The Pacific (17 page)

Without targets, the job of supporting the marine attack seemed over. The fighters had shot down thirteen enemy planes. Of the six pilots missing, three had been recovered. The Wildcat pilots had a lot of experience with the Zeros to discuss. The senior officers spent a lot of time discussing the problems of air support and of devising ways to improve communication with troops. They knew they could reduce marine casualties and speed up the seizure of objectives. Colored panels and/or smoke bombs to signal targets were suggested, as was "the issue and use of 'walkie-talkie' sets like those supplied to civil police forces in the United States for radio communications."
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By nightfall all three carriers steamed south, exiting the area quickly. After two days of combat, the admiral in command assumed enemy submarines would arrive at any moment. The aircrews and ground crews welcomed the respite, but it begged the question: Who was going to guard the troop transports from all those enemy airplanes?

ANOTHER DAY'S FORCED MARCH THROUGH TOUGH TERRAIN BROUGHT THE 2/1 TO A grassy knoll. Was it "the" grassy knoll, the objective they were supposed to reach the day before? Deacon thought so. Sid knew it was not, knew something was wrong with the plans, and knew that every marine in the 2/1 had run out of water and was dying of thirst. Water carriers arrived at last, but there was not enough chow. They dug in. The word was that the carrier pilots had shot down nineteen enemy aircraft. One of them had crashed into
Elliott
. Somewhere in the channel of water visible from their vantage point, their ship and all of their gear had gone up in flames. After setting up a perimeter defense, they received the password "Lucky Strike." When it got dark, the smoking lamp went out and the rain began to fall. Hours later, the ships offshore began to fire. Had it not been for the reports carrying over to him, like the deep angry rumble of thunder, Sid might have thought he was watching "lightning bugs moving around." The arcs of light sometimes ended in a large explosion. Everybody cheered the U.S. Navy. Flares dropped over the scene and searchlights swept it. A plane came over and dropped a flare over the 2/1.

First thing in the morning came the announcement, "We're going back to the beach." The 2/1 trekked downhill without breakfast, lunch, or water. Eight men of the more than forty in the platoon fell out of ranks, exhausted. In the midafternoon, the battalion reached the airfield and, beyond it a half mile, the village of Kukum and finally the beach. No ships swung at anchor in the channel. The fleet had departed. The naval battle they had witnessed was the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) sinking four of the big cruisers. Most of the swabbies who had served on
Elliott
had made it ashore. All were shaken, some burned, and a few had been killed.

Sid and the others cheered. "We won't ever have to ride in that rusty old bastard again." Nor could they resist the chance to wonder aloud, "Where's the navy? Don't we have a navy?" Rations were distributed, but not enough to fill a belly for the evening. The ships had unloaded only about half their supplies before they departed. The members of #4 gun squad started eating coconuts, and Deacon pulled out his last package of fig bars. After dark, another unit started firing at the 2/1, but they shouted the password "Yellow!" enough times to stop it before anyone was hit.

MIKE AWAKENED TO FIND THE NEWS OF THE NAVY'S DEFEAT JUST OFF THE COAST of Guadalcanal on everybody's lips. Unlike the disaster at Pearl Harbor, the cruisers of the navy and the Royal Australian Navy had been beaten in a fight. Along with the four cruisers sunk, a fifth, USS
Chicago
, had been mauled near Savo Island. Instead of the carriers sailing north to even the score, however, the amphibious fleet was coming south toward them. In the ready room, Ray Davis told his men that the Japanese were expected to send landing forces to retake the airfield. The top brass assumed a carrier task force would accompany the enemy's invasion force.
Enterprise, Wasp
, and
Saratoga
would stay close enough to be ready to help as needed, but far enough out to make a counterattack difficult. The ambitious schedule of ASW and scouting missions would continue. The fleet remained on high alert. Dauntless scouts found and strafed an enemy submarine two days later.
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SOME OF THE CONFUSION SORTED ITSELF OUT ON THE FIRST FULL DAY NEAR THE airfield. The two regiments of marines began to divide up the duty of securing their hold on this large flat area, mostly open with high brush called kunai grass. The enemy counterattack was expected to come across the beach near Kukum, so rifle pits and machine gunners began to dig in there. The 81mm mortar platoon dug their positions a thousand yards or so back from the beach, so it would be in their range. Planting the base plate and connecting the tube and bipod meant not having to carry them, which was good, but now the digging began. The work did not prevent Sid, Deacon, W.O., and the others from shooting one of the cows meandering in the plain. Deacon guessed it weighed four hundred pounds as he dressed it out. They also fired at the three big enemy bombers that flew overhead about three p.m., but no one got a hit. While Deacon prepared the barbecue, the rest went scavenging among the building near the airport and in the village of Kukum. Sid cut insignia off of uniforms and pocketed two officers' belt buckles. He noticed something about the enemy's recent bivouac. " The whole camp smelled like Colgate tooth powder."

