“Hope he makes it!” shouted Miller.
Back at the airport, we found that this flier had made it, and that our fighters had shot down two of the Jap bombers and one Zero.
This afternoon, at about four o’clock, we heard scary news on the “scuttlebutt” circuit: that thirty-three Jap ships were on their way toward Guadalcanal, off Lord Howe Island, and at their present rate of speed would be here at four o’clock tomorrow morning.
Before we went to bed, however, we heard that the alarm was another false one. The root of the report had been a radio message from a B-17, which had spotted three Jap ships heading north near Lord Howe Island. The message had simply been misunderstood.
Still, the night was not to be calm. At nine o’clock, I woke up to find my cot shaking, as if someone had a grip on one end and was trying to jostle me. It was an earthquake—which, they say, is a fairly common occurrence hereabouts.
Later, we were awakened by the sounds of machine-gun and rifle fire, and there were two louder explosions which sounded like mortar shells. Had the Japs broken through? I wondered. But after a while one grows bored with the incessant repetition even of thoughts like these. I went back to sleep.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
This morning we heard at Col. Hunt’s CP that the Japs had fired mortar shells into the tractor camp last night. But when our men had answered with heavy fire, the Japs had withdrawn. Apparently they were a small patrol trying to feel out our positions.
We arrived at the airport this morning just in time to hear the tail end of an address by a general to the pilots. They were gathered in a circle around him. And the general was saying: “And I don’t want you to think that those people back there at home don’t appreciate what you are doing. They do appreciate it.”
“What was the rest of the speech about?” I asked one of the fighters.
“You heard it,” he said, disconsolately. “It was that last sentence, repeated a few times.” What the fighters would like to hear, obviously, is news of some relief. Some of them have been flying eight to ten hours almost every day under combat conditions, for the last three weeks. And their rest is disturbed by the Japs practically every night. They would like a little rest in some relatively peaceful country.
Col. Fike gave us the results of today’s raid by our dive-bombers. The target for today was the Jap base on Gizo. The dive-bombers found no aircraft or ships there, but bombed a group of buildings, and probably destroyed a radio station.
Some of our pilots lost their way in the “soup.” Ensign Walter W. Coolbaugh (of Clarks Summit, Pa.) could not even find Gizo, because of the thickness of the overcast; but, nothing daunted, he did find Santa Isabel, and bombed that.
Lieut. Richard R. Amerine (of Lawrence, Kans.), a marine flier, came wandering into our lines today, thin as a ghost, to say he had been out in the jungles, dodging Japs and existing on red ants and snails for seven days. He had parachuted from a fighter plane when his oxygen apparatus went out, a week ago, and had landed at Cape Esperance on the northwest corner of the island. Trying to find his way back, he had run into a large group of Japs. He had found one Jap asleep by the side of a trail, killed the Jap by beating his head with a boulder, taken the Jap’s pistol and shoes, killed two more Japs with the butt and one with a bullet, and finally reached our lines safely. Having once studied entomology, the science of bugs, he was able to subsist on selected ants and snails. He knew which were edible.
There’s a tide of “scuttlebutt” tonight that relief is on the way for the marines here on Guadal, that a huge convoy of ships is en route carrying enough Army troops so that the marines will be able to ship out and perhaps go home.
There is also a less credible rumor that President Roosevelt has promised in a fireside chat—which nobody heard—that the marines on Guadal will be back home in the United States by Christmas. The fact of the matter seems to be that Walter Winchell said something to that effect on one of his broadcasts, but he did not mention the President or link him to the “tip” in any way. So “scuttlebutt” groweth.
VII
BATTLE OF THE RIDGE
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
This morning Col. Edson told me that he is planning to make an attack on the Jap positions in the Taivu Point area tomorrow. If I wanted to go along, I was to be at a certain embarkation point at 3:45 this afternoon.
