In front of Stenberg, a man moaned in pain. When Stenberg approached him, he realized that it was his buddy Jim Broner, one of the two Broner brothers in Company G. Broner was a sergeant in the rifle platoon and had been shot through the leg. It was a deep wound, and the flesh around the bullet hole was shredded. Stenberg took his bag of sulfa powder and dusted the wound and stood guard over Broner, watching for snipers in the trees, waiting for a medic. When the medic arrived he shot Broner up with a half grain of morphine, hurriedly dressed his wound, then gave him two sulfanilamide pills. Ten minutes later, litter bearers carried him out. If they could get Broner back to a portable hospital before he lost too much blood, his buddy had a good chance of keeping his leg.
Doc Warmenhoven and his staff, working round the clock in blackout tents just behind the front lines, were performing miracles with sodium pentathol and blood plasma. Plasma had saved dozens of lives. It came in a tin can in powdered form and was mixed with distilled water and injected into a soldier’s vein via a needle and rubber tubing. Because it was universal, a doctor did not have to wait for blood typing. If the litter bearers could get Broner out of the jungle, Warmenhoven could pump plasma into him as fast as he could slice open the can. He would operate right there, sterilizing his instruments with a small stove or canned heat, kneeling over a canvas stretcher draped in bloody sheets and soaked in disinfectant, in a tent that smelled of burned flesh and of feces, because guys often had their bowels ripped open by mortar rounds. While bullets struck the surrounding trees and perforated the tents, they continued working. In one week they had performed almost seventy major surgeries, including amputations and serious chest operations, saving soldiers who in World War I would have been left for dead.
When Colonel Mott discovered that Bailey was out of position, he called on Lutjens and Company E to take Buna Village. Shortly after sunrise, Lutjens led his men down the main track in the direction of the village. Three hundred yards out, Company E slammed into a Japanese bunker and was stopped dead in its tracks. Although Company E’s assault failed, Stutterin’ Smith, who was in the front lines with his men, recognized that a breakthrough was possible. Sensing victory and a speedy end to the battle for Buna Village, he ordered Companies H and F and some troops from Headquarters Company to resume the attack. He knew the assault would require mortar support.
Putting Captain Harold E. Hantlemann, commanding officer of Company H, in charge of mortars, he instructed Captain Nummer of Company F to initiate the charge. It is what the men loved about Smith—his moxie, his ability to think on his feet, his willingness to be at the front with the privates and the corporals. Smith knew it was his job to make the men believe. The only way to do that was to be right there with them dodging bullets, risking his life.
While Nummer led his men down the main track in the direction of the ripening sun, “Handy” Hantlemann, a former star offensive guard at the University of Iowa, directed a fierce mortar barrage. Hantlemann sported a long, disheveled black beard and looked more like a swarthy pirate than a captain in the U.S. Army. The mortars sent hot shrapnel flying everywhere, but the Japanese were ready for them and stopped Nummer well short of the village. Still, Nummer and Company F punched away at the Japanese for much of the morning.
Herman Bottcher, now in charge of a platoon, saw a Japanese sniper pick off six of Company H’s men. Spotting a rifle barrel jutting from the leaves of a nearby tree, he raised his tommy gun and touched off the trigger. The Japanese sniper fell six feet and then bounced as the rope he had used to tie himself in tightened around his ankle.
Elsewhere, another Japanese machine gunner sprayed bullets through the jungle.
“We have to take him out,” Bottcher told his men. Next thing his men knew, Bottcher grabbed two grenades and was crawling through the long grass. Poking his head up, he saw the machine gun sticking out of a trench. After throwing the grenades, he began pawing at the dirt, digging down as deep as he could. The grenades blew and things went nuts. Bullets flew over his head. Damn Japanese are shooting high, Bottcher thought to himself. Then he realized it was his own men, shooting in the direction of the detonated grenades.
When the firing stopped, Bottcher crawled back to his men, grabbed his machine gun, and returned to scout the enemy trench. He found three Japanese, all dead, crouching with their faces buried in their arms. Bottcher realized that they had heard the grenades hit. With no time to roll out of the trench they had tried to save themselves by covering their heads and faces.
