by Len Levinson
“Here comes Sergeant Shirley,” said one of his aides.
Colonel Smith looked up and saw Sergeant Shirley and the recon platoon coming toward him. Colonel Smith stood, hiked up his cartridge belt, and waited for them to approach. Colonel Smith had dealt with the recon platoon before and thought they were a reliable bunch. If they were good enough for Colonel Stockton, they were good enough for him.
Sergeant Shirley saluted. “Here's the recon platoon, sir.”
Colonel Smith's eyes narrowed and Bannon stepped forward and saluted. “Sergeant Bannon reporting, sir.”
“What the hell's going on up here, Bannon?”
“Japs in machine-gun nests, sir.”
“Where are they?”
Bannon took out his map and showed him the marks he'd made. “Here, here, and here.”
“Hmmm.” Colonel Smith looked up at the sky and saw the sun setting on the horizon. “Well, it's too late to see what's going on up there today. We'll hit them first thing in the morning. Bannon, have your men bivouac somewhere close to my headquarters here. You'll be attached to my battalion until we get through that mess up there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That's all.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bannon led his men away, and Colonel Smith looked at his map. “Major Curry,” he said to his operations officer, “have the battalion move up to the base of Hill Thirty-one and dig in for the night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Watford?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want my headquarters tent set up right here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everybody else dig in for the night. There'll be a meeting in my tent at two thousand hours. Any questions?”
Nobody said anything.
“You're all dismissed.”
Everybody walked away. Colonel Smith sat on the ground again and took out his Zippo, lighting the cigar stub in his mouth. He hoped his tent would be set up quickly so he could go inside and have a swallow of jungle juice where nobody could see him.
It was evening on New Caledonia, and Christmas Eve parties were being held in all the wards. Christmas trees made of local shrubbery were erected, and red and green bunting were draped along the walls.
In Betty Crawford's ward, a Victrola was blaring the Andrews Sisters’ recording of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” A few of the men danced and the others watched and clapped their hands in time to the music. The men were given peppermint sticks, candy, and cigarettes by Red Cross workers, some of them reasonably attractive women whom soldiers were trying to lure outside where they could steal kisses and cheap feels.
Betty Crawford tried to smile and appear festive, but inside she was annoyed because Butsko wasn't there. Where the hell is he? she wondered. She thought he might be out with some other nurse and realized she was feeling jealous.
She remembered him lying bare-chested on the examining table that afternoon and how strange he'd made her feel. What's the matter with me? Am I going nuts? She tried to think of the man she was engaged to marry, but he was in North Africa and it was difficult to conjure him up.
She was afraid Butsko knew how she felt, but if he did, he didn't show it. He treated her just like any other nurse who jabbed needles into his arm. He was cool and respectful toward her, and somehow that was irritating. I think I've been on this island too long, she thought. I'd better pull myself together.
Butsko walked to the docks of the port of Nouméa and sat on a wharf, smoking a cigarette. He didn't like the Christmas party with all the phony Red Cross women talking their bullshit and the guys acting like idiots. He looked across the bay, which was pitch dark at night so Japanese planes couldn't spot it, and thought of his men back on Guadalcanal. He wondered how they were doing and if any had been killed since he'd been gone. None had been shipped to New Caledonia since he'd been there. As far as he knew, it was just him, Frankie La Barbara, and Craig Delane, the rich guy from New York. Frankie would be sent back to the front any day now, but Delane had been hurt very badly. They might even ship him back to the States.
Butsko wanted to get back to Guadalcanal. He hated the war, the constant anxiety and fatigue, but he felt it was where he belonged. He didn't seem to fit into the world without a gun in his hand and a bandolier hanging from his neck. Just a few more weeks, he thought. That's not so long.
On Christmas morning three rifle companies from the Second Battalion advanced up Hill Thirty-one with the recon platoon leading the way. The recon platoon was supposed to show the others the spots where they'd come under machine-gun fire, and as soon as they reached those spots, they came under heavy machine-gun fire again. Mortar support was requested, and soon mortar rounds were flying through the air, blowing up the jungle but doing no damage to the heavily fortified bunkers.