It was pelting rain when I arrived. But the Raiders, who seem to love a fight, were in high spirits. I had been assigned by Col. Edson to go with Col. Griffith aboard a tiny diesel-engined ship which was acting as an auxiliary transport for the occasion. As we stepped aboard, one happy marine said, “This is the battleship Oregon, I presume?”
The captain of the little craft was a jovial Portuguese who had formerly been a tuna captain on the American West Coast. His name, Joaquin S. Theodore. He still spoke in interesting Portuguese constructions, despite his rank as captain of a naval ship.
“We’ll have it coffee for everybody in the morning,” he said. Kindly, he warned against smoking on deck. “Tal your men I don’t like to smoke it on deck,” he said.
He wanted to clear away a space in the small ship so that the tight-packed marines might have a little more room. He pointed to a clothes line and said to his first officer, “Whoever this clothes belongs to I want it out of the lines.”
The ship was a tiny thing, with only limited supplies of stores. But Capt. Theodore passed out grub and all available cigarettes to the Raiders, and shared his little cabin with Col. Griffith.
As we put out onto a rough sea, the pink-cheeked, hearty Portuguese told me proudly about his two “’lil kids” back home and about the exploits of his ship.
Col. Griffith later went over the plans for our expedition: we are to land our troops to the east of a small village called Tasimboko, in the Taivu Point area, and advance from that direction on the town. Tasimboko is supposed to be the bivouac of a large group of Jap troops—estimated to number from 1,000 to 3,000. But the Japs are supposed to be lightly armed.
A bombing and strafing attack on Tasimboko, and shelling from the sea, will be timed to fit in with our attack.
Getting to sleep was a terrible job. The ship’s steaming hold, full of the noise of the engines, was crammed with marines; no room to sprawl there. Every nook about the deck seemed to be filled as well.
Finally I found a spot on the deck, which was partially shielded by a hatchway, and curled around it. But the ship rolled heavily, and rain began to fall. I found another spot on the forecastle deck and pulled the edge of a tarpaulin over me. The rain fell more heavily, and the wind grew cold. I stumbled along to the captain’s cabin and lay down on the floor in the stuffy room. It was better than sleeping in the rain.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
Despite the hardships of sleeping aboard Capt. Theodore’s tiny tub, the Raiders were fresh and ready to go this morning when the time came for us to climb into our boats and shove off for shore.
Just as we were starting, there came a fortunate happenstance: a small convoy of American cargo ships, escorted by warships, passed very close to our own transports. They had no connection with us, and were bound for a different part of Guadalcanal; but the Japs, seeing our ships and the others together, evidently got the impression that a mass assault was coming. And so, fortunately, many of them ran.
But we naturally had no way of knowing this as we dashed for shore in our landing boats. We were ready for a real struggle, and a bit puzzled when there were no shots from shore.
We were more mystified, when, a few minutes after landing, as we were pushing along the trail toward Tasimboko, we found a fine, serviceable 37 mm. field piece, with the latest split-trail, rubber-tired carriage, sitting at the edge of the beach. It was complete with ammunition, and surrounded by Japanese packs, life-preservers, intrenching tools, new shoes, strewn in disorder on the ground.
As we moved along, we found more packs, more shoes, and life-preservers, and fresh-dug slit-trenches and foxho
les in the underbrush. We also found another fine 37 mm. gun, which like the other was unmanned. This second gun was pointed toward the west, indicating we had possibly, as we had hoped, surprised the Japs by circumventing their positions and attacking from the east.
Or perhaps this was only the entrance to a trap. The Japs are supposed to excel at such tactics. We moved on cautiously, circled a small pond and crossed a ford in a river, wading in water up to our waists.
Beyond the ford, we passed a pile of clam shells, evidently freshly opened. “I’m thinking they’ve gone up for breakfast and knocked things off,” snapped Col. Edson with his humorless grin. But he did not relax. He moved his troops ahead fast, barked at them when they failed to take proper cover.
We heard the sound of approaching plane motors, then saw our dive-bombers come out of the sky and slant westward. A few seconds later we heard the thud of bombs falling.