By early afternoon Stutterin’ Smith saw the handwriting on the wall and reluctantly called off the assault. The morning’s offensive had been successful, but his men had made little progress since those early gains.
As the Americans dug in, some Japanese soldiers staged a counterattack. One of Lutjens’ men, Private Johnny Combs, caught them in the act. With his back against a tree for support, he leveled his tommy gun and took out all sixteen attackers.
The battlefield, Lutjens remembers, was littered with bodies: mostly Japanese, but Americans, too. It was a sight he would never forget. Among the dead were two Company E men who had made the mistake of trying to take a small group of Japanese as prisoners. Pretending to surrender, the would-be prisoners machine-gunned their captors.
Despite Company E’s losses, Lutjens felt relieved that many of his best buddies had made it through the battle. Art Edson had survived. Edson had been with Lutjens since their scouting trip along the coast. Together they had also made the walk from Natunga to Pongani to establish contact with the 128th. The return trip had been especially rough on Lutjens, who was sweating out his first malaria attack. Had it not been for Edson, who encouraged, prodded, and sometimes dragged him, Lutjens might never have made it back to Natunga.
Stutterin’ Smith had reason to be upbeat, too. His Ghost Mountain boys had driven the enemy back hundreds of yards. In the process, they had achieved their objective: the first breakthrough in the Japanese perimeter.
Chapter 15
THE BUTCHER’S BILL
BACK AT DOBODURA, GENERAL HARDING had just gotten the news of Stutterin’ Smith’s success. In the big picture, the breakthrough did not amount to much. Buna Village and Buna Government Station had not been touched. With the rest of the 126th—the 1st and 3rd Battalions were still fighting alongside the Australians west of the Girua River—Harding figured that he might have been able to overwhelm the Japanese. But without a numerical advantage, he would have to continue probing their positions for a weak spot. It was a slow, costly business that was bound to keep the grave diggers busy.
On the coast, his 128th Infantry Regiment was bogged down, too. Though Colonel Mott had shaken things up by relieving two officers, the change did nothing to affect the tactical situation. The Japanese were dug in too well. Only tanks or more troops would change that.
Earlier that morning, as Stutterin’ Smith’s troops pressed the attack, General Sutherland flew in from Port Moresby and Australia’s General Herring came in from Popondetta to meet with Harding. Though they had ostensibly come to discuss battle strategies, from Harding’s perspective, the generals had already reached their own conclusions. Sitting on empty ammunition boxes under a small grove of trees at the edge of a kunai field, neither Sutherland nor Herring appeared very interested in listening. But Harding continued to press the issue. Having already argued for tanks and artillery, he asked for the 127th Infantry, which had arrived in Port Moresby on Thanksgiving Day. He reminded the generals that he barely had a third of his 126th Regiment.
By lunchtime, Herring was on his way back to Popondetta. Sutherland, though, stayed on. He and Harding were making small talk when suddenly Sutherland dropped his bomb: MacArthur, he said, was “worried about the caliber of his infantry” and the aggressiveness of its officers. Sutherland wanted to know how Harding intended to rectify the situation. The general bluntly defended his men. Anyone, he said, who thought that his troops were not fighting “didn’t know the facts.” Sutherland then asked him
if he intended to replace any of his top officers. Harding replied that he did not.
Sutherland had heard enough. That afternoon he returned to Port Moresby and recommended to MacArthur that he relieve Harding of his duties. What was lacking at Buna, Sutherland said, was not artillery, troops, tanks, or planes. What was missing was inspired leadership. That Sutherland had not even been to the front lines to assess the situation did not prevent him from commenting on Harding’s alleged inability to motivate his men. Harding would later say that Sutherland’s report to MacArthur must have been a “masterpiece of imaginative writing.”
MacArthur had already ordered Major General Robert L. Eichelberger, I Corps commander, to report to him in Port Moresby. MacArthur had great faith in the general. If anyone could remedy the situation at Buna, it was Bob Eichelberger.
