Tonight the general and his staff had moved from the old CP on the ridge to a slightly safer spot, and of course there had been no time during the day to erect tents, cots or the other elementary comforts of Guadalcanal living. So for the third successive night I slept on the bare ground. The senior surgeon of all Gen. Vandegrift’s medical troops lay down nearby; he, too, had only a poncho for a mattress, and took the discomfort without complaint. “I’m afraid I’m going to have my joints oiled up a bit if this keeps on,” he said. And that was his only comment.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
Yarbrough and Kent have shoved off. They sailed aboard a small ship which came in today and made for a rendezvous with a larger craft. Durdin seems to be somewhat pessimistic about the general situation. Miller and I, being somewhat punch-drunk, are more inclined to view the future cheerfully.
This morning we corraled Col. Thomas and asked him to give us a quick outline of the big battle which has been going on for the last two days. He gave us a lucid summary.
The Japs had assembled three large units of troops, by a process of slow accumulation, said the colonel. Two of these large units, totaling 3,000 to 4,000 and possibly more (the figures were estimates based on the observations of our patrols), were massed to the east of the airport; the third, a smaller group, to the west.
“We couldn’t get at them because of the terrain,” said the colonel, “although we did raid the landing area of the two eastern detachments.” (That was the raid which Col. Edson’s troops had made on Tasimboko.)
The three groups made three separate attacks, said the colonel. The principal of these was a drive toward the airfield from the south along the top of Lunga Ridge. It was here that the Raiders had had their tough fight.
Two other, much lighter, attacks were made: one from the west, from the Matanikau area; and the second from the east, which was apparently intended to flank our positions along the Tenaru.
Our patrols discovered several days ago that the two eastern groups were moving in, one on our flank, one swinging around to make an attack from the south, our rear.
“On the night of the 12th and 13th,” said the colonel, “the Japs came up from the rear [the south] and infiltrated our lines, but did no damage.
“Then, our outpost line being too long, it was withdrawn several hundred yards. One hour after dark on the night of the 13th–14th, groups of 50 to 100 men each broke through the line and attacked the ridge. Col. Edson moved his men 300 to 400 yards to the rear and took up a position on a rugged hill [the steep knoll we had visited on the ridge]. At about eleven o’clock in the evening, the Japs charged in large numbers. Edson had a few hundred men, the Japs about 2,000. Our artillery fire was laid down, causing many casualties. From then on until 6:00 A.M. the Japs made many assaults on the hill, including bayonet charges. They lost 500 men.”
On the same night the Japs attacked our eastern flank, but ran into barbed-wire entanglements and retired, leaving about thirty dead Japs in the wire, said the colonel. The attack from the west did not come until yesterday, and, thanks to our artillery and stubborn resistance by our troops, that attempt was also pushed back.
Miller, Durdin and I made another swift survey of the high knoll where Edson’s men had fought, and decided that since it had no other name, it should be called “Edson Hill” in our stories.
Later in the day we went to Col. Edson’s headquarters to get his story of the battle. He told us about the individual exploits of his men and their collective bravery, but did not mention the fact that he himself had spent the night on the very front line of the knoll, under the heaviest fire.
He did not mention it, but the fact was that two bullets had actually ripped through his blouse, without touching him. Another Raider officer whispered that information to me and I nodded absently, then was startled to see that the colonel was still wearing the garment. Bullet holes marred the collar and waist.
The Raiders told us some good stories of valor; about a sergeant named John R. Morrill (of Greenville, Tenn.), who with two buddies had been cut off from the rest of the marines by a Jap advance. And how Sgt. Morrill had walked with impunity through the Jap positions during the darkness.
Then there was a private, first class, named Ray Herndon (of Walterboro, S.C.), whose squad occupied a very exposed position on the south side of Edson Hill at the time the Japs made their heaviest attacks. The Jap firing hit right into the squad and left only four of them alive, three unwounded, and Ray, hit mortally through the stomach. And then Ray, knowing he was hit badly, had asked one of his buddies to give him a .45 automatic, and said: “You guys better move out. I’m done for anyhow. With that automatic, I can get three or four of the bastards before I kick off.”