Two more air strikes hit them that day. Sid could not stop himself from watching them. Deacon counted twenty-three in one flight. With the falling bombs came word that Japanese ships were on the way. That night, a lot of marines fired at trees and bushes while others yelled the password "Malaria!" The sergeant of #4 gun squad, Karp, got so scared he could hardly move. He wasn't the only one around who looked "lumber-legged."

After a difficult night, the squad relieved their hunger and their stress by going hunting and looting again. Everybody was doing it. They decided to kill another cow that day and kill the pigs they saw later. The enemy's supply dumps and buildings yielded all sorts of interesting military souvenirs, as well as more practical items like bedrolls, cigarettes, liquor, and canned rations. The #4 gun squad stole enough food to last three days. This came in handy, as the word came that the division only had enough rations for five days. On the roads and paths connecting Kukum to the airfield, marines drove around in captured vehicles. Sid roared with laughter at the sight of one grinning marine driving a Japanese steamroller, feigning a carefree indifference, smoking a cigarette. He had painted "Under New Management" on the side.

The air raids continued to arrive a few times a day. When the Zeros came down low to strafe, Sid pulled his .45 pistol and returned fire. One night two submarines surfaced just offshore and shelled the area for half an hour. With all the flying shrapnel, the marines decided to dig their foxholes, bomb shelters, and mortar pits deeper into the dark rich soil. Working parties brought supplies back from Red Beach, where the landing had taken place, using captured IJA trucks. Other marines dug large supply and ammo dumps around the airfield. The marines' 90mm AA guns, emplaced around the airfield at last, began to return fire. The enemy's bombers flew higher. Marines on patrols began to exchange gunfire with the enemy in the jungle.

The #4 gun squad took its turn on guard the night of the sixteenth, when they patrolled along the Tenaru River in "the densest jungle ever." Sometime after midnight, Deacon thought he heard "japs signaling with their coconut shells." He whirled around and pulled the trigger on his BAR, snapping off five rounds at an ambusher. They heard someone jump into the river, then grenades started going off. Sid and the guys spent the rest of the night standing guard, unable to see, "in terror of being bayoneted." In the morning they rewarded themselves with a breakfast of tomatoes, corn, fried potatoes, jam quiche, butter and crackers, and great coffee. They had to enjoy it while it lasted, because the battalion HQ had placed guards around the captured stores. All men would now receive their share of food at the battalion mess. The #4 gun squad knew that meant they would surely starve.

In between the air raids, and the sickening terror they brought, and the working parties, the squad occasionally got a chance to swim in the warm ocean and throw coconuts at one another. The grueling pace allowed few such moments. A patrol on the eighteenth wiped out a reconnaissance patrol of eighteen Japanese officers and men. Well equipped, they were obviously scouts of a larger force that had just landed.
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Another patrol brought H Company to the remains of marines whose bodies had been savaged and desecrated by the Japanese. The horror underlined a fact that the enemy had made clear several times already: no prisoners, no rules, no mercy. Hearing about other patrols, however, had made less of an impression than seeing it up close.

The sound of aircraft engines on August 20 turned out to bring joy, not pain. Two squadrons of U.S. planes circled the airfield and landed. These planes had the initials USMC on their sides, much to the delight of all hands. Bataan had never had reinforcements like these. On Guadalcanal, though, the news was never all good.