Though he had never commanded troops in battle, Eichelberger’s résumé was top-notch. Early in his career, he had served in Panama and on the U.S.-Mexico border. Later, at the tail end of World War I, while assigned to the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for acts of bravery. Having attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and the Army War College, after which he became superintendent of West Point, Eichelberger possessed superb leadership and organizational skills and a keen understanding of military theory.
On November 29 when MacArthur summoned him, Eichelberger was at Rockhampton, Australia, training the 41st Division in jungle warfare. Early the next morning, as Sutherland was on his way to Dobodura to talk with Harding, Eichelberger boarded a plane for Port Moresby.
At MacArthur’s headquarters, Eichelberger and his chief of staff found MacArthur with Generals Kenney and Sutherland. Sutherland had already told MacArthur of his meeting with Harding, and it took only a moment for Eichelberger to discern MacArthur’s mood. Almost before Eichelberger sat down, MacArthur was talking heatedly, striding up and down the veranda, holding his pipe like a weapon.
The 32nd Division’s troops were sick and tired and poorly trained for war in the jungle, but that was no excuse for cowardice, MacArthur said, citing the reports of his operations staff officers.
“A real leader, “he insisted, “could take these same men and capture Buna.”
MacArthur continued, “Bob, the number of troops employed there is no indication of the importance I attach to this job…. The fact that I’ve sent for you, with your rank, indicates how much importance I attach to the taking of Buna…. Never did I think I’d see Americans quit.” MacArthur then told Eichelberger that he was to leave for the front the following morning because “time was of the essence.” The Japanese, MacArthur said, might send in reinforcements “any night.” Eichelberger was to relieve Harding and his subordinate commanders, or MacArthur threatened, “I will relieve them myself and you too.” MacArthur continued testily, “Go out there, Bob, and take Buna or don’t come back alive.” Then he added, “And that goes for your chief of staff, Clovis, too.”
At breakfast the following morning, MacArthur had apparently mellowed. Pulling Eichelberger aside, he wished him luck and god-speed and told him that he was “no use to him dead.” Eichelberger must have felt great relief. Just the day before, he had written Harding, his good friend and former West Point classmate, to express confidence in him.
But then MacArthur’s mood again turned cold. Promising to decorate him if he took Buna, MacArthur told Eichelberger that he was to push the battle regardless of casualties.
“That was our send-off,” Eichelberger later wrote, “and hardly a merry one.”
By 1:00 p.m. that same day, Eichelberger took command of all U.S. troops in the Buna area. The next day a medical officer reported to Eichelberger on the condition of his men. The troops, he said within earshot of General Harding, looked like “Christ off the cross.” Considering their depleted condition, he added, the men were carrying on heroically. It was difficult for Harding not to feel a degree of satisfaction. It was what he had been saying all along.
The men of the 32nd had been subsisting on short rations for well over a month. Because fires were not allowed at the front—the wet wood sent up billows of smoke and attracted too much attention—they ate their rations cold. Their feet swelled and bled. Their fingernails and toenails fell off. They were suffering from jungle rot, malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, ringworm, dehydration, and heat prostration. And there was a shortage of everything they needed to stay healthy—quinine, salt and chlorination tablets, bismuth, and vitamin pills. Because of the sand, mud, water, and humidity, they could not depend on their weapons either. BARs, M-1s, and machine guns jammed. When precious gun oil and patches reached the front, they came in large containers and were difficult to distribute. Spare parts were nearly impossible to find. Ammunition and medical supplies ran short. Soldiers who had lost their entrenching tools were still waiting for replacements.
As a consequence, the morale of the troops was low. To make matters worse, their battlefield successes were few. Although Stutterin’s Smith’s troops had punched a hole in the Japanese perimeter, the Japanese had not yielded much valuable ground. Their positions were impregnable and Harding’s troops lacked the weaponry to reduce them. Mortars, artillery, and air bombardments had proved to be largely ineffective. The only other possibility was for a soldier to rush a bunker and stick a grenade through a firing slit, a feat that took monumental courage and a lifetime of good luck. It was a heartbreaking, ridiculous way to bust a bunker. According to Stutterin’ Smith, “Many more failed than succeeded.”