Then there was a young, round-faced lad from Greensburg, Pa., named Corp. Walter J. Burak, the colonel’s runner, who had twice during the night traversed the exposed crest of the ridge the whole distance from the knoll to the general’s CP, under the heaviest fire. He had made the first trip with a telephone wire, when the line had been blown out. And the second trip, toting a forty-pound case of hand grenades, when in the early hours of the morning, the shortage of that item became pressing.
But the outstanding story was Lewis E. Johnson’s of De Beque, Colorado. Lewis was wounded three times in the leg by fragments of a grenade, and at daybreak placed in the rear of a truck with about a dozen other wounded, for evacuation. But as the truck moved down the ridge road, a Jap machine gunner opened up and wounded the driver severely. The truck stopped. Then Johnson painfully crawled from the rear of the vehicle, dragged himself to the cab, got into the driver’s seat and tried to start the motor. When it would not start, he put the car in gear, and, using the starter for traction, pulled the truck a distance of about 300 yards over the crest of the ridge. Then he got the engine going and drove to the hospital. By that time, he was feeling so refreshed that he drove the truck back to the front and got another load of wounded.
To get the story of the attacks on the other two fronts, we went first to Col. Cates’ headquarters, to cover the attack that had come from the east, and then to Col. Hunt’s for news on the attack which had come from the west, the direction of Matanikau.
Col. Cates referred us to Lieut. Col. McKelvy (William N. McKelvy of Washington, D.C.), the immediate commander of the troops who had held back the Japs attacking from the east.
“The entire attack was delivered against a road called the Overland Trail,” he began.
“On the night of the 13th–14th, at about 10:15, I heard shooting. At 10:30 Capt. Putnam [Robert J. Putnam of Denver, Col.] called to say that one of his listening posts had been jumped. He said that a man came in to his CP, and as he arrived he said, ‘They got ’em all,’ and fainted.
“At about eleven o’clock, Capt. Putnam called and said the Japs had put out a few bands of fire—a few rifle shots, but that there was nothing serious yet.
“Then everything opened up. There was a terrific outburst of firing, and Capt. Putnam said, ‘They’re inside the wire. They’re being bayoneted.’ We found twenty-seven bodies on the wire in the morning.
“We were putting down our big mortars and all the rest. All the activity was on that one flank. The Japs were trying hard to take the road.”
The colonel stopped to get a large map and point out the road, a trail which led from the east into our lines, toward the airport.
“At 5:30 the attack stopped and the Japs withdrew. They didn’t want to be caught in daylight.
“That morning—that was the 14th—we were given a reserve of six tanks. There was high grass across from our positions and we were afraid the Japs were lying doggo in there. While the tanks were in, one of our own lieutenants jumped on one of the tanks. He was a Lieut. Turzai [Joseph A. Turzai of Great Neck, L.I.], who had been wounded by shrapnel, and stayed surrounded by Japs all night.
“Lieut. Turzai told us there were Jap machine guns in a shack in the high grass. Later in the day we sent the tanks a
fter them. They accomplished their mission, with some losses. [We lost three tanks when the Japs opened fire at point-blank range with anti-tank guns.]
“At eleven o’clock last night, the Japs hit us again. It was a minor attack. They shelled us with light mortars.
“Just at daybreak this morning we spotted about 300 Japs in a group. We had our artillery batteries laid for a concentration in that area; the fire fell right on them. They undoubtedly lost a lot of people there.”
At Col. Hunt’s CP, Lieut. Wilson gave us an outline of the fighting in the Matanikau vicinity. That, too, had been of a minor character compared to the finish fight that had raged along the ridge.
“Yesterday morning, just at daybreak, there was mortar and machine-gun fire into our left flank positions,” he said. Col. Biebush (Lieut. Col. Fred C. Biebush of Detroit, Mich.) was commanding our troops.
