Strong Men Armed

by Robert Leckie

  Only after the warships were gone, could the fliers of the Bastard Air Force sleep.

  But they would rise again at dawn, greet the first light with scalding hot coffee to dissolve the rice lying in the belly like stones—greet it with the barely comprehended news of more men killed, more men wounded, and the wreckage of their tiny air force strewn up and down their mangled airstrip.

  Still they flew on, taking to the skies in patched-up aircraft, flying wing-to-wing in that technique of fighting by pairs which they would bring to perfection. Within a week of their arrival, some of them were aces. By August 30, Major John Smith had five little red balls painted on his Wildcat fighter. By nightfall, there were four more.

  August 30 was one of those rare days when only the Zeros came down to strike at Henderson Field. Major Smith shot one of them to earth quickly, coming in on the enemy pilot’s rear and killing him in his cockpit before he knew he was under attack. Then Smith banked toward a Zero attacking his wingman. The red ball flashed full in Smith’s sights. He pressed the button. The Zero flamed and crashed. Now a third Japanese fighter was coming up under Smith. His bullets were sewing stitches up and down his fuselage. Smith nosed over. He came at the Japanese head-on. A bullet struck Smith’s windshield and whined past his ear. He kept his thumb on the button. The Zero was coming apart in chunks. The two planes roared toward collision. They tore past each other not 15 feet apart.

  Over his shoulder Smith could see the Zero spinning down, and its pilot bailing out. Then there was no time to watch for the flowering of the parachute, for Smith, running low on gas, had only a few rounds of bullets left for those six wing guns and here he was coming down on top of a fourth Zero hedge-hopping along the shore.

  Smith skimmed over the coconuts with all guns blazing and the Zero fell into the sea in flames.

  So it went into September, while the Bastard Air Force’s collective total climbed toward 100, while its fighters also flew the cover under which Major General Vandegrift withdrew the Raiders and other troops from Tulagi to meet a fresh emergency.

  The Kawaguchis had slipped into eastern Guadalcanal by night barge and were marching through the jungle toward the gaps behind Henderson Field.

  8

  Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi had brought his dress whites to Guadalcanal with him. He had them in a trunk when his brigade landed at the village of Tasimboko, a mile or so west of the same Taivu area where Colonel Ichiki had landed. Kawaguchi had stowed the whites among his brigade’s supplies at Tasimboko against that day when, with the Rising Sun again waving above the island airfield, with his silk uniform facings gleaming in the sun, his braided cap clapped over his balding head, his handlebar mustache ends twisted briskly to attention, he would turn his face toward the Emperor and the photographers.

  That had been September 6. Next day, after posting a rear guard of about company strength in Tasimboko, General Kawaguchi strode off into the jungle in khakis, confident that his men had landed undetected, assured that Japanese air and sea power would keep the Americans engaged until he had slipped into position to spring his surprise attack the night of September 12. By that time, too, his rear-guard would have joined him with his supplies, his remaining guns, and, of course, the whites.

  Red Mike Edson and about 850 Raiders came ashore near Tasimboko at dawn of September 8. They landed a mile west of the village supported by the shelling of destroyer-transports and the strafing of Army P-400’s. They turned right to the village, dueled briefly with gunners of Kawaguchi’s rear-guard —and then swept through Tasimboko on the heels of an enemy broken on the anvil of encirclement. They killed 27 Japanese at a loss of two of their own killed, six wounded—and now they had the village.

  They broke into a beer warehouse only to find that the last bottle had been issued the day before. Whereupon they burned the warehouse down and the village with it. They towed a battery of Kawaguchi’s guns into the sea, hurling the breech blocks into the water. They blew up supplies. They committed those unspeakable movements of spoliation upon the food which caused one Japanese diarist to write: “It is maddening to be the recipient of these insulting attacks by American forces.” And then Red Mike Edson’s Raiders found the fancy pants of Kiyotake Kawaguchi and carried them back to the airfield in triumph. Two days later they were climbing a ridge to plug one of the gaps behind Henderson Field.

