WE GOT BACK to D-2 late on 13 October, just in time to report our doings and turn in, dog tired. In our absence Colonel Buckley and the others had gone flat out, and they were dead beat too; but he let me know that our naval forces had successfully attacked the enemy on the night of 11 October and had sunk several cruisers and destroyers.1 The Japs were determined to wrest the place from us; for this reason, he said, scouting information was becoming even more vital, because we had to find out whether they had landed more troops. I also heard that a U.S. Army regiment had arrived;2 I remarked that I hoped they were used to this sort of thing!
Little did we know, as we collapsed on our blankets, that we were in for our worst night yet. Japanese planes kept coming over in ones and twos, and the Matanikau artillery continued its steady pounding; but there was better to come. The first intimation was a star shell, which went off right above us and lit up everything as bright as day for at least half a minute. Before it went out, the first salvo landed with a crash on our ridge. It was the heaviest stuff we had seen. The ground shook with the most awful convulsions, and there was dust and smoke everywhere. Our tent was in confusion, as a jagged piece of red-hot steel snapped off the tent pole above our heads; it went right through the remains of my digger hat, which had been hanging up there as a mascot. The top of the tent collapsed over us, together with a few tons of earth that had been blown out of the immense shell craters.
In spite of the confusion, everyone—including Suinao, who was first down and insisted on the best place in the dugout—got out safely, except a clot who was dead to the world (me). One shell fragment went through the top of my mosquito net. I had got to the dangerous stage, where I was aware of things but my brain was too tired to react. Luckily John Mather came back and dragged me out. I managed to crawl below, but promptly fell asleep again and kept falling over on the chap sitting next to me. Despite my stupor, I thought I heard every salvo land. Each time one did, the whole dugout shook and the earth between the coconut logs of the roof fell into everything. We were soon unbearably gritty, but there was no respite, and we spent the whole night down below.
The morning revealed a sorry spectacle. Within a hundred yards of our dugout were six tremendous craters, any one of which could have hidden a jeep, and there were more on top of the ridge. We found several tremendous shell base plates, solid pieces of heavy steel with a diameter of over twelve inches. The small stuff was eight-inch and five-inch. Several spent splinters, some up to twelve inches long, had landed jagged and red hot inside the scouts’ dugout, and my poor lads were very scared. Luckily their only casualties were burns. I shall never forget the sound of those salvoes landing; Wimpy likened it to a hundred-ton door clanging. The field had fared even worse: there was hardly a plane left fit to fly. We were in a proper mess.
The “word” went round that we had been shelled by two Kongo-class battleships and some cruisers, which had lain off some sixteen miles away near Savo Island. Certainly the shells had exploded before the warning sound of firing was heard. Apart from four PT boats that had arrived on 12 October, we had no Navy in the area. We had just about got cleared up and had something to eat when heavy air raids started. As if we had not had our share from the night shelling, an antipersonnel bomb landed three yards from the end of our dugout and blew it in completely. Michael, my cook, and Lieutenant Ogilvie, Macfarlan’s replacement, were both buried. It took us some time to dig them out. Ogilvie was the worst: he had had his back against the dugout side, and was suffering from hemorrhage and concussion. Poor Michael was lacerated all down one side from his ear to his foot by earth and stones, and his eardrum had been blown in. I took him down to the hospital; it was full of casualties, but a bed was found for him, and I was assured that he would make a good recovery. I hated having to leave him there. When I got back, the colonel was sounding off: all our beautiful maps had been ruined again, and so had his cot! None of us, least of all my unfortunate scouts, liked this sitting down and taking it one little bit.
In the midst of all this, David Trench, who had joined the Colonial Service with me as a cadet, arrived, now gazetted in the Defence Force. He and Dick Horton had been on a reconnaissance to the Russell Islands, but they had dropped the teleradio in the water and David was forced to come back. I was terribly pleased to see him, but I was very disappointed when I heard that he was temporarily attached to Mackenzie. I had hoped he would stay with me, as I had asked repeatedly for his assistance because the work had been piling up.
That night we were again shelled by cruisers; it was little comfort that most of the stuff fell on the airfield. The Japanese were really turning on the heat. In the morning we learned the reason why. At Kukum I found Dexter, face white and drawn, hastily evacuating his base and moving it east to Lunga Lagoon. He said nothing—he just pointed over his shoulder beyond the Matanikau, and there, as calm as you like, were six large enemy transports unloading troops and supplies between Tassafaronga and Mamara plantations, only a few miles away. There was no nonsense about landing craft; the ships had their bows almost on the beach, and on each side soldiers were rushing down the gangways. Through the glasses I could see them mustering on the beach. There were thousands of them. Japanese destroyers were cruising up and down between Lunga and Tulagi; one passed not more than five thousand yards off shore. There was nothing one could say or do.