The day after arriving at Dobodura, Eichelberger was eager to tour the front.
Eichelberger did not know it, but after days of fighting, things had finally died down. And he did not like what he saw—men resting at aid stations, men dozing at the roots of trees, unshaven men wearing dirty, tattered uniforms, and empty ration tins surrounded by flies.
Jastrzembski was one of those dirty, unshaven men. His fatigues were caked in mud and diarrhea. He had sweated out the malaria attack, but his limbs were still trembling. His right eye quivered uncontrollably. Just the thought of the previous day’s battle, of cradling his buddy, of staring into the hole in La Venture’s belly knowing that he was a goner, made the bile well in Jastrzembski’s mouth. He tried to put the image out of his head. He was on his way back to the aid station where a buddy had told him they were passing out new jeans. Now more than anything else he just wanted a new pair of jeans. That is when he looked up and saw the general and “lots of brass” walking toward him. Immediately, he realized the general was new. Eichelberger wore his insignia of rank—no officer who had spent any time on the front dared to do that. A Japanese sniper would pick him off in a matter of minutes.
“Soldier, show me the front,” Eichelberger said.
Jastrzembski hardly heard him.
“The front, soldier, the front. I want to see the front,” Eichelberger demanded.
“Follow me,” Corporal Jastrzembski said.
Eichelberger, who was already irritated by the lack of discipline he had witnessed, scowled. He was a three-star general. Who did this soldier think he was talking to him like that?
After walking a hundred yards or so, Eichelberger asked Jastrzembski where the command post was, and Jastrzembski pointed down the trail. Then the general reached in his pocket and handed him a pack of cigarettes. Jastrzembski was a cigar man, but he took the cigarettes anyway. He knew he could trade them later for chewing gum.
Eichelberger stopped at the command post, and then farther down the trail he encountered three soldiers hiding in the long grass at the trail’s edge. When Eichelberger asked them what lay ahead, the men answered that an enemy machine gunner had fired on them hours before. Eichelberger was surprised. Hadn’t they bothered to scout the trail since? The men told the general that they had not. Eichelberger then offered to decorate any one of them brave enough to move forward. When no one volunteered, the general was incensed.
Late
r, Eichelberger held a meeting of his senior officers at Stutterin’ Smith’s command post, which was nothing more than a collection of tables around a large hollow tree stump. Smith had a field phone, which was connected to other field phones by single-strand Australian wire. When Smith phoned his company commanders, every phone in the jungle rang—including the Japanese ones.
Harding also attended the meeting. It was the first time since early October that he had seen Smith, and Harding did not recognize him at first. The gaunt, bearded Smith, Harding wrote in his diary, looked like a “member of the Army of the Potomac.”
The gathering was a heated one. According to Smith, Eichelberger acted “like a bull in a china shop,” and made some “caustic comments” about what he had seen at the front, including the incident with the three men. Smith kept his mouth shut. Years later, recalling the general’s anger, he wrote, “Decorations look damn artificial to a soldier who is filthy, fever ridden, practically starved, living in a tidal swamp and frustrated from seeing his buddies killed.” Listening to Eichelberger denigrate his men, Colonel Mott could no longer hold his temper.
“Dammit,” Mott said. “Anybody who thinks the men aren’t fighting, doesn’t know beans. Do you have any idea of what it’s like out there? The mountains were hell on the men. And now they’re fighting in swamp water up to their chests. You want to know why? Because the Japs have every piece of high ground from here to Australia.”
Harding threw his cigarette to the ground and snuffed it out. He agreed.
Then, Eichelberger’s voice rose, “You’re licked!” he said, looking at Mott and Harding. “Your men aren’t fighting; they’re cowards!”
The meeting broke up shortly after that and Eichelberger buttonholed Smith and asked him what his assessment was.
“It’s tough, damn tough,” Smith said. “It doesn’t pay to attack. The plan should be really basic: To edge up slowly every day. But even that’s not working. We’re not getting anywhere.”
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