Guadalcanal Diary

by Tregaskis, Richard;

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

  After a wonderful hearty breakfast, up to the bridge to find that we are zigzagging. “Stand by for depth charges,” was the word that crackled from the ship’s speaker system.

  We were making full speed. The crew went tensely, hurriedly about the business of preparing to fire depth charges.

  “We’ve sighted a periscope,” the officer of the deck told me, “dead ahead.”

  But before any “ashcans” could be fired, the ship slowed and the air of tension relaxed. “It’s only a mast of one of the ships we lost out here,” said the O.O.D. “Every time we see it, we think it’s a periscope.”

  We were getting near to Savo Island. I went below and got my gear together and came back up on the bridge. We all stood silently watching the small, humpbacked island grow larger. The regular “bong, bong” of the depth finder was a hollow, eerie sound in the stillness.

  General quarters sounded, and the speaker system droned, “Man your boats. Stand by, all boat crews.”

  I went to my assigned boat and climbed aboard, jamming my way among tight-packed marines. Our engines rumbled and coughed, then started, and we were off for shore.

  It seemed odd to be going through the same experience of landing on a strange shore again, as I had done at Guadalcanal. The movements were the same—our sitting low in the boat, our strung-out lines of landing craft streaking in toward the beach, and even the growing distinctness of the island, as palms began to stand out against the sky and thatch huts became visible, seemed something like routine. But there remained the breathless suspense, wondering when and if machine guns would open up on us from the shore, and in those moments of wondering, as usual, one imagined the arrival of bullets and the prospect of men being hit in the boat.

  But none of these things happened, and we came to shore and made our landing without having been fired on. We advanced cautiously up the beach, but there were no Japs and no shots fired.

  We came almost immediately to a row of bamboo and thatch huts which constituted a village. The houses sat amidst wide-spaced palms, and in the grove black natives stood and watched us as we advanced. Most of them wore only bright-colored loincloths.

  An Australian guide who accompanied us set to work to secure some native boys who would lead us through the trails around the island. The big chief of the island was not in the vicinity, but one black man who spoke the Solomon Islands pidgin English was soon located. Like the rest, he wore a bright flannel loincloth and his hair was crinkly—and red. (I found later that native dandies dye their hair with lime-juice.)

  The native’s manners were mild. He raised his hand in greeting and smiled, showing stumpy teeth thickly covered with tartar and stained reddish-brown by betelnut.

  While the Australian and the native talked, marines crept out into the surrounding woods with guns at the ready. We did not want to be ambushed in the village by the Japanese.

  A line of five or six natives stood behind the black man who spoke English. They smiled childishly. Some of their black bodies were tattooed. One of them wore a necklace of bright-colored beads.

  “Me fella lookum Japanese man,” began the Australian.

  But the native shook his head and smiled benignly. “No Jap’nee man island,” he said.

  We must have looked incredulous, for the row of natives behind their spokesman raised their right hands, shook their heads, and smiled, reinforcing his argument.

  Our aviators on reconnaissance had spotted roads and objects resembling tents on Savo Island. The Australian brought up the matter.

  “This fella Jap’nee have tent,” he said. “You savvy tent?”

  The native looked mystified. “Him small house, him calico,” explained the Australian.

  But the native insisted there were no Japs on the island. Four Japs, he said, had come to the island some time before in a small boat. But they had left on Sunday.

  But we would have to see for ourselves whether or not the native was telling the truth. The Australian explained that we needed two guides.

  “Big master want sendum half man go around this way,” said the Australian. “Half sendum round this way. Me fella need two good boys, savvy?”

  Two native boys who spoke pidgin were soon located. The Australian gave them instructions. “If you lookum Japan man you fella no run all about quick time,” he said, “but all same stop and we fella killum.”

  The two natives nodded enthusiastically. “Byumby you fella getting good chow long government,” he promised.

  I chose to go with the group of Raiders who were covering the east coast of the island. They were being led by Capt. John W. Antonelli (of Lawrence, Mass.).