There were strafing planes, too, the long-nosed Pursuits flashing overhead, and we could hear their guns rattling as they dived.
We moved along the shore through an overgrown cocoanut grove and in the brakes of underbrush; we found more foxholes, carefully camouflaged with palm leaves, and caches of food and ammunition.
Shortly after eight o’clock, we made our first contact with the Japs. I saw our people running in numerous directions at once, and knew that something had happened. I ran to the beach and saw what the others had seen: a row of Jap landing boats lying on the sand some distance away, and amidst the boats, a small group of men in brown uniforms, looking our way—Japs.
The colonel called “Nick,” quietly, and Maj. Nickerson (Floyd W. Nickerson of Spokane, Wash.) anticipated the order. “Open fire?” he said hopefully.
The colonel nodded his head.
“Nick,” who is as lean and hard as the colonel, called, “Machine-gun runner.” And when the man came up, which was almost immediately, he gave him the order. Within two minutes our machine guns were firing.
“Red Mike” (as the Raiders call their colonel for the obvious reason that he has red hair) is most taciturn. I asked him, at this juncture, what was happening.
“I think we might have caught a few,” he snapped. And that was all he said.
Now the Japs were answering our fire. I heard the familiar flat crack of the .25 rifle, and the repetition of the sound in long bursts of light machine-gun fire. Others of our men joined in the firing, and it swelled in volume. In the midst of the outburst, we heard the crash of a heavy explosion. I was lying on the ground under a bush, near Red Mike, taking thorough cover.
“Sounds like mortar fire,” he said, concisely.
The burst of firing stopped, and there was a lull for a few moments. Red Mike was on his feet immediately, moving ahead. He sent a message up to Maj. Nickerson, who was leading the advance elements of our troops.
“Nick’s got to push right on up,” he said, low-voiced. Then he was gone, tending to some military business in the rear. A few moments later he was back again, still moving fast. I had found the colonel to be one of the quickest human beings I had ever known.
Rifle and machine-gun fire burst out again, the Jap guns standing out in the chorus like a tenor in a quartet. The bullets were closer this time. I crawled under a wet bush and kept my head down.
A man was hit over to our left. I heard the cry, “Pass the word back for a corpsman,” felt the sickening excitement of the moment in the air. Our first casualty.
Then there came another loud crash from ahead, close and loud enough so that the earth shook under us. I was lying next to a private. “Sounds like a 90 mm. mortar,” he said.
Now the blasting concussion of the explosion was repeated, and we heard the furry whistle of a shell passing over our heads, heard it explode well to the rear. Was it a mortar or a field piece ahead of us? There was more than a possibility, it seemed, that we had run into a heavy Jap force, equipped with batteries of artillery.
I was more certain of it when the explosion was repeated. Again we heard a second crash a fraction of a moment later, well behind us. Now it seemed evident that these were artillery pieces firing, probably several of them.
The Jap artillery was answered by the lighter-toned firing of our own mortars, and another chorus of rifles and machine guns. The Jap guns crashed again, and then the firing stopped.
A runner came to Col. Red Mike, who was sitting for a brief second in a clump of underbrush. “Nick says to tell you there are people across the stream,” he said. A small stream ran parallel to the beach at this point, and that stream marked off our left flank. The Japs apparently were moving through the jungle on the inland side of the stream, planning to cut off our rear. “We can’t see ’em yet, but we can hear ’em,” said the runner.
The colonel called Capt. Antonelli. “Tony,” he said, “Nick says there’s somebody working back across the stream. Take a patrol. Flank ’em if you possibly can.”
There was other business for Red Mike: he wanted to check on the exact location of our companies; he got the “walkie-talkie” into action, sent runners out. He checked on the wounded by making a personal tour. Then he was back in time to get a report from Col. Griffith that a Jap field piece had been captured, unmanned.
“Shall I go with Tony or get the gun?” asked Col. Griffith.
“Go get it, take it down to the water and shoot it,” said Red Mike.