The Zero fighters were keeping our heads down; for a while we had only one dive bomber available. By 1030, after a superb ground staff effort, a number of Wildcats and Airacobras got into the air, together with twelve SBDs. The fighters did their best to keep the Zeros on the move, while the dive bombers sneaked in and inflicted some damage on the transports. The beach was no place to be, as the Zeros kept strafing it, but I managed to stay safe enough at Dexter’s “Chicago piano,” which claimed one plane during the day. Later on more SBDs were repaired and a few Flying Fortresses arrived from Espiritu Santo. All the transports were set on fire eventually and three of them started to sink, but not before they had unloaded most of their walking cargo.
One magnificent effort that morning was made by Maj. Jack Cram, General Geiger’s pilot, who had obtained permission to use the general’s Catalina, the Blue Goose, to attack the transports.3 They tied on a couple of torpedoes with hastily made wire slings, and he sailed into the fray. To his right were the Japanese destroyers; to the front, the antiaircraft gunners on the transports; to the left, the enemy artillerymen ashore. Into this blazing inferno Cram flew, dipping in a shallow dive to obtain top speed. We held our breath as, with charmed life, he held his course. Shouts of pure joy went up as one “fish” detonated against the nearest transport, then he stood the Catalina almost on her tail as he wrenched her out of the ring of fire. The Zeros chased him home, but he managed to land the plane safely. General Geiger complained about the large number of holes in the Blue Goose, but then, smiling, said, “Well done.”
Late the next afternoon more F4Fs and SBDs flew in, but we were now almost out of fuel. The shelling had taken its toll. There being no chance of unloading a transport even if one could arrive safely, in a last desperate effort five huge flat barges had been loaded with drums of fuel and towed up from the New Hebrides; but none made it, as the convoy was attacked by enemy planes and one vessel sunk. On 16 October another barge, being towed by the converted destroyer McFarland, was lost in sight of Tenaru when some Vals planted a direct hit on the ship’s stern. Wasting no time, they bombed the barge as well, setting the fuel alight. It was almost dusk, and there was our valuable fuel slowly burning away. Colonel Twining, with great presence of mind, ordered artillery to fire on the barge, which sank it and put out the fires. Then, in the encircling gloom, Dexter’s Higgins boats rounded up as many of the drums as they could and brought them in. Luckily the tide was taking them eastward, and we were able to collect the remainder the next day.
All normal life was completely disorganized. If you set out on a jeep journey, there was no knowing when you would return. On the fifteenth Koimate and Chaku brought in Freshwater from Gold Ridge. I had to go down to the perimeter to collect him. No sooner had I got there than a raid started, and we scuttled down into a nice deep shelter with some engineers. I hoped things would be quieter than at D-2, but I was disappointed—there was a tremendous explosion and the side of the shelter moved, closing the entrance. We just managed to wriggle out, to find a huge hole and the jeep knocked over on its side, but otherwise undamaged.
I sent Freshwater’s carriers straight out again, as they were not used to bombing and I doubted whether we could feed them. The unfortunate Bilge was out of touch with the situation, and when he called the rations we had sent inadequate I snapped back at him. I felt very tired, nervy, and irritable, and rather cross that he had come in when we were so busy. It wasn’t his fault, poor man! All the civilians up in the hills were moaning because I did not send them rations for their laborers. It was difficult to make them understand how precarious our own supplies were.
At dusk, having parked Freshwater, I was tapping away on the typewriter, trying to finish the detailed report on Gorabusu before dark, when Daniel and Bunga picked that moment to turn up with Leineweber’s patrol, all ninety-three of them. I was pleased to hear that they had had a clean run from Aola; it meant that side was clear. At the same time, no arrangements had been made to feed or bed them, and their parent unit was in Tulagi. It took me until 2200 to find an area and get them settled. They were nobody’s darlings, and everyone was intent on his own survival for another night. It made me feel responsible for their arrival, as if, like the baby in Alice in Wonderland, I did it to annoy!