  The guide assigned us was of typical native pattern: stumpy, dirty teeth, red hair, childish manners—and he smiled apologetically when he spoke. He told us he had learned English on Tulagi, where he had been a cook for an Englishman. He had come back to Savo to get married. He said his name was Allen-luva.

  As we started out through the coastal cocoanut grove, working along a trail, Allen-luva told us the Japs who had come to Savo (which he pronounced “Sabu”) “take bananas, fowl, pumpkin, everything.” A large group of Japs had come in July, he said, in two “launce” (launches), and had been here two weeks.

  “Him speak English?” we wanted to know.

  “Like drunk man,” said Allen-luva and laughed. “Him talk ‘aeroprane’ and ‘guadarcanar.’”

  We passed through a succession of native villages as we pushed along the coast. They were similar: each located amidst wide-spaced cocoanut groves, looking out over a lovely vista of beach and aquamarine-colored sea; each with rows of neat bamboo-walled, thatch-roofed houses; each with a larger bamboo structure serving as a church; some of these churches with handsome altars neatly woven in two-tone fiber, white and black—which had all the elegance of ebony inlaid with ivory; but the effect was spoiled by cheap, colored religious prints pinned to the walls.

  There were song and prayer books in these churches, on the crude benches. Allen-luva told us that the islanders went to church twice a day. There were two sects, Anglican and Roman Catholic.

  We passed through the villages of Septatavi and Pokelo, and then we found the first of the debris. It was the debris of ships—life rafts, oil drums, life-belts—our ships which had been sunk in the great battle of the night of Aug. 8–9 (now called the Battle of Savo Island).

  The debris was washed up on the beach, and even now, nearly a month after the battle, the water’s edge was still stained with oil. Stones and branches farther up the beach were still coated with oil, some of it a quarter or half inch thick.

  Allen-luva said the battle had occurred close to shore. Evidently he had been greatly frightened by it, for he looked scared as he mentioned it now, and all he would say was, “Fires, great fires.”

  Farther to the south, we found debris strewn more thickly along the shore: an oil-coated, rubber life-raft from the Quincy, a soggy notebook kept by an officer on the Astoria, the propeller of one of the catapult planes which the Canberra had carried, crates marked “Australia,” more pieces of wooden life-rafts, more life-belts, inflated and uninflated. But there were no Japs, although our men were constantly on the look-out for them.

  At about noon we had traversed about half the distance from north to south. We halted for a short rest. The jungle had grown thicker as we progressed south, and the trail ran up and down many steep hills. We were dripping with perspiration. It was time to take a swallow of water—and a salt pill (a necessity in the Solomons).

  We heard the sound of many airplane engines in the sky. Capt. Antonelli looked at his watch. “Time for the daily air raid,” he said, and grinned. “It’s going to be good to watch one from a distance, for a change.”

  But the planes were ours. Soon we saw them swinging north past Savo Island, a large formation of our dive-bombers, probably heading for Bougainville or Rekata Bay or Gizo, Japanese bases.

  In midafternoon, we met the
other group of troops, who had traversed the other side of the island. We had reached the southern tip, walked our nine miles.

  Col. Griffith, who had led the other group, said they had run into no Nips anywhere. But they had found an abundance of debris, and oil, along shore, as we had, and had passed the grave of the captain of the Quincy.

  The sea grew rough in the afternoon, and the sky overcast, and we had some difficulty in getting back to our transports. But the childish natives gave us a hand, and waved, grinned and shouted “Cheerio!” as we started for the ships.

  When we reached Guadalcanal, there was some debate as to whether we should stay aboard the Little and Gregory that night. There was a possibility, it seemed, that we might be going down to Taivu tomorrow. But it was finally decided that we should go ashore.

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5

  At one o’clock this morning we were routed out of bed by the sounds of heavy, close shelling. The guns were cracking close offshore in the direction of Kukum, and the shells sighed over our heads and seemed to be crashing far back in the woods.