Next, Red Mike disappeared into the foliage ahead. Now we were out of the cocoanuts, getting into thicker growth. But the colonel still moved like the wind. I followed and after a struggle found him at our foremost position, talking to Maj. Nickerson.
“I’m trying to locate that firing up ahead,” said Nick.
Our planes came in again, and dived and strafed the Jap village ahead of us. The Japs were not firing. We moved ahead.
We passed through a jungle brake which looked just like any other from the outside, but inside we found stacks of cases filled with medical supplies. “Opium,” said a marine, but I made note of the labels on some of the boxes and checked later. Most of the boxes contained “Sapo Medicatus,” which is a blood-coagulating agent.
The foxholes were growing more numerous as we progressed. They were everywhere, carefully camouflaged with leaves. And caches of supplies were also more numerous: crates of canned meat, sacks of crackers; there were more groups of new field knapsacks, with shoes strapped to them, and scores of gray life-preservers, indicating the Jap troops who had been here were probably freshly landed from boats.
Something moved in the bush ahead and to our left. “There are troops going through there,” said the colonel. “Find out who they are.”
Seven minutes later, firing burst out again. I flopped into thick cover, and none too soon. A bullet snapped into the underbrush very close behind me. I picked out the sounds of Jap .25’s, our automatic rifles and our machine guns. There was a torrent of Jap .25 machine-gun firing from the left.
“The boys got on the other side of us,” said the colonel, with one of his wry smiles.
Now came a terrific blast from only a few yards ahead. It was so loud it made my ears ring, and the concussion shook chips of wood on my head from the trees above. We heard the shell whiz just over our heads and burst a few hundred yards to the rear. We knew then that we must be right smack up against the muzzle of a Jap field piece.
The piece fired again, and again, and then there was another outburst of machine-gun fire, ours heavy-toned against the Japs’ cracking .25’s. Then silence.
Maj. Nickerson came back to tell the colonel that our men had “killed the gunners on a Jap 75. It’s only 150 yards ahead,” said Nick. “It was covered by machine-gun fire. We got the gun.”
But the Japs had more guns. We advanced only a slight distance, and another opened on us, as close as the last had been. At the time I was squatting in a thick jungle brake, a tangle of vines and dwarf trees, but the crash of the firing so close was scary, despite the good cover. Each time the gun went off, one felt the blast of
hot air from the muzzle, and twigs rattled down from the trees above. But we knew we were safer here than back where the shells were falling. We could hear the explosions of the shells well behind us.
There was quite a cluster of us in this jungle grove: marines, squatting or sprawling unhappily in the green wet underbrush. Then it began to rain, and the rain came in sheets and torrents. The firing kept on. There were Jap riflemen around us too. (I later found that there had been one, not more than fifty feet from us. We found his body. Why he did not fire at us I don’t know.)
Nick shouted at the little group in the jungle brake. “Spread out,” he said, with the proper blistering expletives. “We lost one squad of the second platoon with one shell. One of those might come in here.”
I moved off to the right, to try to get a look ahead, and then moved back to the rear to see what damage the Jap shells were doing. I passed a marine who was lying on his back in a foxhole, his face very gray. His upper torso was wrapped in bandage, and I could see there was no arm where his left arm had been, not even a stump. A 75 shell had done the work.
A runner came back to report to Col. Red Mike, at 10:45, that a second Jap 75 had been put out of action and the crew killed.
It began to look as if we might have tackled a bigger Jap force than we could handle. The colonel was concerned about the Japs who might, he thought, be sneaking around our flank, cutting us off from the beach where we had landed. The colonel called for naval gunfire support.
A group of destroyers which had come down with us swung in close to shore and began to shell Tasimboko. I went out to the beach to watch the yellow flashes and the geysers of smoke and debris rising where the shells hit.
Then I went forward to look for Nick. Firing broke out again, torrents of it; but there were no more of the heavy crashes of artillery fire this time, only rifles and machine guns firing, and most of them, according to the sound, ours.
Guadalcanal Diary Page 19