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A WAR WITHIN A WAR

September 18 dawned on the convoy as it ran the narrow waters of Sealark Channel and the ships began to lose way. The holds were like ovens and those who could crowd on deck took the cool morning breeze as they looked toward the island which humped against the sky in a curious piebald pattern, jungle masses crowned by pale grassy hills. Two planes circled over the landing beaches, and as the sun rose, men swarmed down the nets and boats bobbed away for the shore.

Lewis Puller was just over forty-four years old, with more than half his life spent in the Marine Corps. The other battalion commanders of the Seventh who landed with him, Herman Hanneken and E. J. Farrell, were also hardened by service of more than twenty years. Veteran officers who watched from the shore realized that “the first team” was in, and that with the Division complete, there would be more than perimeter defense. One of those who saw Puller land, at about 6:00 A.M., was Red Mike Edson, the Nicaraguan veteran whose Raiders had saved the Division in a bloody battle four days earlier. Edson turned to his executive, Hank Adams: “There comes the greatest fighting man in the Marine Corps. We’ll have some competition now.”

There was a noisy reunion between Edson and Puller and the next moments became part of Marine legend. “Now show me where they are,” Puller said. Someone handed him a map, which he took absently, holding it upside-down, looking to the jumbled terrain beyond the beach: “Hell, I can’t make head nor tail of this—why don’t we have something better than a National Geographic map anyway? Just show me where they are!”

Hands waved toward hills which rose behind the jungle. “All right,” Puller said. “Let’s go get ’em.”

Guadalcanal was a jumbled land mass almost ninety miles long, a little-known British copra station which was now the nearest Japanese outpost to Australia and a threat to American supply lines in the South Pacific. There were no accurate maps. On the north coast, a country of plains, slow jungle rivers and rain forest, the Japanese had begun an airfield, now being completed by the First Marine Division. To the south lay a backbone of mountains, the tallest peak 7500 feet high. The average temperature was 80 degrees; the small black natives were afflicted with malaria, dengue fever and fungus infections.

General Vandegrift had landed with the First Division, less the Seventh Regiment, on August 7, and quickly threw up a defensive line around the airstrip now known as Henderson Field. The perimeter was about six miles long and three miles deep, and lay along the northern beaches around the Lunga River. Deep jungle alternated with grassy plains within this area.

Unknown numbers of Japanese patrolled the jungles beyond, and were concentrated westward near the coast, at the Matanikau River. Vandegrift at first attempted nothing more than the defense of his post; his strength did not permit him to probe outside his lines. With the coming of the Seventh Marines, he could open a new phase. The first Allied counter-offensive of the war might now become truly offensive.

There were 4262 Marines of the Seventh, a welcome reinforcement in a cause not yet won, and with them the first supply of aviation gasoline and ammunition for the hard-pressed men of General Vandegrift. The newcomers worked until late afternoon, unloading landing craft. Stacks of cases grew on the sands and captured Japanese trucks bore loads into the grove beyond. Puller urged his men to get every possible case clear of the beach.

General Vandegrift and his staff came to see the landing and the commander’s face grew grim when he saw the commander of the Seventh Regiment step ashore—the colonel wore a natty uniform, complete with low-quarter shoes and silk hose. Officers were not surprised a few days later when the colonel was sent home.

The ships left before dusk, fearful of Japanese naval attack; no more than 60 per cent of the supplies had been sent ashore. Puller drove his men until darkness fell: “Get ’em dug in at least five hundred yards back in the grove. The Japs may wet us down tonight. I know the men are worn out, but make ’em dig if you can.” There was beef stew for chow but many men were too tired to eat and fell asleep without making a pretense of digging foxholes.

In Puller’s pocket, so preposterous in this setting that it would have provoked laughter among his men, was the old, jungle-stained copy of Caesar’s Gallic Wars which he had now carried for more than twenty years. Since childhood Puller had been impressed by Caesar’s common-sense admonition: When you make camp, fortify. He instinctively obeyed the maxim tonight.

The First settled in a coconut grove which seemed a nightmare landscape to Dr. Smith: “Between the torn and splintered stumps flew shrieking and wildly screaming birds, white and blood-red. Deep zigzagging trenches split the ground, and on the edge of the jungle were camouflaged gun emplacements. Scattered through the pockmarked groves were charred remains of Zeros that had crashed and burned with their pilots; and along the shore were the ruins of wrecked enemy trucks and landing barges. Peopling this violent scene were bearded, gaunt, hungry and lonely-looking Marines who greeted us with no outward show of emotion.”

The password was given out and men fell asleep in the dusk. Dr. Smith was kept awake by grotesque shapes looming about him, and the unfamiliar Southern Cross glowing in the sky. A few men stirred after midnight. Planes were droning over the sea, but the motors were suddenly cut off. A light explosion brought men to their feet in the grove. A flare, drifting on a parachute, lit the camp with a weird green glow. Men looked for planes, but fire came from the sea, where Japanese ships stood close in, unchallenged, and battered the area. Much of the grove was combed by flying fragments and men screamed in agony. Trees were torn and broken and many tumbled to the ground.

Dr. Smith was near the Colonel: “I could hear the calm steady voice of Puller through the thunder, ordering the men to remain quiet and on the ground.”

Others heard him: “It’s all right, men. Stay down and they can’t hurt you. This won’t last forever. Tomorrow it’ll be our turn.”

Men who had not dug holes now attacked the earth with helmets and bayonets. Three were killed, two of them near Puller, and Dr. Smith and Dr. Lawrence Schuster treated twelve wounded.

An old truck removed the bodies for burial after dawn, and Dr. Smith thought the faces of men in the grove were already much older.

Puller went to Division headquarters, where he spoke with General Vandegrift. The command post was in a ravine shielded from fire by land, sea and air, a chain of dugouts and caves piled high with sandbags. Puller saw two other old friends there: Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining and Major Edward Snedeker. He left with orders to take his men on their first patrol, a probe of the jungle in the Lunga River area. Puller prepared to leave immediately.

The battalion left the perimeter that afternoon, a file of more than eight hundred men, winding along a trail. Puller had a few last words for the men: “Keep those canteens out of your mouths. If you don’t save water, you’ll regret it. That drink will mean more to you in this place than you ever dreamed it could.”

The lead squad went through the tunnel of the trail; tree-tops laced together a hundred feet overhead, shutting out the sun. There were strange bird calls like human cries—one sounded like someone being strangled, shouting, “I’m all right!” One squawk was like the sound of boards being clapped together. The steamy heat increased with each step.

Puller was near the front of the column; behind him, heedless of his warning, men began to drink water. The tail of the battalion had hardly cleared the perimeter when there was firing ahead. Captain Hayes was near the Colonel at the moment:

“Every man hit the deck, except Puller. We dived for the growth beside the trail but he walked up and down the line talking as if he were on parade. He told us it was all right and that this was nothing to worry about, just small stuff. We began to get up again. Then and there he commanded that battalion as it never imagined it could be commanded. The men saw what kind of a man they had and the word went down the column as fast as light. We lost our fear—or some of it.”

Puller found that three Japanese had been killed at a bridge of the Lunga River and a sniper had fired from the far side of the river. He went ahead, beyond even A Company, which had deployed and lost contact with the column. Captain Bob Haggerty ordered Corporal Frank Cameron, a squad leader, to take his scouts across. Cameron gulped and looked uneasily across the river; his men tiptoed over the bridge, ready to dive into the water at the first sound. There was a stir in the growth ahead of them as they neared the bank—and the scouts were stunned to see Colonel Puller emerge. Haggerty, who was watching from cover, groaned with relief: “For a week those scouts walked around like men who should have been dead.”

There were no Marine casualties here and the column pushed on. The battalion suffered from thirst late in the day; tongues were swollen, dry and scratchy, and some men became dizzy. The jungle changed; they climbed hills so steep that they pulled themselves up the trail by the undergrowth. On a grassy knoll above the tangle, where the night’s bivouac was planned, the column met an ambush. Two of Bob Haggerty’s platoon were killed and the unit broke into tiny groups, leaving Haggerty without a command. He lay in cover and watched Puller: “It was the greatest exhibition of utter disregard for personal safety I ever saw.”

Puller exposed himself to cross fire from concealed enemy machine guns, organizing resistance. He bellowed: “A Company, machine gun squad!” Gerald White, Hurley Edwards and Roland Robey ran up as fast as they could, and Puller placed them in the clearing to cover the advance of the infantry, where enemy weapons showered them. Men were hit near them but until White’s skull was creased by a bullet which tore a hole in his helmet the gunners were untouched. Private Willie Rowe, a rifleman who was wounded near them, called in the dark when fire had ceased: “Leave me alone. I’m going to die where I am.”

Puller would not permit it. Squads crawled over the area until all men were accounted for and the wounded were brought into the lines. Gerald White’s throbbing head prevented his sleeping and he often saw Colonel Puller: “He paced up and down that weary, dejected band all night, reassuring the wounded that they would get good care the next day. He told us we were in no danger of a night attack—but I didn’t think he knew. He must have been twice as dogtired as we were.”

Another Puller story spread through the camp before men fell asleep: In the dusk, the Colonel had deliberately lighted his pipe in the open, then quickly fallen and rolled over in the dirt, to draw machine gun fire and spot the location of an enemy nest. His own gunners then cleaned it out by firing at the muzzle flashes.

Quiet fell late that night, after Puller had halted a bit of nervous firing by some of the men: “I don’t want another man to fire a round, unless he can point out the target to me.”

In the morning they tackled the cruel ridges and ravines once more and the vanguard met still another ambush—this one lightly manned and quickly brushed aside. There were two casualties, one of them serious. Captain Jack Stafford, who had mishandled a rifle grenade, or used a faulty one, was torn by an explosion; blood gushed from his face and throat. Puller reached his side as a corpsman gave the officer morphine.

A red tide oozed over Stafford’s chest, and the Colonel saw that he was on the point of strangling in the gore. Puller snapped a large safety pin from a bandoleer, reached into Stafford’s mouth and deftly pinned the tongue to the upturned collar of his uniform. He sent the stretcher off with five four-man teams to act in relays, and even so it was a punishing burden on the rugged terrain back to the perimeter. Puller had saved Stafford’s life.

