Guadalcanal Diary Page 8

  Our patrols failed to contact any concentrations of Japs on Guadalcanal today. Lookouts along the shore reported seeing several Jap submarines; but there was no shelling of our shore positions, during the day or at night. The night’s sleep was undisturbed, extremely welcome.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12

  Down at the beach early this morning, and, after considerable delay, finally boarded the small fleet of three motorboats which was to take us to Tulagi. Two of the craft were the regulation type of landing boat. The third was a lighter, filled with drums of gasoline. For armament we had .30 caliber guns, on the landing boats, and .50 caliber on the lighter.

  As we set out in the glaring sun, Marine Gunner Banta (Sheffield M. Banta of Staten Island, N.Y.), in charge of our boat, warned our crew to keep an especially sharp lookout for airplanes. Also, he said, for submarines; but I could see that our crewmen spent most of their time anxiously watching the sky; that their principal worry was a strafing attack from the air, which turned out to be a mistake in judgment.

  Three times before we reached the middle of Tulagi Bay, Gunner Banta borrowed my field glasses to investigate an object in the sky. Twice, the objects were birds.

  The third time there had been an excited warning from Seaman John R. Tull (of Wachapreague, Va.), who manned one of our machine guns. Gunner Banta took the field glasses and focused them nervously.

  “It’s a plane,” he shouted. And our machine guns swung around and angled toward the sector of the sky where he had been looking.

  Then, suddenly, we could all see the plane. It was coming straight for us. I suppose in that moment we all realized how helpless is a small boat under the attack of a well-armed aircraft. One felt suddenly very much alone, out there in the middle of the bay, with at least ten miles of water on every side.

  “Don’t shoot until we’ve identified it,” ordered Banta, as our gunners pulled back their bolts and charged their machine guns. “Remember there’s a PBY scheduled to come in today.”

  So we waited, tensely, while the spot of the plane against the sky grew larger. And then at last we could see the distinct outline of a seaplane hull, the high wing and twin motor nacelles of a P-boat.

  “It’s ours,” said Gunner Banta. And we began to breathe freely again.

  The pretty flying boat came toward us for a few miles more, then swung in a slow curve toward the shore of Guadalcanal.

  We moved happily on our way. The small green spot that was Tulagi and the rugged blue backdrop of Florida Island were looming larger and more distinctly on our horizon. We had only about four or five miles still to go to reach our destination. The few flecks of spray that came over our bow felt good and cool, and the breeze caused by our movement was refreshing.

  “I think that may be a submarine, over there,” said someone in the boat. And we looked where he pointed, with a great inclination to disbelieve.

  But it was a submarine—a long low black shape, with a rise at the center where the conning tower stood. He was moving away from us. But when we spotted him, he also spotted us; slowly he swung around and headed so as to cross our bows.

  He was now a mile or two from us, to our port side and ahead. We could see the line of white spray threading along the base of the slim black hull as he picked up speed. We were going to have a race on our hands. We knew that then, and I knew that I would not again scoff at the melodramatic formula of Race for Life or Race with Death as being improbable.

  In our little boat there was confusion for a few moments as everybody shouted at once. There was some doubt as to what we should do. Should we run back for Guadalcanal or head for the open sea or cut for the eastern, right-hand tip of Florida Island and try to reach it before the Jap cut us off? There was no time for debate. Gunner Banta gave the order to head for Florida, and Coxswain Charles N. Stickney (of Newbury, Mich.) swung our helm sharply to the right and opened the throttle.

  Our boat began to jar and pound against the choppy waves as we suddenly picked up speed, and sheets of spray bowled over the bow and drenched us.

  The other boats of our little fleet were also pounding along at full speed, tossing plumes of white spray over their cockpits.

  But the submarine was gaining. It was evident that he was moving swiftly; that our race with him was going to be close; and that we might have to swim for it, even if we won the race.

