Guadalcanal Diary Page 5

  I walked among the troops gathered on the forward deck, and found them silent and nervous—a contrast to the gaiety and song which had filled the few preceding days. There did not seem to be much to say, although a few lads came up with the inevitable, “Well, this is it.”

  The first of our marines clambered over the rail and swung down the rope nets into the boats. The boats pulled away and more came up, and the seeping waterfall of marines continued to slide over the side.

  I got word that it was time for me to debark. I took one last look around the ship. Toward Guadalcanal shore, I could see the cruisers still pasting shells into the landscape. On the point of land (Kukum) where the bombardment had set afire a fuel dump, there was a new fire now: two columns of smoke instead of one. From Tulagi-way, across the bay, one could hear the sounds of heavy cannonading. The landing must be going ahead there.

  It was just eight o’clock when I hit the deck of the bobbing landing boat. Col. Hunt and his staff officers were already aboard. This was to be a “free” boat; the colonel could take it ashore at any time he pleased. He might go in after the first landing wave, and, at any rate, we would not be later than the fifth wave.

  At 8:06, a covering screen of fighter planes appeared and flew low over the fleet of transports. They shuttled back and forth overhead, weaving a protective net in the sky.

  For a long time our landing boat circled astern of our ship, while we sat on the bottom, keeping our heads below the gunwale in the approved fashion.

  At 8:34, the Navy coxswain swung our boat around and we headed for the shore. We were moving slowly, however, throttled back.

  Kneeling so that I could look over the gunwale, I saw that our warships close to Guadalcanal shore had ceased firing for the time being, though from the north, Tulagi-way, came the sound of heavy cannonading.

  At 9:02 our boat was moving toward the beach at full throttle when the line of cruisers and destroyers ahead of us began a terrific bombardment of the shore. This, we knew, was the “softener” which would, we hoped, sweep the beach clean of any Japanese machine-gun or artillery emplacements, and make our landing easier.

  Scores of naval guns blasted simultaneously into the shore. The din of their firing was intense. Sheets of yellow flame welled from the gun barrels up and down the line, and along the beach a line of blue and black geysers leaped up where the shells were striking.

  At 9:05 the intense bombardment on the shore was ending. A haze of dirty black smoke hung over the edge of the land. And we were heading straight for it.

  We followed, not too distantly, the first wave of landing boats, which we could see as an irregular line of moving white spots against the blue water, each spot dotted at the center with black. The white spots, we knew, were foam; the black, the boats themselves, making maximum speed toward shore.

  We could not see the boats strike shore; but signals rose ahead of us on the beach. The colonel turned to the rest of us in the boat and smiled. The agreed signal for a successful landing. A signalman stood on our motor hatch and wig-wagged the good news back to our mother ship.

  It was quickly acknowledged.

  The fact of a successful landing, however, did not mean that our effort to take the beach-head would be unopposed. We ducked well below the level of the gunwales as we reached a fixed line of departure, a certain number of yards from shore, and forged ahead.

  At 9:28 we passed the boats of the first wave, coming out from the beach to the ships to get another load of troops. We poked our heads up to see that they showed no signs of having been damaged by enemy fire. We gathered a little more courage now and raised our heads to see what was happening. Lieut. Cory, squatting next to me, shouted to me over the rumble of the motor that perhaps there were no Japs. Still, it seemed that this would be too good to be true. Perhaps the Japs were merely drawing us into a trap.

  At 9:40 we were close enough to land to see isolated palm trees projecting above the shore—sign that we were coming close to whatever trap the enemy might have prepared.

  In our boat there was no talking, despite the excitement of the moment. The motor was making too much noise, at any rate. We sat and looked at each other, and occasionally peeped over the side to glimpse other boats plunging shoreward in showers of spray around us, or to cock an eye at the strangely silent beach.

  At 9:47 we were close enough to the shore to see a long line of our landing boats drawn up on the dun-colored sand, close enough to see a wallowing tank moving along the shoreline, tossing plumes of spray before and behind. We could make out throngs of our troops moving on the beach amongst a line of thatched roof huts. We then became very courageous, since it was apparent that there were no enemy troops in the vicinity.