The column at last reached another river, and here most of the men, half-maddened by thirst, lost all discipline for a time. Those near Captain Hayes “acted like dogs, lying and lapping the water.” Hayes, like several other officers, used canteen cups and laced the water with iodine. Many men plunged into the muddy stream.

Near this point Puller met Company A of Edson’s Raiders, led by a familiar figure. The new commander was Captain Lew Walt, his old Basic School student. Walt’s strong round face beamed as they shook hands and he said earnestly: “I’m sure honored to be in a fight with you, Colonel.”

The crew carrying Stafford rearward had an adventure at about the same moment: When two snipers opened on the stretcher party Stafford hopped from the litter into a nearby hole despite his severe wound and directed fire against the enemy by his gestures. Bob Haggerty thought: “We’d have been firing in the trees all day if he hadn’t taken charge.”

With the main column, Walt’s men found a wounded Jap who had a mangled leg but seemed likely to survive. Walt picked six men and put a sergeant over them with precise orders: “Get him back to the perimeter alive. I don’t want to hear of his death by accidental discharge. Get him back for questioning. Alive.”

When the patrol returned to camp Walt heard the story of this wounded Jap’s end: The stretcher party had faithfully carried him back, guarding his life from passersby who were suspicious of oft-repeated Jap treachery. The prisoner had gone to a hospital tent and onto an operating table, and while doctors worked over him had snatched a scalpel and buried it in the back of the nearest man. The doctor was expected to recover. The Jap did not survive for questioning.

The battalion came back into the lines before dark and took a defensive position for the first time. The men crawled into foxholes and peered out across fifty-yard fire lanes cut into the thick growth.

A fury of fire broke out in the adjoining Third Battalion sector about midnight. Puller called assurances to his waking men: “No Japs. If they were firing, there would be stuff coming over. Stand up and you’ll see. This is what I told you about in training. Never duck until you hear a shell coming—and then it’ll be too late.”

Hank Adams of the Raiders stopped by Puller’s command post and found the Colonel lying on his blankets as if listening to rifles on a firing range: “Listen to those poor green devils banging up the ammo, Hank. It’ll be a wonder if somebody doesn’t get hurt.” When this firing continued Puller was ordered to the troubled area with his troops. He found the battalion command post in disorder; a staff officer had shot a canteen from a friend’s hip with his pistol, and tracers now flew in every direction. Puller halted one addled marksman, a veteran warrant officer who was firing furiously up into a tree: “Stop it! Nothing up there. If you fire again, I’ll bust you.”

Daylight revealed only empty cartridges on the ground—all Marine.

The next day, September 23, the First Battalion moved on its first major action, a patrol across the slopes of Mount Austen, a dominating hill near the headwaters of the Matanikau River. Puller was to lead one arm of a pincers movement against enemy forces concentrating in that region: The First Raider Battalion would march up the Matanikau from the sea, and the Second Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, would wait at the mouth of the river, ready for action.

Puller’s men moved through the first day without incident and were by now so trail-wise that they took a Jap camp by surprise near the end of September 24. Captain Regan Fuller, a fearless, rail-thin young University of Virginia graduate from Washington, D.C., was in command at the point of collision:

“It was rough country, up and down everywhere, with plenty of cover. I sent one of my boys, Corporal Turner, up a grassy hill to our right, where we were trying to persuade the Old Man to stop for the night. I walked behind Turner—and we almost stepped on two Japs who were eating rice by a hidden fire at the base of a big tree. They were as astonished as we were, and we all scrambled. I fired three clips from my .45 and killed one of them, but the other ran down the trail toward our main body. Turner’s squad had deployed into line behind us. There was a little shooting, and then quiet for a few minutes.

“The Old Man bobbed up behind us almost as soon as the shots sounded, and when it slacked off he began to eat some rice from the Jap pot. A machine gun bullet knocked the bowl from his hand and sent it flying. We were caught in some cross fire, pretty wicked on the open slopes.”

A runner just behind Puller was hit in the throat and died quickly. Everyone else hit the ground, except for Colonel Puller. First Sergeant William Pennington retained a vivid memory of the moment:

“The Colonel stood there in that grazing fire with that little old stump of a pipe in his face, yelling, ‘B Company! Second platoon, in line here!’ Machine gun fire kicked up dust all around me, and I stayed down in that knee-high kunai grass, like everyone else in the ranks. The Old Man didn’t find too many leaders right there. He was the only Marine you could see standing on that hillside.”

Regan Fuller had an even more remarkable view of the battalion leader:

“Soon as the machine guns opened from cover, the Colonel fell to the ground, rolled over, and was on his feet again, like a rubber man. He kept that up for several minutes: Hit the deck, roll. Stand and bellow orders, then down again, spinning. He knew the Nips would zero in on him while he was yelling orders, and he kept ’em buffaloed. He came out of it without a scratch.”

Puller continued to shout orders until he got Captain Chester Cockrell’s B Company into line as a screen against the concealed Jap force:

“Cockrell! Get ’em up!” And for a moment the outrageously loud curses of the Colonel echoed in the jungle through the fire fight. He soon had a skirmish line moving forward and the enemy was pushed beyond a ridge.

A grenade fell near the Old Man—no more than eight yards away, Captain Zach Cox estimated, but Puller turned when he saw A Company scatter and yelled: “Oh, that damned thing ain’t going off.” It helped to steady the men. The grenade was a dud.

Cockrell’s B Company was being cut up in the woods by snipers in trees with light machine guns, and fire from Puller’s front became spotty. The fight was now at close quarters; the Colonel had killed three men with his .45—one of them a Japanese major.

Fire near the rear of the position was so heavy that Dr. Schuster was forced to snake on his stomach to reach the wounded. It was now almost dark and the doctor shielded himself as best he could, using a flashlight in brief intervals to pack bleeding chests, tie off torn arteries, and administer plasma.

A runner brought word that Cockrell had been killed; Puller called for Zach Cox: “Take over B down there and pull ’em together. They’re scattered over hell’s half acre.”

When Cox found a sergeant and half a dozen men of the front company and asked where the men of B were, he got the reply: “This is it, Captain. These are all we’ve got.” A search turned up most of the other men; the wounded began to move rearward.

The skirmish closed when Cox led a charge which drove the enemy and exposed a Jap camp. Puller estimated that five hundred men had bivouacked there. Looters brought him canned crab and tangerines which he tried at once and found delicious. He took a beautiful dress sword from the body of the major he had shot, as well as a map case and a war diary. He gave these to Pennington: “When you get back to camp, have an interpreter go over the papers. I want a copy of the translation.”

Puller then fell back to a ridge in the rear and had the men dig in for the night. Thirty or more Japanese bodies lay within their new lines. Radiomen called the perimeter with Puller’s report on Marine casualties: seven dead, twenty-five wounded, eighteen of them stretcher cases. The Colonel also asked for an air drop of stretchers and said that he would pursue the enemy. A reply crackled from headquarters: A battalion of the Fifth Marines would reinforce him, the wounded would be sent back, and the probe would continue to the Matanikau, if Puller thought it advisable.

The night passed in quiet, with a light rain. A sleepless officer discovered the depths of Puller’s concern for the dead and wounded in one of the Colonel’s rare intimacies: “God, I hated that I had to curse at Cockrell out there tonight. He was a good, brave Marine—the fighting kind. It was something that had to be done.”

The reinforcements from the Fifth Marines were up at 8:45 A.M. and Puller sent Major Otho Rogers back with the wounded, with A and B Companies as bearers and guards, then led his combined force westward. The trail toward the river was narrow and overgrown and progress was slow. A lone Jap was sighted during the morning. Puller walked into an open field for a look around; an enemy private leapt from cover and raced toward the jungle. The Colonel helped half a dozen men run him down but the small, frightened man told them nothing. He seemed to speak no English and was unarmed. In his hiding place they found a radio. “They’re smarter than we are,” Puller told his officers. “They had him lying there to report our patrols. I expect they know every move we make.”

They carried the prisoner and his radio toward the Matanikau.

The force reached the swift brown stream on September 26 and since his original orders directed Puller to return to the perimeter on that day, he did not cross the river but turned northward toward the sea. At about 2:00 P.M. there was mortar and machine gun fire from across the river and a bitter fight ensued at the mouth of the stream; Puller waded almost across the river under fire which caused twenty-five casualties—most of them in G Company, Fifth Marines. Once more, he escaped unscathed.

During this night headquarters radioed a new plan: Puller, with the single company of his battalion, plus the Second Battalion of the Fifth, would hold their position. The Raiders would march upstream, cross, and come into the Japanese rear. Colonel Mike Edson was sent out to take charge: Puller would act as his executive officer for the operation, but this chain of command was not made clear, at least to junior officers, and added to the ensuing confusion.

Sunday, September 27, was a day of tragic blunders. Puller remained with Edson at the river’s mouth, where a white sandspit thrust through the shallows toward the enemy. To their right was the sea and to their left the tangled growth through which Lieutenant Colonel Sam Griffith now led the Raiders upstream. Planes bombed the enemy on the far shore but planned artillery barrages did not come. There was a long delay. The coastal force did not attack.

Radio messages from the Raiders passed through Puller’s communications men late in the morning. The first was garbled and led Edson to believe the Raiders had crossed the river. The commander called on headquarters to send reinforcements—and was promised the men Puller had sent back to camp. They would come down the coast in Higgins boats, land on the far side of the Matanikau, and aid in surrounding the enemy. Puller did not learn of this move until he saw the boats themselves, driving past him just outside the surf; he tried in vain to hail them.

A few minutes later there was another radio call from upstream: The Raiders had been stopped. Griffith was wounded and Major Kenneth Bailey, his Medal of Honor exec, was killed. The radioman, assuming Puller to be in command, handed him the message, which he read and passed on to Edson.

Edson studied the message with care. “All right,” he said. “I guess we’d better call them off. They can’t seem to cross the river.”

“Christ!” Puller said. “You’re not going to stop ’em when they’ve had only two casualties? Most of my battalion will be out there alone, cut off without support. You’re not going to throw these men away.”

The officers could not agree on the next move. Puller never forgot the long afternoon: “I walked away from Edson and his officers, with a signalman. I just went down to the sea and hailed a boat from the old destroyer that was out there, heading for Point Cruz, where my men were. I got aboard the ship, the Ballard, she was. Her skipper took her right in close, and when we spotted my men on a hilltop, a few hundred yards inland, I began sending blinker and semaphore messages. It was only a minute or two before I could spot, in my field glasses, a Marine with semaphore flags, answering us from the hill. It went about like this:

“‘Return to beach immediately.’

