Guadalcanal Diary Page 6

  Evidently these huts had been used as barracks by the Jap troops, for there were signs bearing Japanese inscriptions hung on the walls. I took one to Lieut. Cory, the interpreter. “It says Unit No. 3,” he said, “in charge of so-and-so.”

  Sailors are amazingly efficient souvenir hunters. I saw some of them here with our advance units; they were busy collecting the Japanese signs.

  A tank rumbled past us as we plodded down the beach. On the rear of the tank, in large white letters, was painted the name “M. J. Bob.” Another passed, it carried the name “Edna.”

  I stopped to talk with Col. Frank B. Goettge, and he told me word had come that casualties—and fighting—had been heavy on Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo. There were still stubbornly resisting, isolated groups of Japs to be cleaned up on Tulagi, he said, and on Gavutu the marines had lost a lot of men. Estimates of casualties ran as high as 60 percent (later found to be much lower). The marines had had a particularly good deal of trouble in trying to get across the causeway between Gavutu and Tanambogo, he said. The causeway was only eight feet wide and seventy-five yards long, and it was swept by machine-gun fire.

  Col. Goettge suggested that probably the Japs would be in today to try another attack on the transports, which still lay close offshore, and so, when Col. Hunt’s people cut from the beach back into the jungle, I stayed behind on the shore—and saw one of the most awe-inspiring spectacles I have ever witnessed.

  It was just noon when the quick, paced whoomp-whoomp of anti-aircraft firing began and I could see black bursts plastering the whole dome of the sky over Tulagi. I could see the flash of gunfire coming from the gray shape of the Australian cruiser out in the bay. Then the other warships took it up, and the whoomping sounds came in overlapping clusters and volleys. Overhead, the canopy of anti-aircraft bursts was spreading thicker—and farther—over the sky.

  Then the thunder of the big anti-aircraft guns was augmented by the fierce rattling of smaller anti-aircraft guns, and the whole sound swelled in a quick diapason until it seemed to swarm into your ears. Suddenly I saw the first Jap, a long, flat-shaped plane moving in among the transports like some preying shark, skimming over the water below the level of the masts, and I thought “Torpedo plane!”

  Now I could see other Japs, the same flat, sinister shapes, prowling low over the water, darting among the transports. And there were black spouts of water rising amidst them: the splashes of bombs, or perhaps torpedoes being launched by the enemy aircraft.

  The ships were moving over the horizon now, racing for the narrow straits which led to the open sea—trying to get out before they were hit. But the splashes of bombs and torpedoes were coming more frequently, and closer.

  Our fighter planes dived into the foray. I saw one of them rout a Jap plane out of the fracas and chase it fiercely, with the Jap apparently in panicky flight toward the western tip of Guadalcanal. I heard the popping and rattling of the American’s machine guns, continuing for seconds on end, and suddenly the Jap began to trail smoke. Then fire came at the root of the smoke plume, and the plane, falling, traced a gorgeous, steadily brightening curve across the sky. I watched, fascinated, while the plane arched into the water, and the slow white fountain of a great splash rose behind it, and then the white turned into brilliant orange as the plane exploded and sent a sheet of flame backfiring a hundred feet into the sky.

  I turned my field glasses back to the transport fleet, in time to see a huge flash of fire, as red as blood, burst along the upper deck of one of the transports. Then a clump of sooty black smoke billowed out from the blood-red roots and towered up into the sky. The transport must have been hit directly. (I found out later that one of the Japs had crashed, apparently by accident, into the ship just aft of the bridge.)

  Almost simultaneously, three other columns of smoke rose just over the rim of the horizon. I surmised that other ships had been hit.

  The panorama of action stretched all the way from east to west. I had seen one Japanese plane fall in flames far to the left. Now, to the right, two others were falling in clouds of smoke.

  In the center of the picture the stricken transport was still burning. The red flames mounted into the smoke, spreading belches of fire high up into the cloud as an explosion evidently occurred.

  But suddenly the sky was empty of Jap planes. The awful storm of firing had stopped. The raid was over. I looked at my watch. It was 12:10.

