Guadalcanal Diary

by Tregaskis, Richard;

  We had just got to our feet when an outburst of rifle and machine-gun fire came from the south, apparently only a few hundred yards away. We wondered then if another big Jap effort to break through our lines had begun.

  The firing continued, and the noise was augmented by mortar explosions. Then there came the flash of naval gunfire again, this time from the direction of the Tenaru. We hit the deck pronto, but the shells were not coming in our direction. The sound of the explosions indicated they were falling along shore.

  Our observation posts reported that four Jap warships—cruisers and destroyers in the usual force—were swinging along the beach, bombarding the shoreline at their leisure, then turning back and making the run in the opposite direction to repeat their performance.

  Then the shelling stopped, and, gradually, the small arms and mortar fire coming from the south dwindled in volume. But we did not go back into the valley to sleep this night. I slipped my poncho over my head, put on my mosquito head-net and my helmet, and lay down on the top of the hard ridge to sleep.

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13

  We heard this morning that a Jap patrol nipped off one end of our outpost line, last night, a few hundred yards south of the general’s CP, on the ridge. That was the firing we heard. The Raiders, who hold the line, are falling back to a better position today, in case a big Jap push develops today or tonight. Last night’s fighting was only a minor sort of engagement.

  Miller and I went to Kukum this morning to watch the daily air raid, which came in at about noon, on schedule. Interception was good. The bombers got frightened and jettisoned their loads. And Zeros and our Grummans had a terrific dogfight. From Kukum, we could see them dodging in and out of the towering cumulus clouds, occasionally diving down over the water. We saw one Wildcat (Grumman) come diving down like a comet from the clouds, with two Zeros on his tail. He was moving faster than they, and as he pulled out of his dive and streaked across the water, he left them behind. They gave up the chase and pulled sharply back up into the sky. We had a good view of their long, square-tipped wings, and the round red ball of the rising sun insignia, as they turned. They appeared, as the pilots had told me, to be very maneuverable planes.

  Many planes were dogfighting in and about the masses of cumulus clouds. I watched two planes, one chasing the other, pop out of the tower of cloud, describe a small, precise semi-circle, and go back in again.

  A few moments later they made another circle, like two beads on the same wire. Other planes popped in and out of their levels in the cloud structure, and the whole area of the sky resounded with the rattling of machine guns. With so many guns firing at once, there was a cumulative effect as loud and magnificent as thunder.

  Back at air headquarters, we waited for the tally of today’s score. It was four bombers, four Zeros.

  We went to bed in our tents tonight, but were shortly told to move out and up to the ridge-top. This time I had enough foresight to take along a blanket, and my satchel full of notes.

  We could hear rifle fire coming from our front lines a few hundred yards to the south. Then machine guns. Flares went up occasionally and shed a glow over the sky.

  I spread out my poncho and blanket and tried to sleep. I was awakened by the blasting of our own artillery batteries, to the north of us. The shells were whirring just over our position in the ridge-top, skimming over the trees, then hitting and exploding a few hundred yards to the south, apparently in the area where the fighting was going on.

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Shortly after midnight this morning the din of firing grew so tremendous that there was no longer any hope of sleeping. Our batteries were banging incessantly, the rifle and machine-gun fire from the direction of the Raider lines had swelled into a cascade of sound, Louie the Louse was flying about, and flares were dropping north, south, east and west.

  We were drawing up a strong skirmish line on the ridge-top. Reinforcements were on their way up. We knew that the Raiders, Col. Edson’s people, out on the ridge, had their hands full. We knew then that a major Japanese effort to break through our lines and seize the airport had begun.

  Another storm of rifle, machine-gun and mortar fire came now from the direction of the Tenaru. Was this another attempt to break through? For the present there was no way to find out.

  Naval gunfire began to boom from the north. But it was not coming near us.

  The general said to Col. Thomas: “Say, Jerry, ask air headquarters is it feasible to send a plane to see if there are any transports—just to see.” The general was as calm and cheery as usual.