“‘Engaged. Cannot return.’

“‘Fight your way. Only hope.’

“There was no reply, and so I had one more signal sent:

“‘Give me your boundaries right and left. Will use ship’s fire.’

“I got no answer. The ship turned its guns on the jungle, and blasted hell out of it, from the sea up the hillside. We could see just about where the battalion lines were, and those gunners laid it on, right up to the limit.”

From the hilltop, the furiously firing Ballard was welcomed as an avenging angel. The survivors had almost given up hope.

Major Otho Rogers was a small, quiet, inoffensive reservist, a Washington, D.C., Post Office employee who had never seen combat. Puller had grown fond of him in their months together but realized that his executive officer was beyond his depth in jungle warfare.

Yet on this Sunday morning, ordered to lead a relief force beyond the Matanikau, Rogers had briskly rounded up the company and a half of 1/7 which had brought in the wounded from Mount Austen, and scraped together every cook, baker and headquarters man in sight. Rogers wore fresh clothing which would make him a conspicuous target: starched breeches and a clean shirt, both faded almost white from washing. Bob Haggerty thought his little speech pathetic, as the three hundred gathered on the beach to board the boats: “Men, you belong to the world’s finest body of fighting men, the U. S. Marine Corps—and you’re with the best officers and noncoms in the Corps. There’s only two or three hundred Japs where we’re going now. Let’s wipe ’em out. I hope every man gets the Navy Cross.”

They landed in two waves, and at 1:10 P.M. were ashore without incident, just west of Point Cruz, a wooded peninsula west of the mouth of the Matanikau.

There was no opposition; the men went through an old coconut grove to the grassy heights above. Private McGuire, of Haggerty’s platoon, killed two fleeing Japs—and in the rear there was a burst of machine gun fire. The landing boats had now pulled out of sight and the unit was alone. A column of Japanese appeared on an old coastal road, coming from the river. Captain Zach Cox ordered the 81 millimeter mortars to fire on them. Rogers looked at the big force with concern: “They told me the Jap strength in here was no more than two or three hundred.” The column below, which scattered briefly under mortar fire, began working its way up the hill. The Marine force was surrounded.

Captain Cox retained a memory of a moment of relative calm: “There was an air raid on Henderson Field and our fighters went up after the Japs. I saw an enemy bomber fall apart, high up, and it seemed to take forever for the wing to fall into the sea.”

This raid knocked out communications at division headquarters and thereafter the isolated men were on their own. Artillery fire burst upon them; it was American artillery, firing from far down the coast, trying to aid the attack which had disintegrated. The Japanese now closed in.

A mortar shell exploded almost between the feet of Major Rogers and the commander was killed. “There was so little of him left we rolled the remains in a blanket,” Sergeant Pennington said. The same blast tore the arms and legs of Zach Cox and he was out of action. Dr. Schuster attempted to give him drugs and bind the arm with splints, but Cox refused until he was told it was the only way he might live. Schuster tended him and crawled to other wounded. Captain Charles W. Kelly, Jr., took over Rogers’s command.

The perimeter, narrow and winding, snaked around the crests of irregular hills and men could see few of their companions in the attack which followed; machine gun and mortar fire literally sprayed them. Losses mounted.

Marine mortars, firing at an almost impossibly close range, were held in place by men who lay on their backs to support the tubes with their feet. Captain Kelly tried to gain contact with the units beyond the river, but got a grim report from the communications man, Sergeant Robert Raysbrook—the radio had been forgotten, left at the base in the perimeter.

Help now appeared in the sky, a scout dive bomber which was prowling the coast for targets. Kelly’s men laid out white undershirts to signal: H E L P. The plane circled and its pilot, Second Lieutenant Dale M. Leslie, dipped his wings in acknowledgment. He sent word of the unit’s plight by radio and circled overhead, waiting for a chance to help.

Bob Haggerty was hit, and as Dr. Schuster worked over him, the wounded Captain saw enemy coming up the hillside, under the trees: “The little bastards, dressed in green from head to foot, were sneaking through the bushes toward us. I told the machine gunners and mortarmen to stand by.” The firing order never came, for the Ballard hove into sight.

From his promontory on front of the hill, Captain Regan Fuller saw her with disbelief: “An old time four-stacker, and she was boiling, with black smoke trailing out behind her. Almost as soon as I caught sight of her the guns began to swing upward, hoisting into position. It was a lovely sight.” Fuller’s men had sustained only one casualty to this point—but in Haggerty’s sector, where artillery shells still fell, many men were lost. Some of Haggerty’s men were demoralized by the time the Ballard appeared.

Sergeant Raysbrook now redeemed himself for failure to bring the radio and under fire from snipers and machine guns semaphored the destroyer and called Puller’s messages to Captain Kelly. The survivors made ready to abandon the hill.

As they watched, shells from the Ballard’s five-inch guns tore the jungle growth, blasting a path to the beach. Captain Cox peered down beneath the foliage, where in the dim green thickets he could see groups of the enemy blown apart. The noise and smoke grew and within a few minutes the descent began.

Regan Fuller’s men gave a Rebel Yell and plunged down the slopes, taking Dr. Schuster with them. They reached an open space near the beach before meeting opposition from Japanese, still half-seen, who were no more than twenty feet away. Schuster was hit in the elbow and attempted to bandage himself. Fuller helped him and sent him forward with other wounded.

Platoon Sergeant Andy Malanowski of Baltimore was nearby with a BAR taken from a casualty. “Captain, you take Doc Schuster and the other wounded on down, and I’ll handle the rear. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” Malanowski set up his gun on a log across the trail.

Fuller had to clear a path once more, and with a grenade tossed a few yards away brought a Japanese toppling from the thickets. A Japanese officer darted from cover, holding a sword in two hands, and beheaded a private marching near Fuller.

The other units trickled down the hill but, except for Fuller’s men, met no organized Jap parties. Survivors gathered on the beach, where a small perimeter of defense was set up. Fuller waited for Malanowski but he did not come. There was one rapid burst of fire from the undergrowth where the sergeant had waited, then silence. Malanowski was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his brave rearguard stand.

There were conflicting memories among survivors as to what happened on the beach. B Company arrived first and was first to get in boats sent out from the Ballard—the small craft commanded by Coast Guard coxswains. They were held up for a time by Jap fire from Point Cruz but at last got in, when a boat’s gun knocked out an enemy machine gun. Sergeant Pennington remembered a big coxswain swearing at the Japs, holding a tiller in one hand, and firing with the other. One coxswain, Douglas Munro, was killed, and won the Medal of Honor; two others, wounded, won Navy Crosses.

Captain Kelly had his men bearing wounded to the boats, which had grounded some thirty yards from shore; he watched proudly as the stretcher bearers returned to the beach to await other boats rather than climb in with the wounded. More boats hovered far out, despite efforts of Lieutenant Leslie, still overhead in his plane, to herd them to shore.

Dr. Schuster got into a boat which stuck on a coral reef and was almost sunk by Jap machine guns before Marines from the beach gave covering fire.

A few minutes later, near 5:00 P.M., Regan Fuller experienced trouble with the coxswains. With only a few of his wounded aboard, Fuller was forced to hold a pistol on one coxswain to force him to wait for other men. The last of them got away under fire, with Japs pushing to the very edge of the undergrowth at the beach.

Puller could see little of the action from the Ballard, but when he caught sight of his men on the beach he quickly went overboard and into one of the small boats. Puller’s boat neared others which were circling far from shore, hesitant to go in; he bellowed orders and led them to the beach. The coxswains moved. The Colonel went in with them, and was at the water’s edge for ten or fifteen minutes, under sporadic fire, as the evacuation came to an end.

Puller’s battalion had twenty-four dead and twenty-three wounded in the fiasco—and the Raiders and the Second Battalion of the Fifth Marines, who withdrew at about the same time, had another one hundred and seventeen casualties. The only benefit of the operation was the ominous intelligence that a bigger Japanese buildup was under way.

Colonel Puller saw some of his officers and men in the evening, but had little to say. The next day, back in the main defense line of the perimeter, he called together the battalion officers. His voice was hard and his face unsmiling;

“Gentlemen, at least we’ve all been blooded now. I don’t want you to be mooning over our losses and feeling sorry for yourselves or taking all the blame on your shoulders. We’ve all got to leave this world some day; we’re all in the same pickle. And there are worse things than dying for your country. Some things about our action in the last four days I want you to remember forever. There are some we’d all like to forget—but they’ll be in your mind’s eye as long as you live. I hope we’ve all learned something. Now take care of your men, and make yourselves ready. We haven’t seen anything yet.

“One other thing. Back there on the hillside at Mount Austen, I had trouble getting company officers up. I hope you saw what that cost us in casualties. Never do I want to see that again in my command. I want to see my officers leading. I want you to know that you’re leaders, and not simply commanders. You cannot operate a military force in the field under these conditions with commanders alone. Civilians wouldn’t know what I was talking about, but you’ve found out now that it’s true: There are many qualities in a man, but one that is absolutely necessary in an infantry leader is stark courage. Give that idea to your men in your own way.

“Don’t worry over things that are done, that we can no longer help. Concentrate on building a better combat unit, because that’s the best hope of all of us surviving. None of us could help the fact that I was the only combat-trained man in our outfit when we began. I was lucky enough to get the jolt when I was young. You’ll come along fast, and there’ll be work for us. Let’s be ready when our time comes.”

Regan Fuller noticed that a thinly disguised scorn came into the Colonel’s voice as he spoke of details of the bungled operation, especially in the phrase, “the much-vaunted Raiders.” Fuller was so impressed by the Old Man’s manner, and his words, that he took the same theme to his company, and talked with them long and earnestly. They seemed to buck up.

One night soon after, an interpreter brought Puller a translation of the diary taken from the Japanese major he had shot on Mount Austen. The Colonel read it with interest. The officer, who had fought for ten years in Manchukuo, had studied the great military leaders of the world—half of them Asiatics whose names meant nothing to Puller. But there was Genghis Khan, and among Americans were Lee, Jackson and Grant. Puller read a few lines aloud to officers who were visiting his command post—Mike Edson, Hank Adams, and an old World War I flier of the House of Rothschild, now the battalion paymaster, Major Henry Heming:

The Americans amaze me. I never violate the principles of warfare, and they never obey them. We never move without an advance guard, but when we attack Americans, it is always the main body we meet. We Japanese take advantage of the country; the Americans use great machines to clear the jungle.