The mystery of Ishimoto remained unsolved. If we had not actually killed him,4 we had at least put him out of action by capturing his two teleradio sets and his arms and rations. One mistake the Japanese frequently made was talking to the islanders, and other people who they did not think mattered. Amongst our information on Ishimoto was a report that he had tried to get the locals to protect the Japs from the Americans. The Japanese, he said, could not now retake the island; he wanted to go back to Japan, but the Emperor had forbidden any of them to do so. In addition, he not only told one scout, acting as an innocent villager, that he received messages from the post at Vioru, but more or less admitted that submarines had called and brought them supplies. In a letter, Clarry Hart wrote that Ishimoto had said his real job was to protect civilians and prisoners of war against assault and pillaging by Japanese troops. (He was, as Hart noted, not overly successful, as there was plenty of pillaging, little of which could be put down to war necessity; nor did he protect the fathers and sisters from Ruavatu.) Ishimoto would have been a valuable prisoner, but we had had no luck in finding him alone when we had sufficient force to capture him alive.
Even getting the scouts fed was a problem, as they came in at all hours. My lads took a dim view of the operational schedule, but I kept them out and on the job as far as possible. On 16 October Koimate took ten other scouts up the Tenaru River, to split three ways and keep an intensive watch for flanking patrols.
As we got more deeply involved on our western boundaries, patrolling the rest of the perimeter became ever more important. I was given the go-ahead to enlist another hundred scouts. (Most of those enlisted had already done well as scouts, though in an unarmed, unpaid capacity.) And so we took over the patrolling of a large area up the Tenaru and Lunga Rivers and down to the coast on the eastern side. All this intense activity, daily air raids, and an increasing pile of reports awaiting writing—what a life!
I started on a real night’s sleep, but was roused at 0430 on 17 October to make maps and indicate targets for a little “reverse Lend-Lease” shelling. Two brand-new destroyers had been detailed for the purpose, and I was delighted. Major Nees5 of the 11th Marines came along to call the targets, including several six-inch howitzers beyond the Matanikau that had been throwing in such a lot of old iron. We had to wait an hour at the beach while the Grummans knocked down seven Vals and a Zero out of a mob that had come on the scene rather earlier than usual. The destroyers were unharmed, though one had her rail bent by a near miss. Major Nees and I went aboard the Aaron Ward, David Trench aboard the Lardner.
Leaving Nees to explain things to the captain, I clambered up to the director turret with the gunnery officer. As we steamed into position, I realized what a terrific treat it was to be on board such a clean ship. Our unironed “dungreens” and muddy boots looked positively scruffy compared to the immaculate Navy attire. My eyes goggled, as we passed through the wardroom, to see a snow-white tablecloth and real silver laid out on the table. Ashore we had forgotten such things. My cup was filled to overflowing when the gunnery officer telephoned down for a sandwich for me. Up came a real fried egg and some bacon between two beautifully toasted pieces of real bread. I could hardly believe my eyes!
Going close in to Kokumbona, we steamed along parallel to the coast as far as Mamara, where the Japanese had recently landed so many stores. Major Nees called out the target numbers from the bridge, while I directed the rangefinder onto them. Each time I did, all five five-inch guns immediately swung round onto the target, and the gunnery officer, removing his cigar, nonchalantly said, “A couple of salvoes, do you think?” “Yes, rather,” I replied. And so we steamed up and down, with the Lardner coming on behind us.
After being on the wrong end of naval bombardments for so long, I thoroughly enjoyed the performance. Each ship fired a thousand rounds before breakfast, and we were not interrupted from the air. Shore batteries fired on us, but they were outranged. We started huge fires at Tassafaronga; up the coast there were flames, black smoke three hundred feet high, and tremendous ammo explosions. We picked the right spot, and did enormous damage.
After it was all over we sat down to a colossal breakfast in the wardroom, Nees and I really feeling quite ill at ease using civilized implements again. Meanwhile, Wimpy and Winter had been down in the waist of the ship taking movies of the spectacle. I expect Wimpy told some tall tales of the hardships on Guadalcanal, for as we clambered down into the Higgins boat for the ride back the sailors lined the rail and threw down cigarettes, candy bars, and magazines, all rarer than fine gold on shore.
Wimpy, a turkey drumstick protruding from each pocket, was wreathed in smiles.
Back at D-2, everyone was highly excited. Shore observation had given us “A+” for our shooting, and morale had shot up by leaps and bounds. They were just as pleased with our loot, which was carefully shared out. We took not the slightest notice of another air raid! (I refer to raids with monotonous regularity. I don’t think we ever got used to them, but they were part of life on Guadalcanal. The Japanese air forces just kept on coming, and our fighters kept on knocking them down.) There was no doubt that something big was brewing, but it was not being brewed by us, and as I listened to the noise from the Matanikau front I had again the sense of impending tragedy. I felt very depressed in spite of the elation at the damage we had just caused to the Japanese.
