Guadalcanal Diary

by Tregaskis, Richard;

  “One man fire,” shouted Capt. Sherman. He designated a grizzled, leather-faced marine to do the shooting. I noticed that the man wore the chamois elbow pad and fingerless shooting glove of a rifle-range marksman. The marines told me he was Gunnery Sgt. Charles E. Angus (of Nashville, Tenn.), a distinguished marksman who had won many a match in the States.

  We watched Sgt. Angus, as if he were the spotlighted star of a play, when the Jap jumped up again and began to run. Angus was nervous. He fired several shots, working his bolt fast, and missed. He inserted another clip of cartridges, fired one of them. But then the Jap had sunk down into cover again.

  It was a little disappointing—but only for the moment. The Jap had flopped on the beach. He was evidently heading for the sanctuary of the water, hoping to swim for it. But now he started to get up again—and that was as far as he got. He had reached only a crouch when Sgt. Angus, now quite calm, took careful aim and let one shot go. The Jap sank as if the ground had been jerked out from underneath him. It was a neat shot—at about 200 yards.

  Now the tanks, their job finished, were rolling out of the grove, heading for the spit. There were only three of them now. One sat very still and dead in the grove.

  In a few minutes the tanks were behind our line. I followed them back until they stopped a few hundred feet west of the Tenaru, and the tank captain, his face grimy and his shirt soaked with sweat, climbed out. He said his name was Lieut. Leo B. Case (of Syracuse, N.Y.).

  Col. Pollock had come back to talk to Lieut. Case. The colonel said, “Man, you really had me worried.” He laughed. “But what a job!”

  The colonel told me that his orders to Lieut. Case had been only that the tanks should run up and down the beach, on the far side of the Tenaru, and do a sort of reconnaissance. Turning into the grove, where close-spaced trees made it difficult for tanks to maneuver, and blotting out the Jap positions with point-blank fire—this had been Lieut. Case’s own idea.

  I went back to our front line, for firing was growing heavy again. Across the river Jap after Jap jumped up from the underbrush and dashed for the shore. It was their last hope for escape, with Col. Cresswell’s troops coming in from behind. Most of the Japs were knocked down by our fire as they ran, long before they reached the beach. Some of them, however, reached the beach and tried to swim away. Their heads, small black dots amongst the waves, were difficult targets to hit. But our men relished the firing. Whenever we could see the head of a swimming man, a small storm of little waterspouts rose around him as our bullets smacked home.

  Now we could distinctly see a few green-uniformed marines, noticeably bigger than the enemy, popping into view, then disappearing, in the grove across the river, far back among the even lanes of trees. And the sound of rifle and machine-gun fire accelerated, telling us that there must still be considerable Japanese resistance in the grove.

  There were more of our troops on the beach at the edge of the grove, far down across the Tenaru. They were visible for a few seconds at a time, as they moved forward, then took cover, then repeated the process.

  Our artillery fire, which had been pounding into the grove constantly in the earlier part of the day, had now halted. But Col. Cresswell’s people were using mortars to finish off the Japs. The flashes of the explosions were like huge orange flowers scattered through the edge of the grove, just across the Tenaru. We simply kept our heads low and watched the excitement. There was no firing from our side of the river, for we were afraid of hitting our own men. And the Japs were too occupied with fighting our people closing in the rear to bother with those of us on the west bank of the Tenaru.

  From time to time a live Jap stirred from among the dead piled on the Tenaru River spit and dived into the water. But at such point-blank range, these would-be escapers did not get far. From Hell Point, on Col. Pollock’s end of the spit, volleys of firing sprang out and the Jap was killed as he swam; even the kindliest marine could not let the swimming Jap escape, for he would be apt then to swim around our rear and throw grenades as several Japs had done earlier in the day.

  There was bitter fighting now in the grove across the Tenaru. We realized that the tanks had not “mopped up” completely, for we could still hear the snapping of Jap machine-gun and rifle fire. But Col. Cresswell’s people were closing in fast. A large group of them advanced steadily but cautiously down the beach bordering the grove. Several groups moved simultaneously among the rows of palms scarcely 300 yards beyond the Tenaru. We kept our heads low, for the bullets of Cresswell’s marines might accidentally strike among us.