Puller laughed: “Right now I’m mystified by some of the tactics we use, myself.”

A day or so later the beautiful sword of the Jap major was stolen from the command post. One of Puller’s aides was indignant. “We’ll have a shakedown. We’ll turn it up in one of the bedrolls, Colonel.”

“Hell, no!” Puller said. “I don’t know who got it, but any one of those boys rated it more than I did. They carried the big load. Let him keep it.”

A week later Puller heard that one of his Marines had sold the sword to a souvenir-hungry sailor for $1000. He laughed: “Those idiots will buy anything.”

He was writing his wife daily, and on October 4, just a week after the return from Mount Austen and Point Cruz, wrote her:

Merry Christmas (make it a merry one for our precious daughter’s sake). I will be merry because you two are safe and well. I love you with all my being.

He enclosed a $500 Government check, as first payment for a diamond pin for Mrs. Puller, and promised another later. He ended the letter:

I will return to you safe and well; never doubt it, not even for a moment.… Lewis.

My command is one to be proud of. It has proved itself to be such.

The keeping of records was now primitive and rather casual, for there was seldom a day without enemy contact, bombing or naval shelling. Puller wrote his reports in longhand and had Sergeant Pennington type them on the antique typewriter owned by the battalion. He soon had statements from the survivors of the stand at Point Cruz and recommended several men for medals—including Andy Malanowski, the Medal of Honor; and Robert Raysbrook, the Navy Cross.

He still missed nothing involving the morale of his men. Regan Fuller, who began to feel the stark drama of the situation after the first severe fight, grew a beard and swaggered around the perimeter like a desperado.

Puller took him aside: “Old man, you’re carried away with this war business. You’re feeling too self-important about it. That’s dangerous. This is just a matter of kill or be killed, and we’ve got to stay on our toes to have a chance. Clean yourself up. Here’s some shaving gear. And when you’re through, you can take a drink from that bottle, if you like.”

General Vandegrift had been promised reinforcements. Army troops were on the way and there would be a naval buildup, too, in an effort to halt Japanese attacks from the enemy base at Rabaul. Vandegrift determined to repeat the stab across the Matanikau, this time in greater force, for his aerial photographs showed him Jap concentrations there, a threat to the whole perimeter and to Henderson Field. If the Japanese could cross the Matanikau, they could place artillery within 5000 yards of the airstrip.

Even as he made the decision to attack once more, the enemy was gathering to spring. The fresh 4th Regiment of the Sendai Division, conquerors of Java, had just been put ashore. The enemy was in place to storm the Matanikau on the night of October 6.

The Marines launched their move on October 7. Mike Edson’s Fifth Marines marched along the coastal road to hold the mouth of the river. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Whaling, a skilled woodsman without a command, was given a small force of picked men, including snipers and scouts. He would follow Edson, then turn upstream, cross at Nippon Bridge, and drive down the opposite side of the stream to the sea. Behind Whaling was the Seventh Regiment, now under a new colonel. Its assignment was to follow Whaling and cover the left flank of the operation, then to attack and drive for the sea if possible.

Edson soon met the enemy and in a fierce fight pushed them into a pocket on the east bank of the river. In the night, reinforced by the Raiders, Edson fought hand-to-hand to hold his position under fresh attacks. The men of Whaling and the Seventh Regiment, meanwhile, pushed toward their objective upstream.

On this march, for the first time, Puller used native bearers and guides in his column, stocky, muscular black men with six-inch shocks of dirty red hair, a coiffure achieved by rubbing raw lime into the hair. Puller had bargained for these men with Captain Martin Clemens, the British labor boss of the island; the price was one twist of chewing tobacco daily for each man.

Late in the morning the head of the battalion came upon a slightly wounded Japanese soldier after a sniper hunt. Puller looked at him from a distance of several yards.

“Don’t take chances with him,” he said. “He may have a grenade ready to go off. We can’t slow down to carry him anyway. Kill him.”

The Colonel led the file ahead. Marines in the rear prodded the prisoner to his feet and after a gingerly inspection loaded him with packs, two or three at a time. They drove him all day, lightening their own loads, but near the end of the march passed Puller, seated on his helmet at the trailside.

“Say, old man, why didn’t you kill that bird? Didn’t you hear my order?”

“Sir, we thought he could carry today and we could kill him tonight.”

“No you won’t,” Puller said. “He did your work all day, and you’ll sit up and guard him all night.”

The discomfited Marines kept watch over the prisoner, vainly tossing bayonets within his reach, hoping to tempt him to make a dash for freedom. In the morning the survivor went rearward with a party carrying wounded.

On this day, October 7, the Life magazine reporter John Hersey marched with the interior column. On the trail Colonel Julian Frisbie, the executive to Colonel A. L. Sims, gave the plan of operations to Hersey in simple terms. He ended: “This is very much like a plan Lee used at the Chickahominy … with Jackson closing the trap at the rear.… The units will not be sent out in quite the same pattern, but the same general idea. Our advantage is, if Whaling finds the going impossible, we haven’t committed Hanneken and Puller. I think it’ll work.”

Hersey heard his first sounds of war on the march. Rifle fire, he wrote, was constant, falling on the ear “like the sound of a knife tearing fabric.” He was impressed by the shouts of the mortarmen at work, and most of all by the weird sounds shells made overhead, “like a man blowing through a keyhole.”

Late in the afternoon Hersey saw Puller’s meeting with the commander, Colonel Sims. Hersey’s account of the moment as Sims ordered a push forward:

“Puller blew out his cheeks, thrust out his chest: ‘That’s fine. Couldn’t be better. My men are prepared to spend the night on the trail. Best place to be if you want to go anywhere.’”

Puller and Frisbie yelled some jokes back and forth, and Puller moved on.

Hersey joined Whaling’s force the next day and from his experiences wrote the book, Into The Valley—but it was Puller who fought the spectacular engagement of the operation, one of the most bloody of the island campaign.

There was a quiet night by the river, but at 5:30 A.M. on October 8 a severe rainstorm broke, ending visibility and turning the trails into streams. Whaling and the Seventh Regiment managed to cross Nippon Bridge, a small affair of coconut logs, but made slow progress through the hilly jungle. The attack was postponed a day and at headquarters Vandegrift got disquieting news of an even larger Japanese buildup west of the Mantanikau.

The morning of October 9 dawned clear and refreshingly cool. The force from the interior moved down the west side of the Matanikau toward the sea. Edson still held the river’s mouth, on the east bank, and the little offensive thus bore the shape of a crude horseshoe.

Puller noticed that his regimental commander did not accompany the attack, but remained on the east side of the river at Nippon Bridge. The movement developed with Whaling nearest the river, then Hanneken with the Second Battalion of the Seventh, then Puller with the First Battalion. Japs were out in full force and there was constant action against snipers and small parties; this did not impede progress and the front soon neared the sea in the area of Point Cruz.

Hanneken fell into a brisk battle in the broken country and while he was organizing his defense was called from Nippon Bridge: A change of plan by headquarters had called them back to the perimeter. He was to break off and return by the beach road.

Hanneken obeyed orders and in the move left Puller’s Company C, commanded by Captain Marshall Moore, to hold the front alone. Puller hurriedly threw A Company onto the ridge to help, but there was little room for maneuver. Bob Haggerty placed his B Company on an adjoining hill and opened furiously with mortar fire, and though he could not see its results, was told by men from C that the enemy was being cut to pieces by the shells.

At the peak of this Puller had a telephone call from the regimental commander, in the rear: “Puller, we’ve got a change in orders. Execute a reconnaissance in force with your battalion along the coast road toward Kokumbona. Do not become involved in a large action. Be prepared to withdraw, to maintain communications.”

Regan Fuller was within earshot as Puller shouted, in a rage: “How the hell can I make a reconnaissance when we’re engaged, down to the last man? We’re fighting tooth and nail, man. If you’d get off your duff and come up here where the fighting is, you could see the situation.” He slammed down the field phone.

Puller called a brief conference; Regan Fuller noticed that he held an aerial photo upside-down, obviously using it as no more than a prop. “All right, gentlemen,” the Colonel said. “There are the enemy over there in those ravines. And here we are. Now go get ’em. Drive ’em into the sea.”

At 1:00 P.M. the battalion’s fight reached its climax and within an hour it was over: Puller saw Japanese swarming from a circular ravine in the midst of the jungle growth—an old crater, he assumed. Puller called for an artillery concentration. The big shells came into and around the crater in devastating fashion, but even more deadly were the mortars of 1/7.

Puller had at last caught the enemy in an ideal situation and pressed his advantage. When mortar fire drove the Japanese up the slopes of their crater, they emerged into the fields of fire from his machine guns, which cut down scores of the small figures. When the tide flowed back into the crater the mortars opened once more. Within a few minutes the slaughter was complete and the enemy unit had ceased to exist as an effective force.

When it was over, regimental headquarters called back, relieving Puller of the necessity of a reconnaissance patrol and permitting him to return to the perimeter. There was also a call from Hanneken, a request to bring back his wounded. Puller’s men carried in all casualties from the two battalions. Puller’s battalion had five dead and twenty-one wounded; total losses were sixty-five dead and one hundred and twenty-five wounded for the operation. Puller estimated the enemy losses to be at least five times as great—but it was later revealed that the Japanese Fourth Infantry had lost almost an entire battalion, with six hundred and ninety dead, the result of Puller’s strike in the crater.

Enemy documents found in the crater told headquarters how fortunately timed the attack had been and how telling Puller’s blows. One order to the enemy troops had read:

“From now on, the occupying of Guadalcanal Island is under the observation of the whole world. Do not expect to return, not even one man, if the occupation is not successful. Everyone must remember the honor of the Emperor, fear no enemy, yield to no material matters, show the strong points of steel or of rocks, and advance valiantly and ferociously. Hit the enemy opponents so hard they will not be able to get up again.”

Also found were atrocity tales sent back to Japan by these troops:

“The Americans on this island are not ordinary troops, but Marines, a special force recruited from jails and insane asylums for blood lust. There is no honorable death to prisoners, their arms are cut off, they are staked on the airfield, and run over by steam rollers.”