  I sat on the edge of the dugout and watched the bright flashes of light rising high in the sky, heard the haughty, metallic voices of the cannon. Sitting like this, virtually in the lap of a shelling attack, one felt as if he were at the mercy of a great, vindictive giant whose voice was the voice of thunder; the awful colossal scale of modern war has brought the old gods to life again.

  The shelling continued for about five intense minutes, and then, suddenly, stopped. A few seconds pause, and the sounds and flashes of cannonading began again, doubled and redoubled in volume. But the shells were no longer passing over our heads, no longer directed against Guadalcanal. We surmised then that a naval engagement must have begun.

  Ten minutes later, the cannonading continuing at a furious pace, we heard the sound of an airplane motor. Then a pinpoint of green light appeared over the beach to the east. The light grew brighter, then became a bright sheet of green-white, flickering over the whole side of the sky. It was a flare.

  More flares followed, east and west, while the blasting of the guns continued, and then a white light snapped the sky over Kukum suddenly into illumination. It was a searchlight glare, probably from naval vessels, ours or theirs, illuminating the opponents.

  The gunfire kept on, and the searchlight went out as suddenly as it had come on. Then it started again. And there was more cannonading.

  These wonders continued until 2:08, when they ceased sharply, and there were no more sounds, no more flares, no more searchlights.

  From Kukum, by phone, we heard the “dope”: that there had been a furious naval engagement off Savo Island, with about five ships participating. That two ships had been hit and were still afire. But we did not then know whether they were ours or theirs.

  With daylight I hurried to Kukum to see what had happened. En route I passed several ambulances going the other way. They were loaded.

  Comdr. Dexter told me the Little and Gregory had been sunk. Boats were out now, bringing in survivors.

  I found survivors scattered all over the beach: some on stretchers, with doctors working busily over them; some with lesser wounds, sitting dejectedly on the sand, waiting treatment; others, in scant, torn clothing, many of them still smudged with oil, standing in silent groups.

  Boats lined the shore and wounded were being taken from these on stretchers; other boats dotted the water a few hundred yards offshore, moving like busy waterbugs.

  At the back of the beach they were still loading ambulances. Some stretcher bearers passed me with inert, white-bandaged wounded.

  I talked with one of the “walking wounded,” who sat in his underwear on a pile of gear while a gash in his lower leg trailed a small trickle of blood on the sand. He had been hit by a chunk of H.E.

  A corpsman came up and said to the sailor: “You better get that fixed.”

  “I’ll wait until they”—the sailor motioned toward a badly wounded man on a stretcher, now being tended by a doctor—“get through.”

  The sailor told me he had been on the Little, and was a chief bosun’s mate. His name was Ralph G. Andree and he came from Wheelersburg, Ohio.

  He spoke dully, stoically, about the action in which his ship had been sunk. “We only got about three or four rounds out of each gun,” he said. “And the Japs shot through us like paper. They couldn’t have been more than a couple of thousand yards away.

  “The first shot they fired hit a fuel tank and set us afire. Then they turned the searchlights on and kept on firing until they had us afire all over.

  “Then they went over and sank the Gregory and it looked like they came back and gave it to us again after that.”

  A young lieutenant, wrapped in a blanket, a little blue from the cold but otherwise unharmed, told me he had been officer of the deck aboard the Gregory at the time of the sinking. He was Lieut. (JG) Heinrich Heine, Jr., of San Diego, Cal.

  “Judging from the searchlights and the gunfire,” he said, “I’d think there were about five Jap ships. There was at least one cruiser because they were firing three at a time—salvos.

  “It was like about forty kinds of hell breaking loose. Put ’em together and you get the picture.”

  Lieut. Heine gave a very coherent account of the events of the fight as he had seen them.

  “We were patroling offshore and about to make a turn,” he said, “when somebody dropped flares. Then there were searchlights, and then hell.

  “The Japs opened fire with the Little as a target, until we opened fire. Then the Japs shifted to both ships.

  “One of our four-inch guns and two smaller-caliber guns fired on the Jap astern. We put out the searchlights. But they came on again. And by that time we were ready to abandon ship.

