My New Zealand army mentor, Colonel Salmon, had called me to his office and informed me of the impending arrival of these two vessels, which had been traveling independently. He apprised me that the New Zealand waterfront was a “different world” and that he and the other authorities could do nothing for me down there. I would be on my own.
I soon found out that “down there” was a tightly organized, communist-oriented community controlled by Captain Peterson—the Harry Bridges of New Zealand. Port Director Peterson ruled with an iron hand. This nondescript person claimed to be a Dane but spoke totally unaccented “American” suggestive of a background and origin somewhere in our mid-Atlantic states. He talked like an archetypical communist sleeper who had somehow failed to get the word that the United States was now allied with Russia in the war against the Axis Powers.
The wharfies over whom Peterson exercised absolute authority were a likable, manly group, but they necessarily maintained an unbroken allegiance to their leader, just as our own longshoremen supported Harry Bridges. There was a constant series of strikes, or work stoppages, as they called them. None were serious or of long duration, but in total they had the effect of slowing unloading operations to a snail’s pace. “Raining” and “they hadn’t got their mackintoshes” were favorite reasons for ceasing operations. The ships furnished refreshments to the night shift. They enjoyed the way we made our coffee. Then came the night I was notified, “They’re off the job again. They want tea instead of coffee.” We had none. More time lost. The highest daily record was fourteen strikes in twenty-four hours.
The arrival of the del Brazil brought matters to a head. She had been loaded out of New Orleans with equipment for the division tank battalion. Several of these heavy vehicles were loaded on top of the hatch covers providing access to the holds. It was necessary to offload the tanks first, and del Brazil carried a special jumbo boom for this purpose. The New Zealand crane operator, one of Peterson’s minions, swung the boom outboard—then let it go on the run. It crashed to the deck, with the end protruding over the side-bent into a useless dogleg. Qualified noncommissioned officers and others who witnessed the incident were unanimous in condemning it as an act of deliberate sabotage.
There was in Wellington Harbour a fifty-ton crane ship, the Hikitia, that could handle the loads involved. But it operated under the control of Port Director Peterson, whose refusal to assist was positive and point blank.
Accompanied by Lt. Col. John D. Macklin, who was the officer in charge of Marines embarked in del Brazil, I went to the ship’s agents in the city of Wellington and asked for assistance. At the mere mention of Peterson’s name the agents went into a state of shock and threw up their hands in dismay. No help here, although the U.S. government was paying them a handsome fee for looking after the ships’ interests in Wellington Harbour. I am afraid I became a bit exercised in my denunciation of their discreditable conduct.
John walked me back to the Waterloo Hotel, where we tried to figure out our next move. We called John the “Old Fox.” An officer in the First World War, he had been active in the Marine Corps Reserve for many years. In civilian life he was a superintendent of public schools in an Ohio city and a Shakespearean scholar who could quote the Bard in endless but apt dissertations. He also played poker. On this occasion, spiced with a few quotations from Hamlet, he let me know that he was not enthusiastic about my proposal, which was to make a back door approach to Pat Hurley at breakfast the next morning. I thought the idea was somewhat chicken myself, but I was just that desperate.
About 2100 I received a call. It was the Old Fox down on del Brazil. He said, “We’ve just got the last of those tanks off the hatch covers.” Then followed an illogical and disjointed account. Something about “a working party of sergeants . . . and four bottles of whiskey . . . got themselves invited aboard the Hikitia . . . you owe me two bottles of whiskey!”
I didn’t press him for details. I never want to know what happened down there. The Marine Corps has the finest sergeants in the world, but they don’t go on working parties. Over the centuries we have found that some things in the Corps, such as the care and training of recruits, are best left to sergeants. To this list, I now add the hijacking of friendly ships in a friendly port. I am sure the Old Fox would agree.
The unloading of the two ships continued uneventfully until we reached the ammunition tonnage, usually stowed in the bottom of holds due to the effects its great weight has on the stability of the ship. All work ceased when the first cargo net loaded with ammunition was lowered to the dock. This time the wharfies won, due to New Zealand’s port regulations prohibiting the unloading of explosives within the environs of a city.