General Vandegrift, then unaware of the damage inflicted, was not content with the operation. Puller was also displeased, but for very different reasons:

“The whole process was asinine. They mixed up the outfits as badly as they possibly could. There was no overall commander. Division gave orders to Hanneken, Whaling and me. Whaling was senior, but orders did not come through him. My regimental commander was behind the river, and not on the scene. Thus, when they found two battalions stopped cold in the fight, communications were so bad that they pulled these two outfits, and left me to face all the enemy. We were blindly lucky to come out as we did. Imagine them ordering me to go on some damned reconnaissance, when I was fighting with every man I had! Proper designation of authority would have made everything clear.”

Despite difficulties, the enemy had been seriously checked. On October 11, as the land action subsided, the Navy, with a little fleet under Admiral Norman Scott, caught the Japanese Cruiser Division Six off Cape Esperance, “crossed the T” on the enemy, and virtually blew the division out of the war. The American ships were part of the shield for the Army’s Americal Division, now on its way to Guadalcanal.

Puller’s battalion now took its place in the perimeter which defended Henderson Field, the main line of resistance in the American position. Puller temporarily took a line of holes and gun positions on ridges behind barbed wire. The Colonel set to work on improving battalion morale. Dr. Smith noted in his diary that Puller seemed more concerned over losses:

“He has become almost fanatical in his desire to see that the men are properly cared for. If a man’s body is lost he is greatly disturbed, and frets about the time lost before he can recover the body and give it a decent burial. Not an outwardly religious man himself, he encourages divine services to be held frequently on the front lines for the men who want them. He would much sooner give services himself than not to have any.”

Puller was often dissatisfied with a chaplain’s talk to the men and would grumble: “Maybe it’s time I tried my hand. I think I could do better.” Dr. Smith thought he would have been the island’s best chaplain, and wrote in open admiration: “Whatever he says is sincere. I have never seen an officer with so little bluff.”

Puller recommended other men for medals from the operation at the crater, among them Lieutenant George Plantier, who, though badly wounded, refused to be treated until he had seen all his mortar shells fired. Despite maximum range over difficult terrain his first round had been on target.

Supplies were still short, but though all outfits were limited to two meals daily Puller fed his battalion three without violating orders. He spotted stacks of Japanese rice in boxes along the shore, a neglected treasure. Some was wormy and spoiled; his men culled it, and he sent the rest to his cooks. This was a godsend during October. For three weeks there had been no coffee or sugar, and rice was so inevitable at meals that cooks colored it with food dye in an effort to divert the attention of the jaded men.

The troops were filthy; their socks were gone and their underclothing was rotting away. At the worst of this time the Army hit the beach, the vanguard of the American Division. The Colonel learned of it when he saw half a dozen of his men spruced up in Army utilities.

“Where the devil did you get ’em?”

“Colonel, the beach is loaded. Anything you want.”

Puller summoned Pennington and they went to the beach in a jeep. There were vast piles of stores: boxes of socks, bacon, underwear, everything the Marines could desire. The soldiers had taken cover from Pistol Pete, a long Jap howitzer far down in the jungle which dropped a shell in the sand every few minutes. Puller and Pennington threw cases on the jeep until the sergeant feared that they would never move it.

A crouching Army MP shouted from a foxhole: “Leave that stuff alone, damn you! That’s Army gear.”

Puller gave him a farewell: “If you’re guarding this stuff, get the hell out here and guard it.”

Pennington returned for two more jeep loads and the glad news went out to the companies, over the phones; every unit got fresh socks and plenty of sugar that night. Puller went back to the beach for more weapons and lugged in dozens of machine guns. There was an enticing treasure, an iron-bound battalion arms chest with a lock so sturdy that it had to be burned off with a torch. Puller had visions of hundreds of spare weapons parts he would soon dole out—but when the box was opened he saw that some soldier had replaced the contents with hundreds of cans of sardines. The cans were distributed down the battalion line, but Puller mourned the loss of the parts.

Puller’s communications men had taken a radio from a wrecked plane at the edge of Henderson Field and hooked it up with five or six headsets, so that the command post now often listened to news from back home. One night Puller and his officers heard Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox say dolefully that Guadalcanal seemed hopeless, and threatened to become another Bataan.

Puller shook his head, and a young officer shouted: “How about that old bastard? Don’t he know we got real Marines on this island?”

Division headquarters scolded Puller when it discovered the radio, and was still annoyed even when he explained that it had been salvaged from a ruined plane.

Malaria began to cripple the Division, with more than 700 cases in the first half of October and 655 new cases in the next week. Puller advised headquarters to try the old Haitian remedy of injecting the troops with quinine, but after a conference with medical officers, General Vandegrift declined: “They say that foreign doctors use the method, but that it’s too dangerous. About one to two per cent casualties could be expected. We can’t risk it.”

Puller protested: “It’s better to take that risk than to keep on as we are, and know we’ll lose hundreds, even thousands. Sooner or latter, you’ll have the Division put out of action with malaria.”

This was in vain; treatment of malaria was continued with atabrine.

During mid-October Japan made her supreme effort to conquer Guadalcanal and reach for Australia. On October 9, while Puller was pounding his adversaries in the crater, General Harusoyhi Hyakutake of the Seventeenth Army landed to take charge. About 900 Japanese troops were being landed each night, and on October 12, a night when the American position was hammered by Japanese battleships and planes, 4000 more enemy soldiers landed at Tassafaronga. By now more than 20,000 Japanese troops were ashore, facing an almost equal number of Americans, the latter hemmed into their perimeter against the sea, so that the Japanese retained the initiative. In “The Slot,” or Sealark Channel, the American Navy still ruled by day, and the Japanese by night.

Vandegrift now reorganized the perimeter. On his left, facing inland, Sector One, along the beach, was held by a defense battalion and special troops; Sector Two, moving into the jungle, was held by the 164th Army Infantry Regiment; Sector Three, 2500 yards long, belonged to Colonel Sims’s Seventh Marines—but only Puller’s and Hanneken’s battalions were used in the lines; Sector Four, with the First Marines; and Sector Five, with the Fifth Marines, completed the curve back to the sea at the mouth of the Matanikau.

The major Japanese attack was expected along the Matanikau, and most of the Division’s strength was placed there.

The Japanese moved to attack these positions on October 15, with Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama’s Second Division assigned to swing far inland and hit the Marines from the south—in the area where Puller’s men awaited. Nine infantry battalions set out on this march, a total of 5600 men, excluding artillery and other support troops. The soldiers carried or dragged everything, even guns, over the rough trails. They were late in making their attack and abandoned many guns on the trail.

Heavy rains swept the island almost daily and Japanese progress was slow until, on October 22, a tank and infantry attack on the beach struck the Marines and was bloodily repulsed. This had an effect, however, for to meet the threat, Hanneken’s battalion was pulled from its place beside Puller on October 24, and sent to a riverside position. Puller’s men spent the day in furious activity.

Puller now had to cover the whole sector of 2500 yards with his understrength battalion, and he filled the hole left by Hanneken by spreading his men and putting all except the mortars in line. He had sent officers and noncoms among Hanneken’s men before the departure, and in an hour they learned more about the lay of the land and the firing lanes than they could have learned in a day by inspection. Holes were deepened and more machine guns were put into position.

Puller had seen a couple of strands of barbed wire along a jeep road in his rear and had that taken down for the front line; there were no staples, and Marines wrapped the wire around trees. The wire was hung with tin cans filled with stones and grenades with their pins half-pulled. There were no trip-flares to warn of enemy approach and light the area.

Puller walked the line most of the day, at each gun position asking the man in charge to show him the field of fire; the Colonel checked to see that the fire zones interlocked, and ordered improvements at almost every point.

From left to right, the companies were: A, C and B. On the far left, where Regan Fuller commanded, was the only spot of open land, where A Company joined the 164th Army Infantry. During the day the field in front of the Army position was plowed, to slow attackers. At the edge of the field Regan Fuller placed a 37 millimeter gun and two 50-caliber machine guns. Otherwise, A Company had the worst of the battalion position, for their ground was low and the hill in their front was heavily wooded.

Men worked so hard in the day, carrying arms and ammunition, digging, filling sandbags and hanging wire, that many were asleep by late afternoon.

A Company was weaker by one platoon than the other companies, for despite the protests of Colonel Puller, there was an outpost of forty-six of its men some 3000 yards to their front, commanded by Sergeant Ralph Briggs, Jr., of Port Edwards, Wisconsin. These men had been out for several days, to warn of an enemy approach.

Colonel Puller was on the field phone often during the day of digging-in, trying to persuade his regimental commander to have headquarters withdraw Briggs and his patrol: “They’re going to sacrifice those men—that’s all. We don’t need any bait on the hook, as you say. If they’re coming, they’re coming. It’s foolishness to throw away that platoon.”

Once, when it appeared that the commander had expressed agreement, officers in the CP heard Puller roar: “All right, then, if you think so, why don’t you waltz your duff down to Division and get ’em back in here?”

The outpost remained in the hills to the south, out of sight, but connected with the main line by telephone.

Puller also called Pedro Del Valle, of the 11th Artillery, several miles down the coast, and asked him to be ready to fire support during the night. Del Valle was reassuring: “I’ll give you what you want. I know you won’t be unreasonable. Just call for all you need.”

At dusk, as usual, the artillerymen registered their guns, and shells exploded in the thick growth a few yards beyond Puller’s lines.

In the afternoon there was a report of smoke in the hills beyond the outpost and a rumor spread that a Jap officer had been seen studying the position through field glasses. None of this intelligence came to Puller, but as night drew on, men in the CP with him saw that he expected trouble. Sergeant Major Frank Sheppard was beside him as daylight faded:

“Shep, we’ll probably get mixed up in a scrap tonight. The weather is right, and the moon won’t be much. It’ll rain like hell—and Nips are out there.”

The Colonel had the field phones opened down the line so that all companies and platoons could hear every message. He made a final check after dark, squatting in the dugout of his CP; there was no light in the place except for a flashlight occasionally used by the radioman.

First Battalion, Seventh Marines, was ready for its night of trial. Rain began to fall.

At 9:30 the phone rang in the battalion CP. Puller answered. It was Sergeant Briggs, whispering. The company communications men listened to the conversation:

“Colonel, there’s about three thousand Japs between you and me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. They’ve been all around us, singing and smoking cigarettes, heading your way.”