  “I was stationed at Boat No. 3. I tried to get one of our machine guns to bear on the Jap searchlights, then realized that was foolish. I saw several hits on the bridge, and went there to see if there were any wounded. I found only one officer.

  “Then I went to the well deck to see what could be done about extinguishing the fires. I then went back to the boat stations and lowered No. 2 and No. 3 into the water.”

  Lieut. Heine talked as formally as if he were writing an official report. “I collected approximately twenty men,” he said, “and we launched a life raft. I had all hands in the water swim to the raft.

  “The Jap continued to fire. He was at the time about 100 yards from the Gregory, on the side opposite from ours. Several shells came over the ship and landed twenty to twenty-five yards from the raft.

  “The ship was burning amidships. She had taken a shot through the fire room. But a member of the fire-room crew had pulled the fires and secured the main steam stop, and prevented the ship from blowing. He was John Maar, water tender, first class.”

  One of the few survivors who appeared energetic and chipper was Lieut. (JG) Paul F. Kalat, of Worcester, Mass., who had been the engineering officer on the Little. After his ship had sunk, he had spent some eight hours in the water, and the Jap warships, he said, “just missed me by a whisker—about twenty-five to thirty feet.” Lieut. Kalat said he believed the Jap ships were cruisers, and that they were new vessels. Ensign William M. Newton, of Gastonia, N.C., said there were two cruisers and a destroyer, at least.

  We went back to Gen. Vandergrift’s CP and from there to airfield headquarters to see what damage the dive-bombers, which we spotted yesterday, heading north, had done. We found they had bombed and strafed thirty-six landing boats which had been spotted bringing Jap troops into Cape Esperance.

  Dive-bombers and Army and marine fighters had gone out this morning to strafe fifteen Jap landing boats trying to get ashore at dawn.

  Apparently both groups of boats—those at Cape Esperance and those at Taivu—were badly damaged, and many Japs killed in the attack. But the discouraging fact remains that some Japs are getting through our cordon and landing. (Later we found that the Japs were using small boats to transport troo
ps all the way from Bougainville to Guadalcanal—nearly 500 miles. The boats moved at night in small jumps from Bougainville to Choiseul to Santa Isabel. In this way, by constant effort, they were trickling forces into our island. Eventually those landings, coupled with the landings being made from larger ships, would mount up—unless we could find some way to stop them. But in any case, our air activities did have the effect of making such landings difficult.)

  We were still at headquarters on the airfield when an air alert was sent out. So we of the Guadalcanal Press Club—Miller and I plus the two new members, Yarbrough and Durdin—climbed into a jeep and sped down to Lunga Point to watch the show.

  There was a radio available here. Miller clamped on the headphones and listened in on the interplane messages, calling them aloud so that we had a blow-by-blow description of the fighting.

  The first exciting call came at 12:32:

  “Planes off the starboard bow …”

  Then, “Morrell [a call to Lieut. Rivers J. Morrell of San Diego, Cal.], have you sighted the enemy?” And Morrell’s answer:

  “They are up on the left side above you. See ’em?”

  “I’m going in, going in,” called Morrell, signaling his attack.

  Then other groups of fighters spotted the enemy, in quick succession:

  “There are twenty-six bombers coming in from the south.”

  “I’m going over there where the mess is going on.”

  “I’m starting to go in.”

  “There are Zeros with those bombers. Watch out.”

  “Watch it, there, watch it.”

  “Six Zeros just passed over us. Look out for ’em.”

  We heard the sounds of dogfighting in the sky but the planes were too high in the clouds to be seen. We also heard booming explosions, which we at first took for anti-aircraft, but later realized were bombs. We found out later the Japs had jettisoned their bombs after interception and fled without making a run.

  “We got one bomber,” called one pilot. “Bracket!”

  Then one of our casualties called in, “I’m in trouble and I don’t mean maybe. I’m going down.” A few moments after, we saw him coming in, his motor streaming smoke and his propeller sitting still on the nose of his plane. A “dead stick” landing.