  At 9:50, with a jolt, our boat grounded on the dun-colored sand. Our debarkation was leisurely. I jumped carefully from the bow and got only one foot wet, and that slightly; hardly the hell-for-leather leap and dash through the surf, with accompaniment of rattling machine guns, which I had expected.

  From down the beach, a jeep, evidently the first ashore, came past us. There was noise, and motion, everywhere, as more troops leaped from beached landing boats, and working parties struggled to unload bigger barges coming in with machinery, equipment, supplies.

  A group of five fighter planes zoomed close overhead. A tractor was being hauled from a tank lighter. I saw two marines setting up a small generator between two bamboo huts which had been knocked silly by the shellfire. The generator would run a radio.

  One shattered thatch hut had already been occupied as headquarters for a company of Marine Pioneers. Evidence of civilization is the oilcloth sign they have posted outside their headquarters—with the green lettering “Shore Party CP—A Co.” Pioneers were busy straightening out the interior of the shack. It was a peaceful scene.

  But just behind the strip of sandy beach, heading inland, I found a much less secure atmosphere. Scattered through the cocoanut grove I could see marines crouching behind trees, with their rifles at the ready. From the jungly woods to the south came the occasional crack of a rifle. Groups of marines, their faces muddied and sprigs of bushes fastened to their hats for camouflage effect, were forming up in patrols. “I want you guys to watch every tree,” said a top sergeant, giving his platoon instructions.

  I attempted to discover if any opposition had been encountered. “I heard machine-gun firing when I came in,” said one marine, “but I don’t know whether it was ours or the Japs’.”

  “There’s a little firing in there,” said another marine, motioning toward the jungle. “Looks like the Japs’ll take to the hills. Another Nicaragua. They’ll be in here alive next month, fighting in the jungles.”

  At 10:20 a procession of jeeps towing carts of shells moved through the cocoanut trees and out toward our forward positions. The procession was a reminder that deep inland our troops might at that moment be tangling with the Japs.

  But there were no sounds of cannonading coming from inland. Only from the direction of Tulagi, twenty miles to the north, could we hear the boom of distant cannon fire.

  Back on the beach the activity of peaceful unloading continued. The sand was now torn and rutted by constant traffic of jeeps and tractors. Our first tank was being pulled from a lighter. Anti-aircraft guns were being rolled out and set up on the beach, their barrels pointing seaward.

  A medical-aid station had been set up on the sand, under a Red Cross banner. The attending medico, Dr. C. Douglas Hoyt, said that there had been no casualties so far—except for a lad who cut his palm with a machete while trying to open a cocoanut. That was cheerful news.

  By this time, fast-moving Col. Hunt had evaporated from the beach, taking his staff with him. I set out to overtake him, using his command post telephone lines—which it seemed had sprung through the conquered terrain almost instantaneously—as a guide.

  I passed through the coastal belt of cocoanut palms, then through a beaten path cutting through a field of shoulder-high parched grass, and then i
nto the thick, shadowy jungle, where, fortunately, a trail had been cut.

  The Ilu River, which had sounded so sinister and impassable in the memorandum passed about on board ship, was disappointing. It was a muddy, stagnant little creek, almost narrow enough to jump across.

  Beyond the stream, it was easy to make one’s way through the wet, smelly jungle, for the marines had cut a swath three or four feet wide—wide enough to allow passage for ammunition carts. The trail penetrated for miles into the jungle—the advance elements of marines were thousands of yards beyond that—and scarcely two hours had elapsed since our first wave hit the beach. What wonder workers these Americans are!

  I found Col. Hunt’s command post, as it was called, actually only an undistinguished part of the jungle, where communications men were busy installing field telephones. It was time for lunch. We squatted in the matting of soft, wet leaves and opened ration cans.