  There was one item we had not even considered: shellfire. It was a horrifying sight to see geysers of water leaping up between us and the submarine, for we knew then that he was ranging in on us. We heard the sharp bang of the shells exploding, and knew they would soon be coming dangerously close.

  Then there were more geysers, closer to the submarine, and we were mystified for a moment, until we heard the booming of gunfire coming from Tulagi shore. We knew then, and were thankful, that a shore battery was opening up on the submarine.

  But the shells were not yet falling near the sub. And each time he fired his gun, he ranged closer to us.

  I tried to fix my field glasses on the submarine, but our boat jerked and bounced so, and the spray doused the lenses in such steady downpour, that the attempt was futile.

  Our clothes were soaking. I started to wrap my field glasses in my field jacket, then undid the bundle. No use trying to keep things dry. We were going to have to swim for it. I could see that. The submarine was gaining on us, and a shell landed only a hundred yards or so astern of us.

  Just then we saw that the men in the other landing boat were waving wildly at us. One of the seamen had jumped up on the boat’s motor hatch and was trying to send us a message by signal flag. A haze of smoke was coming from the motor hatch of the other boat. We could see that it was in trouble. Our boat swung over next to the crippled one and we bumped gunwales, pulled apart, and smashed together again as the two boats, running at top speed, ran parallel courses. The crew of the other craft fell, slid and vaulted into our boat. Lieut. Herb Merrillat (Herbert L. Merrillat of Monmouth, Ill.), marine public relations officer and ordinarily quite a dignified young man, jumped over from the other boat and landed, a disordered collection of arms and legs, on the bottom of our boat. He was wearing white sox. In the haste of the moment, he had left his shoes behind. Even in that moment, the sight of his descent was humorous.

  But we had lost precious time in picking up the other crew. Now the submarine had gained a good lead, and our fate seemed hopeless. I told myself that this was my last day of existence, as it seemed certain to be.

  But the splashes of the shore batteries’ firing were coming closer to the submarine now. We saw several that appeared to be only a few yards from the conning tower. And one of our crewmen shouted “Smoke, she’s smoking!” I could not see any smoke. But it was evident that the shells were now beginning to come too close to the submarine for his comfort. For the sub was turning away from us and toward the open sea to the west. We were saved by the bell. The ordeal was over.

  We sailed into the calm waters of Tulagi harbor, down the narrow passage of water walled by greenery and came to a small wooden dock. It was distinctly a pleasure to set foot on land again.

  The buildings along the shore did not seem greatly damaged by shellfire, although some of the walls were pocked by bullet holes. We made our way to a frame house where, we had been told, we would find Gen. Rupertus and the officers of his staff.

  Gen. Rupertus was a dynamic type, younger than the average general. He showed us to a bare room, where we sat on the edge of a table while we talked. This was his office. There had not been much time to set up the creature comforts on Tulagi.

  The general summarized the fighting on Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo. The toughest job, he said, had been to clean out scores of dugout caves filled with Japs. Each cave, he said, had been a fortress in itself, filled with Japs who were determined to resist until they were all killed. The only effective way to finish off these caves, he said, had been to take a charge of dynamite and thrust it down the narrow cave entrance. After that had been done
, and the cave blasted, you could go in with a sub-machine gun and finish off the remaining Japs.

  The Jap dugouts—“dungeons,” the general called them—had been found in great numbers on Tulagi and Gavutu. Exterminating them had been a tedious job, particularly on Tulagi, where only yesterday the last of them had been finished off.

  “You’ve never seen such caves and dungeons,” said the general. “There would be thirty or forty Japs in them. And they absolutely refused to come out, except in one or two isolated cases.”

  The general was enthusiastic about the bravery the marines had displayed in the fighting here. “There should be forty or fifty Congressional Medals awarded to these people,” he said.

  “I don’t know how to express it,” he said, and it was plain to see that he was having difficulty putting his admiration into words. “I think the United States should be just as proud of these people who gave their lives,” he began, and paused, groping for a sufficiently glorious phrase, but it would not come. He finished the sentence lamely, “Gave their lives in the most wonderful work in our history.”