  That was where they were on the night of September 12 when Kiyotake Kawaguchi came furiously against Henderson Field, doubly determined to save his face, now that he had lost his pants.

  9

  Bald but for its kunai grass, nameless and bumpy, the ridge rose like a long thin island from the dark green sea of the jungle. It lay a short mile south of Henderson Field. It stretched perhaps a thousand yards on a northwest-southeast slant. It could be bombed and shelled, it could be easily approached, it could be turned, be overrun, cut off—but whoever held the ridge commanded Henderson Field, and whoever held the airfield held Guadalcanal.

  It was here that Red Mike Edson brought his Marines on September 10, after General Vandegrift received reports which told him that the payoff battle was impending.

  To the east of the Tenaru, patrols had found emplacements of Japanese mountain guns. They were carefully sighted in on the Marines’ defenses and thoughtfully smeared with grease against the corrosion of the jungle. They were left unguarded or only protected by a single soldier. But Vandegrift had learned not to be baffled by the enemy’s ways. He could judge now between what mattered and what seemed to matter. It mattered that these guns were new, not that they were undefended; that their sentries were well fed and well equipped, not that they were solitary. It mattered that the dump which Edson had destroyed at Tasimboko had been large, not that it was lightly guarded. It mattered that the Melanesian natives now swarming to the sanctuary of his perimeter were terribly frightened, not that their estimates of Japanese numbers were as usual unreliable; that they babbled of gun-point forced labor on a “tunnel” southwest through the jungle, not that they had actually seen or had not seen the torture and murder of missionary priests and nuns.

  Vandegrift could now judge with certainty that the enemy had returned to Guadalcanal in force, that he was heavily armed, that he had lost his supplies and must therefore attack quickly, that he had disappeared to the southwest and was probably looking for a route to the airfield through one of the gaps behind it. That was why, on the tenth, Vandegrift sent Edson up to that ridge to plug the biggest gap. Also on the tenth, Vandegrift took the mounting fury of Japanese aerial bombardment to be one of the surest signs of approaching battle. But then, having judged the situation, he could not act.

  He could not maneuver, for he had only a single battalion in reserve. He could not reinforce Edson or plug other gaps, for his specialists, truck drivers, pioneers and amtrack men had already been formed into rifle battalions and sent to hold isolated strong points. Nor dared he strengthen the ridge by weakening other points already spread disastrously thin and held by troops already melting away with malaria.

  Next day, the eleventh, there was help. Twenty-four Navy fighters flew into Henderson Field, and rarely before had sailors been so warmly welcomed by Marines. There had been 46 Japanese bombers and fighters over the airfield that day and the Marines were down to 11 planes.

  On the eleventh, Major General Kawaguchi decided that the guns lost at Tasimboko meant that he would cancel a thrust at the Tenaru scheduled to coincide with his surprise attack. Otherwise, he would go ahead and surprise the Americans whom his scouts had sighted on the ridge.

  On the eleventh, the Marines on the ridge had their first mail call in two months. Major Kenneth Bailey, hardly recovered from his Tulagi wound, had gone over the hill from the hospital in New Caledonia and brought the outfit’s mail with him. There were bundles of letters, hometown newspapers, food packages from home. The men grinned happily. At last they were getting a rest. They could read letters, munch pogey-bait, loaf, or perhaps stroll up to the ridge crest
to enjoy the spectacle of fierce dogfights growling over the airfield. They scattered when the Zeros sighted them and came snarling down with bullets digging up dirt, their empty cartridges tinkling to earth in a chilling fugue.

  Also on the eleventh, Colonel Red Mike Edson scouted the jungle to his front and became alarmed at signs of an enemy build-up. On the twelfth he was among his men, softly urging them forward on the ridge, ordering them to stow their mail, dig in, string barbed wire, for this was it as it had never been before.