Local authorities waived enforcement of the rule, and we proceeded with the task using Marine working parties instead of the union stevedores, who refused to touch the stuff. We had few men available for this hard work and were extremely grateful to receive help from one of the local American oil companies in the form of roller trays, long ladder-like frames with rollers instead of rungs, allowing the men to push heavy loads and thus avert the backbreaking task of lifting and carrying. The New Zealand army assisted us with heavy motor transport to carry the ammunition to an impromptu magazine in a canyon outside the city. We never did return the trays. I told Detwiler to take them back and thank the company. He overruled me, saying, “We’ll need these for the rest of the war.” We did. If I could remember the name of that oil company, I would never buy a gallon of gas from anybody else.
June is late autumn in New Zealand, and the weather was beginning to change. We were concerned about sheltering our supplies and equipment, a problem that would be greatly multiplied when the division arrived. Warehouses in New Zealand are numerous but small. Detwiler had leased everything available, but their capacity was totally inadequate for our needs. Most of the warehouses were full of wool, accumulated since the war began. Few ships came to the Antipodes, and fewer wanted to load wool. The skipper of del Brazil told me that as soon as he unloaded in Wellington he would pick up a cargo of wool from the warehouses in Christ-church on the South Island and take it back to the United States. Suddenly I had a great idea. Why not load del Brazil from Wellington warehouses instead of sending her to Christ-church and turn the resulting vacant storage space over to us?
But I had failed to include one vital factor, the New Zealand national psyche, in an otherwise logical equation. In New Zealand the words “wool,” “sheep,” and “mutton” are a trinity never to be taken lightly. It is a pastoral country where a person who fails to close a gate, thus permitting the “boxing” of different strains of sheep, sinks to the social status of a horse thief in our Old West. Agreements concerning these matters in New Zealand are as solemn and sacred as the Magna Carta. So my sensible proposal was rejected with amused scorn and mild outrage reverberating from on high. Even the Old Fox refused his sympathy: “After all, Bill, what would we think of a New Zealander who came to Washington and suggested revising the Gettysburg Address, tinkering with the rules of baseball, or, God forbid, even changing the name of Arkansas?”
The whole problem was overtaken by events following in swift succession after the victory at Midway. The essential supplies I sought to protect from the elements would soon become the target of Japanese bombers and battleships, which bounced them around on the shores of a faraway island of which none of us had ever heard.
The Midway victory gave a great boost to the national morale of the New Zealanders. The Singapore surrender had caused them a grievous and irreplaceable loss in men and material. Our surrender in the Philippines was an added blow. They felt isolated, alone, and disarmed, and for the moment they were. To them help from America was just another in a long line of promises, few of which had ever been kept.
On Sunday, 14 June 1942, the Wakefield moved into Wellington Harbour. This troop transport carried General Vandegrift and 6,000 members of the 1st Marine Division. There was considerable excitement ashore as the huge vessel tied up to
a small dock on the central waterfront. I went aboard and reported to the general, giving him a brief report on the local situation. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that the New Zealand government had already completed camps to accommodate the first echelon and was well on the way to being prepared to receive the second. He was less happy to learn that del Brazil and Electra were still in port and gave immediate instructions for Marines to take over the unloading of both ships.
Colonel Salmon took the general on a tour of the new camps. I accompanied them and noted the undisguised pleasure with which our old man viewed the spacious camps and their surrounding training areas and his genuine appreciation of what the New Zealand army and Public Works had accomplished in so short a time. Returning to the Wakefield, I turned my local duties over to Col. Pate, D-4 (logistics) of the division staff, and departed to report to my regular boss, Col. Jerry Thomas, D-3 (operations). I dropped by the Aotea Quay to tell the Old Fox about our takeover of all unloading. He was delighted. On the way back to the hotel I stepped briefly into the latrine at the end of the quay. There, above the facility (called a u-RY-al in New Zealand) someone had scrawled a classic graffito, “All wharfies is bastards.”
