Strong Men Armed

by Robert Leckie

  It had been a dull damp war at Tauali where Masters’ Bastards still sat in roadblock. Patrols moving out from the perimeter ran into occasional brief skirmishes on narrow jungle trails, but then the enemy vanished. Throughout the day of December 29 patrols came in with reports of a silent jungle.

  Lieutenant Colonel Masters was worried. That night the men holding his perimeter facing east to the jungle were on full alert. A fierce storm burst on their heads, and at two o’clock the following morning 116 Japanese came charging west down a natural causeway connecting the Marines’ ridges with their own.

  They came yelling in what might have been a hurricane, and they came with such swift ferocity that they immediately overran one gunpit.

  The Marines counterattacked. Gunnery Sergeant Joe Guiliano cradled a light machine gun in his arms and plunged into the dark melee firing from the hip. The Japanese were thrown out of the pit they had taken, but they came back. Guiliano fired again and led another charge. The fight raged on through the wind-whipped darkness, until, in the morning, it had come to the end usually foreordained when a hundred lightly armed men charge a thousand better-armed men holding the high ground. The Marines, whose losses were six killed and 17 wounded, never found out for sure why this detachment from the 53rd Regiment had launched that charge.

  There were no officers among the five men taken prisoner, and everyone else was dead.

  Up at the airfield a patrol from the Fifth Marines had run into heavy fire from the “deserted” bunkers in the southern ridges. The regiment prepared to return to the ridges, for the Japanese had to be driven from the high ground if capture of the airfield was to be completed. The Fifth began a series of small nasty actions in which the Marines slugged through muck and fire to clear the hills.

  By one o’clock on the afternoon of December 30 Major General Rupertus was able to send this message to Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, the commander of ALAMO Force:

  First Marine Division presents to you as an early New Year’s gift the complete airdrome of Cape Gloucester. Situation well in hand due to fighting spirit of troops, the usual Marine luck and the help of God—Rupertus grinning to Krueger.

  Next day the American flag went up the pole at Cape Gloucester Airfield—and by the time it reached the top it was already limp and dripping. That same day, General Rupertus did what he could to assuage the grief of an American mother. He ordered Private Paul Hansen sent home never to be returned to combat again.

  And back in Melbourne the newspapers celebrated the easy victory with the exulting headlines:

  OUR MARINES TAKE CAPE GLOUCESTER!

  21

  Major General William Rupertus began the New Year of 1944 by drawing a perimeter around the airfield and calling upon Brigadier General Lemuel Shepherd, the assistant division commander, to clear out the Japanese holding high ground in the Borgen Bay area.

  Borgen Bay was the 10-mile indentation formed by Cape Gloucester on the west and the irregular northern coast jutting out to its east. Along its coast was a series of hills which the Marines wished to hold to guarantee their beachhead.

  The eastern flank of this beachhead was represented by Target Hill about six miles southeast of the airfield and about a thousand yards west of the mouth of Borgen Bay. General Shepherd, long considered one of the Marine Corps’s foremost tacticians, sent a force into the jungle at Suicide Creek about a mile northwest of Target Hill. The Marines were to cross the stream and swing like a gate southeast through the Borgen Bay hills. Shepherd’s plan was simply to hold at Target Hill and hit at Suicide Creek.

  While Shepherd’s battalions moved into position on the airfield side of Suicide Creek, the Japanese across the stream were building an intricate ambush in a morass. Colonel Kenshiro Katayama, who had arrived from the south coast to take command in Borgen Bay, had conferred with Matsuda at Nakarop, and the swamp fox—who never came within a half-dozen miles of the front—had given him complete control of the battle. It was Katayama who ordered Major Shinichi Takabe to dig in southeast of Suicide Creek with his 2nd Battalion, 53rd.

  Katayama had also studied Suicide Creek and Target Hill. He had found that the creek area was impassable for the dreaded American tanks and decided to hold there. Target Hill, however, was open on its seaward side where the coastal road to the airfield ran around it. To recapture the airfield, Katayama decided to hold at Suicide Creek and hit at Target Hill. It was the exact opposite of Shepherd’s plan and the guarantor of battle at both points.