“All right, Briggs, but make damned sure. Take your men to your left—understand me? Go down and pass through the lines near the sea. I’ll call ’em to let you in. Don’t fail, and don’t go in any other direction. I’ll hold my fire as long as I can.”

“Yes, sir.”

Puller had hardly put down the telephone when the bell rang once more. A company in the line reported Japs were cutting the barbed wire in its front. Puller spoke to the circuit down the battalion line.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get this straight. Hold fire until you get an order from me. The outpost must get clear before we open up. If the bastards break through, use the bayonet. And keep someone at every phone. Wait.”

Puller looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. Yells rolled from the right: Japanese voices shouting in English, “Blood for the Emperor! Marine, you die!”

A Marine bellowed back: “To hell with your God-damned Emperor! Blood for Franklin and Eleanor!” Obscene shouts followed.

Puller got on the telephone and called loudly: “Commence firing.”

The front erupted with blazing weapons, and over their heads the artillery shells soughed through the rainstorm. Explosions farther back in the jungle halted Japanese columns before they could move but the vanguard pressed against the wire along a narrrow front. Grenades blew holes in the fencing and enemy troops ran into the fire of the massed machine guns. Puller had almost doubled the normal strength of machine gun companies, picking up the weapons at every opportunity. Their weight was felt now.

Sergeant Manila John Basilone’s nest of guns was about the center of C Company, in the middle of the line, with a slight decline in his front; the enemy drove toward him so persistently that he covered the hill with their bodies and when the first fury of attack faded he sent men to push down the wall of enemy bodies, to clear the fire lane.

Calls for help came from several outposts and Puller sent men from headquarters; often he left the CP himself, prowling among the companies. The attacks now came in waves, each high tide lasting for about fifteen minutes, with increasing fury each time. There was at least one attack every hour. Weapons began to give out.

Regan Fuller, on the low ground at the left, saw an enemy mass in the edge of the field, crowding against the jungle for cover. His 37 anti-tank gun fired three rounds of canister and the column disappeared. Elsewhere in his front Fuller had every weapon blazing—he had a rifle platoon, a heavy machine gun section with four 50-caliber and six 30-caliber machine guns, two anti-tank guns, and a number of extra pieces, including half a dozen old Lewis machine guns, most of which jammed. There were eighteen BAR’s and a 60 millimeter mortar. The mortar fired 600 rounds during the night, until it was red hot; at dawn the tube barely projected from the mud. The wire before A Company was not broken and not a man was lost during the hours of darkness. In the first light, Regan Fuller saw enemy bodies stacked “like cordwood” in the edge of the jungle, and in the field where his anti-tank guns had fired was a column of Japanese dead, each rank lying half atop the one in its front in perfect formation—a weapons company with machine guns, rifles, mines and dynamite still held by its troops.

Puller called Del Valle again: “Give us all you’ve got. We’re holding on by our toenails.”

“I’ll give you all you call for, Puller, but God knows what’ll happen when the ammo we have is gone.”

“If we don’t need it now, we’ll never need it. If they get through here tonight there won’t be a tomorrow.”

“She’s yours as long as she lasts.”

John Basilone came scurrying to the CP several times during the night, at lulls in the fighting. He reported some guns in trouble and vanished, bearing heavy parts or ammunition on his back. He was barefooted. Regan Fuller saw him once on the A Company front. Basilone reported his guns burning out, and such a serious lack of water that men were urinating in the gun jackets to keep them firing.

From the rear, after a couple of hours, artillerymen reported the barrels of their 105’s were white-hot at the muzzles. No one knew how long the big weapons could maintain their fire.

Regan Fuller called the CP from the flank:

“Colonel, I’m just about running out of ammo. I’ve used almost three and a half units of fire.”

“You got bayonets, haven’t you, Fuller?”

“Sure. Yes, sir.”

“All right, then. Hang on.”

In the heaviest of the firing, when Puller had left the CP, regimental headquarters called for him.

“Not here, sir,” the wireman said. “Colonel Puller’s up front.”

“Find him. Get him on the phone.”

After the crew had made several calls to the line position, Puller returned and talked with the regimental commander. The few remaining in the pit heard Puller’s explosive reply:

“What d’ya mean, ‘What’s going on?’ We’re neck deep in a fire fight, and I’ve no time to stand here bullflinging. If you want to find out what’s going on, come up and see.” He growled angrily to Pennington and Sheppard: “Regiment is not convinced we are facing a major attack!”

Near 3:00 A.M., when six or eight separate attacks had built up and waned on his front, under almost constant fire, Puller again talked with regimental headquarters—this time with the exec, Colonel Julian Frisbie:

“Yeah, it looks pretty bad.… Sure, we could use help. But if it’s coming, for God’s sake don’t hold it back—send it on in.”

The battalion was now down to about 500 men, Puller estimated. He had no way to guess the strength of the enemy waves. Japanese had infiltrated the lines by this hour, and men who could be spared were hunting them in the blackness. Frank Sheppard organized a small security party for the CP in an effort to protect Puller and his diminished staff; there were now two men left with the Colonel.

There were more talks with the regimental CP before reinforcements arrived, and some delay ensued when the fresh troops, the Third Battalion of the Army’s 164th, were led to regimental headquarters, instead of coming directly to the front.

“Who’s guiding them in?” Puller asked.

“A Navy chaplain here, Father Keough.”

“Put him on.”

Puller was soon satisfied that the priest, who had often visited the front positions, could lead the battalion through the rain-swept jungles the mile or more to his position. He hung up the telephone and went into the downpour, accompanied only by a runner.

The jeep road was lower than the battalion line and perhaps a quarter of a mile to the rear. When Puller reached the road and stood in the rain, waiting, there was an occasional tracer over his head. Within a few minutes the head of the relief column appeared. Puller shook hands with Father Keough.

“Here they are, Colonel.”

“Father, we can use ’em.”

Puller greeted the Army commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Hall: “Colonel, I’m glad to see you. I don’t know who’s senior to who right now, and I don’t give a damn. I’ll be in command until daylight, at least, because I know what’s going on here, and you don’t.”

“That’s fine with me,” Hall said. “You lead on.”

“I’m going to drop ’em off along this road,” Puller said, “and send in a few to each platoon position. I want you to make it clear to your people that my men, even if they’re only sergeants, will command in those holes when your officers and men arrive.”

“I understand you. Let’s go.”

Puller, Keough and Hall led the file along the dark road in the rain with the thunder of fire growing to their left. Every hundred yards or so they met a runner who had come back through the undergrowth to lead in reinforcements. Puller halted at each runner and gave him a squad or more of men. When they came to the end of the line all the troops had been fed in, with guides to their positions, and were ready to help stand off the enemy.

In some of the holes Marines took the fresh guns and ammunition of the Army troops and did much of the firing themselves—but other beleaguered veterans found the newcomers superb fighting material, though they did not know the ground. The Army men had the new M-1 rifles, the first the Marines had seen. The mixed men fought well together, and as dawn approached beat off two or three more Japanese attacks.

Puller went to the CP with Keough and Hall when the men of 3/164 had been distributed. It was after 4:00 A.M. An hour later the enemy drove a wedge into the line, some seventy-five yards deep and perhaps fifty yards wide. As the first light of day came Puller sent mortarmen on either side of this break and with a flurry of fire cleaned up the salient. Marines counted thirty-seven Jap bodies in the small triangle when the line had been straightened.

Puller gave the Army colonel and the priest blankets and a meal of C-rations, then left them to inspect his line. He later recommended Keough for the Silver Star for his work of the night; it was not awarded.

Reports of trouble still came from the line. Sergeant Robert Cornely had lost several guns in his position, one because a steam condenser had exploded, and his men competed with others for spare gun barrels in the morning. Dozens of automatic weapons had been fired for so long that the rifling was worn smooth. Two of the three men shot during the night in Cornely’s position were killed by Marines in the confusion caused by Jap infiltrators in the rear.

Soon after dawn Puller was told that men had found a party of about forty of the enemy, lying asleep near the 80 millimeter mortar position commanded by the great gunnery sergeant, Roy Fowle. The sleeping Japs bore land mines and dynamite, evidently for an attack on the mortarmen, whose fire had wrought such havoc on the Jap columns. The sleeping invaders were soon wiped out.

There was one enemy prisoner, a sullen little warrant officer who refused to talk when he was brought to Puller. The Colonel was so stung by the insolence of the prisoner that he slapped him with the flat of an entrenching tool; teeth spilled from the Jap’s mouth, but they were false teeth. He gave no information, even then.

A later prisoner talked freely with Puller:

“Why didn’t you change your tactics when you saw you weren’t breaking our line? Why didn’t you shift to a weaker spot?”

“That is not the Japanese way. The plan had been made. No one would have dared to change it. It must go as it is written.”

The commander of the Army’s 164th Regiment, Colonel Bryant E. Moore, sought Puller during the morning. “Colonel Puller, I want you to know how happy I am to have had my men blooded under you. No man in our outfit, including me, had ever seen action, and I know our boys couldn’t have had a better instructor. I wish you’d break in my other battalions.” Puller praised the men of the battalion in return: “They’re almost as good as Marines, Colonel.”

His old friend, General R. S. Geiger, the aviation chief, also visited the front and walked over the torn terrain. He was astonished by the windrows of Japanese bodies. Overhead, his planes were strafing and bombing the retreat of the enemy through the interior.

Sergeant Briggs and his men of the outpost had a hair-raising return to the lines. When the battle broke out Briggs led the way to the area before the Army regiment, where most of them hid overnight. There was a close call on the way. As Briggs told the story:

“We gained cover in the woods where it was cold as hell, and the Japs seemed to be all around us. We could hear them jabbering and walking so close that one Jap stepped on a Marine’s bayonet and another stepped on the helmet of a man hit by rifle fire.

“They filed by in squads, the most unreal sensation I ever had, but they didn’t want to tangle with us for fear of betraying their position to the guns.”