  He tried again. “I mean that when it comes to bravery, there isn’t anybody in the world that can beat us,” he said. “I don’t think the United States has an episode in its history that can touch what’s been done here.”

  We talked to Col. Edson (Col. Merritt A. Edson of Chester, Vt.), commanding officer of the Raiders, who had assaulted and taken Tulagi. He was a wiry man with a lean, hard face, partly covered by a sparse, spiky growth of grayish beard; his light blue eyes were tired and singularly red-rimmed in appearance, for he was weary now from long days of fighting, and his red eyebrows and eyelashes, being almost invisible, heightened the effect. But his eyes were as cold as steel, and it was interesting to notice that even when he was being pleasant, they never smiled. He talked rapidly, spitting his words out like bullets, his hard-lipped mouth snapping shut like a trap. Hardly a creature of sunlight and air, he; but I could see that he was a first-class fighting man. (Col. Edson later won two outstanding victories on Guadalcanal, and was awarded the Navy Cross.)

  Col. Edson summarized the Tulagi campaign. “The Japs had one battalion, of about 450 men, on the island,” he said. “They were all troops—no laborers. All of their defenses were located on the southeast part of the island. Our landing was [at 8:15 A.M. on Friday, August 12th] at the northwest part. There were only small obstructionist groups out there.

  “The Japanese casualties were about 400. Not a single Nip gave up. [One prisoner was taken; he had been dazed by a close mortar burst.] In one of the holes there were seventeen dead Japs, when a man went in to get the radio. But there were still two Nips alive. They hit the man and one other who followed him later.

  “It was the same in all the dugouts. We found that an officer was alive in one of them. We sent an interpreter out to get him. The interpreter came to the mouth of the cave and asked if the officer wanted to surrender. The answer was a grenade.

  “The northwest section of the island, where we landed, was very thick bush—jungle country. There were only a few enemy outposts along the coast in that sector, and we lost only one man, from sniper fire, as we went in to the beach. Our plan was to go inland to a ridge line which ran the length of the island, and then change direction and work along the ridge, giving the men on top of the ridge a position to shoot down.

  “The terrain was difficult. It took us three hours to get through a mile and a half of ground.

  “As we came out of the jungle, we really ran into trouble. There the Nips had 200 men in dugouts and rock emplacements with snipers scattered around. Even after we got control, machine-gun nests in dugouts held up our advance for several hours.

  “It was impossible to approach the Nip dugouts except from one direction. You had to crawl up on the cliffs and drop dynamite inside while you were under fire all the time.”

  While the right flank of the Raiders was occupied in trying to root out the Japanese dugouts, said the colonel, the center and left flank pushed around the Jap center of opposition and down the ridge which formed the backbone of the island. They met fierce resistance from snipers and machine gunners, and one company suffered 15 percent casualties, including two officers.

  “The snipers would lie still until our men passed, then shoot from the rear,” said Col. Edson. “There were snipers everywhere in trees or buildings, behind rocks.”

  Despite opposition and casualties, the Raiders drove down the ridge-back of the island, said the colonel, until they ran into a shovel-shaped ravine with three steep sides. Here they met the stiffest Jap resistance. The walls of the ravine surrounded a flat space which the British had used as a cricket field. Now the Japs had dug innumerable large caves into the limestone walls of the ravine, and from the narrow mouths of these dugouts they fired rifles, automatic rifles and machine guns. There was “continuous crossfire across the ravine,” said the colonel.

  By the time the marines reached this area, it was dusk and they halted for the night. But the Japs were organizing a counter-attack.

  “At 10:30 that night the Japs counter-attacked,” said the colonel. They broke through between C and A Companies, and C Company was temporarily cut off. The Japs worked their way along the ridge, and came to within fifty to seventy-five yards of my command post. The Nips were using hand grenades, rifles and machine guns. We suffered quite a few casualties, as our men fought hard to hold the Japs back. One machine-gun company lost 50 percent of its non-commissioned officers. Finally, the enemy was thrown back.