  The colonel assigned the 2nd Battalion, 141st Infantry, of Major Toyoji Mukai to seize Target Hill. He held Mukai high in his esteem. High in Mukai’s esteem was Lieutenant Shinichi Abe, whose 5th Company was chosen to spearhead the attack.

  Lieutenant Abe was among the most popular and able young officers in the 65th Brigade. He quickly gathered his platoon leaders and issued orders. The men were to move out from Aogiri Ridge—the Borgen Bay bastion which guarded Hill 660 as well as the approaches to Matsuda’s lair—and move to the western face of Target Hill. Artillery, mortar and machine-cannon fire would pin down the Americans while the assault troops and engineers stealthily cut steps in the steep lower slopes of Target Hill. This would make it easier for the 5th Company to strike the Americans fast and hard. Lieutenant Abe also sent a field dispatch to one of his platoon leaders, Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Yamaguchi, who was then moving forward to the attack zone. The message instructed Yamaguchi on the hour of attack and location of the company CP, and it concluded with this admonition:

  It is essential that we conceal the intention that we are maintaining position on Aogiri Ridge. Concerning the occupation of this position, it is necessary that Aogiri Ridge is maintained.

  Yamaguchi read it and thrust it into his pocket, unaware of how truly important Aogiri Ridge was to the defense of Borgen Bay and the safety of Iwao Matsuda, not thinking that he might be killed, that the message might be found on him, that the Americans might be able to read it. For Warrant Officer Yamaguchi was in a tearing hurry to get his platoon into position for the attack on Target Hill, which was scheduled for before dawn on January 3.

  On January 2 the Marines attacked Suicide Creek.

  The newly arrived Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, was on the right or west with the Third Battalion, Seventh, on the left.

  They came up cautiously to the creek’s steep banks. Scouts waded across. It was difficult going, for though the creek was but 20 to 30 feet wide and from two to three feet deep and sluggish, its floor was covered with slippery stones. There were also fallen trees which the scouts had to clamber over, but they got across. They slipped into the jungle and soon they were back, waving the main bodies on.

  The first platoons crossed and the Japanese struck.

  Machine-gun fire swept the Marines from every direction. Marines pitched to the ground or threw themselves down to return fire blindly. It was as though they had been attacked by a battalion of ghosts. They had no notion where their enemy was. They could only hear the bullets whining about them, smacking into trees, cutting leaves, digging up spurts in the mud, sinking into flesh. One platoon was pinned down. A young rifleman was blinded by powder burns. He blundered about, calling, “I can’t see—I can’t see.” Corporal Larry Oliveria grabbed him by the arm. Together, they withdrew. Oliveria paused every few feet to fire, then hefted his rifle and pulled the blinded boy all the way back across the creek as the youth mumbled in a stupor, “I can’t see—I can’t see.”

  Some of these platoons crossed Suicide Creek four times, only to be hurled back four times. One platoon came down again to the water’s edge. A big husky rifleman stepped into the water. A bullet smacked loudly into his belly.

  “Them dirty bastards!” the stricken man mumbled in amazement, and sank into the water dead.

  There were wounded Marines stumbling through the water, rolling down the banks, fighting the current that swept them downstream. Men ran out to seize them and pull them to safety and were shot down themselves. Still the fig
ht raged on, a battle incredibly unreal for there was still no sign of the enemy.

  At dusk the Japanese very nearly turned the repulse into a rout. About 50 of them followed the retreating Marines across the creek. They crept up the sheltering high banks near an emplacement of four machine guns. The gunners had started to dig their own foxholes. Their guns were untended. If the Japanese could get to them, they could swing them on the Marines and strike a serious counterblow at the entire attack.

  They ran for them in a silent rush. They were 30 yards from the digging Marines before someone spotted them and shouted:

  “Japs!”

  Captain Andrew Haldane and Lieutenant Andrew Chisick heard the shout as they spoke to a group of riflemen. They whirled and raced away to intercept.

  It was going to be close. Not even the Marines around the guns had much time to lunge for the weapons they had put aside. Some of them had begun to scatter, but many more had joined Haldane and Chisick. A Japanese soldier was first to the guns. He slid into sitting position to fire one of them, and a Marine bayoneted him through his chest. Then the tall men in green closed with the short ones in brown. Some of the Japanese fell. The remainder broke free and ran back across the creek. But now the Marines had their weapons and they cut down 20 of the enemy before the skirmish was over.