I had managed to call at the hospital to see Michael nearly every day. He was picking up well, but he was getting rather fed up with being carted down into a dugout every time there was an air raid. Michael was very pleased when Wimpy and I told him about our shoot: “Altogether Japan ’e catch’m bigfella kill.”
Although we had been successful in destroying enemy supplies, we hadn’t had much luck with the Matanikau howitzers, collectively christened “Pistol Pete” or “Stovepipe Charley.” Several of them had been knocked out, but the Japs seemed to have lugged the rest into widely scattered, well-concealed gullies, where we could not hit back. Fortunately their shelling was not coordinated, as they went after the same areas each night and everyone kept clear. The 6th Naval Construction Battalion had roped one area off and erected a warning notice, but the end of the airfield was still being sniped, and the fighter boys and their planes did not like it one bit. Another “landing area” was down near Mackenzie’s end of Henderson Field. To drive there, you waited until a shell landed, then drove like mad before the next one came in. It wasn’t the casualty rate that worried us, but the interminability of it all, and the effect on everyone’s nerves.
The scouts on perimeter patrol were having considerable success in mopping up small isolated enemy parties and bringing in large quantities of deserted equipment. Here Chaku appeared to be in his element: with another armed scout and two or three retainers, he harried a mob of about thirty Japanese, picking off stragglers and separating one section from another by assimilated attacks until there were none left. He brought in six machine guns and several baskets of ammunition.
Trying to solve the howitzer problem, we had all gone over the aerial photographs with a fine-tooth comb, but most of the land where the gunners calculated they were hidden was virgin bush, and nothing could be seen. As we had been promised another destroyer shoot, I spent hours with Lester, one of the D-2 experts, working to plot all the possible sites. One night he and I were hermetically sealed in the blackout tent, preparing a target plan; suddenly, Lester, who was nearer the brailed-up tent door, disappeared, as a ghastly rattle developed overhead. Sweeping out the light with one hand, I fell straight through the tent door and made a dive for our dugout from ten yards away. I couldn’t see Lester anywhere, but I could feel at the back of my neck that something very large was about to drop very close. The entry to the dugout had a bend; I literally flew down the passage and landed in a mass of shoulders and feet, having passed the unfortunate Lester, who had been crawling slowly into the dugout. At that moment everything heaved up with a tremendous bang: it was a thousand-pound bomb, which had landed seventy yards away. The bomb did not go off until it was twenty-five feet deep; it left a queer, bottle-shaped hole in the ground. Two minutes later the plane that had dropped it was hit in the tank and disappeared, blazing, into the sea. We were lucky!
The unceasing enemy air activity was followed by offensive action all along the Matanikau front. The whole area was in an uproar, and we had to hit back. On 22 October another shoot was scheduled, with the destroyer Nicholas. We went out at 0630 and fired a thousand rounds at four howitzer positions, but although the shooting appeared to be good something was still firing when we got back. We had just come ashore when the Nicholas was attacked by Zeros and Vals. She opened up with zest, the Grummans intercepted, and two of the dive bombers went into the sea.
Colonel Buckley told me that we were going to attack the Japanese on the Matanikau. To make it effective, every available Marine would have to be thrown into the line; no one could be spared to make roads to evacuate wounded, or to take up ammunition and rations. We discussed the feasibility of raising carriers to do the job)—he wanted three hundred of them—and finding a camp site where they would be fairly free from bombing attacks. With tents being bombed to bits daily, they would have to dig foxholes and fix up some sort of shelter over the top with coconut fronds.
The other change we planned was to use the schooners, then tucked away in the mangroves at Marau, instead of landing craft, for reconnaissance parties and for evacuating the remaining civilians, who could not be fed. The Japanese diaries from Gorabusu showed that landing craft were very noisy and easy to pick up. To find out at what rate the Japs were reinforcing Guadalcanal by barge, Horton had made his trip to the Russell Islands (he returned safely that day) and Josselyn had been installed on Rendova, where it was hoped he would be able to tell us what traffic was passing down the Slot. These operations, both involving long passages, were done with landing craft; remarkably, they did not raise any suspicion on the part of the enemy.
The decision to concentrate all our efforts on the Matanikau front was obviously the right one, for between the air raids and the malaria our ground units were getting very thin. This gave my scouts the chance to volunteer for one or two more “guerrilla operations.” After his success near the Tenaru, Chaku was sent off to destroy the enemy radio post at Vioru on the south coast, and the Aola section was given permission to dispatch the remnants of the Gorabusu party, which they had been shadowing at Gegende.