“At about 8:30 A.M. there came a bayonet charge. But it was repelled with heavy losses for the Japs. The Japs tried it again at 10:30.
“The Japs tried a breakthrough between two groups of troops on our left flank. They were trying to see how far our wire extended. They were beaten back.
“At about noontime, a patrol went out to reconnoiter the enemy position. Maj. Hardy [former Capt. Bert W. Hardy], who led the patrol, sent back a message, saying, ‘The woods are infested with snipers and automatic riflemen. I am pushing forward.’
“Information gathered by our reconnaissance enabled us to put down a heavy concentration of mortar and artillery fire which stopped the attack.”
I slept in a shack at Kukum tonight, on the bare board floor. I came awake, once in the night, to hear people shouting. I asked a man next to me what was happening. He grunted. “Those silly sailors don’t secure their boats,” he said, “so when Oscar goes by, they all bust loose when his wake hits ’em.” But he was wrong. It was not Oscar who had gone by, but a couple of Jap destroyer-type warships, apparently paying us a visit after landing troops at Cape Esperance, to the east.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
We had some copy to get to Gen. Vandegrift’s headquarters for censorship this morning, and were about to start out for the CP, when an air alert came in. But there was no raid, and we reached our destination with our stories and got them off. Till Durdin feared they would be our last.
Today our dive-bombers and torpedo planes from Henderson Field went north on an attack mission. We checked at the airport later in the day and found that they had been after some Jap cruisers and destroyers located between Bougainville and Choiseul. It was believed they got one torpedo hit on a cruiser and got a bomb hit on a second.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
Till Durdin’s worry that our story on the Jap attack might be our last, fortunately is not being substantiated. Things seem to be calming down on Guadalcanal. Our patrols on all our fronts contacted no Japs today, and to the east and south, it seems, they have withdrawn a goodly distance. Along Col. McKelvy’s front, we heard, our troops have found abandoned mortars and machine guns, some of them in brand-new condition, indicating the Japs fled in some haste.
Nor was there any air raid today, although our fighters, Pursuits and Grummans, went down to Cape Esperance on a strafing mission. Again they had found Jap landing boats on the shore there but no Japs visible. Evidently they had landed at night on the regular schedule and had time to take good cover.
The dust is getting thick on Guadalcanal. If you move on the roads now, you stir up a cloud of the dirty gray stuff. Planes and trucks moving across the airport trail huge triangular black clouds. You put on clean clothes at nine o’clock and walk down the road and at 9:30 you look like a chimney sweep. When you ride in a car the dust of passing vehicles chokes your lungs and blots out your vision. We now ride about with our helmets held over our faces in an attempt to keep them relatively clean. Schultz has dug up a pair of fancy polaroid goggles somewhere. Also, incidentally, a cowboy-effect belt set with large paste-stones, ruby- and emerald-colored. Where he collects such items on Guadalcanal is a mystery. He has also adopted the glamorous sun-helmet which Yarbrough left behind. Schultz’s ambition is to be a state cop in Illinois (he’s from Chicago) or a border patrol trooper, after the war.
At air headquarters today we saw a complete tabulation of the number of planes shot down by our fighters to date. The total is 131; of these, our marine fighters (Grummans) have knocked down 109; the Army Pursuiters, four; our Navy fighters (also Grummans), who have been here only a short time, seventeen; and one of our dive-bombers got a Zero. Our anti-aircraft batteries, in addition, are credited with five.
Of the 131 enemy planes destroyed, about half were fighters or other single-engine planes, and about half the fast, two-motored Mitsubishi 97’s.
Today I talked to a Coast Guard seaman named Thomas J. Canavan (of Chicago, Ill.), who had just got back after recuperating from a terrible adventure. That adventure happened about a month ago, when Canavan was out on anti-submarine patrol; there were three small boats in the patrol, and they were surprised by three Jap cruisers and sunk. Canavan was the only survivor. He saved his life by floating in the water, playing dead while one of the cruisers came close by and looked over his “body.” Then he swam for seventeen hours, trying to get to Florida Island. He finally made the shore.