  And then the fighting, suddenly, seemed to have ended. We saw marines at the opposite end of the Tenaru spit, three of them, swiveling their heads about, stepping tensely with rifles at the ready—all set to kill any Japs who might try one last stealthy act of resistance.

  Several times, as these three leaders moved across the spit, live Japs stirred among the piles of dead—I was told later that some of them tried to throw grenades at our people—and were killed for their trouble.

  Jap dead are dangerous, for there are usually some among them alive enough to wait until you pass, then stab or shoot you. Our marines had by this time learned to take no chances. The dead were shot again, with rifles and pistols, to make sure.

  More marines trickled out of the cocoanut grove, from the other side of the Tenaru, following the three leaders, advancing just as cautiously. More of our men moved out from our (Pollock’s) side of the Tenaru to move across the spit and help in the brutal but necessary re-butchery of the dead. I watched our men standing in a shooting-gallery line, thumping bullets into the piles of Jap carcasses. The edge of the water grew brown and muddy. Some said the blood of the Jap carcasses was staining the ocean.

  I followed our men out onto the Tenaru spit. At the far end I talked to some of Cresswell’s men; they told me there were hundreds of Jap dead in the grove and beyond, and some wounded prisoners—a few.

  Just then came a recrudescence of rifle fire rattling in the cocoanut grove, then a few of the unmistakable sharp cracks of a Jap .25. Snipers were still operating in the grove. We spread out a little on the spit. The strip of sand was not yet a safe meeting-ground.

  But the Battle of the Tenaru was to all intents and purposes at an end. The detailed sequence of the fighting was not yet clear. But we knew that a major Japanese attempt to break through our lines and seize the airport had been stopped, and we knew too that this must have been one of the most crushing defeats the Japs had yet suffered. Our own casualties, I found, were only 100, twenty-eight killed and seventy-two wounded; whereas the Japs had lost an estimated 700 killed. (I found later that the actual count of the Jap bodies in the Tenaru battle area was 871.)

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 22

  This morning I went down to the Tenaru with Lt. Col. Buckley and Capt. Moran, the interpreter.

  The stench of bodies strewn along Hell Point and across the Tenaru spit was strong. Many of them lay at the water’s edge, and already were puffed and glossy, like shiny sausages. Some of the bodies had been partially buried by wave-washed sand; you might see a grotesque, bloated head or twisted torso sprouting from the beach.

  It was not pleasant to look at the piles of bodies on the spit. But that carnage was a pale painting, compared to the scene in the grove across the spit. That was a macabre nightmare. We saw groups of Jap bodies torn apart by our artillery fire, their remains fried by the blast of the shells. We saw machine-gun nests which had been blasted, and their crews shredded, by canister fire from our tanks. The tread tracks of one of our tanks ran directly over five squashed bodies, in the center of which was a broken machine gun on a flattened bipod.

  Everywhere one turned there were piles of bodies; here one with a backbone visible from the front, and the rest of the flesh and bone peeled up over the man’s head, like the leaf of an artichoke; there a charred head, hairless but still equipped with blackened eyeballs; pink, blue, yellow entrails drooping; a man with a red bullet-hole through his eye; a dead
Jap private, wearing dark, tortoise-shell glasses, his buck teeth bared in a humorless grin, lying on his back with his chest a mess of ground meat. There is no horror to these things. The first one you see is the only shock. The rest are simple repetition.

  Walking among the clustered dead of the grove, we could see why it had been difficult to spot the Japs from across the river. They had been well dug in, with excellent foxholes. It had taken our tanks to flush many of them from their holes.

  We found some interesting Jap equipment: several flamethrowers, which evidently had not been used; a small Jap field-piece on a little cart; bangalore torpedoes, long pipe-like bombs used to blow up barbed-wire impediments. The Japs’ packs contained canned heat, rice, cookies, soap; an extra pair of shoes and gas masks were strapped on the outside. And all the equipment was new; the Japs had been well equipped.