  Some “shorts” from our own artillery fell in the valley where our tents are located. The flashes were as bright as day. One man standing near where I sprawled on the ground was knocked down by the concussion. We thought at first that the shells were Jap projectiles from their ships, ranging on the CP.

  The sounds of firing had now become a din. A gray mist began to drift in among the trees on the ridge. It was thicker in the valley. Was it smoke from our artillery? It might be gas. (It was smoke, released by the Japs to create a gas scare.)

  An artillery observer came into our communication dugout and reported to Col. Thomas, who was busy with phone calls, checking on the latest information from all outposts, giving orders. The observer said his telephone line, reaching farther toward the front, had been blown out. He had come back to relay firing instructions to our artillery batteries. He said the Japs were trying to advance down the ridge, but that our artillery fire, coupled with determined resistance from the Raiders on one of the knolls of the ridge, was holding up the enemy.

  The observer found a line open from this point back to our batteries. “Drop it five zero and walk it back and forth across the ridge,” he said. Then we heard the loud voice of the officer directing the battery: “Load … fire!” Then the bang of the cannon, the shells whizzing overhead.

  The barrage continued. And after a few minutes, a runner came back from Col. Edson’s lines. “Col. Edson says the range is perfect in there,” he said, breathlessly. “It’s right on. It’s knocking the hell out of ’em.”

  Snipers were moving in on us. They had filtered along the flanks of the ridge, and taken up positions all around our CP. Now they began to fire. It was easy to distinguish the sound of their rifles. There were light machine guns, too, of the same caliber. Ricocheting bullets skidded amongst the trees. We plastered ourselves flat on the ground.

  I went to the communication dugout to see if there might be any room inside. But the shack was filled. I picked a spot amidst some sparse bushes at the foot of a tree. A bullet whirred over my head. I moved to another tree.

  A stream of tracer bullets arched through the trees from behind us. We heard Jap .25’s opening up from several new directions. It seemed now that they were all around.

  The whispered word went round that the Japs were landing parachute troops (later proved false). More reinforcements came through our position on the ridge, while the Japs were firing. But we wondered if we could hold our place. If the Japs drove down the ridge in force, and broke through Col. Edson’s lines, they would be able to take the CP. If they had already cut in behind our position, as we suspected they had, they would box us in, and perhaps capture the general and his staff.

  But the general remained calm. He sat on the ground beside the operations tent. “Well,” he said cheerfully, “it’s only a few more hours till dawn. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

  Occasionally, he passed along a short, cogent suggestion to Col. Thomas. He was amused at my efforts to take notes in the dark.

  The telephone line to Col. Edson’s front had been connected again. The colonel called Col. Thomas to say that the Raiders’ ammunition was running low; he needed a certain number of rounds of belted machine-gun bullets—and some hand grenades. Col. Thomas located some of the desired items by phone after a quick canvass. They would be sent over soon, he told Col. Edson.

  But at about three o’clock Col. Edson called aga
in to say that he was “almost out.” The ammunition had not arrived.

  We were wondering if the Raider line was going to cave in when more Jap planes came over. There were probably two of them. They dropped more flares.

  The sounds of heavy firing to our left rear had broken out again. Col. Thomas checked by phone. “It’s in McKelvy’s area,” he said. “The Japs got into his wire.”

  Snipers were still popping at us from all sides. We had our hands full. But then Col. Edson called back to say that ammunition and grenades had arrived, and the news had a good effect on morale.

  At about four o’clock the snipers were still shooting into our camp, but they had not attacked our skirmish lines on the ridge. Our artillery fire had slackened a little. And the sounds of firing in the Raider area were sporadic. I rolled myself in blanket and poncho (for the early mornings on Guadalcanal are always chill) and lay down in some underbrush on the slope of the ridge. I was able to sleep for about an hour.

  As the first light of dawn came, the general was sitting on the side of the ridge, talking to some of his aides. A Jap machine gun opened up, and they high-tailed for the top of the ridge, with me right behind. We were heading for a tent, where we would at least have psychological shelter. Just as we reached the tent, a bullet clanged against a steel plate only two or three feet from us. It was amusing to see the rear ends of the dignified gentlemen disappearing under the edge of the tent. I made an equally undignified entrance.

