W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  "I'm not going anywhere, Jack," Harris chuckled. "But you better put that Garand back together before you take another pull at that pink bottle and forget how."

  (Four)

  Off Cape Esperance

  Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

  0240 Hours 7 August 1942

  At 0200, Transport Groups X and Y, the Amphibious Force of Operation pestilence, reached Savo Island, which lay be-tween the islands of Guadalcanal and Florida. The skies were clear, and there was some light from a quarter moon, enough to make out the land masses and the other ships.

  The fifteen transports of Transport Group X turned and entered Sealark Channel, between Savo and Guadalcanal. They carried aboard the major elements of the 1st Marine Division and were headed for the beaches of Guadalcanal.

  Transport Group Y sailed on the other side of Savo Island, between it and Florida Island, and headed toward their destina-tion, Florida, Tulagi, and Gavutu islands. Group Y consisted of four transports carrying 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, and other troops, and four destroyer transports. These were World War I destroyers that had been converted for use by Marine Raiders by removing two of their four engines and converting the reclaimed space to troop berthing. These carried the 1st Raider Battalion.

  The Guadalcanal Invasion Force was headed for what the Op-erations Plan called "Beach Red." This was about six thousand yards east of Lunga Point, more or less directly across Sealark Channel from where the Tulagi/Gavutu landings were to take place. The distance across Sealark Channel was approximately twenty-five miles.

  The Guadalcanal Fire Support Group (three cruisers and four destroyers) began to bombard assigned targets on Guadalcanal at 0614, adding their destructive power to the aerial bombing by U.S. Army Air Corps B-17s which had been going on for a week. At 0616, the Tulagi Fire Support Group (one cruiser and two destroyers) opened fire on Tulagi and Gavutu.

  By 0651 the transports of both groups dropped anchor nine thousand yards off their respective landing beaches. Landing boats were put over the side into the calm water, and nets woven of heavy rope were put in place along the sides of the transports. Marines began to climb down the ropes into the landing boats.

  Minesweepers began to sweep the water between the ships of both transport groups and their landing beaches. No mines were found.

  The only enemy vessel encountered was a small gasoline-carrying schooner in Sealark Channel. It burned and then ex-ploded under both Naval gunfire and machine-gun fire from Navy fighter aircraft and dive bombers. These were operating from carriers maneuvering seventy-five miles from the invasion beaches.

  The Navy sent forty-three carrier aircraft to attack Guadalca-nal, and nearly as many-forty-one-to attack Tulagi and Gavutu. The aircraft attacking Tulagi either sank or set on fire eighteen Japanese seaplanes.

  Zero-Hour for Operation pestilence, when Marines were to hit Beach Red on Guadalcanal, was 0910. H-Hour, when Ma-rines would go ashore on Tulagi, was an hour and ten minutes earlier, at 0800. But the first Marine landing in the Solomons took place across the beaches of Florida Island. That operation, however, did not rate having its own Hour in the Operations Order.

  At 0740, B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, went ashore near the small village of Haleta, on Florida Island. Their mission was to secure an elevated area from which the Japanese could bring Beach Blue on Tulagi under fire. They encountered no re-sistance; there were no Japanese in the area.

  At 0800, the first wave of the Tulagi force-landing craft car-rying Baker and Dog Companies of the 1st Raider Battalion- touched ashore on Blue Beach. There was one casualty. A Ma-rine was instantly killed by a single rifle shot. But there was no other resistance; the enemy had not elected to defend Tulagi on the beach, but from caves and earthen bunkers in the hills inland and to the south.

  The landing craft returned to the transports and loaded the second wave (Able and Charley Companies, 1st Raiders) and put them ashore. Then a steady stream of landing craft made their way between the transports and the beach and put the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, on shore.

  Once on Tulagi, the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, crossed the narrow island to their left (northwest) to clear out the enemy, while the Raiders turned to their right (southeast) and headed toward the southern tip of the island. About 3,500 yards sepa-rates the southern tip of Tulagi from the tiny island of Gavutu (515 by 255 yards) and the even smaller (290 by 310 yards) is-land of" Tanambogo, which was connected to Gavutu by a con-crete causeway.

  Operation pestilence called for the invasion of Gavutu by the 1st Parachute Battalion at 1200 hours. The parachutists, once they had secured Gavutu, were to cross the causeway and secure Tanambogo.

  The Raiders encountered no serious opposition until after noon. And 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, encountered no serious opposition moving in the opposite direction until about the same time.

  Off Guadalcanal, at 0840, the destroyers of the Guadalcanal Fire Support Group took up positions to mark the line of departure for the landing craft, five thousand yards north of Beach Red.

  Almost immediately, small liaison aircraft appeared over Beach Red and marked its 3,200 yard width with smoke gre-nades.

  Immediately after that, at exactly 0900, all the cruisers and destroyers of the Guadalcanal Fire Support Group began to bombard Beach Red and the area extending two hundred yards inshore.