  We saw our tank, which had been stopped by a Jap grenade or mortar. It was undamaged, except for the fact that one tread was broken clean in two. The machine was being towed away by a truck.

  The snipers who remained in the grove yesterday afternoon had been almost completely cleaned out. Patrols were setting out to finish off the remainder. We could hear scattered shots coming from the eastern part of the grove.

  Back at the airport, I found some long-nosed fighter planes, painted army brown, coming in for a landing. They were pursuit ships, the first Army planes to arrive in Guadalcanal. The planes bore bright insignia and spectacular individual crests. One plane carried in large letters the legend “The Flying Pole.” The plane’s aerial had been painted like a barber’s pole, carrying out the motif. And the pilot, inevitably, was a young man of Polish extraction, named Lieut. Edmund E. Brzuska, who came from Chicago. The leader of the group was Capt. Thomas J.J. Christian, whose father is a brigadier general at Camp Sutton, N.C.

  At Gen. Vandegrift’s headquarters, we heard the story of a native police chief named Vouza. Vouza, it seemed, had been caught by the Japs on a scouting expedition, and tied up and held prisoner when his captors found a small American flag in his possession. The flag had been given to him by marines.

  Vouza said that the leader of the Japs who caught him was a notorious Jap agent named Ishimoto. Ishimoto had been a carpenter on Tulagi for years, ostensibly, while he carried on as an agent for the Japs. When the Japs had taken Tulagi, May 5th, Ishimoto had been given a rank in the Jap land forces. He had apparently commanded at least a part of the troops which our forces turned back yesterday at the Battle of the Tenaru.

  Vouza, according to the story, was tied to a tree and questioned by Ishimoto as to the American strength and positions. When the middle-aged native refused to talk, the Japs, he reported, stabbed him with bayonets. Still, he would not talk. Finally the Japs left him hanging from the ropes, with gushing wounds in his chest and throat. But the native, nothing daunted, chewed through his bonds with his teeth and walked twenty miles back to our lines. He was hospitalized. (The doctor who tended him told me later that as soon as the bad gash in Vouza’s neck had been sewed up, he asked for something to eat.) Vouza told our officers that Ishimoto had seemed certain of victory over our forces; Ishimoto, he said, had bragged about his force of more than 1,000 Japs, said they would “mop up” our people.

  I stopped at Col. Pollock’s command post and talked with him about the officers and men of his outfit who had distinguished themselves in yesterday’s battle. There were many, but several were outstanding:

  Pvt. Joe Wadsworth had occupied a foxhole on Hell Point at the time early yesterday morning when the Japs made their all-out effort to cross the Tenaru sandbar and penetrate our lines. He had fired at them with his automatic rifle, killing several, until his gun jammed. Then he had picked up a Springfield rifle and fired with that, and finally, when the Japs had come close, he had jumped up and run to meet them with his bayonet. Then he had been struck by a bullet which knocked him down. But he had refused to be evacuated until the more seriously wounded had been cared for.

  Lieut. George Codrea (of Akron, Ohio), whose platoon formed the foremost firing line in the furious fighting during the early morning hours, had been hit twice in the left arm by grenade fragments at 4:30 A.M. But he had stayed on the spot and continued to direct his men, although his wounds were very painful, until 11:30 when the pace of the fighting slackened a bit.

  Corp. Lawrence A. DiPietroantonio, when the Japs took one of our field guns in cross fire and killed or wounded the crew and replacements, took over the gun single-handed and operated it as a one-man crew until others could join him.

  I stopped at Col. Cresswell’s headquarters and he told me more tales, in practically endless sequence, about the marines under his command who had done heroic things in the Tenaru battle. One of them was Corp. Raymond A. Negus (of Peabody, Mass.), who had been wounded in both arms, the abdomen and left thigh as Cress-well’s people closed in on the Jap positions from the rear.

  Two of his comrades had picked up Corp. Negus on a stretcher, but he had climbed off and told them to take cover, as they were exposed to devastating fire from Jap rifles, mortars and machine guns. And then he had crawled to a safer spot without assistance, despite his wounds.

