War Stories II (37 page)

SERGEANT MITCH PAIGE, USMC
Second Battle of Bloody Ridge, Guadalcanal
25 October 1942
2230 Hours Local

Every weapon that the Marines landed with on Guadalcanal in August 1942 was valuable, even if they were World War I surplus. Most had a 1903 Springfield five-round bolt-action rifle. But I felt that I probably had the best machine gun platoon in the Marine Corps.

Everyone in my platoon could take apart, field strip, and put together a water-cooled machine gun, a .30-caliber light machine gun, a 1903 Springfield rifle, and a 1911-model .45-caliber pistol.

By 25 October we had about 25,000 Marines, soldiers, and sailors on Guadalcanal. And the Japanese had about the same. On the island, these people were fighting for the little airstrip called Henderson Field. Every platoon leader was called down to Marine headquarters and the word I got was, “Sergeant Paige, this is all the ammo we have for your machine guns. And this is all the C-rations.”

We were on the west side of the Bloody Ridge perimeter, on a finger that sloped down into Japanese territory. Twenty-four hours a day something was going on somewhere along that perimeter. As we moved into position it was raining and we were under artillery fire. Major Connelley came to my platoon and said, “Mitch, I want you to take your machine gun platoon to the ridge up there.”

My platoon was sent to hold the high ground for the entire division. I told 'em, “Look, we're going to fight this thing till we whip every one of
them. There's nobody in the world that can beat this platoon. Nobody! You're the best machine gunners in the world.”

We had eight water-cooled and eight light machine guns. We had worked on them to where we'd built up the rate of fire from 550 rounds a minute to 1,300 rounds a minute.

This water-cooled machine gun sits on a fifty-one-pound steel tripod. Now the gun itself weighs forty-two pounds, plus seven pints of water. And each ammo belt is twenty-two pounds. This is a lot of weight.

Every one of our machine guns were 1917 or 1918 model A-1 machine guns. All of our light machine guns were .30-calibers and air-cooled. These were used as a backup weapon for the water-cooled guns.

You could stack fifteen sandbags on the water-cooled guns, and it would still vibrate a little bit.

Marines would crawl and control the day, and the Japanese would do everything they could to control the night. Every man knew he had to kill or be killed. The Japs were battle hardened. They'd been fighting in China for almost ten years. Many of them were Mongolians over six feet tall, and weighing over 200 pounds.

And I reminded my men, “They love to run bayonets through you first and then shoot you.”

I lined up my machine guns as quietly as I could and warned the men that they couldn't have anything rattling. “If there's anything rattling, you wrap it with something. Don't let 'em hear the machine guns, setting the gun on the tripod—nothing, you're going to have to be very quiet.”

I crawled from man to man and encouraged them. I told them, “Major Connelley says if there's going to be an attack, they're not going to attack G Company. You can expect an attack here.”

And I said, “When they come at our line, don't fire because if you fire too soon they'll pull back and wait, let you expend all your ammunition, and then charge when you run out. But when they start their attack, and they hit our line, they're committed. They're not going to turn around and run back.”

There was a Jap patrol right within twenty yards of us. We didn't want to give away the machine guns' position so we threw hand grenades.
We heard all this screaming and hollering and figured we got about eighteen or nineteen of 'em with the hand grenades.

I always carried a long line with me, rolled up in a bag. And I had some empty C-ration cans that were blackened in the fire. I tied 'em just ten feet in front of my whole line of guns. I put one empty .30-caliber cartridge in each one of 'em—as a noise-making trip wire. They'd have to go through me first to get to Henderson Field.

Suddenly flares lit up and we saw nothing but bayonets coming at us. They would scream “Banzai!” and “Blood for the Emperor!” It was horrible.

Meanwhile mortars are going off, and 105s that they were firing over us into the jungle. Soon, they were coming up, elbow to elbow. When we first heard those trip wire cans, I screamed out, “Fire, fire, fire! All machine guns fire!”

They hit my line and dove right into the guns and we just literally wiped out a whole batch of them, right there. They were scattered all over the place, and I was tripping over them. I recall vividly one of 'em impaling Sam Liepardt—ran a bayonet right through him—on their first banzai assault.