The mortar barrage went on for an hour, while the rifle companies lay in the jungle, waiting for the order to charge. Bannon smoked a cigarette and peered through the leaves at the smoke and flames as trees crashed to the ground and huge quantities of real estate were blown into the air.
Finally it was decided that the target area was demolished and any Japs who'd been there had either retreated or were dead. Colonel Smith transmitted the order that all three companies should attack as soon as the mortar barrage stopped. The order was relayed to every platoon and squad, and the men waited tensely for the mortar barrage to end. Finally the last volley was fired. The jungle was still for a few moments and then resounded with the shouts of officers and sergeants.
"Charge!”
The men jumped to their feet and ran up the hill. Bannon pumped his legs and shouted an old Texas cattle call. Longtree let out an Apache was whoop and Shaw screamed bloody blue murder. The three rifle companies surged up the hill in a mighty green wave, and the Japanese machine guns opened fire again with vicious intensity. The jungle became filled with zinging hot lead, and in the first minute innumerable GIs were cut down. The rest hit the dirt, because any farther advance was clearly impossible. The company commanders sized up the situation, or at least they thought they did, and ordered their men to continue the attack on their bellies. The men inched up the hill into the hail of lead, taking more casualties. Medics moved about from man to man, and the Japanese sharpshooters fired at their Red Cross armbands.
Colonel Smith was a hundred yards behind the front line and could see what had happened. Moreover, all the companies were reporting that they couldn't move any farther. Colonel Smith told them to stay put and then ordered another mortar barrage. It lasted a half hour and then the troops were ordered to attack again. Once more they rose to their feet and charged, and once more they were ripped apart by machine-gun fire. Now Colonel Smith realized for the first time that he was up against something serious, but before he relayed any quick evaluations to Colonel Stockton, he wanted to make sure. He ordered all companies to stay where they were and requested that the recon platoon be sent back to him.
The recon platoon disengaged and crawled back down the hill on their stomachs until they were a healthy distance from the machine-gun nests, then stood and double-timed back to Colonel Smith. The morning wasn't even over yet and Bannon already had two dead and three wounded.
Colonel Smith sat amid thick foliage, surrounded by his staff, as Bannon and the recon platoon approached.
“I want you men to go out on a patrol for me,” Colonel Smith said. “We need a clearer picture of what's up there, and the only way to do that is to probe for their flanks. Bannon, you take the recon platoon and try to find their left flank. I'll have a platoon from Headquarters Company look for their right flank. Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
Colonel Smith drew a line with his finger on the map, and Bannon caught a whiff of alcohol fumes. Is he drunk? Bannon wondered.
“Go this way,” Colonel Smith said. “If you encounter more fire, keep moving to your left until you find where their shoulder is. Any questions now?”
“No, s
ir.”
“Get going, and good luck.”
Colonel Smith ordered the mortar barrage to cease, so that the recon platoon wouldn't get shelled by mistake. Then his own Headquarters Company recon unit showed up and he told them their mission. Up the hill, the machine guns continued firing at the companies that were pinned down.
“The Japs are having their fun now,” Colonel Smith told Major Curry, “but their hours are numbered up there.”
The recon platoon made its way south through the jungle on a line parallel to the skirmish line of Second Battalion soldiers farther up the hill. They were in a column of twos with Longtree on the point, Shilansky ten yards out on the left flank, and Shaw ten yards out on the right flank. The jungle was thick, but drier than in the valley. In the distance the relentless tattoo of Japanese machine-gun fire could be heard.
The men in the recon platoon said nothing; they'd been on many crummy patrols before, so this was nothing new. They plodded through the jungle until Bannon thought they'd gone far enough out on the left flank and then he moved them up the hill again.
None of them knew what to expect. They could run into more machine-gun fire or they could circle around the Japanese position. Bannon had to make sure they didn't circle around too far and get cut off.