  Red Mike could guess that his men were bitter. They had fought at Tulagi, patroled Savo, fought at Tasimboko. They had gambled against the law of averages, the only law that bound them, and had survived that awful lottery. Now, seeking the respite in which they might forget the mounting odds, they were being asked to toss their numbers in again. Their numbers. Not those of the other outfits below them, fresh outfits, fat outfits, outfits that had yet to risk the odds—but the Raiders again, the Paramarines again. They cursed Red Mike for a “glory hound.” They muttered that he hung around Division to hunt up new assignments for the outfit, more medals for himself. But they dug.

  Soon only a singularly stupid man wasted his breath cursing the brass. He saved it for the moment he had struck his pick mattock on the ridge shale and the frail tool snapped in his hands, or when the barbed wire tore his flesh and left it festering and unbandaged, for no adhesive tape would stick to bodies slippery with sweat.

  They fortified the southern nose of the ridge where it sank into the jungle between steep wooded ravines falling away to right and left. In the right ravine a company was strung out a half-mile west to the Lunga River. On the left another line stretched east a similar distance and ended with an exposed flank in the jungle. The men in the ravines cut fields of fire, strung single strands of wire from tree to tree. On the ridge, artillery observation posts were set up, machine guns emplaced, reserve companies put into position.

  The aerial battle began over Henderson Field again, and the shriek of diving airplanes, the sharp cracking of the antiaircraft bursts, the hammering of guns and wailing of bombs took on dread significance for these Marines: the Betty bombers laid sticks of eggs all down the long axis of their ridge.

  Then the clamor of aerial battle ended and the ridge became silent but for the clinking of picks, the rasping of shovels, the soft urgent calls attuned to gathering dusk. Men straightening on the ridge could see the last flights of parakeets skimming over the jungle roof, the brilliance of their plumage vanishing with the fading light. Night came clear and moonless. The jungle seemed to flow around the ridge like a silent dark sea. Men in the ravines squeezed their eyes tight shut to accustom them to the night, and were startled to hear the cry of the bird which barked like a dog, the crrrack of the bird whose call was as the clapping of wood blocks.

  The ridge was ready.

  At nine o’clock that night a green flare fell from a Japanese patrol plane droning over Henderson Field. A half-hour later a Japanese cruiser and three destroyers stood off the mouth of the Lunga to pound the ridge with eight- and five-inch shells. In twenty minutes more a rocket rose in front of the Marines on the right or Lunga side of the ridge.

  Firecrackers exploded, random shots rang out, mortars fell and the Kawaguchis struck with a howl.

  They had marched down the bank of the Lunga, swung right toward the ridge, and then, silhouetted in the swaying light of their parachute flares, had come sprinting on in waves. Grenadiers first, riflemen, light machine-gunners, coming in columns stretching as far back as the Marines could see, they came on to a cadenced slapping of rifle butts, a rising, rhythmic chant:

  U. S. Marines be dead tomorrow.

  U. S. Marines be dead tomorrow.

  They drove the Raiders back. In the blackness that followed the dying flares, they split the center of Edson’s lines, sliced off a platoon to the far right flank, cut communications wire, and moved down the Lunga to attempt an encirclement. If General Kawaguchi had chosen to follow quickly upon that first shattering rush, he might have overwhelmed the ridge. But his men merely flowed up against its right side, thrashing about in the jungle that had engulfed them, tripped them, confused them, once they had left the straight going of the riverbank. The battle that had been joined so swiftly became fragmented almost immediately.

  Groups of Marines struggling to restore their lines blundered into groups of Japanese milling about trying to cut fields of fire in the undergrowth. The shooting was wild, the grenades fell among friend as well as foe, the bayonet jabbed against the sound of a strange tongue and found only air. It was a battle fought beyond the direction of either commander. Even a fresh Japanese naval bombardment after midnight did not drastically alter the deadlock established after the first fierce charge. It smoldered on until daybreak, a mindless fight, but it ended in a victory for General Kawaguchi.

  His men had cut communications between the Marine companies and forced them back. They spent the daylight of the thirteenth fortifying their positions for the final blow that night.