  The landing craft carrying the first wave of the Beach Red invasion force (the 5th Marines, less their 2nd Battalion, which was on Tulagi) left the departure line on schedule. When the Landing Craft were 1,300 yards off Beach Red, the covering bombardment was lifted.

  At 0910, on a 1,600-yard front, the 5th Marines began to land on the beach, the 1st Battalion on the right (west), and the 3rd Battalion on the left (east). Regimental Headquarters came ashore at 0938. Minutes later they were joined by the Heavy Weapons elements of the regiment.

  Again, there was virtually no resistance on the beach. As the landing craft returned to the transports to bring the 1st Marines ashore, the 5th Marines moved inland, setting up a defense perimeter six hundred yards off Beach Red, along the Tenant River on the west, the Tenavatu River on the east, and a branch of the Tenant on the south.

  Once it had become apparent that they would not be in danger from Japanese artillery on or near the beach, the transports began to move closer to the beach, dropping anchor again seven thousand yards away.

  At about this point, serious problems began with the offload-ing process on the beach. In many ways these duplicated the di-sastrous trial run in the Fiji Islands.

  The small and relatively easy-to-manhandle 75mm pack how-itzers (originally designed to be carried by mules) of the 11th Marines (the artillery regiment) had come ashore with the as-sault elements of the 5th Marines.

  The 105mm howitzers now came ashore. But because there were not enough drop-ramp landing craft to handle them, they did not bring their "prime movers." The prime mover intended to tow the 105mm howitzer was the "Truck, 2 1/2 Ton, 6x6," commonly called the "six-by-six." Six-by-six refers to the num-ber of driving wheels. The standard six-by-six actually had eight wheels in the rear, for a total of ten powered wheels. So equipped, the six-by-six became legendary in its ability to carry or tow enormous loads anywhere.

  But the 11th Marines were not equipped with six-by-sixes. In-stead, they had been issued a truck commonly referred to as a "one-ton." It was rated as having a cargo capacity of one ton (as opposed to the two-and-a-half-ton capacity of the six-by-six), and it had only four powered wheels with which to move itself through mud, sand, or slippery terrain.

  Since there were insufficient drop-bow landing craft to move this "prime mover" immediately onto Beach Red, when the 105mm howitzers arrived on the beach, there was no vehicle ca-pable of towing them inland to firing positions-except for a few overworked amphibious tractors, which had a tanklike track and could negotiate sand and mud.

  These were pressed into service to move the 105mm howit-zers. But in so doing, their metal tracks chewed
up the primitive roads-as well as whatever field telephone wires they crossed. That effectively cut communication between the advanced posi-tions and the beach and the several headquarters.

  Within an hour or so of landing on the beach, moreover, the Marines were physically exhausted. For one thing, the long peri-ods of time they'd spent aboard the troop transports had caused them to lose much of the physical toughness they'd acquired in training.

  For another, Guadalcanal's temperature and high humidity quickly sapped what strength they had. And the effects of the temperature and humidity were magnified because they were slogging through sand and jungle and up hills carrying heavy loads of rifles, machine guns, mortars, and the ammunition for them.

  And there was not enough water. Although medical officers had strongly insisted that each man be provided with two can-teens (two quarts) of drinking water, there were not enough can-teens in the Pacific to issue a second canteen to each man.

  The Navy had been asked, and had refused, to provide beach labor details of sailors to assist with the unloading of freight coming ashore from the landing craft, and then to move the freight off the beach to make room for more supplies.

  It was presumed by Naval planners that the Marines could provide their own labor details to offload supplies from landing craft and that trucks would be available to move the offloaded supplies from the beach inland.

  Marines exhausted by the very act of getting ashore managed slowly to unload supplies from landing craft, further exhausting themselves in the process. But then, at first, there were no trucks to move the supplies off the beach; and when the one-ton trucks finally began to come ashore, they proved incapable of negotiat-ing the sand and roads chewed up by amphibious tractors.

  The result was a mess. Landing craft loaded with supplies were stacked up three rows deep off the beach. They were unable even to reach the beach, much less rapidly discharge their car-goes.

  (Five)

  Aboard LCP(L) 36

  Off Gavutu Island

  1225 Hours 7 August 1942

  First Lieutenant Richard B. Macklin, USMC, was unhappy with Operation pestilence for a number of reasons, and specif-ically with his role in the operation.

  He had arrived at the 1st Parachute Battalion three weeks ear-lier after long and uncomfortable voyages, first aboard a de-stroyer from San Diego, and then a mine sweeper from Pearl Harbor. When he had finally reached the 1st Parachute Battalion, the commanding officer, Major Robert Williams, had promptly told him that he hadn't expected him and frankly didn't know what the hell to do with him.

  "I had rather hoped, Sir, that in view of my experience, I might be given a company."

  Macklin felt sure service as a company commander would get him his long-overdue promotion.

  "Company commanders are captains, Macklin," Williams re-plied.

  "Company `C is commanded by a lieutenant," Macklin po-litely argued, "one who is junior in rank to me."