  At 12:54, the transports had turned and were moving to their anchorage off our beach. But out in the middle of the bay, the badly hit ship was still burning, with her fires evidently out of control. (She was later abandoned and scuttled.)

  A marine, passing by, told me he had counted six of the Jap planes falling. (I found later that there had been forty Japanese planes attacking; that sixteen of these were shot down on the spot, and the remaining twenty-four destroyed by our fighters, one by one, as they streaked for home, after the raid. The Jap torpedo bombers had not gone after the warships, contenting themselves with merely strafing the transports as they passed by.)

  I started back inland, to catch up again with the marine forces making their way toward the airfield. At 1:30, I passed two marines bringing in the first Jap prisoners—the first enemy people I had seen close to.

  There were three of the Japs, walking in single file, while the marines, looking huge by comparison, shooed them along like pigeons.

  The Japs were a measly lot. None of them was more than five feet tall, and they were puny. Their skins were sallow. The first two in line had shaved heads and were bare from the waist downward; the marines had been diligent in their search for weapons.

  The third Jap had been allowed to keep his khaki-colored trousers. He wore a scraggly beard which made him look even more wretched, and on his head he had a visored cap of cheap cloth with a cloth anchor insignia.

  The Japs blinked their eyes like curious birds as they looked at me. The first in line gaped, a gold tooth very prominent in the center of his open mouth.

  The interpreter, Lieut. Cory, said he had just interviewed the Japs, and that they had told him they were members of a Navy labor battalion. They had been captured in a labor camp which lay just ahead.

  A few minutes later I caught up with the temporary command post in a grove of trees. Maj. (now Lieut. Col.) Bill Phipps (William I. Phipps of Omaha, Neb.) was riding a captured Jap bicycle up and down a track road which cut through the woods.

  The bike was apparently brand-new, a good-looking job much like the typical English bicycle, with hand brakes and narrow tires. This was the first of a great stock of booty we were to capture.

  “There are lots more like this down the road,” said Maj. Phipps. “And lots of other stuff, including trucks.”

  Capt. Ringer (Capt. Wilfred Ringer of Brookline, Mass.) was about to lead a party to the camp. I went with them.

  Down the road we passed a few more marines riding shiny Jap bicycles. One careened amongst a group of marching troops, narrowly missing several. “No brakes!” he shouted. But finally he discovered the mechanism for bringing the machine to a stop. An American was being educated in foreign ways.

  To one side of the road rested three Jap trucks, with fresh gray paint and apparently in first-class condition. They looked like the latest American models, but carried a Jap trademark.

  Across the road sat a Ford V8 sedan, camouflaged in green, and carrying the Jap Navy license plates with white anchor insignia—apparently an official’s car.

  When we entered the Japanese tent camp we knew why we had been able to sail into Tulagi Bay and under the Jap guns without being fired upon. The enemy had been caught completely unawares.

  In the first of the big tents—there were scores of them—we burst in upon a breakfast table left completely in medias res. It looked as if the Japs had left by the back door as we came in the front.

  Serving dishes, set in the middle of the table, were filled with meat stew, rice, and cooked prunes. Bowls and saucers around the edge were mo
stly half full of food. Chopsticks had been left propped on the edges of the dishes, or dropped in haste on the floor mat.

  In other tents we found more signs that the Japs had run in panicky surprise when our assault began. Shoes, mosquito nets, toilet articles, soap and other essentials had been left behind.

  Walking through the Jap tent camp, we could see the reason for their hasty withdrawal. Many of the tents had been ripped by H.E. fragments and some knocked flat; groups of cocoanut palms were shattered, their trunks rent and tops blown off by shellfire, and in one little grove we found two shell-blasted bodies, now well attended by flies. One body sat at the foot of a tree, eyes staring straight ahead. The left leg had been nipped off at the knee, and the lower part of the leg, with the shoe still on the foot, lay a few feet to one side.

  In another tent which was an infirmary, and completely stocked with drugs and surgical instruments, we found one emaciated patient sitting on his bed of matting. He told Lieut. Cory that he was suffering from malaria.