  “The next day the Raiders, aided by support troops under Col. Rosecrans (Col. Harold E. Rosecrans of Washington, D.C.), cleaned up the southeastern end of the island.

  “The Nips were still in the pocket [in the cricket-field area]. But we had positions for machine guns and mortars on three sides of them. We closed in on the pocket and cleaned up some of the dugouts. By three o’clock that [Sunday] afternoon we had complete physical control of the island. A few groups of snipers and machine gunners remained. It took days to finish them off.

  “The Nip defense was apparently built around small groups in dugouts with no hope of escape. They would stay in there as long as there was one live Jap. There was a radio for communication in nearly every one of these holes.

  “We pulled out thirty-five dead Japs from one dugout. In another we took out thirty. Some of these people had been dead for three days. But others were still in there shooting.

  “In none of these places was there any water or food. The Nips had evidently made a dash for their dugouts when the naval bombardment came, without stopping for provisions.

  “In one case there were three Japs cornered. They had one pistol. They fired the pistol until they had three shots left. Then one Jap shot the two others and killed himself.”

  Col. Edson listed some of the outstanding heroes among his Raider troops. Maj. Kenneth D. Bailey (of Danville, Ill.) had acted with great bravery in trying to knock out a Jap dugout emplacement which was holding up our advance.

  “The cave was dug in the ravine,” said the colonel. “The enemy fire was so severe that our men could not advance.

  “Bailey got on top of the cave by crawling. He tried to kick a hole in the top. When that failed, he tried to kick the rocks away at the foot of the entrance. While he was attempting to do that, one of the Nips stuck out a rifle and shot him in the leg.”

  Then there was Gunnery Sgt. Angus Goss, a one-man demolition squad. When one Japanese cave had resisted with particular stubbornness Sgt. Goss had tried throwing in hand grenades and these had been promptly returned by the Japs inside. The sergeant then tried holding the grenades for three seconds before hurling them, but even in this case the Japs caught the missiles and threw them back. The patient sergeant then got TNT and thrust it into the hold. But the Japs shoved the TNT out of the cave and the dynamite exploded outside, driving splinters into Goss’ leg. He then “got mad” and went into the cave firing full tilt with his sub-machine gun, and ki
lled the four Japs who remained alive. Eight other dead Japs were found in the dugout.

  We visited the cricket-field ravine where the toughest Jap resistance had been met. The stink of rotting bodies was very noticeable. We passed several piles of shattered rock lying against one of the limestone sides of the ravine. These were cave-mouths which had been blown in with dynamite.

  Some of the cave-mouths were intact. Braving the odor of the dead inside—the Raiders had not found time yet to bury their foes—one could see that the entrances to these Jap strongholds were long and narrow, affording very good defensive positions.

  We had to step over six or seven bodies which lay in front of one of the cave-mouths. They were bloated like overstuffed sausages. Other bodies were scattered over the floor of the ravine.

  We talked with several other staff officers before we shoved off in a landing boat for Gavutu. One was Lieut. Comdr. Robert L. Strickland (of Enid, Okla.), director of air-support operations. Comdr. Strickland told us how all the Jap planes in the Tulagi vicinity—eighteen in number—had been destroyed before they could get into the air on the morning of August 7th.

  “Our Navy fighter planes caught all the Jap planes on the water or on their ramps at Gavutu,” he said. “There were nine seaplane fighters, one four-engine bomber and eight seaplanes. They were set afire, most of them sank, and all were destroyed. We had no air opposition here.”

  Flight Officer Cecil E. Spencer, one of the Australian guides who had accompanied our landing forces, told us how his boat had been the first invading craft to touch the soil of the Solomon Islands. The marine troops which he had accompanied had hit the beach at the western end of Florida Island, near Haleta Village, at 7:40 on the morning of August 7th. They were under the command of a Capt. Crane.