  It was not safe to walk about the camp this morning. Snipers had worked their way into camouflaged positions in trees through the area, and there were some machine gunners, with small, light .25 caliber guns. One had to watch one’s cover everywhere he moved.

  There were large groups of Japs on the left or east side of the ridge, in the jungles. There was a lot of firing in that area. We had a firing line of men extending south from the CP, out along the ridge, facing those groups of Japs. The men lay along the edge of a road that ran down the exposed top of the ridge, protected only by grass. The Japs were firing at them from the cover of the jungle.

  Beyond that firing line, the ridge curved and dipped. It rose like the back of a hog into a knoll, beyond the dip. It was on this knoll that the Raiders had been doing their fiercest fighting.

  I worked my way out along the ridge to the firing line, to get a look at the knoll where the Raiders had been fighting. I lay flat next to a machine gunner while the Japs fired at us with a .25 light gun. A man to our right, farther out on the ridge, was wounded. We saw him crawling back toward us, a pitiful sight, like a dog with only three serviceable legs. He had been shot in the thigh.

  Beyond the bend in the ridge, the machine gunner told me, there were several more wounded. A group of six or seven of our men had been hit by machine-gun fire. Two of them were dead.

  In the jungle at the foot of the ridge we heard our own guns firing as well as the Japs’. Some of our troops were pushing through there, mopping up the groups of Japs.

  It was evident that the main Jap attempt, down the top of the ridge, had failed. I moved out a little farther along the ridge, nearly to the bend in the road where the wounded lay, and I could see the knoll where the fighting had been going on. It was peopled with marines, but they were not fighting, now.

  We heard the characteristic whine of pursuit planes coming. Then we saw them diving on the knoll, and heard their machine guns pop and rattle as they dived. “They’ve got a bunch of Japs on the other side of the hill,” said a haggard marine next to me. “That’s the best way to get at ’em.”

  I worked my way back to the CP and got some coffee. I was cleaning my mess cup when I heard a loud blubbering shout, like a turkey gobbler’s cry, followed by a burst of shooting. I hit the deck immediately, for the sound was close by. When the excitement of the moment had stopped, and there was no more shooting, I walked to the spot, at the entrance to the CP on top of the ridge, and found two bodies of Japs there—and one dead marine. Gunner Banta told me that three Japs had made a suicide charge with bayonets. One of them had spitted the marine, and had been shot. A second had been tackled and shot, and the third had run away. These three had been hiding in a bush at the edge of the ridge road, evidently for some time. I had passed within a few feet of that bush on my way out to the firing line and back. The animal-like cry I had heard had been the Jap “Banzai” shout.

  Col. Edson and Col. Griffith, the guiding powers of the Raiders, came into our CP this morning to make a report to Gen. Vandegrift and shape further plans. The mere fact that they had come in was a good sign. It meant that the fighting was at least slackening and perhaps ending, for they would not have left their front lines if there had been any considerable activity.

  Maj. Ken Bailey, one of the Raider officers and a hero of the Tulagi campaign, also appeared, dirty and rumpled but beaming like a kid on the night before Christmas. Bailey loved a fight. He showed us his helmet, which had been pierced front and back by a Jap bullet. The slug had grazed his scalp without injuring him.

  The Raider officers’ conversations with the general and Col. Thomas were held in the general’s secret sanctum. But I talked to Col. Edson as he left the shack. He said that the large main body of the Japs, who had been trying to drive down the ridge, had fallen back.

  He said that a force of between 1,000 and 2,000 Japs had tried to storm the ridge, with lesser forces infiltrating along the base. His estimate of the Jap casualties, at that time, was between 600 and 700 in the ridge area alone. Our artillery fire, he said, had smacked into the midst of a large group of Japs and wiped out probably 200 of them. Our own casualties had been heavy, for the fighting was furious.

  The colonel gave the impression that the big battle of the ridge had ended; that the only fighting in the area now was the mopping up of small, isolated Japanese groups by our patrols.