  Things were quite peaceful. The colonel said that apparently no resistance had been encountered by our landing party. If there were any Japs about, they had faded into the hills. Capt. Charles V. Hodgess, one of our Australian guides and the former owner of a cocoanut plantation on Guadalcanal, joked about the ease with which we had occupied Guadalcanal thus far. “I’m exhausted by the arduousness of landing against such heavy fire,” he said.

  After we had eaten, I worked my way back to the beach, to find the transports lying close in, swarms of hustling lighters still rushing back and forth. Half-ton trucks had been brought in and were moving up and down the beach already hauling stacks of crates—food, medical supplies, spare parts, ammunition.

  Some of the marines were still occupied with cracking cocoanuts along the beach. Others had gone in for a dip, to rest muscles wearied by four and a half hours of unloading.

  I went back to the jungle, headed for the colonel’s advance party—and missed the first Japanese air raid on the marines at Guadalcanal.

  At 1:30 I heard the quick, basso “whoomp, whoomp, whoomp” of anti-aircraft fire, and saw the sky fill with the dark-brown smudges of shellbursts. The sky was overcast, and there were no planes visible, but the droning of motors could be heard. It was evident that the Japs were after the transports and warships in the bay, for the anti-aircraft bursts were concentrated over that area. Trees then blocked my view of the ships; but I was to learn later in the day that they had not been hit.

  For a few minutes, the noise of plane motors grew louder, and then, amidst the steady drone, I heard the crescendo whine of a diving plane, followed by the unmistakable rattle of aircraft machine guns, probably one of our own fighter planes diving on the Japs.

  At about 1:40, the sound of anti-aircraft firing stopped. A few moments after that, a flight of eighteen of our fighter planes swung out of the overcast sky and swept across Tulagi Bay. Evidently the air raid was over.

  I caught up with the colonel’s party in the woods, and plowed steadily along with them through jungle trails until just before four o’clock we reached a pleasant cocoanut grove. We had just sat down to rest our bones when a terrific concentration of antiaircraft fire could be heard breaking, and again the bursts were visible in the sky.

  The command “Take cover” was passed, and we slid for the bush, wondering if the Japs would come in and strafe our troops. But this time, as the last, their target was evidently the ships. The antiaircraft fire this time lasted five minutes. We neither heard the bombs nor saw the planes. Then the raid was over. It had been as tame as our landing. (But I was later to find out that for the ships involved, the raid had been furious. Jap dive-bombers had attacked our warships, damaging one. Two of the attackers had been shot down by anti-aircraft fire.)

  At this juncture Dr. Pratt came up with our party. He said he had been talking to an eyewitness of the first air raid (at 1:30), and that this eyewitness had said that he saw two Jap planes shot down and their pilots descending in parachutes. But the “scuttlebutt” is being passed around among the men that there were as many as six Jap planes shot down in the first raid. (False: there were three shot down, two by our fighters, one by anti-aircraft.)

  We rested in the cocoanut grove for a few minutes before moving on. It was quite peaceful, despite the rifle shots that cracked in the woods about us. For it was now the general assumption amongst our group that there were no Japs in the vicinity.

  Sgt. William A. Davis (of Evansville, Ind.), an engineer, came up to tell me he believed he was the first marine to be shot at in the Guadalcanal campaign. He made a wrong turn somewhere and got out ahead of the advance troop elements, shortly after the landing. Two shots were fired at him, he said, and they came within a few inches.

  In the cocoanut grove, it was bizarre to see a marine pick up a telephone and hear him say “Operator” into the receiver. It seemed strange, too, to hear French horns, sounding exactly like those you might find on a fashionable roadster, tooting in the jungle. It happened they were attached to the tanks.

  “I’ll be right out,” said a marine after one such toot; as if his girl were waiting outside with the top down.

  There was an end even to this amusement. We had to get up and march again for miles through the jungle, through cocoanut groves, across boggy streams and over steep little hills.

  At 4:30 we came out of the trees to an open field of tall grass. Two marines stood at the edge of the field. They had their .45 automatics in their hands, and seemed a little nervous. One of them approached the colonel.