They advanced up the hill in a skirmish line, with Bannon in the middle a few yards behind the others. The tension built as they rose higher and higher up the hill. After twenty minutes Bannon figured he was almost level with the battalion skirmish line, and he expected Japanese machine guns to open up on him at any moment.
He wasn't disappointed. The jungle exploded in front of him and a Japanese machine-gun bullet put a hole in a leaf two inches from his right shoulder. The men of the recon platoon dropped down as bullets whizzed over their heads.
"Pull back!”
They crawled back down the hill as bullets slammed into trees and kicked up dirt all around them. Private O'Conner was hit in the leg and Pfc. Baum dragged him along with the help of Gomez. They continued crawling until they had fifty yards of jungle between them and where they were before, and then Bannon told them to stop.
Blum went to work on O'Conner's leg, while O'Conner writhed in pain, clenching his teeth together in an effort to keep from screaming. Blum gave him a shot of morphine to calm him down and then sprinkled sulfa powder on the wound to disinfect it and start the clotting. The bullet had hit an artery, and blood pumped into the air like a geyser. Blum tied on a tourniquet to cut off the flow of blood.
Bannon would have to send two men to help O'Conner back to the battalion aid station, which would reduce his strength even more. He knew now that he shouldn't have sent the entire platoon up the hill together, because that presented too many targets. He'd send just a few the next time, and the rest of the platoon could stay in support a short distance back. He tried to figure who to send back with O'Conner; it would have to be the two most useless men, but he had no useless men in the platoon.
“DelFranco, Miller, take O'Conner back down the hill!”
DelFranco spun around. “But I'm your runner!”
Bannon could see the look of hurt on DelFranco's face. DelFranco knew Bannon picked him because DelFranco was not as good a soldier as the other men in the platoon. What would Butsko do? Butsko would stick with his decision and get tough.
“I told you what you're gonna do—now do it!”
“But, Sarge . . .”
"Do it!”
DelFranco buckled under. He looked at Miller, who also was on the puny side. I'm not a priest and Bannon doesn't believe I'm much of a soldier, DelFranco thought. What the hell am I? He laid his walkie-talkie, bazooka, and bazooka ammunition on the ground, then he and Miller got under O'Conner's shoulders and lifted him up.
“We won't be here long,” Bannon told DelFranco and Miller, “so stay down at the battalion aid station until we get back.”
DelFranco and Miller carried O'Conner down the hill, and O'Conner was humming a crazy tune, because the morphine had finally gotten to his head.
“Gafooley, you're my new runner. Pick up this equipment.”
“Hup, Sarge.”
Bannon told the rest of them that thereafter Shaw, Shilansky, and Longtree would probe for the Japanese machine-gun nests, with the rest of the platoon hanging back.
“You three watch your step,” Bannon told them. “I don't want any more fucking casualties today. Now let's move out, and everybody stay awake.”
The platoon headed south again for a few hundred yards, then turned west. They had gone completely around Hill Thirty-one this time and were in a wooded valley, heading for another hill that was designated Hill Thirty on Bannon's map. At the base of the hill he sent Longtree, Shaw, and Shilansky forward.
After a half hour of rough going uphill through the jungle, Longtree, Shaw, and Shilansky came under machine-gun fire. They crawled back to where Bannon and the rest of the recon platoon were.
“There's another one,” Longtree said wearily.
“We'll swing out a little farther this time,” Bannon replied.
They turned south again and after five hundred yards a new set of machine guns opened up, stopping them cold. They crawled away beneath the hail of sizzling bullets and then scouted the far side of the hill. It wasn't long before more machine guns started firing at them.
By noon Colonel Smith realized that ahead of him was a vast Japanese defensive position. He couldn't figure out its complete configuration, but he knew the approximate location of some of the machine-gun nests and decided to knock out at least a couple of them. He withdrew all his units and requested an artillery strike on two of the machine-gun nests on Hill Thirty-one.