  They got the guns emplaced as darkness fell. They braced for a nocturnal counterattack. Just before dawn they heard firing to their left, where Lieutenant Abe was attacking Target Hill.

  Lieutenant Abe, like so many Japanese soldiers, prepared to go into battle wearing all that he possessed. He pulled on his extra pair of trousers. He put his third shirt over his second shirt and slipped his arms into his raincoat. He stuffed his pack with all his goods and food, and also every document concerning Target Hill which had come his way, and onto the back of this he strapped his rolled overcoat. He hoisted this onto his shoulders. He slung his field glasses over this, buckled on his pistol, seized his sword and his entrenching tool—and called for mortar fire.

  The first Japanese mortar shell struck the nose of a ridge held by Captain Marshall Moore’s Company A of the First Battalion, Seventh. It instantly killed Gunnery Sergeant Theon Deckrow, but a machine-gunner and a dozen other Marines stayed in line. Soon they detected the sound of digging beneath the mortar barrage. They guessed that the Japanese were cutting steps into the hillside. They waited. The mortar barrage grew in intensity. By five o’clock the Japanese had begun to throw in artillery and 20-millimeter machine cannon, but they missed target and the Marines on the plateau still waited.

  At a quarter of six, the red flare rose and the charge began. The machine-gunner who had stayed at his post after Deckrow’s death ran 20 belts of machine-gun ammunition through his gun. That was 5,000 bullets from a single weapon, and there were others firing, as well as mortars exploding among the Japanese coming up the hill. Lieutenant Abe was quickly killed, Warrant Officer Yamaguchi was shot to death, and that Major Mukai who commanded the attacking battalion was driven back into the jungle after Captain Moore heard him screaming orders and brought fire down around him.

  What report Major Mukai made to Colonel Katayama is unknown, but the colonel sent this message to Major General Matsuda:

  By the desperate struggle of the officers and men of the Regiment, Target Hill had been captured and the enemy were forced to the water’s edge. But, owing to the enemy counterattack with superior forces, we have relinquished it again with much regret.

  Of course Target Hill had not been “relinquished,” nor had the Marine lines been bent, let alone broken. Close to 200 Japanese were killed or wounded during a two-hour run at the wire, at the expense of three Marines killed and 10 wounded. Target Hill had been so one-sided that Division refused to believe that it had been a well-planned attack with the intention of turning Shepherd’s seaward flank. That belief would continue until intelligence officers examined Lieutenant Abe’s well-clad body and someone thought to look into Warrant Officer Yamaguchi’s pocket.

  But even as intelligence officers arrived on the battlefield—angrily shooing the souvenir-hunters away—the clamor of battle had shifted back to Suicide Creek.

  Dawn at Suicide Creek burst from the Japanese mortars. Before the Marines could leap erect to continue the attack on the morning of January 3, the shells were flashing and roaring among them. One young rifleman was decapitated by the direct blast of an exploding shell. Men going forward looked at that sitting headless figure with just the neck from which dog-tags dangled and wondered who it might have been.

  They went across Suicide Creek, small unit by small unit, sometimes finding and knocking out an enemy gun, but always being thrown back again.

  One Marine lay behind a log, firing. “It don’t do no good,” he muttered, his face ashen. “I got three of ‘em, but it don’t do no good.”

  Platoon Sergeant Casimir Polakowski shouted at him angrily: “What the hell you bitchin’ about? You get paid for it, don’t you?”

  The shocked Marine managed a weak grin and continued to fire. Polakowski arose to take his platoon across the creek to rescue another one trapped over there. He saw three of his men killed in rapid succession, returned, ran to rescue a wounded Marine being shot at by a sniper—and was shot in the back.

  Lieutenant Elisha Atkins led his platoon of heavy machine-gunners across the water. The enemy gunners allowed half of them to cross, and then the converging fire of six automatic weapons made a screaming, bleeding hell of the others. Some men lay in the water, not daring to move, not even daring to rescue others who lay across trees in full view of the enemy, who called helplessly, over and over, whose blood flowed into the faces of those who dared not move to help them.