At daylight Briggs and the party crawled into the grass. Japs turned mortar and machine gun fire on them. Private Gerald White and another man made an heroic trek from this spot. When he remembered the machine gun he had left behind in the outpost, White crawled back some 600 yards to the spot, accompanied by his friend, and removed a bolt, making the gun unserviceable. In his absence Private Robert Potter gave his life to save his companions. When Jap fire became heavy in the field Potter leapt to his feet and dashed back and forth, drawing fire, shouting to his friends to run for American lines. Most of them escaped in that way, Potter was killed. Several remaining men of the party got back into the lines aboard a Bren gun carrier sent out by Regan Fuller. Only four of the outpost failed to return.

Puller’s men found two hundred and fifty Japanese dead inside their lines during the day, about twenty-five of them officers—one a major who had committed suicide, leaving a final entry in his diary on the loss of his colors and troops: “I do not know what excuse to give. I apologize for what I have done.… I am going to return my borrowed life today with short interest.”

Puller’s casualties for the battle were nineteen dead, thirty wounded and twelve missing. In his first report, the Colonel estimated that he had been attacked by a Japanese regiment with a strength of 2000 men. Captured documents revealed that his half-battalion had beaten off the suicidal attacks of three enemy regiments (the 16th, 29th and 230th), plus the remnant of a brigade—or the equivalent of a Japanese division. Two of the regiments admitted to carrying off 500 stretcher cases between them.

Two or three days later when the stench of bloated bodies in his front made his men retch, Puller persuaded Division to make a count of enemy casualties and bury the corpses. This burial detail counted 1462 bodies and spent two days at the grisly work. Bulldozers gouged holes and covered the enemy dead in great pits.

There was an attack on the night of October 26 following Puller’s big fight, but it was light by comparison and the enemy did not press home. It was clear that, for the time being, 1/7, with the aid of Del Valle’s artillery and the final support of the Army battalion, had saved the perimeter against almost staggering odds. It had cost the Japanese dearly to leave their artillery on the rugged trails and to confine their attacks to a narrow front. Guadalcanal saw no fighting more furious, by land, sea or air.

Puller added somber figures to his report: In the campaign thus far his battalion had lost twenty-four per cent of its men and thirty-seven per cent of its officers.

General Vandegrift sent the battalion a commendation for its “determined and vigorous defense against … numerically superior enemy forces.… The high combat effectiveness demonstrated is a tribute to the courage, devotion to duty and high professional attainment of its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. Puller, and to the company commanders, Captains Charles W. Kelly, Jr., Regan Fuller, Robert H. Haggerty, Marshall W. Moore, and Robert J. Rodgers.”

The company commanders won Silver Stars for the night’s fighting, but Regan Fuller, for one, thought that Sergeant Briggs, Gerald White and Robert Potter should have been honored instead. Sergeant John Basilone won the Medal of Honor, the first Marine enlisted man to win the award in World War II.

Puller won a second gold star for his Navy Cross.

The Colonel spent the next days trying to care for the men, for he had little hope of replacements. Dr. Edward Smith saw Puller almost as soon as the guns stopped firing on the morning of October 25, when the Colonel appeared at the aid station, now a makeshift hospital.

Smith and an assistant were operating on a crude table beneath a tarpaulin stretched over a gully. The doctor had on one shoe and stood in six or eight inches of mud, the last hope of sanitation gone as he worked over the battered chest of a young Marine. Blood colored the muck beneath the doctor’s feet. Smith had been operating all night.

Puller had little to say: “Well, Doc, I guess when they trained you, up there at Harvard Medical School, you never thought you’d come to this?”

“We must have help, Colonel. Get us more doctors. Men will be dying.”

Puller made an effort, but it was six hours or more before other doctors were sent by headquarters and all the injured began to get attention.

Smith continued to operate; there was now an added reminder of battle and a promise of more to come. A Marine set up a grinding wheel beside the doctor’s shelter and at odd hours, day and night, men came to sharpen their bayonets.

Regan Fuller kept an increasingly close watch on the Colonel: “He became more concerned for the men being killed and wounded as it grew worse. I saw his eyes puddle up many a time, but he would have died rather than have any of us think that he could weep for his men, or anything else. He never lost control.”

Puller frequently sent the men to the nearby river to bathe, with riflemen on constant guard. The jungle itch had become serious and was weaving red welts over the bodies of men; they were ordered to wash as often as possible.

The Colonel washed in the river with the troops, too, and Regan Fuller noticed that even when he washed his uniforms he stripped with the enlisted men in the river. “A common touch the men liked,” Fuller said. “Though a few of the Clausewitz-type officers in the rear ranks snickered behind his back, the men knew he was real, that he never put on an act, and they loved him.”

Puller’s ill-concealed tenderness was evident to his men when he talked with one of his old gunnery sergeants, Roy Fowle, who had cancer, knew that he was doomed, and could eat only canned milk—every can of which was saved for him by the troops. Fowle was a little bear of a man, far from handsome, with a quiet manner which concealed his warlike spirit and his skill as a mortarman. “He could teach Lou Diamond tricks,” Puller often told his men. The men often discussed the proposition: Who is the world’s greatest gunnery sergeant—Roy Fowle, Joe Buckley, or Red O’Neill? All were veterans in the ranks of 1/7 who played leading roles in the perimeter defense.

There was little enough gaiety, for more men had malaria each day and hundreds, like Puller, suffered from it in the afternoons, when they were so weary that they could not move their aching joints. When action came they returned to duty as if they were normal.

Puller shielded the men from unnecessary work. A young officer who insisted that they police up the battalion area, removing Jap beer cans and the debris of battle, was stopped by the Colonel: “Forget it, old man. Let the boys get in their sacks and leave them the hell alone. They’re half dead from fever and fighting, and they’ll have to hop to it again any day now.”

The first bags of mail for the battalion arrived from the States in early November, creating great excitement. Puller had Sergeant Pennington open the sacks, and there was consternation when he dumped out packages of training manuals from headquarters, material they should have had weeks ago, on Samoa. Puller gave them a long, bitter look.

“Take the damned things down the hill and burn ’em,” he said. “Sort out what real mail there is. Can you think of anybody who needs training manuals less than our gang?”

There was a squabble between A Company and some of the 164th Army men, for Regan Fuller’s men had bartered for, or stolen, some new M-1 rifles during the big night’s fighting, and Army officers wanted them returned. The Colonel was amused by the affair. For himself, he favored the old rifle they brought to Guadalcanal: “For sheer accuracy, if you want to kill men in battle, there has never been a rifle to equal the Springfield 1903. Others may give us more firepower, but in ability to hit a target, nothing touches the old ’03. In my opinion, nothing ever will. A perfect weapon, if ever there was one.”

Puller’s command post telephone rang at 3.00 A.M. one morning and someone shook the Colonel awake. Colonel Thomas at Division was calling.

“Puller, there’s a man here who wants to see you. Come on down.”

“Who the hell is it?” It was a ten-mile jeep ride to Division, and there was a downpour of rain.

“I can’t tell you on the phone. Come on. Be here by daylight.”

When Puller clumped into the Division dugouts, streaming water, he saw the smiling face of Chester Nimitz, who had come down from Pearl Harbor.

“Admiral Nimitz,” Thomas said, “I want you to meet Colonel Puller.”

“You’re ten years too late,” Nimitz said. “Puller and I were shipmates, away back there in China station days.”

There was a warm, brief reunion between the old Augusta hands.

“I was delighted to see your name come through in dispatches at my headquarters,” Nimitz said. “I assure you they went through my office, on into Washington. You’re doing a great job, just the kind I knew you’d do.”

The Admiral was soon busy pinning medals on officers and men who had gathered for the ceremony, and when it was over, Puller said goodbye and bumped down the road to his battalion.

The first week in November settled the fate of Guadalcanal and the Solomons. An even dozen big Japanese transports lay within striking distance, loaded with troops, and task forces gathered to escort them in. In the American perimeter, most of the American Division had arrived, as well as two regiments of big guns, 105’s and 155’s. The Eighth Marines were on the point of landing and the air force was growing—there were now five squadrons based at Henderson Field.

On November 3 Colonel Hanneken led his men across the Metapona River. He observed enemy ships landing troops and was almost cut off by a strong attack which forced him to retreat over the river to Koli Point. After hours of trying to reach headquarters with a faulty radio Hanneken got through a call for help. The force sent to extricate him was led by General W. H. Rupertus, the officer who had persuaded Puller to go to Haiti so many years before. Rupertus took three battalions of infantry, some artillery and tanks. One of the infantry outfits was Puller’s 1/7.

The battalion joined Hanneken at the mouth of the Malimbiu River, crossed in landing craft, and with the aid of an Army battalion upstream Hanneken and Puller tried to surround the enemy. Puller pushed from the west against the enemy, Hanneken from the east, and the Army’s 2/164 from the south.

The country, as usual, was rugged and well screened and Japs were everywhere. At 6:00 A.M. on November 8 Puller’s men left the beach at the mouth of the Metapona River and on a front of about 600 yards moved toward an unnamed stream about 1500 yards away. They skirmished through the morning and at 2:00 P.M., without warning, enemy artillery and machine guns opened on the column from across the nameless river.

Puller was 300 to 400 yards behind the point of his column. The first salvo of Japanese fire burst just in front of him. For the first time in a combat career spanning twenty-three years, his luck ran out under enemy fire. He was blown from his feet by a spray of flying metal; shell fragments had torn his legs and lower body and he was bleeding freely.

The field telephone was carried by a Marine just in his rear.

“Call headquarters, old man,” Puller said.

“I can’t, sir. The wire’s been cut.”

The Colonel struggled unsteadily to his feet and tried to help the communications man repair the wire. As he stood an enemy sniper shot him twice through the flesh of his arm with small caliber bullets. He sank back to the ground.

Frank Sheppard was leading the column with a party of cooks who carried ammunition. The point halted when enemy fire came in and Sheppard instructed the cooks in operating the light machine guns, which he set up for them. A runner brought him word which he could not at first believe:

“The Old Man’s been hit. Bad.”

Sheppard soon reached the spot, which was still under fire. Bunky Davis, a brave corpsman, was darting about the clearing, hanging plasma bottles over the wounded and treating all he could find. None of the doctors had come up from the rear.

Puller nodded toward Davis: “I want that man recommended for a Silver Star.”

Sergeant Pennington had come up by now, and he helped Sheppard lift Puller into a poncho to get him off the ground and avoid tetanus infection.

Sheppard bent over Puller: “Are you able to stay here in command, sir?”

“Yes. Of course I am. I’ll be okay. I can’t leave these men.”