CHAPTER 4
Advance Man at Guadalcanal
The transport Wakefield arrived in Wellington on Sunday, 14 June. Disembarkation commenced immediately and proceeded briskly and smoothly. All hands were delighted with the newly constructed camp at Paekakariki, with its complete facilities, pleasant surroundings, and nearness to a liberty town. The Engineer Battalion took over camp maintenance and continued making minor improvements. Our boat pool and landing craft units enjoyed a well-sheltered bay for conducting their operations.
The rest of the command embarked on a schedule of rigorous training designed to restore the men to their former level of physical conditioning, lost after long weeks of limited activity aboard a crowded ship. Detailed schedules were established for all phases of military training, including the immediate resumption of amphibious exercises conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Navy amphibious forces in Wellington Harbour. We also established beach defenses north of the city, along a coast rimmed with innumerable handsome sandy beaches.
Command was exercised from Wellington, where General Vandegrift established his headquarters in the old but comfortable Hotel Cecil near Aotea Quay. The hotel’s residents had recently departed, leaving these fine facilities for our exclusive use.
On 26 June General Vandegrift was summoned to Auckland by the newly arrived commander, South Pacific Area (ComSoPac), Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley. We supposed the purpose was to provide an opportunity for the requisite official calls and an overall discussion and survey of our own and the Japanese military situation in the area. The general was accompanied by three of the heads of his four staff sections, Lieutenant Colonels Thomas, Goettge, and Pate.
That night, we in Wellington received a long coded message as information addressee. It was a warning order from the chief of naval operations (CNO), Adm. Ernest J. King. Subject to approval by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the South Pacific forces would initiate a major naval campaign on 1 August 1942—only five weeks hence!—with Tulagi Island as the first objective. The plan further stated that after taking Tulagi, we would be relieved by army troops, reembark, and one week later seize positions in northern Bougainville! Not satisfied with all that, it closed gloriously with the Napoleonic injunction: “Be in New Britain, repeat New Britain, by 20 September.” They didn’t say what year. (The 1st Marine Division eventually fought its way ashore at Cape Gloucester, New Britain, on 26 December 1943.) Marines are good, but even so, none of us had an ego that great.
There was also some padding (extra words, usually gibberish like “send us more Japs,”) inserted by the originating station for some arcane reason known only to communicators. I well remember that in this particular dispatch the words were “U.S. Marine Corps, seagoing bellhops, ya, ya, ya.” This form of humor was a popular amusement throughout the naval service until, during the battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, some “little squirt”—a junior officer—added “THE WORLD WONDERS” to a dispatch addressed to commander, Third Fleet, Admiral Halsey, asking, “WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY-FOUR?” Padding of that kind ceased.
The plan did contain one very sound provision. It told ComSoPac in blunt language to get out of his office building in Auckland, hoist his flag on a ship, and proceed to the area of operations, a rudimentary principle for overseeing any campaign. That foreshadowed something we were beginning to suspect.
In addition to being totally unrealistic, the plan was “Blue Water Navy” circa 1907 from start to finish, with little or nothing in the way of specific reference to the role of airpower in this first amphibious campaign of the war. Guadalcanal was not even mentioned. There was a reference to adjacent islands, obviously inclusive of the group of minor islets close to Tulagi, such as Gavutu and Tanambogo. It most certainly did not include the major island of Guadalcanal, some twenty miles to the south of Tulagi. Guadalcanal— ninety miles long and twenty-five miles wide—possessed the only extensive terrain in the area suitable for developing a major air base—an unsinkable aircraft carrier. Therefore, it was the strategic jewel in the Solomon Islands necklace. The Japanese, apparently aware of this, were believed to be constructing a fighter strip there.
General Vandegrift, a man of keen perception and great common sense, recognized the threat of such a base to our position in the South Pacific and insisted that the main effort be made against Guadalcanal rather than Tulagi. In this he was joined by Jerry Thomas, ComSoPac military planner Col. DeWitt Peck, and, I believe, Ghormley’s chief of staff, Rear Adm. Dan Callaghan.