  Red Mike Edson’s men were stunned. They stumbled as they walked, lifting their feet high as though fatigue had weighted them with lead. They mumbled as they talked, licking cracked dry lips with swollen tongues. They had been thrown back, and they did not like to remember it. They had attempted to drive off the Japanese with a morning counterattack, but they had failed again. They had expected to be relieved or reinforced by the Second Battalion of the Fifth Marines, but intermittent attacks on Henderson Field had kept this force under cover. The men of the Fifth could not reach the ridge until dusk, after the dogfights over Henderson Field ended and enemy guns from land and sea had fallen silent. Even then they would only be able to take up supporting positions.

  It was up to 400 men holding a shortened line 1,800 yards long against 4,000 Japanese—one man every five yards against 10 of the enemy. Red Mike Edson gathered a small group of men in late afternoon, a few minutes after they had eaten their first food since the day before, and he spoke to them like a professional.

  “This is it,” he said softly. “It is useless to ask ourselves why it is we who are here. We are here. There is only us between the airfield and the Japs. If we don’t hold, we will lose Guadalcanal.”

  The men returned to their gunpits. But this time there was no cursing.

  Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi had lost more men than he had anticipated, but he had successfully forced his way past that deadly American firepower. He was in close, where the “spiritual” power of Bushido was unstoppable. His men had been pleased to hear the sound of friendly bombs falling upon the Americans. Tonight, he would attack earlier than usual. He wanted to have the airfield cleared of Americans before Admiral Mikawa’s cruisers arrived at midnight. Then the honor of retaking Guadalcanal would belong to the Army. Also, he had ordered the Ishitari Battalion then east of the Tenaru to strike the river line at midnight. Then, he, Kiyotake Kawaguchi, would wheel his three battalions right or east from the airfield and crush the Tenaru Americans from the rear.

  General Kawaguchi sent a radio message to Tokyo. It was not as premature as had been the diary entry of Colonel Ichiki, but it did suggest that if Radio Tokyo were to announce the recapture of the airfield, Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi would back them to the hilt on it.

  At half-past six that night he attacked.

  “Gas!”

  Smoke rolled over the Marine right. Again the flares, again the jabbering, and again that voice, precise and un-American:

  “Gas attack!”

  But there was no gas, it was only smoke, only another Japanese trick, and the Marines held to their holes until more flares had made a ghoulish day of the night and from 75 yards away the jungle spewed forth platoon after platoon of short tan shapes. But now the Marines were screaming their own coarse epithets at the onrushing enemy. They were firing. The Japanese were falling. Still they came on, a full battalion rushing a right flank held by less than a hundred Marines, and this time they were sh
ooting from the hip as they came.

  Again the Japanese closed and fragmented that right flank. Quickly they cut off a platoon and surrounded it. The Marines fought back individually. Pfc. Jimmy Corzine caught sight of four Japs setting up a machine gun on a commanding knob. He rushed them. He bayoneted their leader and as the others fled, turned the enemy gun on them, killed them, and fired on until he himself was killed.

  Edson’s right was in serious trouble. Captain John Sweeney’s Company B had been cut into small pockets among a surging sea of enemy. He had lost his right flank platoon, he was down to less than 60 men, and on his left a mortar barrage and another headlong rush of the Kawaguchis had driven the Paramarines back.

  Captain Torgerson took command of the retreating Paramarines. He rushed among the knots of men drifting back along the ridge spine. He held roll call. He singled the men out by name, he taunted them to go forward—and they did. They drove out through a rain of Japanese hand grenades, throwing themselves on the bare slopes to fire, to set up machine guns. The Japanese singled out the Marine machine guns, dropping grenades on them from the little launchers or “knee mortars” they carried forward strapped to their legs. Sergeant Keith Perkins scurried over the ridge, hunting grenades and ammunition for his two machine guns. One by one, his gunners fell or were wounded. Perkins jumped on his last gun. He fired. He was killed.

  The Paramarines were hanging on to what remained of the left flank as Red Mike Edson came forward on the ridge and tried to make telephone contact with Captain Sweeney’s Company B alone on the right. A voice came through.