A dozen of the regiment's seventy-five-millimeter pack howitzers were towed to the front, and shortly before 1500 hours began their barrage. The big, powerful shells blew apart the top of the hill, cracking trees and loosening boulders, causing minor landslides. Although the jungle suffered considerable damage, the Japanese pillboxes weren't harmed at all. The Japanese soldiers crouched low to the ground, jammed their fingers in their ears, and waited for the barrage to stop.
In the headquarters bunker Major Uchikoshi had followed the day's events closely, aware that the Americans were trying to determine what was in front of them by patrolling. Now that Hill Thirty-one was under bombardment, Major Uchikoshi knew that the Americans were going to assault the fortifications there. It was like a chess game, and Major Uchikoshi decided that he must check the American assault.
He ordered that the bunkers on Hill Thirty-one be fortified with machine guns and rifles from bunkers not under shelling and that other Japanese troops set up a defense in front of those bunkers as soon as the shelling stopped, to impede the American advance.
Major Uchikoshi believed the communiqué from General Hyakutake, stating that the Americans were cowardly and were losing their taste for fighting. He thought that if he could stop this first American attack on the Gifu Line, they wouldn't have the determination to make a second all-out effort.
He ordered his men on Hill Thirty-one to stand fast and defend their positions to the last man. Then he look at his watch and waited for the barrage to begin.
The recon platoon would participate in the attack on Hill Thirty-one with George Company, commanded by Captain Dennis Orr from Lubbock, Texas. Captain Orr had closely clipped salt-and-pepper hair and was old for an officer of his rank. He had been an enlisted man before the war, receiving a commission in 1940 when the Army began its buildup.
Lubbock was a long way from Pecos, the area where Bannon was from, but they were both Texans and heard the wide open spaces in each other's speech the first time they talked. Orr's family were ranchers and Bannon had worked on a ranch, so there was an affinity between them right off the bat. While the artillery barrage went on, they sat together at the bottom of the hill, talking about horses and cows, trying to figure out if they knew anybody in common, but they didn't. Captain Orr had a slow, easy manner, as if he wer
e going to set out on a hike instead of trying assault one of the machine-gun nests on Hill Thirty-one.
“You a married man?” he asked Bannon.
“No, sir.” He noticed the gold band on Captain Orr's finger. “You are though, huh?”
“Yup. Got me a good little gal. She's back in Hawaii, looking after my youngsters. Got a boy fourteen and a girl twelve. The boy's tried to enlist already, but he wasn't able to fool anybody. He's afraid the war'll be over before he gets a chance to fight.”
“He doesn't know when he's well off.”
“No, he doesn't. I guess he's seen too many of them war movies, and of course he's been on Army posts all his life. Boys that age love war. They think a chestful of medals will make the girls love them more, but they don't realize they'll more likely get a chestful of bullets. Course, you can't tell them that. You can't tell a boy that age nothing.” Captain Orr looked at his watch. “The barrage is gonna stop in about ten minutes. I think maybe you'd better get back to your men.”
“Yes, sir.”
In a crouch Bannon moved through the jungle to the recon platoon. He found them sitting in squad groups, smoking cigarettes and looking exhausted from the morning's patrols.
“We're moving out soon,” Bannon told them. “Let's get ready.”
The men checked their rifles and bandoliers of ammunition. They put on their packs and made sure nothing was dangling loose. It was another hot sunny day on Guadalcanal, and the top of the hill was covered by smoke from the howitzer shells. The top of the hill was gradually being pulverized, which would make for tough going, because there'd be fallen trees everywhere.
Bannon sat on the ground and took out a cigarette. His right side hurt him where he'd been cut by that Japanese bayonet. The stitches had been removed nearly two weeks before, but the wound bothered him if he did too much physical exercise, as he had that morning. The barrage on top of the hill sounded like rolling peals of thunder. Bannon figured it would soften up those machine-gun nests pretty well and might even put them out of action for good. He had no idea that the machine-gun nests were well protected by bunkers with thick walls and thicker roofs.
