Guadalcanal Diary Read online

  When he got back to the main body of marines, Few found they were dug in for a fight. He dug in, too, using his helmet and hands, and there followed a long exchange of shooting.

  Several other Americans had been hit, notably Lieut. Cory, the interpreter, with a bullet in the stomach, and Capt. Ringer. The Japs were closing in for the kill when the sky began to grow light with a pre-dawn glow. Spaulding had earlier made a break for the beach, started to swim for Kukum. Arndt followed. And then Few, stripping down to his underclothes, made a dash for the water.

  “It was the end of the rest on the beach,” said Few. “The Japs closed in and hacked up our people. I could see swords flashing in the sun.”

  Few had to swim four and a half miles to reach Kukum, and there are sharks in that water, but he made it. When I talked to him only a few hours later, he did not seem physically tired at all.

  I went to Gen. Vandegrift’s headquarters, where a table, an unusual luxury on Guadalcanal, was available for typing. But it was difficult to do any work; there were three air-raid alarms, which kept us on the run, although no Japs materialized.

  Guadalcanal airport, I find, has turned out to be quite a prize. The runways, it is said at headquarters, are excellent. One huge runway is 3,778 feet long and 160 feet wide, and was surfaced with coral gravel and cement, except for a strip 197 feet long, when we arrived.

  Shelters for planes had also been set up by the Japs. And they had left behind five steamrollers, two tractors, a large cache of first-quality cement, and a system of electric lights running the length of the runway.

  Back at my tent tonight, I felt a loneliness which could not be gainsaid. Lieut. Cory and Dr. Pratt, both of whom are missing and believed dead on the last Matanikau excursion, bunked in this tent.

  The rest of us in the tent, Maj. Phipps, Capt. Narder (of Worcester, Mass., now a major) and Capt. Dickson (also of Worcester and also now a major) lay awake talking for some time, and that helped to allay the shock of worrying about and wondering if we had lost our friends.

  During the night I awoke and listened, and watched the segment of sky I could see through the tent door. There were flashes of white light, and distant rumblings, coming from the north. I heard the other men in the tent stirring. They too were watching the sky and listening. We lay a long time silently, and then Don Dickson (Maj. Donald L. Dickson of Worcester, Mass.) summed up our thoughts. “It’s only a storm,” he said. The rest of us had come to the same conclusion. We joked a little about our jittery nerves and went back to a fitful sleep.

  IV

  EXPEDITION TO MATANIKAU

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 14

  Enemy aircraft dropped their first bombs on Guadalcanal today. They had been over before, but this was the first time they actually attacked the island.

  The time was 12:15, and I was at Gen. Vandegrift’s headquarters, attempting to catch up with my writing, when an outpost phoned in to say the enemy had been spotted. There were eighteen bombers, coming in high.

  The air-raid alarm, a dilapidated dinner bell, jangled, and there was a general scurrying for protective foxholes. A few of us, however, went to a clearing to watch the excitement (which I later found to be very bad practice).

  In a few seconds, someone shouted, “There they are!” and pointed, and we all looked. Then I saw three of the Japs, silvery and beautiful in the high sky. They were so high that they looked like a slender white cloud moving slowly across the blue. But through my field glasses, I could see the silvery-white bodies quite distinctly: the thin wings, the two slim engine nacelles, the shimmering arcs of the propellers. I was surprised that enemy aircraft, flying overhead with the obvious intention of dropping high explosives upon us, could be so beautiful.

  Others said they could see fifteen more Jap bombers, but they were not visible to me at the moment. I watched, my glasses frozen on the flight of three planes, while they cruised slowly, leisurely over the airport.

  Suddenly, from directly in front of us, came a swift sequence of explosions, and, in an instantaneous reaction, we hit the deck. But it was one of our own anti-aircraft batteries which we had heard. They were firing fast now; we could see the flashes coming from the gun muzzles, hear the quick reports of the firing.