“If we’re going to do this, why settle for a dinky little frog pond like Tulagi Harbour?” was Jerry’s comment.
Admiral Ghormley gave his qualified approval, and planning began for a two-pronged simultaneous attack against Guadalcanal and Tulagi.
Seizure of these two places lay well within the capabilities of our available forces, and together they would provide a firm trielemental base for further operations by land, sea, and air forces in the direction of Rabaul, New Britain, the Japanese base dominating the entire area.
Throughout the planning period, General Vandegrift never referred to the nonsensical part of the plan. He required us to prepare for what he knew we could accomplish with what we had, dismissing the “be in New Britain, repeat New Britain, by 20 September” injunction from his mind as just so much bombast. He insisted on an ironclad execution of our directive from CNO and refused to engage in any chitchat concerning its merits. Those who questioned it were immediately rebuffed. Nevertheless, for the first time I noted the beginnings of the command crisis besetting him until he acted once and for all in mid-September.
Taking no counsel of his fears, Vandegrift rejected all doubts and cavils about what we were ordered to do and regarded those who offered them with condign and unforgiving contempt. In this regard I was reminded of another general from Virginia of like mind-set. It was after midday at First Manassas, and the Union troops were advancing victoriously. On Henry Hill a staff officer approached his general and said, “Sir, I fear the day is going against us.” Without turning his head the general replied, “If you think so, you had better not say anything about it.” Within the hour that same general, there on that same spot, would earn his immortal title, “Stonewall.”
I do not know, but I believe that the growing irrelevance of General Vandegrift’s chief of staff, Col. Capers James, stemmed from similar feelings of misplaced confidence.
I am sure the general was just as appalled as the rest of us—an untrained division, made up largely of patriotic young men who had enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor, rushed through a few weeks of abbreviated recruit training, joined the 1st Marine Division in North Carolina, and spent most of their time since then on board ships en route to New Zealand. Now, on short notice, we were ordered to take on a battlewise major opponent even before all o
f our half-trained division had reached the area.
Security also was a matter of deep concern. Embarkation at a large seaport such as Wellington is not conducive to operational secrecy. There was no alternative, but since we had already publicized our forthcoming amphibious training exercises, we decided to continue this as our best form of deception. The ruse was only partially successful. The old hands were not taken in when they saw what was going aboard the ships. They had been through all of this before, some in World War I, others in China, Haiti, Nicaragua, or the Dominican Republic. The youngsters were excited to be going on an amphibious training exercise, and, in a way, it was the truth. What we didn’t tell them was that they would hit the beach firing ball ammunition instead of blanks. The Old Breed would quickly spread that scuttlebutt.
The reembarkation went smoothly, thanks in large part to the efforts of a young officer, Maj. Victor Krulak, who wasn’t even there. Two years before, while on the staff of Maj. Gen. Holland M. Smith, commander, First Amphibious Corps, Krulak was assigned the onerous task of formulating detailed logistical and operational procedures for joint use by the navy and Marine Corps in pursuance of our amphibious doctrine. Heretofore these critical procedures had been an area of much confusion and sometimes violent disagreement. This astute and dedicated officer produced a remarkable series of documents covering embarkation, loading, ship-to-shore movement, and shore party operations.
These procedures—some innovative—were all tested operationally during the summer of 1941 by Amphibious Forces Atlantic, the overall naval command. Highly successful, they were approved by commander, Amphibious Force Atlantic, and placed in effect for that force, which was then contemplating a movement into the Azores.
I had brought copies with me, just in case. Working with Maj. William B. McKean of Commodore Reifsnider’s staff, we were able to gain agreement between General Vandegrift and the commodore to employ these documents in anticipation of their eventual acceptance by Rear Adm. Kelly Turner, commander, Amphibious Forces South Pacific (ComPhibForSoPac), when he reached the area.
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