  As we walked on through Jap territory, that afternoon, we began to realize the huge quantities of booty we had fallen heir to. Passing by the airport, which was by now completely occupied by our troops, I saw rows of brand-new wooden barracks—so new that the Japs had not yet moved in.

  I climbed aboard a tank and rode to Lunga Point, and there found the largest Jap camp, and great quantities of equipment.

  We rode past a large gray frame-house which I was told contained a Jap electricity plant—ready for use; we passed through a grove where our shells had torn half the trees asunder, and came to a huge motor-transport dump, complete with repair shop. Here there were at least 100 Jap trucks, Nipponese versions of the Chevrolet.

  Beyond the truck dump we came to a great camp of tents, the largest we had yet seen, and at a beautiful bend in the river, the buildings which had evidently been the Jap headquarters. Here there were shacks which contained iron beds (most of the acres of surrounding tents had only board platforms topped with mats), handsome French telephone receivers, radios, riding boots standing in corners.

  The house which had evidently been occupied by the commanding officer was well stocked with luxuries such as big bottles of saki, small bottles of wine, a large radio set, and nearby stood a bathtub, crowning luxury on this hot tropical island.

  Along the road passing the Jap headquarters, a long line of our own trucks and jeeps, moving personnel and supplies forward, were passing; a captured Japanese car was one of the procession. On the other side of the road, in the Jap truck dump, marines were starting up the Nip vehicles, most of which, it seemed, were ready to go except for ignition keys.

  Few of our troops, evidently, had investigated one Jap house, with open sidewalls. I wandered in and found a large drafting table equipped with properly up-angled drawing boards in the center of the building, and a desk on a sort of porch at one end. Around the edge of the room were shelves filled with blueprints, drafting supplies, stocks of paper, record books. This had evidently been the headquarters office.

  One of the drafting boards had half-finished plans, drawn on tissue paper, pinned to it. The drafting pen lay across the center of the drawing, evidence of a helter-skelter withdrawal. Nearby a French phone lay beside its receiver—as if a conversation had been interrupted by our arrival.

  Around the headquarters buildings I saw great stores of food: stacks of crates filled with canned goods, cases of a soda pop labelled “Mitsubichampagne Cider,” and two varieties of Japanese beer. There were also large tins of hardtack and boxes of sweet biscuits.

  Some of the passers-by had already sampled the Jap canned goods. I saw that there were canned pears and peaches and pineapple, goulash, crabmeat, shredded fish and salmon, hardly the primitive diet on which the Japanese is traditionally supposed to subsist.

  I walked on down the road, seeking Col. Hunt’s command post, passed a Jap refrigeration plant, and came to a large warehouse full of food. Obligingly, the Nips had even left cooking kettles behind.

  Col. Hunt told me that he had encountered no Japs all day. But as the afternoon sky grew darker and evening came closer, the feeling that we might have walked into a trap grew more pressing. To gain all this booty without a struggle seemed too good to be true.

  At 4:32 in the afternoon we had our first alarm. We heard shots to our left and behind us, coming from deep in the woods. A few seconds passed in silence, and then, suddenly, I heard our men shouting loudly and violently, saw them running for cover, flopping down in the brush to face our left rear. I thought, “This is it! This is the trap! They’ve got us.” I could see in the faces of the men around me that they thought this was the fight for their lives which they had been expecting.

  But it was a false alarm. The colonel, afraid that in our nervousness we might fire on our own supporting troops coming up behind, walked boldly through our hasty skirmish lines and down into the woods whence the rifle shots had come.

  I followed, to find the cause of the alarm. Three Japs had bolted from one of the tents in the camp; possibly they had been caught there by our advance as they tried to get some food, and they had been shot. Two were dead. One lay on the ground, breathing hard. There was a small bloodstain on the back of his shirt, the color of wine. A corpsman ripped off the shirt. There was a hole about the size of a dime in the man’s back.

  “He won’t last,” said the colonel, looking at the wound. “That’s an internal hemmorhage.”

  Corpsmen came up with a stretcher and carried the wounded man away, and he was given medical treatment; but he died soon after.