  Across the bank Lieutenant Atkins lay in a tangle of vines. He had been hit three times and was losing blood fast. Pfc. Luther Raschke found him. He cut him free and tried to drag him back across the creek, but “Tommy Harvard,” as the men called Atkins, refused to go.

  “Go on,” he gasped. “Keep the line moving. Get the men out.”

  Raschke and Corporal Alexander Caldwell obeyed. They got back in time to hear that the engineers of the Seventeenth Marines had laid a corduroy road of logs through the swamp which Major Takabe considered impassable.

  At last there were tanks coming up to Suicide Creek.

  At last there were Corsairs coming up to Rabaul, coming up to one of those wild aerial battles the Marines called “a big hairy dogfight.”

  Since the December 27 fighter-sweep in which Pappy Boyington had shot down his twenty-fifth plane, there had been no attacks on the dying Japanese base on eastern New Britain. It had rained constantly, while Boyington alternated between badgering others and being badgered. He had but a few days to go on his third and final tour in the Pacific. He hounded meteorological people for the latest word on the weather, and was hounded by war correspondents for the latest word on when he was going to break Foss’s record.

  On the night of January 2 came reports of clearing weather at last. At dawn of the next day, while Japanese mortars scourged the Marines at Suicide Creek, Pappy Boyington fire-balled his splay-legged fighter down the Torokina strip and circled aloft while his Black Sheep climbed to join him. They pushed the stick forward and roared north.

  Over Rabaul 40 to 60 fighters rose to meet them. When they had reached 12,000 feet, Boyington told his fighters to get set. He looked around him.

  “Okay,” he shouted, “let’s get the bastards!”

  They went nosing over.

  Boyington went down. Captain George Ashmun followed on his tail. They pounced on a pair of Zeros flying at 15,000 feet. Boyington made an overhead run on one of them. From 400 yards away he fired a short burst. The Zero burst into flames.

  “You got a flamer, Skipper!” Ashmun yelled, and Boyington grinned in his cockpit. He had shot down as many enemy planes as any other American.

  Boyington climbed, Ashmun riding his wing. Again they saw Zeros below. Again they went over, thinking t
he rest of the Black Sheep were diving after them. They scissored over the Japanese, weaving back and forth over one another, firing short bursts.

  Two of the slender, brown, red-balled sausages flamed and fell, but Boyington did not grin this time, for Ashmun’s plane was puffing smoke and his wingman was going down in a long graded dive. Behind him came a dozen Zeros converging for the kill.

  “Dive, George!” Boyington screamed. “For God’s sake, dive!”

  There was not so much as a waggled aileron in reply, and the Zeros were taking turns at tail passes.

  Boyington slammed in behind them, kicking the rudder back and forth, triggering short bursts. Ashmun’s Corsair was now a fiery meteor and was dropping into the sea. But there was another Zero in flames too, Pappy Boyington’s twenty-eighth kill—and also his last.

  For there was now a pack of Zeros growling on his tail. Boyington threw the stick forward and raced over the ocean at 400 knots. He could see the enemy bullets stitching patterns in his wings. His main gas tank blew up.

  It was all over.

  Boyington felt as though his body had been hurled into a blast furnace. With his remaining strength he released his safety belt with one hand, seized the rip-cord ring with the other, and kicked the stick hard forward with both feet. He had given his body centrifugal force, made it weigh a ton, and he went flying out the top of his plane. He was only a hundred feet above the water when his chute opened with a spine-snapping jerk, and though he slammed the water hard he was alive and treading water when he surfaced.

  The Japanese tried to gun him to death. They played cat-and-mouse for half an hour, one Zero coming in low and pulling out just as another dove in from a different direction. Twenty-millimeter cannon exploded all around Boyington. He was gagging from the sea water he had swallowed as he had played duck-the-apple for the enemy pilots. After two hours of treading water he reached beneath him for the rubber life raft dangling between his legs. He pulled it out and found that it was intact. He inflated it. He climbed aboard and examined himself. His scalp was dangling down over his eyes. His left ear was half chewed off. His throat was cut and his left ankle torn up. There were shrapnel holes in his hands and his leg ached where it had struck the stabilizer when he was catapulted free. But he was not dismayed. He found himself humming something, and tried to puzzle it out. It was: