. We will halt at that point while our artillery throws a heavy barrage into the village, and then we will move on up to the river and perhaps cross over into the village.

  We had started at about two o’clock. At 2:40 our large column was moving through the cocoanut groves, when we heard an outburst of shots ahead.

  “We may have some Japs in the bush,” said Capt. Hawkins. Then there was more firing, and a few minutes later, as we moved ahead, we passed two small Japanese, evidently laborers, kneeling by the side of the path.

  “Oh, look, they’ve got a couple of goonie birds,” said one of the marching marines.

  The Japs looked particularly abject. “They look like they’re praying,” said a marine.

  “They probably are,” said another.

  The lads were in high spirits as we shoved along the trail. By this time, they had done enough marching on Guadalcanal to get toughened up a bit, and now the sense of strength and fitness apparently made them extremely good-natured. Some of them sang “The Band Played On” and other ditties.

  At 3:30 we passed the same Jap corpse which we had seen on the last excursion along this trail. Still the corpse sat, bloated and big and motionless, under the tree. Fortunately a blanket covered the face.

  “So that’s what’s the matter with your chow, Rebel,” said one of the lads to Sgt. “Rebel” Holmes (Sgt. Alton B. Holmes of Oak Park, Ga.). Sgt. Holmes was the company cook, and the remark was a slighting allusion to the quality of the food he prepared.

  “That Jap’s been there so long he doesn’t even smell anymore,” said another marine humorist.

  The lads were still in good spirits when at four o’clock, sweaty but not tired, they bivouacked under the cocoanuts. Cheerfully they searched the tangle of grass at the foot of the trees, looking for good cocoanuts. There were hundreds of opened, husked cocoanuts among those which had fallen from the trees; evidently the Japs had been hard pressed for food.

  Our supper, which consisted of perhaps a can of “C” ration or a candy bar, inspired the inevitable mockery about the cook’s food.

  “This stuff is better than that fishheads and rice you’ve been feeding us, Rebel,” said one of his buddies.

  “How about a nice fruity Jap for breakfast tomorrow, Rebel?” said another.

  “You bring me the Jap and I’ll do the work,” was the answer.

  There was a little group of marines gathered about “Rebel” by this time, for he evidently had a deserved reputation for being a “character” among his fellows. And there is usually, I have found, a circle of admirers about such a character, especially in the idle hour after supper.

  At six o’clock the sky had grown dark and threatening. “It looks like rain, eh, Rebel?” said one of the marines.

  “The rain ain’t nothin’ to be afraid of,” said Rebel. “You know what the Old Campaigner says, ‘Take off your clothes and cover up your weapons—there ain’t no soap in the rain.’” The Rebel had been an old campaigner himself, it developed. He went into a yarn about the rain down in the West Indies.

  The talk shifted to the subject of Jap snipers and the thesis that they are hard to spot, because of their camouflage, their smokeless powder and the fact that their rifles have no muzzle blast.

  “Them guys are the original invisible men,” said Rebel.

  That brought up the idea that walking in woods filled with Jap snipers was dangerous; that our present mission was dangerous.

  “I made out my will before I left, bud,” said Rebel. “I said give this package of cigarettes to this guy and …” His idea dwindled into silence. “You know, you’re gettin’ uglier every day,” he said to a buddy.

  “It’s just that lousy food you’ve been givin’ us. That’s what makes it,” was the answer.

  Rebel resorted to one of the favorite marine words for his answer: the word “gook,” which means anything foreign or strange.

  “If you didn’t get to go on this lousy gook island, bud,” he said, “you wouldn’t get that lousy chow.”

  Darkness was closing in on the cocoanut grove. Some of the lads collected palm fronds and arranged them as mattresses, with ponchos atop them. But Rebel’s circle remained around him. The talk turned to Jap cigarettes; we had captured hundreds of cases of them in our landing. Rebel remarked that they were pretty dungy.

  That suggested to somebody the story about the cigarette salesman, who was quite a demon in disposing of his particular brand of butts. One day, it was narrated, somebody said to this super salesman: “Did you know that Smokos are half dung and half tobacco?”

  “Now I’ll be more enthusiastic about them than ever,” said the salesman. “I thought they were all dung.”

  Rebel said the Jap cigarettes were all dung, and that he had been too proud to smoke them while there were American cigarettes about.

  “I smoke ’em now, by God,” he said. “I’m gettin’ squinch-eyed.”

  The breeze was still shooting, as the marines say, when I went over to another conversational circle, where Capt. Hawkins and Lieut. Walter S. McIlhenny were talking seriously about tomorrow’s job. Crossing the Matanikau was one of their worries. If the Japs had machine guns bearing on the ford, it would be difficult. Another worry was advancing too fast and getting into our o
wn artillery barrage.

  I put on my poncho, pulled my mosquito net over my helmet and lay down on a gentle incline. I found that the deep-type American helmet makes quite a comfortable head-rest for sleeping. The hammock which fits around the head inside makes a sort of cushion. If you dig the edge of the helmet into the ground and brace it between two stones, you have a steady head-rest.

  The ground felt hard that night, and the grass was lumpy, but I would have slept soundly despite these obstacles if gunfire had not awakened us.

  The first salvos, heavy, distant thumpings, began just after ten o’clock. There were two heavy “booms” close together, then another couple, and then a long row of singles. The men lying all about in the cocoanut grove stirred and stood up and looked in the direction of the cannonading. It was coming from the north, toward Tulagi.

  The sound seemed to grow closer and louder. The top sergeant, standing near me, was sure the Japs were shelling the airfield. Others knew this was the beginning of the Jap invasion attempt we had been expecting for so long.

  Capt. Hawkins sent a patrol out to the beach to see if there were any fires visible on Guadalcanal. One man reported he had seen a fire in the direction of the beach, where we had made our original landing on Guadalcanal. The others could not see it.

  “Was it a submarine?” asked somebody.

  “I don’t know,” was the answer. And so we went back to sleep, to the accompaniment of “grousing” about the fact that we on Guadalcanal had not yet received any air support.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19

  We were awakened several times after midnight this morning by renewed cannonading, but we did not get up again. At 6:40 A.M., when we were up and on the move, we heard sharper reports of heavy guns, indicating they were closer. A patrol went to the beach to have another look, but reported no ships visible. One man thought he had seen a shape at sea but could not be sure whether it was a fish or a submarine.

  We reached the clearing with the white trees shortly after eight o’clock, and halted there to wait for our own artillery bombardment of Matanikau. The bombardment was late. We waited, wondering if the Japs had landed, back near the airport, if that could be the reason for the delay. We still had no word as to the meaning of the gunfire we had heard during the night and this morning.

  Lieut. McIlhenny looked down the trail that led to the airport, to the rear. “I believe we’d better query by TBY and see what happened,” he said. He called a runner. “Go up and request permission from Capt. Hawkins to radio and find out what happened to our barrage,” he directed.

  An affirmative answer came, and in a few moments, the tall antennae of the field radio had been set up at the trailside, a generator tied to a tree, and we could hear the steady grinding noise as electric current was wound up.

  The operator clicked out his message. “Right on the beam this morning,” he said. “They’re receipting for it.”

  We sat and waited for the answer. The air grew quiet. The cannonading from the ocean had ceased. Then we heard the sound of motors, many of them; they were our landing boats, carrying ashore the troops which were going to land beyond Kokumbona and work in toward us, toward Matanikau, and thus close one side of the three-sided vise on the village.

  “What’s holding up our answer?” Lieut. McIlhenny asked the radio operator.

  “He has to give it to the executive officer,” said the operator, cheerfully, “and then the answer has to be written out before it can be sent back.”

  Just then the receiving key of the set began to buzz. “That message may constitute the answer to the query,” said the radioman, very officially.

  “I don’t know whether to move up or not,” mused Lieut. McIlhenny. “I might move in there and he might open up with the barrage.”

  But the answer was reassuring. “Your first message,” it read. “Answer: Not due yet.”

  Lieut. McIlhenny gave the order to move forward, and we passed the clearing with the white trees, crossed the little bamboo bridge over the little creek at the edge of the clearing, and moved on down the wide path into the jungle beyond. We took cover carefully along the sides of the trail as we moved up. We were getting into enemy territory.

  It was 8:19 when a marine came from our right flank (which lay near the beach) to report, “I can see a ship.”

  Just then the guns began booming again. I moved over to the shore and swept the horizon with my glasses, but could see no ship. I went back to our column.

  At 8:30 a marine came in from the beach out of breath and said, “There’s a Jap destroyer out there.” I went to the shore expecting another false alarm and was startled. Like a toy ship on the horizon, but very distinct, moving toward Kukum, in from the sea, was a Nip warship. With my field glasses I could make out turrets fore and aft, the decks characteristically crowded with piles of superstructure, the curved bow, and even an orange flag with a red rising sun at the masthead. Possibly this was the ship which had been shelling our shores. (I later learned that it was. It had passed in close to Kukum, lobbing shells toward shore positions, without doing any physical damage, while another Jap warship bombarded Tulagi.)

  I watched the Jap ship as it slowly swung bow on until it pointed straight for the spot where I stood, kept turning and swung broadside to shore. It did not fire, and apparently it lay beyond the range of our shore batteries, for they were not firing either.

  A few minutes later, as I returned to our troop column, our artillery opened the expected barrage against Matanikau. We heard the booming of the guns behind us, then the soft sighing as the shells passed overhead, and sharp, loud crashes in quick succession as they landed.

  We halted and then moved on while the intensity of the barrage increased until the booms of the cannon, the sighs of the passing shells and the cracks of the explosions overlapped and mingled into a continuous train of sound. When we halted again I worked my way to the sea side to find that only the masts of a Jap ship were visible, projecting just above the rim of the horizon toward Tulagi. The ship was firing, I knew; a thin, dirty cloud of smoke, brownish-yellow in color, floated over her masts. It was the unmistakable smoke that comes with gunfire.

  I rejoined our main group of troops just in time to hear a burst of gunfire from our left flank and ahead. There were several bursts of sub-machine gun fire, then a few rifle shots, and then the answering crack of a Jap .25 caliber. I knew that sound by this time, and took shelter in a clump of brush behind a tree. More .25’s cracked, in more rapid succession, and firing went on sporadically. I watched the ants hustling through the foliage under my nose. There were three kinds of ants, large and small red ones and medium-sized black ones. There was little to do except watch them until the firing let up.

  It was about 9:45 when the firing lulled, and we poked our heads out into the open again to see what went on. Apparently a sniper or two had been knocked out ahead of us. But we moved cautiously. A squad went out on our left, to comb through the bushes. A runner came in from the beach. “I think there are Japs in a boat on the shore,” he said. “I saw a sorta head pop up.”

  The top sergeant sent a squad out in the direction which the runner indicated. I was moving forward, along the fairly open edge of the trail, when I heard a .25 machine gun. The sound was coming from the beach, evidently near the boat which the runner had reported. I heard the heavier tone of the Browning automatic rifle, and the crash of two exploding grenades, from the same area.

  Then more Jap .25’s opened up ahead; a storm of firing broke and filled the jungle. I dived for the nearest tree, which unfortunately stood somewhat alone and was not surrounded by deep foliage. While the firing continued and I could hear the occasional impact of a bullet hitting a nearby tree or snapping off a twig, I debated whether it would be wiser to stay in my exposed spot or to run for a better ’ole and risk being hit by a sniper en route.

  I was still debating the question when I heard a bullet whirr very close to my left shoulder, heard it thud into the ground and then hea
rd the crack of the rifle which had fired it. That was bad. Two marines on the ground ten or fifteen feet ahead of me turned and looked to see if I had been hit. They had evidently heard the bullet passing. That made up my mind. I jumped up and dashed for a big bush. I found it well populated with ants which crawled up my trousers legs, but such annoyances were secondary now.

  The sniper who had fired at me was still on my track. He had evidently spotted my field glasses and taken me for a regular officer.

  I searched the nearby trees, but could see nothing moving, no smoke, no signs of any sniper. Then a .25 cracked again and I heard the bullet pass—fortunately not as close as before. I jumped for better cover, behind two close trees which were surrounded by ferns, small pineapple plants and saplings. Here I began to wish I had a rifle. I should like to find that sniper, I thought. I had made an ignominious retreat. My dignity had been offended. The Matanikau sortie had become a personal matter.

  Then it began to rain hard. It rained until we were soaked and the ground was mushy, while the firing continued.

  A Jap .25 machine gun, making the characteristically sharp sound in characteristically long bursts of fifteen to twenty shots, was firing again on our right flank and ahead. But the gun had been spotted by our “point” in that direction. In a few seconds we heard the crash of one of our mortar shells, ranging on the Jap. Then a muttered sentence, passed from mouth to mouth, came back from that area:

  “Pass the word back, more to the right on the mortars.”

  A few seconds later I heard the “thwung” sound of the mortar firing, and after the usual long interval of flight, the crash of the exploding shell.

  “More to the right on the mortars,” was the word that came back. And then again, the thwung of the firing, the crash of the exploding shell—and silence from the Japanese machine gun. (We heard later that this particular nest, hidden in a beached boat, had been knocked out.)