  “We found fresh chopped trees, which looked like they’d been cut about an hour ago, sir,” he said. “We think it was a Japanese gun emplacement.”

  But half an hour later, after some more painful trudging under heavy packs, we had not seen any signs of the enemy. We halted, then, in a grove of tall, slender, white cocoanut palms—which must have been beautiful when it was well kept. Now there are piles of decaying palm fronds and aged, rotting cocoanuts on the ground; but we settled down to rest without a murmur of complaint. Anything would look like home after the day’s hiking.

  We had a canned ration supper, and since there was no water, many of the lads busied themselves with knocking down green cocoanuts from the trees, and cutting them open for milk. Some of the marines had already learned the art of rapid cocoanut-cracking. One such was P.F.C. Albert Tardiff (Albert C. Tardiff of Newark, N.J.), who opened one for me in two minutes flat.

  Bedding down for the night under the tall palms and a panoply of soft stars would have been a beautiful experience, except for bugs, mosquitoes and thirst—which unfortunately were all too present.

  With the coming of the dark, the mackaws began to squeal in the tree-tops, and rifle shots became more numerous. The sentries were jittery on this their first night on the island. I awoke from time to time to hear the call of “Halt!” followed almost immediately by volleys of gunfire.

  Once, near midnight, I woke to hear a sub-machine gun cracking very near the grove. Then a rifle barked. Then another. And soon, five or six guns were firing simultaneously, and the bright white tracer bullets were zipping in several directions over the grove where we slept. Some of the slugs whined through the trees close by. And then the firing fell off, and died, and we went back to sleep again.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 8

  A runner came back from our foremost elements this morning to report that the airport, prize of the Guadalcanal invasion, has been reached and that, as yet, no contact has been made with the enemy.

  But one of our sentries, who had a post last night at the outskirts of our cocoanut grove, said that, at just about daybreak, a patrol of about 150 Japs passed close by our bivouac and then took off into the bush.

  Col. Hunt pointed up the morale. “This is no picnic,” he said, obviously concerned over the fact that we have had an easy time of the campaign thus far. “We’ve got to be careful.”

  The colonel was in exuberant good spirits this morning, probably, I guessed, because he had found that he could undergo the rigors of an all-day hike and feel sturdy the n
ext morning—as he had a quarter of a century ago in the First World War.

  The colonel set his helmet on the ground, sat himself down on it, and unfolded a map, while his staff, gathered around for the day’s orders, watched.

  “I’ll tell you what I know and then you’ll know as much as I do,” he said. He pointed a big finger to a spot on the map. “Here’s where we are,” he said. “We’ve got to work down there and get to the Tenaru. Probably we’ll wade around the mouth of the river.” He went into the details of our plans.

  The colonel passed along the good news that operations on Tulagi and Gavutu, across the bay, were going well. Tulagi, assaulted by the Raiders, was “O.K.” despite heavy resistance, he said. The troops, attacking the neighboring island of Gavutu, had “taken their first objective and the rest is in the bag.”

  The colonel folded up his map brusquely, as if he were snapping shut a book he had just finished. “Well,” he concluded, “there’s the set-up. Better get packed up and stand by to move on.” He stood up and clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, it looks like we might run into something this morning,” he said. “Are you ready for a fight? It looks as if business is picking up.” It was plain to see that he was lustily looking for a scrap.

  But we trudged along through the jungle for miles, reached and forded the river, passed through another cocoanut grove, scared up a herd of horses, and came out on the beach again—without seeing a single Jap.

  “I wish those f– – – – – – Japs would come out and fight,” one sweaty, dirty marine lamented, indulging in the marines’ favorite adjective for anything distasteful. “All they do is run into the jungle.”

  We passed through a little village of tin-roofed huts on the beach. The white-plastered walls had been holed and in some cases shattered by the naval gunfire. The roofs had been turned into sieves by flying H.E. (high explosive) fragments.