  Up in the blue in front of the three silvery planes, we saw puffs of gray smoke, like small clouds, popping into sudden existence. In some of them we could see a slight dash of bright orange. The shells were bursting. Then we heard the soft whoomp-whoomp-whoomp of the explosions, coming to us late over the long distance. And there were more reports from our guns, more little clouds in the sky, more soft whoomp sounds.

  But the anti-aircraft batteries were shooting too low. The planes cruised leisurely, and we saw their wings pass along and over the spreading clouds of the ack-ack bursts.

  Then we heard a closely spaced series of explosions, sharp and apparently quite near. The sounds were notably loud, and sharper than any I had heard before. And the ground shook under our feet. The Japs had dropped six bombs (which had fortunately fallen into the water) near Kukum. The planes swung in a slow circle with anti-aircraft bursting behind them, and disappeared into the sky to the south.

  Tonight at Col. Hunt’s command post we were sitting and talking in the dark, and it was peaceful and soothing to sit in close company and hear the voices close by, with only glowing cigarettes to mark the speakers, when the phone jangled. Lieut. John Wilson, one of the staff officers, said, “Oh oh, here we go,” as he picked up the phone, and his predilection for bad news was correct. The news was that five Jap destroyers had been sighted, standing in toward Guadalcanal shore.

  We decided that the long-expected Jap counter invasion was on the way. But since there was little we could do about it for the time being except wait for further reports, the talk swung to less serious matters. Don Dickson’s embryonic red beard, for instance; the raggedness of the foliage brought forth some disparaging remarks.

  I had imagined that in such a situation, the atmosphere would be more tense. But now it seemed perfectly natural to be joking about beards, while there was a Jap invasion in the offing.

  Then the phone rang again, and this time, there was good news. “The five Japanese destroyers have turned out to be four native sampans and a submarine,” Lieut. Wilson reported.

  The scare was over. But we did not sleep very soundly. The submarine, a Jap, of course, had been seen standing in toward shore, then submerged. Any time in the night, we knew he might come up and lob a few shells in our direction. As usual, we slept with our clothes on.

  The popping of sentry fire in the night did not disturb me. It was becoming more or less routine, like the sound of passing streetcars in the city.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 15

  This afternoon, again at 12:15, Jap two-engine bombers swung in over Guadalcanal. Again I could see three of them, as high as before, and again, anti-aircraft opened up and clouded part of the sky with bursts.

  The Japs’ bombs fell closer this time. There were two sticks of bombs, and they hit near the airport. There was no damage, and only one man was injured. He suffered a slight shrapnel wound in the back.

  But the real news came when a jeep dashed up to Gen. Vandegrift’s command post with a great burst of speed and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. The driver ran to the general and handed him a small red-and-white object. It was a red tassel with a red-and-white cloth streamer attached. It had been dropped, by a Jap plane, said the breathless driver and it contained a map giving directions to Nip troops on Guadalcanal. The enemy planes had also dropped supplies in parachutes, said the driver. Our men were setting out to retrieve some of the bundles, he said.

  The map, a mimeograph drawn on cheap paper, was most interesting. It showed the beach and the airport, with an arrow pointing inland to a spot marked in Japanese “broad place.” From “broad place,” where a cache of food was indicated, a dotted line ran to the airport. The line was marked “six kilometers.”

  Later in the afternoon two ma
rines brought in two of the packages of supplies which the Japanese had dropped from their planes today; also the news that there had been about fourteen dropped in all. Of these, our forces had recovered more than half.

  The packages, wicker containers with cushions on the bottom to break the impact of the landing, contained food and ammunition. There were cans of goulash, bags of biscuits, little boxes of Japanese candy, and .25 caliber ammunition, in clips. There were also more mimeographed sheets, obviously designed to cheer the desperate Japs on Guadalcanal. Capt. Moran (Capt. Sherwood F. Moran of Auburndale, Mass.), the ranking interpreter, made a hasty translation.

  One of the messages began, “The enemy before your eyes are collapsing”—which Gen. Vandegrift found an amusing bit of whimsy. And it went on: “Friendly troops: a landing party [marine naval brigade] relief is near,” which had a more ominous sound.