“May I call for artillery fire, if I can get the radio or phone working?”

“Yes, if you know how.”

Men shoveled out a foxhole for Puller and lowered him in the poncho. The telephone was placed in the hole with him and when the line was repaired he cradled the phone in one arm and talked with headquarters. Pennington listened as he discussed a mortar barrage across the river the next morning and the launching of a dawn attack.

Sheppard called in the artillery fire; shells soon burst in the thickets across the stream and the enemy was quiet for the rest of the evening.

Late in the night Puller realized that he could no longer walk and called Division headquarters.

“I find myself unable to proceed by leading my troops,” he said.

After a delay word came back: “Major John C. Weber will assume command of your battalion within a few hours. He is leaving the perimeter immediately.”

Weber arrived about 3:00 A.M.

Amphibious craft came into the river after daylight to pick up the battalion’s dead and wounded, but not until all others had been gathered would Puller consent to move.

A corpsman leaned over him with an evacuation tag, preparing to tie it to Puller’s uniform. The Colonel snarled: “Take that and tag a bottle with it. I can go under my own power. Go and help the men who need it.”

Pennington said, “Colonel, the boats are here, and are all loaded. They’re ready for you now.”

Puller got slowly to his feet. A doctor reached for his arm, but the Colonel wrenched away. “No, dammitall. Let me be. I can go.” He limped down the trail. He made it to the beach on foot, a distance of about a thousand yards, then crawled onto a landing craft and was taken down the shore to Kukum, in the perimeter. There was a long, painful jeep ride to the field hospital, which was no more than a canvas stretched overhead against the weather.

Mike Edson and Hank Adams saw him on the way back and stopped to ask if he needed help.

“Nothing to it,” Puller said. “Hell, these are just Band-Aid wounds.”

When the doctors examined him in the crude shelter they gave him drugs, and went to work. They dug out six of the smaller fragments of shell without using an anesthetic. It was a burst from a 77 millimeter which had felled him. When they reached a bigger wound in his thigh the medics halted.

“If this is coming out, Colonel, you’ll have to fly south tonight. Nothing this side of Australia can do the job. It’s for a real hospital.”

“How long would I be laid up?”

“Maybe a month, maybe only three weeks.”

“Wouldn’t it take care of itself—won’t tissue cover that chunk without having to operate?”

“Nobody knows. You can’t keep going forever with it embedded there.”

“Hell, when I was a boy in Virginia half the old men in the country carried around enough Yankee iron in their bodies to open junkyards. I can’t go to Australia while my men are fighting.”

The doctors shook their heads but did not insist. The Colonel went to bed for recuperation.

Frank Sheppard visited him when the battalion had come back from its latest adventure and together they composed Puller’s report on the action, a detailed account which ended: “Casualties inflicted on the enemy during this period are known to be more than twice our own. Our losses were twelve killed and twenty-seven wounded. Our total casualties to date are officers, fifty per cent, and enlisted men, twenty-three per cent; combined, twenty-five per cent.”

Dr. Smith passed one day and Puller yelled: “Hey, Smitty, let’s get together for a bridge game,” but both knew the old foursome was no more. Puller proudly showed the doctor a snapshot of his daughter which had recently arrived by mail. He seemed optimistic about the war, too. On the day after he was wounded there was news that the German Rommel, the Desert Fox, was in retreat after so many victorious months in the North African deserts.

Nearby, the tide also turned. Off Savo Island an inferior task force under Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan and Norman Scott gallantly assailed a big Japanese fleet, and though both were killed and six ships lost, the enemy was shot to pieces. The Jap losses were two cruisers and a destroyer sunk, five others burning and presumed sunk, and a crippled battleship which was finished by American torpedo planes the next day. Guadalcanal appeared to be safe, but Puller could see even from his confinement in the canvas shack that the First Marine Division was near the end of its usefulness.

By the time Puller was wounded the few surviving original officers were unsteady on their feet, ill with malaria, dengue fever or skin diseases. Regan Fuller had left at last, for after the fight at Koli Point he had weighed only one hundred and seven pounds; his evacuation tag read: Malaria and semi-starvation. He left the island ruefully, realizing that he was afraid to face Puller, because he had been evacuated. The feeling endured for years.

One day a new patient was placed in the cot next to Puller, just a foot away. The boy had come from the Fifth Marines, a shell shock case; he trembled and whimpered constantly, and babbled in the night. The Colonel made efforts to help him, but the boy was hostile. After the first few days Puller noticed that the young man no longer had tremors except when he knew he was being watched.

“There’s no such thing as shell shock or battle fatigue,” Puller said. “All in the mind. Until I got in this war, I never saw a bit of it. We fought all up and down Haiti and Nicaragua without it. You’ll be okay.”

After an air alert one day, when the boy had crouched in an underground shelter for a long time after the all clear sounded he returned to his cot, took from his billfold the photograph of a pretty girl and began to cry. Puller looked over his shoulder.

“Too bad you’ll never see her again,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Why, she’ll never look at you again after this. She wouldn’t spit on you.”

“She’ll never know. How could she hear?”

“Oh, she’ll find out. You ever see those big Wanted posters in the Post Offices? That’s what the Marine Corps does with its goof-offs. Your picture will go right up there. She’ll find out, all right.”

The boy reached under his cot and Puller tensed, thinking that he was after his pistol. The sobbing boy dragged out his pack and hurried from the tent. A medical corpsman soon entered.

“Colonel, you shouldn’t talk to a man like that. You brutalized him.”

“It’s just what he needed. You mind your business, old man.”

The doctor appeared the next morning at Puller’s cot, grinning. “Colonel, I told you that I’d send you back to your battalion within a week, but I’m going to recommend that you stay right here, instead. You could do more for the war effort. Did you know that corpsman of mine put you on report this morning?”

“No, and I don’t give a damn.”

“He reported you for roughing up that kid you sent out of here—but do you know what? I called the Fifth Marines, and damned if he isn’t back on duty, chin up and ready to go. Whatever you did was just the medicine for him.”

Puller later heard that the boy was decorated for bravery on the island.

On the last day of his eight-day stay in the field hospital Puller had a visitor from Washington, Lieutenant Colonel Russell P. Reeder, Jr., of the War Department’s General Staff, who had been sent out by General George C. Marshall to evaluate the fighting against Japan.

Reeder questioned Puller closely for an hour or more and took notes. These observations were later published in a classified booklet used as a guide in Pacific operations. Puller offered his criticisms with complete candor: “The staffs are twice as large as they should be. The regimental staff is too large. I have five staff officers in the battalion and I could get along with less.”

He also blasted some of his superiors: “Calling commanding officers from the front lines back to battalion and regimental command posts to ask, ‘How are things going?’ is awful.”

The booklet introduced Puller with a note: “Lieutenant Colonel Puller is being recommended by General Vandegrift for the Medal of Honor for leading his battalion, with seven holes in him, continually for twenty-four hours.” This did not develop, but the division commander, in addition to commending Puller’s battalion for its perimeter defense and putting in for a third Navy Cross for its commander, also wrote:

“I have known Lewis Puller since 1919. He was one of the best combat patrol officers I knew—just as he is an outstanding officer today. He did a wonderful job with his battalion on Guadalcanal, in every phase of the operation. I am as proud to have him as a friend as I was glad to have him as a Marine.”

Puller did not forget his men. Of the commanders on Guadalcanal he alone wrote letters to all wounded men from his outfit who had been evacuated to hospitals or home. Captain Zach Cox got one of these letters:

The officers and men of the First Battalion, Seventh Marises, recall with pride the part that you played in our successes against the enemy until you received your injury in action.

They employ this medium to express their appreciation for the part you played while you were here, wish you a speedy recovery and hope that when you return to further action, it will be in the same outfit.

They further assure you that until you return and thereafter until the enemy is destroyed, they will continue the fight with ever-increasing vigor and determination.

January 1, 1943, was warm and sunny and the loading went smoothly. The gear was all stowed and the last of the First Marine Division troops were going aboard. It was only then that their condition became apparent. Men who had fought for four months in the foulest climate in the Pacific and had been shelled, bombed, or shot at by snipers almost constantly between battles, seemed to collapse at the same moment. Scores were unable to climb the nets into the ships and had to be carried aboard. They had shocked expressions, with glazed, sunken eyes. For weeks most of them would be patients with malaria, dysentery, assorted fevers and fungus infections. Virtually every man in the Division had malaria by now.

Puller said: “It isn’t so much that they’re sick, or even worn out. It’s the reaction, from the discovery that they’re finally leaving this damned place, and yet, a lot of them grew into men here.”

The Division’s dead were 1242, and 2655 had been wounded; sickness was nearly total. No one could yet grasp the importance of the island fighting on the day of loading out: The longest of the Pacific island campaigns had been fought and the pattern of future victories had been set. The Japanese had paid a higher price here than they would pay again and had thrown in all at their disposal, ships, planes, men and machines. More than 50,000 men had been lost on the island or on ships trying to reach it. In Japan it was already known as the Island of Death. For more than a year Radio Tokyo was to call the First Marine Division the Guadalcanal Butchers.

Though the Division had covered itself with glory, it was the First Battalion, Seventh Marines, which led all the rest. Other outfits had been more highly publicized, but the Seventh Regiment had won thirty-seven medals and nineteen commendations, fifty-six in all. Of these, the First Battalion had forty-three—twenty-eight of the medals and all but four of the commendations. And 1/7 had 264 casualties of its own, 93 of them dead.

Puller spent the last day idly. After a swim that lasted most of the morning he saw a half-naked Marine barber cutting hair and had his skull shaved. After lunch he lay in the sun for an hour and fell asleep. Frank Sheppard shook him awake.

“Colonel, they want you to go to Henderson Field and see General Geiger. You’ve got orders to go to the States by the first transportation.”

“What’s it all about?”

“I don’t know, Colonel. The Division adjutant called, and he made sounds like he was in a hurry.”

Division headquarters knew nothing of the mysterious change in orders, but it was clear that he would not now join the Division in Australia while it refitted. He went in a jeep to the airfield, where General Geiger told him that he could take off for Noumea the next morning.

He left in the first light of January 2, with a long backward look at the dappled island where he had fought for so long, and then there was only the sea. He transferred to a commercial plane at Noumea and almost as soon as it was airborne he fell asleep. He was on his way home.