On the same day the mortar section moved closer to the Tenaru because an attack was expected. The #4 guns ran in a row parallel to the ocean, still well back from the river, and the crew of #4 spent the afternoon digging a new pit and getting the weapon sited. The move did not mean Sid and Deacon had to abandon their "honey" of a bomb shelter, which they had constructed of logs and strung with netting to be both bombproof and mosquito-proof. The mortarmen spent their time in one of three locations: their mortar pit, which had some foxholes around it; their camp, where they slept aboveground; and their bomb shelter belowground, into which they ran when they were shelled by ships or bombed by planes. No one from the squad was at camp that night, however, since Benson had alerted everyone for night action. As had become usual, many men from the mortar squad manned their rifles in foxholes along the river, buttressing the rifle companies. This night Sid, Deacon, and two others manned the mortar pit. As usual, two men slept in the pit while the other two stood watch.

At about three a.m. heavy artillery fire and MG and rifle fire woke Sid and Deacon. The hammering of weapons firing was sustained and concentrated at the intersection of the beach and the river on their right. This was not some jittery guy firing at iguanas in the bush. The foursome jumped up to prepare to fire the mortar. They made sure their rifle or pistol was handy, too. Behind them the 75mm cannons shelled the area across the river. It seemed like hours passed as real combat was waged close by. Word came for #3 and #4 guns to move up. The squad broke down the 81mm and moved up to within a hundred yards of the river, right into the battle, stumbling and cursing in the semidarkness. The machine gunners and the riflemen lined the bank, hammering away. At the point where the river met the sea, where a sand spit made it easy to ford, the 37mm cannons methodically pumped rounds. Dawn had broken when they set up the guns and, during a pause, they heard men cheer, "Hurrah, here comes the 81s."

The #4 gun opened fire as soon as they could see the bubbles in their sights. Deacon had them fire their HE (high explosive) shells in a zone pattern on the other side of the river. The short range made for a high sharp arc before they burst amid the coconut plantation. Around Sid and Deacon, the ammo carriers broke down the cloverleaf shell containers, then opened the waterproof shell case and handed a round to the assistant gunner, Sid, who tore off excess increments and dropped the shell down the tube. W.O. cleaned up the excess increments (the small packs of gunpowder that propelled the shell) before they were ignited accidentally. The team got into a rhythm, not holding back. Their shells' launch could not be heard over the cannonading. The rending crash of their HEs' explosions marched among the rows of coconut trees, evil in its power. A few hours later, a heavy volume of fire cut into the line of marines. The enemy's mortars had found their range. Near Sid's position, a sliver of shrapnel sliced off a man's head. Another shell landed in a foxhole with four men. The smell of burned flesh and of sweet blood mixed with the cordite. The fusillade drove Sid and Deacon and others back from their guns.

The team returned to the mortar amid the pieces of bodies. They began blasting away again, starting at one position and moving left or right. The riflemen and the machine gunners began waiting while the HE marched across the battlefield. The approaching blasts drove the remaining enemy from his cover and they would fire at the targets. The sense of urgency began to wane. Colonel Pollack, the CO of the 2/1, came over and directed them to fire at an amtrac that had been abandoned in the river. A Japanese machine gunner was using it for cover. It took a few rounds before #4 gun squad dropped a round into the amtrac. A cheer went up. Late in the afternoon, word came to cease fire.

Standing next to #4 mortar and awaiting orders, Sid saw the horror of war up close in the sudden quiet. The corpsmen finished removing the wounded and started removing the bits and pieces of bodies. Beyond the marine line and to the left, on the point of the sand spit, the bodies of the enemy lay piled two and three deep. "The whole earth to our left flank," Deacon wrote in his journal, "was totally black with dead japs. The mouth of the Tenaru is nothing but a mass of bodies."

A few survivors tried to get away by swimming out to sea, but "our men picked them off like eating candy." Others lay amid the pile, waiting only for a marine to get close enough for the chance to kill him with a grenade. One of those explosions taught every man to shoot into each body or else jab a bayonet to make certain all were dead. It was easy to tell which ones needed another bullet, since so many of the enemy had been torn into pieces. They had run right into the hail of bullets and canister shot of the 37mm, which sprayed lead pellets like a giant shotgun, scything down men by the squad.