  Then: “We are convinced of help from heaven and divine grace. Respect yourself. By no means run away from the encampment. We too will stick to it.”

  Another enclosure for the benefit of Jap morale was headed: “Great East Asia Newspaper, Special Edition,” and it gave a highly colored report of supposed Jap naval successes in the Solomons:

  “On August 7th and following at the Solomon Islands, the Imperial Fleet inflicted losses upon the American and British combined forces.

  “Sunk: battleship (unknown type)—1; armored cruiser (Astoria type)—2; cruisers (unknown type)—at least 3; destroyers—at least 4; transports—at least 10.”

  The “newspaper” also listed as “defeated, crushed, smashed up,” two armored cruisers of the Minneapolis type, at least two destroyers and one transport. And it was claimed the Japs had shot down at least thirty-two fighter planes and nine “fighter bomber planes.” Total Jap losses were listed as seven planes and two cruisers, which we knew was a deliberate lie.

  This afternoon a great wave of “scuttlebutt” swept Gen. Vandegrift’s headquarters. The topic: a Japanese invasion force is on the way, may strike tonight.

  Everyone seemed busy preparing for the supposed invasion. At the general’s CP (command post), marines were busy digging extra foxholes. And in the evening troops marched to our treasured airport in a long column to take up defensive positions.

  Back at Col. Hunt’s CP, my billet, I found the staff officers engaged in hushed consultation. They too evidently expected a Japanese attack that evening.

  But the night was quiet, except for the usual shooting on our sentry lines. Despite the Jap message of encouragement, the Nip troops remaining on the island must be growing more and more hungry, more and more desperate. Increasing numbers of them are coming near our lines, possibly looking for food, and being shot or captured.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 16

  It was a quiet day, except for the sighting of one submarine off Lunga Point. The sub, lying beyond effective gun range, came in no closer.

  At 12:15, as we sat in Col. Hunt’s command post, we remarked over the fact that there had been no air-raid alarms all morning.

  “What happened to our little yellow playmates today?” mused Lieut. Wilson.

  “It’s early yet,” said Maj. Dickson. “I’ll give ’em till 12:30.” But 12:30 came and went, and hours after that, and there was no air raid, not even an alarm. We were mystified, but highly pleased.

  Col. Goettge, Dr. Pratt, Lieut. Cory, Capt. Ringer and the others who went on the ill-fated excursion to Matanikau have been given up for lost. But another trek into the village is being planned, and this time, the expedition will be in force and out for blood.

  This afternoon we were amused to hear a broadcast over the Jap propaganda station, saying that the United Nations’ Solomon Islands operations have been a failure; and that in fighting there the first division of marines, our choicest troops, said the Japs, had been wiped out, annihilated, and all our transports sunk. That was such a grotesque statement that it was funny.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 17

  At 8:30 this morning an outpost of one of our weapons companies called our command post to bring us another alarm. This time, seven unidentified ships had been spotted standing in to shore. “They are supposed to have disappeared behind Savo Island before identification could be made,” said Lieut. Wilson, passing on the report.

  Once again we thought that at last the Jap invasion attempt was on its way. But at 10:05 the phone rang again in our CP, and Wilson laughed as he told us: “The ships have turned out to be islands.”

  Living here amidst the constant threat of invasion, one cannot blame the lookouts for being over-zealous. The night-and-day strain is great, especially in view of the fact that we are still without air support—and, if the Japs only knew it, pretty much at the mercy of sea or air attack. But, fortunately, they either don’t know or are not yet ready to attack in any great force. We are hoping very hard that our planes will arrive before the Japs do.

  The nervous strain of the situation has already told on a very few of the marines, who, including one high-ranking officer, have developed hysteria psycho-neurosis. But except for these very few, our men are showing an exceptionally large amount of good humor amidst distressing surroundings.

  Lieut. Snell, whose strength gave out, temporarily, during our arduous second day’s march, has come back on the job as Col. Hunt’s aide. He is completely recovered from his paralytic stroke and seems in excellent health. He says he refused to be sent home.