  Pvt. Roy L. Barnes (of Cincinnati, Ohio) had shot a grenade out of the hand of a Jap as the Jap was about to hurl it at Barnes’ platoon. When Lieut. Maurice F. Ahearn (of Boston, Mass.) was wounded, a Navy Corpsman, Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class Richard J. Garrett, had deliberately placed himself between the wounded officer and the enemy riflemen; he had used himself as a human shield.

  Those were the outstanding among the scores of stories I was told by Cols. Cresswell and Pollock. But they were typical. The Battle of the Tenaru had been a first action for many of the marines involved. But they had stood up to the enemy like more seasoned troops.

  VI

  BOMBARDMENT

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 23

  There is no laundry on Guadalcanal. It was one of the things the Japs forgot to provide. Apparently they did their own, as we must now do.

  I turned to this morning with a wooden bucket and a cake of laundry soap and scrubbed several dirty items. After some hours of effort, I found the clothes were at least a tattletale gray, whereas they had formerly been a darker shade.

  It was a pleasant morning. And noontime came and still there had been no air raid. It began to seem that we were going to enjoy one day of rest.

  But in the afternoon there came a disrupting surge of “scuttlebutt.” A slew of Jap ships were on their way to Guadalcanal.

  I checked the story with the best-informed sources, and found it was true. Our patrol aircraft had spotted a large Jap naval force, 150 miles off, heading in our direction. There were transports, cruisers and destroyers to a total of about fourteen ships.

  A striking force of our dive-bombers went out to hunt the Japs. But before they could reach the enemy, the weather closed in so that they were unable to make contact. I was at our airport operations center when the pilots came back, looking brokenhearted about the matter.

  “I feel like hell about it,” said the squadron leader, checking in with the operations chief. “But we just couldn’t get in there.”

  “I never saw anything like it,” said another dive-bomber pilot. “I came back from Tulagi two feet over the water, trying to get under the overcast. Even then I couldn’t see anything.”

  There was nothing more to be done about the matter, for the moment, except to leave our shoes on when we went to bed that night. Which we did.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 24

  The expected Japanese task force did not show up during the night. But a Japanese submarine came up off Kukum at about two o’clock this morning and threw shells into Guadalcanal.

  When we heard the sound of the cannonading, Capt. Dickson, Capt. Narder and Major Phipps, my tent mates, rose up in the dark with a swift reflex and sneaked for our dugout, I with them.

  It was some time before we discovered what was happening. We could see that the sky over Kukum was
illuminated by white light while the shelling went on, and judging from the suddenness with which the light snapped off and on, we estimated it was a searchlight.

  The sounds of cannonading were not alarming; we could hear the sound of the shell exploding before the whistle of the projectile passing through the air. And that was a good sign. It meant the shells were falling far short of us.

  Ten minutes after it had begun, the shelling stopped. But the alarm was not yet over. We could hear the low-toned muttering of motorboat engines coming from the direction of Kukum.

  Lieut. Wilson checked on the phone. “Jesus,” he said, “they ain’t ours. All our boats are beached, all crews inland.”

  We sat in the CP, waiting and talking while the usual cigarettes glowed in the darkness. It was a scary situation, sitting in the dark, listening to the sound of motorboats, and wondering if that sound marked the coming of the much-expected Jap landing party. But humor does not desert Americans in such situations. We sat, waited and exchanged wisecracks.

  Maj. Gannon (James J. Gannon of Philadelphia, Pa.), however, brought news which dampened our spirits for a few minutes. “Number four gun had almost a direct hit,” he said, tragically. “I lost two men and two wounded.” Our spirits sank. “It’s too bad,” he said. “But there it is.”

  But later it developed that this first estimate, like a good deal of first news about casualties, was overly gloomy. We heard the verified fact in the morning: that only one man had been seriously wounded in the shelling.

  I visited the spot in the morning with Col. Phipps. Three of those who had been slightly wounded were still on duty at the scene. They told me they still carried pieces of shrapnel in various parts of their arms and legs.

  I asked one of the wounded, a husky lad named Kagle (Pvt. George R. Kagle of Abilene, Tex.) if his wounds did not hurt.