Canavan, who still looked and talked as if he could feel a ghost looking over his shoulder, said he had only a cocoanut for nourishment during two days on Florida. This he promptly upchucked. He saw fierce-looking natives with spines of bone stuck through their noses and ran from them, but he found later they had been cordially inclined. For when he woke up after falling asleep exhausted on the beach, he found someone had covered him with palm fronds to protect him from the rain and nightly cold. He tried twice to swim to Tulagi Island, and the first time was thwarted by tides. The second time he succeeded.
Our dive-bombers and torpedo planes laden with bombs went out today to target the buildings of the Cape Esperance area where the Japs have been landing. They reported they set the buildings afire.
There are two persistent reports on the “scuttlebutt” circuit today: one is that reinforcements are coming to Guadalcanal—and, on that count, estimates of numbers vary; and the other is that our aircraft carrier Wasp has been sunk.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
The rumor that reinforcements were en route to Guadalcanal was substantiated today, when they arrived. Early this morning, a certain colonel told me: “I can’t say anything more about it, but I’d recommend that you go for a walk on the beach.” I went to the beach and saw cargo- and warships and transports steaming into sight.
Miller and I went to the landing point to watch the ships unload. All along the beach our weary veterans stood and watched the process, passively. We had been talking about reinforcements, and waiting for a long time.
They were marines, these new troops, thousands of them, boatload after boatload; they wore clean utility suits and new helmets, and talked tough and loud as they came ashore.
One of our veterans told me he had been talking to some of the new arrivals. “Chees,” he said, “these guys want to tell us about the war.” And we knew then that it would take some time with these men, as it had with us, to get rid of that loud surface toughness and develop the cool, quiet fortitude that comes with battle experience.
Two correspondents came in with the shiploads of reinforcements. They are Jack Dowling and Frank McCarthy, who is relieving Miller. Miller was delighted and made much noise about the fact that when he hit the deck of the ship that would take him out of here, he was going to shave off his beard. We all cheered, for Miller’s beard is one of the true horrors of Guadalcanal. It is almost as raggedy as my mustache.
A very reputable source told me today that the report of the Wasp’s having been sunk is true. He said she took two torpedoes in an isolated attack by a submarine (actually she took three), and was abandoned by her personnel.
Another persistent rumor these days is that our naval
forces and the bulk of the Jap Navy in this area have fought a great battle somewhere to the north. But there is no confirmation from any official, or even informed, direction. The truth seems to be that there has been no major naval action by surface forces since the battle of Savo Island.
Durdin and I sat on the beach most of the afternoon, waiting for the Jap air raid which we thought was inevitable. Our fleet of cargo and transport ships would make excellent targets. But the Japs, fortunately, did not come this afternoon.
They did come tonight, a force of ships estimated to range from two to six. They were too late, for our ships had gone. But Louie the Louse flew over for some time, dropping flares, looking for our ships, and the Jap ships, probably cruisers, lay well offshore and lobbed shells into our coastline.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
At the airport operations building this morning, we watched our dive-bombers taking off for some mission to the north. Probably bombing Gizo, or Rekata Bay, or one of the other Jap bases in the Solomons. Our people have been attacking some such objective frequently during the last few days, but have not had much luck in catching the Japanese ships, although they have damaged shore installations.
I checked over my records in an attempt to find out just how many ships our dive-bombers are credited with sinking since the first group of planes arrived here nearly a month ago. The total of ships sunk, I found, is three destroyers, one cruiser, and two transports. Probably a dozen other ships, mostly cruisers and destroyers, have been damaged by hits or near misses; altogether, a good score, considering the fact that poor weather conditions and night operations generally make the location of the enemy difficult.
Guadalcanal Diary Page 22