  But snipers were scattered through the trees of the area. I had a brush with one of them during today’s first air raid.

  I was sitting on the side of the ridge that looks over the valley where our tents are located. A throng of Zeros were dogfighting with our Grummans in the clouds and I was trying to spot the planes.

  Suddenly I saw the foliage move in a tree across the valley. I looked again and was astonished to see the figure of a man in the crotch of the tree. He seemed to be moving his arms and upper body. I was so amazed at seeing him so clearly that I might have sat there and reflected on the matter if my reflexes had not been functioning—which they fortunately were. I flopped flat on the ground just as I heard the sniper’s gun go off and the bullet whirred over my head. I then knew that his movement had been the raising of his gun.

  But there was no time to reflect on that fact either. I retreated behind a tent. And then anger caught up with me. Again the war had suddenly become a personal matter. I wanted to get a rifle and fire at the sniper. Correspondents, in theory at least, are non-combatants. Several of our men, however, fired into the crotch of the tree where the sniper was located.

  Miller had come in from Kukum, where he spent last night. He and I went out on the ridge, later in the day, to have a look at the battleground. We climbed the steep knoll where our troops had made their stand and turned back the main Jap drive.

  The hill was quiet now. Small fires smoldered in the grass. There were black, burned patches where Jap grenades had burst. Everywhere on the hill were strewn hand-grenade cartons, empty rifle shells, ammunition boxes with ragged, hasty rips in their metal tops.

  The marines along the slope of the hill sat and watched us quietly as we passed. They looked dirty and worn. Along the flank of the hill, where a path led, we passed strewn bodies of marines and Japs, sometimes tangled as they had fallen in a death struggle. At the top of the knoll, the dead marines lay close together. Here they had been most exposed to Jap rifle and machine-gun fire, and grenades.

  At the crest of the knoll we looked down the steep south slope where the ridge descended into a low saddle. On this steep slope there were about 20
0 Jap bodies, many of them torn and shattered by grenades or artillery bursts, some ripped, a marine told us, by the strafing planes which we had seen this morning. It was up this slope that the Japs had sent their heaviest assaults many times during the night, and each time they tried they had been repulsed.

  Beyond the saddle of the ridge rose another knoll, and there we could see more bodies, and the pockmarks of shelling. The whole top of this knoll had been burned off and wisps of smoke still rose from the smoldering grass.

  Miller and I still stood on the open crest of the knoll. “Better watch it,” a marine said. “There’s a sniper in the jungle over there.”

  We moved away from the hill crest and had walked about fifty feet when we heard a shout behind us. A man had been hit, at the spot where we had been standing. He had a bad wound in the leg. Our luck was holding.

  We went to Kukum to watch for further air raids. But no more planes appeared until late in the afternoon. In the meantime, we heard heavy artillery pounding into the jungle near Matanikau, and saw smoke rising in great clouds above the trees. We heard that a large body of Japs were trying to make a breakthrough in that area. The first reports had it that casualties were heavy, but later we found that the fighting here had been only a protracted skirmish and our casualties were few.

  It was dusk when Jap seaplanes made a low-altitude attack. Three of them, monoplane float aircraft, passed back and forth over Kukum, drawing streams of anti-aircraft fire. Others swung over the beach farther to the east, and the island became alive with ack-ack; the sky was trellised with the bright lines of tracer.

  Again the Japs dropped many flares, and once we saw an extremely bright white light flaming over the Tenaru, which we thought was a flare—and found out later that it was caused by two Jap planes burning simultaneously.

  The Jap planes, we learned at air operations headquarters, had tried to make a bombing attack on the airport. A group of fifteen to twenty Jap seaplanes, slow, ancient biplanes, had sneaked over the mountains in southern Guadalcanal, and tried to make a low-altitude attack. But they had been caught by our Grummans, and nine of them shot down. Four Zero floatplanes had also been shot down. And in the earlier raid of the day, two Zeros and one bomber had been downed—and the bombers had been turned back long before they reached Guadalcanal. The Jap air attacks of the day, like their land effort of last night, had been a failure.