  It was 6:15, and we were back at the command post, when one of our officers was brought in on a stretcher. It was Lieut. Snell, the colonel’s aide.

  Lieut. Snell was suffering from paralysis, although he could speak. A veteran of the World War and in his middle years, accustomed to office work, he had been overcome by heat and exertion. An officer told me that Snell had lost consciousness four times earlier that day, but kept the matter quiet and attempted to stay with our moving column.

  The colonel wanted to do something to cheer his aide. So he took Snell’s little pocket flag—an eight inch by twelve inch star-spangled banner which the lieutenant had carried with him in China and the Philippines—and had it hoisted on the bare flagpole at the Japanese headquarters. It was touching to see the little flag, proud but pitifully small, ride up the mast, to see Snell’s eyes watching it, and his mouth twisting and contorting as he tried to smile. (Later, Lieut. Snell recovered completely and rejoined the colonel.)

  In the evening I heard a story which Col. Hunt had modestly not told me: that he had led the “point” of our troops crossing the Lunga River.

  Usually, it is a private’s or corporal’s business to lead the point, the very forefront of an advance. But when the colonel reached the Lunga, and found our troops holding back there and anxiously eying the forbidding dark woods across the bridge, he had led the way. Behind him went his staff—including the chaplain, Father Reardon, who was unarmed.

  When we bedded down for the night, on the ground, I shared Father Reardon’s poncho. We pulled it as closely as possible around us, for the sky looked dark and rainy.

  We were awakened by gunfire at about eleven o’clock. “There’s something moving in the river,” somebody said. People all around us were shooting, with sub-machine guns, pistols, rifles. Again the tracer bullets made dazzling patterns in the dark. After ten minutes, the shooting stopped. If there had been any Japs in the river, they were certainly dead, or had retreated, by that time.

  III

  CONTACT

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 9

  A little after midnight this morning, the rain began to pour down on Guadalcanal. I withdrew myself from Padre Reardon’s poncho and sought refuge in one of the Jap tents. It was fairly well filled already with marines, but I found a place to lie down, and slept until about one o’clock, when men all round me began to stir and talk, and coming half awake, I heard the sound of a plane buzz
ing overhead.

  It did not sound like one of our planes. The motor had a ragged, high-toned sound. We all stopped talking and listened. “It’s a Jap,” somebody said.

  A few minutes later we had the proof. In the direction of the beach where we had landed, a greenish-white glow flickered in the sky. It was a flare. We stood in the drizzling rain, silently, and watched while the Jap cruised over Guadalcanal, dropping flares in several sectors of the sky. Was this the prelude to a Jap landing, we wondered. The plane came over us three times, and then we heard the sound of the motor growing fainter and fainter, until it had gone.

  I had just dropped off to sleep again, when again I woke to find people whispering, and this time to hear the brroom-brroom-brroom of cannonading coming from the sea, evidently quite close.

  It had stopped raining. We stood in a quiet group under the palms, listening and watching. The flashes of the gunfire were filling the sky, as bright and far spreading as heat lightning. And a few seconds after each flash, we could hear the booming of the guns that had caused it.

  The salvos of firing came with increased intensity, so that the sky was lighted by the quick flashes for minutes on end, and the rumbling of the firing had almost a continuous sound. Then, for a few moments, the flashes and the booming stopped; the sky was quiet, and then the cannonading began again, seeming louder, brighter and closer than before.

  We knew then that there was a sea fight going on. Possibly, it was the battle for Guadalcanal. Possibly, if our people out there lost the battle, the Japs would be ashore before morning, and we would have to fight for our lives. We knew the fate of all of us hung on that sea battle. In that moment I realized how much we must depend on ships even in our land operation. And in that moment I think most of us who were there watching the gunfire suddenly knew the awful feeling of being pitifully small, knew for a moment that we were only tiny particles caught up in the gigantic whirlpool of war. The terror and power and magnificence of man-made thunder and lightning made that point real. One had the feeling of being at the mercy of great accumulated forces far more powerful than anything human. We were only pawns in a battle of the gods, then, and we knew it.