  This morning there was a call from one of Col. Hunt’s headquarters. “Twelve more prisoners today?” said Snell, answering the phone. “Dead or alive?”

  Everywhere in our occupied area, prisoners are surrendering in increasing numbers. Most of them are desperately hungry, for, they say, they ran from their camps without stopping even to take food, on August 7th. Some of them have eaten nothing save a few cocoanuts in all the meantime.

  The air alert—at Col. Hunt’s CP sounded by a battered siren which rather whispers than screams—came at 10:40 this morning. But the enemy aircraft turned out to be only one plane, apparently an Aichi double-float seaplane, which did not drop any bombs, and did not come close to the airport or our positions.

  The visit has a rather ominous significance; it means that there must be at least one Jap cruiser somewhere in our vicinity, for the plane is obviously a cruiser type, and could not have reached us from the Jap land bases to the north.

  At the prison camp this afternoon I found that Capt. Mike Davidowitch (of New York City), chief of the Military Police, now has 203 Japs under his keep.

  Looking at the prisoners, who squatted inside a barbed-wire rectangle like animals on exhibit, brought mixed feelings. One could not but feel at least a trace of sympathy for the group of labor troops, a meek-looking, puny lot, most of them well under five feet in height and physically constructed like children. After all, most of them had been conscripted into service, and had always been unarmed.

  But the military prisoners, Japanese naval troops, were different. They were a surly-looking, glowering group, and by no means puny. They were cooped up in a little barbed-wire pen of their own, since they had refused to mix with the laborers. We stared at them and they stared back at us. There was no doubt as to what either we or they would have liked to do at that moment—if we had not remembered our code of civilization or if they had not been unarmed.

  Capt. Davidowitch told us the Jap laborers seemed to be happy about the kind treatment given them in this American prison camp. They thrived on American food.

  Back at Gen. Vandegrift’s headquarters, we found a tall, sturdy blond man joking with the staff officers. He wore the traditional shorts and short-sleeve shirt of the Britisher, and red shoulder marks, the badge of some kind of colonial authority.

  He was W. F. Martin Clemens, the British commissioner for Guadalcanal, and he had just come into camp after three months in the bush. He had stayed there during the entire Jap occupation.

  Clemens had come into our camp without shoes, and, as he said quite casually, “I had a few
tins of food left.” He did not say, but it was perfectly obvious, that our arrival had saved him from a difficult spot.

  Clemens had retired to the hills a week after the Coral Sea battle began on May 5th, when the Japs had moved into Guadalcanal. Several times the Japs had nearly found him. Once they had started out with a native guide up the road which led to Vuchikoro, his temporary headquarters. But the guide had turned the Japs off the track, saying in effect, “That very bad road” and leading them up another trail.

  Once he had been swimming in a small stream when a Jap plane had flown over low. But by the time the Jap circled and came back to investigate the splashing, Clemens, in the nude, had retired to the safety of the woods.

  When the time came for our invasion of the Solomons, the commissioner had emerged from the bush to a ridge 2,000 feet high to “watch the show,” he said. From that time on, he had been working his way through the jungle to our camp.

  I reached Col. Hunt’s CP in the late afternoon, to find the colonel at the center of a rather grim group of officers. They were laying plans for a large excursion into Matanikau, and it was easy to see that they are intent on mopping up the Japs in the village this time. The attack will come off day after tomorrow. The plan is to box in the town from three sides: one company of troops, under Capt. Spurlock (Capt. Lyman D. Spurlock of Lincoln, Neb.) will set out tomorrow morning, cut through the jungles to the rear of Matanikau and work into position for an assault from the land side; another company led by Capt. Hawkins will advance along the shore toward Matanikau from Kukum, bivouac overnight, and be in position to strike from the east when the attack begins; while a third group of troops, under Capt. Bert W. Hardy (of Toledo, Ohio), will make a landing from boats far to the west of Matanikau, beyond the next western-most village of Kokumbona, and attack Matanikau from the west along the shore.

  Capt. Hawkins’ troops will leave Kukum at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. I asked him if I might accompany his outfit. “Sure,” he said, “come right along.”