I had a .45-caliber pistol, which I fired until it was empty. As I threw it down, I saw this bayonet coming towards me, aimed for my neck. And all I had left was my K-bar [knife]. I reached for it and stuck my other hand out, and his bayonet went right through my hand, and just split everything—my finger and all. Everything happened so fast and he lost his balance. I did too, but I got my K-bar and put it in his left side.

So then I took off down the line, to see how the rest of the platoon was holding up. As I saw Liepardt, I knew he was dead. I ran over to the next gun just as Charlie Locke was killed by a Jap gunner who fired point-blank and hit him. Charlie was hit right in the front as this guy splattered him with his submachine gun. Blood was flying all over the place. I was just covered with blood, and I learned later that one of his bullets went through my pistol belt, and through my side, where it took a chunk out.

Men were trying to come up with ammunition, crawling up from George Company. Fox Company was taking casualties. I sent two men
back there to tell them, “Hold the line, but don't shoot straight ahead because you'll be killing us!”

Scarp and Pulawski from my platoon were both killed, and there were hundreds of enemy soldiers coming up and charging over the hill. You just couldn't kill them fast enough.

Gaston was down, and this Jap was whacking at him with his samurai sword. Gaston's a big Marine, about 210 pounds. With his foot that
wasn't
being whacked on, he kicked the Japanese under his chin, broke his neck, and killed him.

I was literally walking into some of these Japanese, and they were bumping into me. I thought they'd overrun us.

Our entire position would soon be isolated, and they could just knock off and annihilate the entire division. They stopped right on the crest of the hill, and began going down toward Connelley.

I grabbed a gun from George Company and it was just about the first good break of my day. I just sprayed that whole area, and all these guys never knew what hit them. The next morning, Connelley and I looked at them; they had holes in the back of their heads, in their backs, the soles of their feet, and every Japanese was dead.

I don't know how many attacks there were, it just seemed like it was constant. There was wave after wave. And we're fighting and shooting. I was running from gun to gun and the first thing I knew, nobody was on the guns. I was the only one alive on the guns.

And at that precise moment, up from the jungle, about ten yards away from the edge of our perimeter, I saw a place where somebody could crawl up and fire. If they got up that close, we could knock them off with either hand grenades or swing a gun over that way. But when I look again, there's a Japanese with a light machine gun there. He'd plunked his gun down to my left. I grabbed hold of one of our machine guns, and there was no ammunition in it. And this guy is sitting there, aiming at my head. He's ready to pull the trigger.

But when I looked down, somebody had brought some more ammo up so I reached down, picked up a belt of ammunition, and fed the 250 rounds into the gun. I pulled the cover down, pulled the cocking handle
twice to lock and load the gun. Then all I had to do was put my finger on the trigger.

But while I was loading, a Jap gunner has me in his sights from my left, and he's got me cold. Before I could swing my gun around he fired all thirty rounds from his light machine gun at me and missed. I could feel the warmth of the bullets going past. I immediately fired one burst, and he was gone.

I got ready to go down the hill and a guy jumps up, an officer. He had his revolver out, and I ran toward him, bouncing and running down the hill, firing. He and sixteen or seventeen guys came out of the
kuni
grass, and with one big burst, I just mowed them down. The officer, firing at me, hit my helmet twice. He threw his revolver down and reached for his samurai sword, and as he started to pull it out, I was on top of him. I gave him a burst, and later, I thought, “That's exactly what poor Charlie Locke got.”

The hand-to-hand combat lasted probably four or five hours. I looked around, and nobody was moving. And it was as quiet as a cemetery. All our machine guns were still hot—absolutely red hot and steaming. But they were still able to fire. They'd fired beautifully, with no stoppages.

No writer has ever written about it because nobody knows anything about it except my platoon, but we were the first and closest to the enemy, and we killed over 1,000 Japanese that night.

A few nights later I watched five Jap ships come in. They were going to land their troops right near my platoon on the beach, fourteen miles inside enemy territory.

They started down the beach but something had told me to put my machine guns on the beach, in an echelon, instead of lining up four guns. When they hit the surf, we were supposed to kill them all as they came ashore.

I told my platoon, “We're here, and we're going to hold this ground. I know our machine guns are going to work well. We've got the best weapons in the world.”

Meanwhile, “Chesty” Puller's outfit had 800 Marines on his line. Nimitz had sent us 1,400 men of the Army's 164th Infantry Division. They did a fabulous job.

When it was all over the colonel came through and said, “Sergeant Paige, you're now Lieutenant Paige.”