These small operations could deal with “refugees,” but there would be trouble if the Japanese again landed a large force to our east. On 23 October Lieutenant Colonel Carlson,6 who had led the Makin Island raid, arrived; we discussed in detail plans for his 2d Raider Battalion to make an extended offensive patrol from Aola westward, to oppose sudden landings and eliminate the considerable number of stragglers. This complex operation required complicated logistic arrangements, for the Raiders would have to bring along their rations and ammunition. I would meet them at Aola, and then Tabasui, with fifty scouts and a hundred carriers, would take them to the Tasimboko border; from there Vouza, with like numbers of men who knew that area, would bring them through to the perimeter. Carlson was a first-class leader, who had learned to live off the land. It was agreed that John Mather would be attached to him.
Wimpy, Koepplinger, and others at D-2 had been doing a lot of whispering with their friends in the 5th Marines. The latter had realized for some time that Tojo had merely been probing our defenses, and that he was about to throw his kitchen sink at some point along their line. Where it did come it was least expected, but nevertheless we were ready for it.
On the morning of 23 October, as the B-17s were taking off from the New Hebrides to bomb a big target to our north, machine-gun and mortar fire began to rattle all along the Matanikau. Just to help matters, it poured with rain, which bogged down all our transport. As the sun was going down, the Japanese tried to force the sandspit at the mouth of the river with medium and light tanks backed up by infantry. Gleaming wet from the rain, they were beautifully silhouetted against the setting sun. Hastily the Marines brought out 37-mm antitank weapons and half-track-mounted 75-mm guns. They soon got the range and knocked out nine tanks; the sandspit was so narrow that the rest had to retire.
The ground attack went on half that night, and the Japanese left behind several hundred dead. After a solid bombardment they tried the same thing two nights later, but again failed. We also had our casualties, and the Matanikau was bitterly held. This was but a prelude for an attack on our southern flank, between the Lunga and the Tenaru, where Lieutenant Colonel Puller’s understrength battalion was battling like mad. We had just built a new fighter strip near the Tenaru, from which P-38 Lightnings, strange but speedy birds with twin fuselages, had recently begun operations. The Japanese went flat out to get it, and they very nearly did.
Things looked pretty bleak. There was talk at D-2 of our having to go into the line, but we had no time to dwell on possibilities. Intermittent enemy artillery fire continued all day and D-2 was bracketed several times, which made life pretty uncomfortable. I spent the time dashing out between salvoes, working on the camp area for the carriers who we hoped would volunteer. It was a good thing Trench was there to help. We really needed three or four officers to operate a native labor force, and another one or two to help with the scouting organization; but there was little chance of getting them.
At D-2 everyone was working, more or less, twenty-four hours a day. Apart from special jobs such as organizing the labor camp I had to take my turn at the telephone watch, collecting alarms and situation reports from all fronts and collating information from coastwatchers. At night, action continued and the horizon was continuously lit up. I didn’t like the look of things at all.
By the time the sun set, the twenty-fifth of October had become known as “Dugout Sunday.” Instead of sending only bombers, the enemy sent mixed raids over us all day long; they were mostly strafing Zeros. It was a relief to think that the Japanese might be getting short of bombers, but they were probably trying to tire our fighter pilots out. It was money for jam, however, and a field day for everyone. The Grummans chased the Zeros down to the P-39s, and if they missed them everyone on the ground opened up till the sky was red with tracers. Yells went up every time a Zero “bought it.” One in particular I saw, blown to pieces in midair. The tail plane floated down, turning over and over like a falling leaf. And so it went on all day.
Things got blacker and blacker. Five enemy ships came close during the afternoon to pepper us; several flights of various aircraft responded, sinking a cruiser and damaging two destroyers. The rest escaped under cover of darkness; they had, I thought, probably landed troops somewhere. The rain made it very difficult for the returning dive bombers, who were being worked very hard. We didn’t seem to have much navy left, while on land we had our backs to each other (except to the east, where we had very few troops left to outflank), and we were being attacked everywhere.
Information filtered in about the B-17s’ target, which turned out to be Rabaul. It got a good pasting. Five to six hundred Japanese lay dead on our Matanikau line and to the south. That night our southern front was completely engaged; we managed to hold them off, but it was a very close go, and I did not see how we could hold out against a fresh lot of invaders. In the midst of this raging battle, Colonel Thomas called, asking me to make an urgent reconnaissance to Aola. He had briefed those who were going, and I had full authority to make whatever arrangements I liked, as long as I got off as quickly as possible.