  "I'm not going to turn over a company to you at this late date. They're a team now, and I don't intend to screw that up by throwing in a new quarterback just before the kickoff," Williams said. "Sorry."

  Not only was what they were about to do not a football game, Macklin fumed privately, but refusing to give him the command was a clear violation of regulations, which clearly stated that the senior officer present for duty was entitled to command.

  Williams seemed to be one of those officers who obeyed only those orders it was convenient to obey. In this regard he had obviously been influenced by the Army paratroopers with whom he had trained. Macklin had seen enough of that collection of clowns to know that any resemblance between Army paratroop officers and professional officers was purely coincidental.

  They thought the war was a football game, and acted like it. Macklin had actually witnessed Army paratroop officers drink-ing, and probably whoring, if the truth were known, with their enlisted men in Phoenix City, Alabama, across the river from Fort Benning. If the Army's 82nd Airborne Division was ever sent into combat, there was no question in Macklin's mind that it would fail, miserably, to accomplish its mission. Discipline was the key to military success, and Army paratroop discipline was a disgrace.

  But insisting on his legal rights would not have been wise, Macklin concluded. There was no doubt in his mind that if he appealed to the proper authorities, Williams would be ordered to place him in command of "C" Company. But if he did that, Major Williams would from that moment just be looking for an excuse to relieve him. And being relieved of command was worse than not being given a command at all.

  So here he was, in a landing craft, about to assault an enemy-held beach, having been officially designated a "supernumerary officer." Supernumerary was a euphemism for "replacement"- an officer with no duties, waiting to replace someone wounded or killed.

  Meanwhile, the First Parachute Battalion, the "Chutes," was obviously being improperly employed, that is to say as regular infantry. The rationale for that was that there were no aircraft to drop them.

  Macklin personally doubted that. He had seen ships in San Diego loaded with partially disassembled R4Ds, for instance. Perhaps they were Air Corps C-47s, destined for China or Australia, as he had been told; but the planes were identical, only the nomenclature was different. If the senior officers had wanted to use Para-Marines, they could have gotten the aircraft some-where.

  And if aircraft were truly not available, then the obvious thing to do was not commit the Para-Marines. It made no military sense to waste superbly trained men, the elite of the elite, as com-mon infantry, sacrificing them in assaulting a beach on an island that had no real military importance that Macklin could see. It was only five hundred yards long and half that wide!

  What they should have done, if they really thought the island was a threat, was to shell or bomb it level. Not send Marines to throw away their lives and all their superb training to occupy it. All the Japanese were using it for was a seaplane base. By definition, seaplanes could be used anywhere there was enough water for them to land and take off.

  Probably the whole thing was regarded by the brass as a live-fire exercise, to give the Para-Marines a blooding and Naval Avi-ation some practice. Navy SBD dive-bombers had attacked Gavutu for forty minutes, starting at 1145.

  Ten minutes after the dive-bombers started their attack, the Navy started shelling the island, a barrage that lasted five min-utes, causing huge clouds of smoke and dust to rise from Gavutu.

  Macklin reminded himself of what he knew of the explosive force of one-hundred-pound bombs and Naval artillery. It was awesome. It was reasonable to assume that, on an island only five hundred yards long, very few Japanese soldiers, much less their armament, could survive forty minutes of dive-bombing and an intense five-minute Naval barrage.

  Macklin was close enough in the landing barge to hear the Coxswain when he muttered, with concern and resignation, "Oh, shit!"

  "What's the matter?"

  The Coxswain took his hand from his wheel long enough to point ahead, at the beach. Macklin was reluctant to raise his head high enough over the bow to look-doing so would make his head a target-but curiosity, after a moment, got the best of him. He raised his head, kept it up long enough to look around, and then ducked again.

  Either bombs from the dive-bombers or shells from the Naval artillery, or maybe some of each, had struck the concrete landing ramps used by the Japanese to get their seaplanes in and out of the water. Huge blocks of concrete had been displaced.

  The Operations Order called for this landing craft and the landing craft to each side to run aground on-the concrete ramps. But that would not be possible.

  Aware that his heart was beating rapidly and that his mouth was dry, Macklin considered the alternatives. The Coxswain could continue on his prescribed course until the landing craft ran into one of the huge blocks of concrete and had to stop. There was no telling how deep the water would be at that point; it was even possible they would be in water over their heads when they went over
the side of the landing craft. If he had to jump into water over his head with all the equipment he was carrying, he would drown.

  There was a concrete pier extending maybe two hundred yards from shore. The Coxswain could run the landing craft against that, and the Marines could then climb onto the pier and run down the pier to shore.

  But, he realized with alarm, if the Naval artillery had hit the concrete ramps, it probably had hit the concrete pier as well. There was a good possibility that at least a portion of the pier was destroyed, and that it would be impossible to run all the way ashore.

  And in the moment it occurred to him that even if the pier was intact, anyone running down its length would be like a tar-get in a shooting gallery for riflemen and machine-gunners de-fending the beach, the Coxswain throttled back his engine. A moment later, the landing craft grated against the concrete pier.