Then things started coming apart.
The improvised landing operation went well, and the troops landed without losses but soon ran into heavy fire. The first casualty was Major Rogers, killed as the troops began to move inland. Upstream, nothing much was happening, as the Raiders were not, as supposed, across the river ready to move against the exposed Japanese flank.
Feeling no pressure or threat from any direction, the Japanese reserves were free to turn their attention to the leaderless 1st Battalion, which had hastily taken up a defensive position on the first hill inland from the beach. The Marines were quickly assailed by two forces at separate points. Their withdrawal became a matter of paramount importance.
We had not suffered a serious air raid for several days, but even before Edson finished giving me his report we were struck by an unexpected low-level attack that almost completely demolished the CP. Everything was knocked down, including most of the trees we relied on for cover. When it ended, I reached for my phone—ten inches of useless wire dangled from the receiver. I tried another phone. The switchboard operator told me all communications were wiped out.
All this with a daylight withdrawal on our hands.
I drove to Kukum, where an artillery battalion was supporting the attack at the river. Over their lines I could talk to their forward observer at the river. He in turn could relay messages to Edson and Puller. Ballard, with Puller aboard, was supporting the movements of our endangered troops, ordered by Puller, to cut their way through to the closest beach, where they would be picked up by landing craft sent from the boat pool. Lt. Dale M. Leslie of VMSB-231, piloting a lone SBD, showed great initiative and rendered invaluable support in directing the landing craft to the correct beach and informing them of survivors at other points.
The landing craft flotilla, led by Lieutenant Commander Dexter, U.S. Coast Guard, was heavily involved and fought with the Japanese at close quarters along the beach to protect the embarking troops. Signalman First Class Douglas A. Munro, USCG, won the first Medal of Honor in Coast Guard history for his heroism in this combat. Unfortunately, the award was posthumous.
In addition to its official motto, “Semper Paratus,” the Coast Guard adheres resolutely to a less formal one couched in simple one-syllable words: “You have to go out. You don’t have to come back.” This day they demonstrated that they still lived and died by both mottoes.
To me the real significance of this unlucky operation lay not so much in the fact that the enemy was being strongly reinforced but in the fact that he was in a position to cross the river in force sufficient to threaten the right (west) flank of our perimeter. A foothold at the river mouth would be a serious threat because the key terrain feature there was the sandbar, which provided a crossing over the Matanikau River at its mouth. As long as we held it, our right flank would be secure and the airfield would not become inoperable due to heavy close-range fire from artillery brought across the river. No one had ever heard of a sandbar being a key terrain feature. Mt. Austen was thought by some to be the key terrain feature, and in a way it was. It dominated the scene but was too large, too inaccessible, and too remote to be of any real value to the relatively small forces on either side. We patrolled it frequently and ignored it the rest of the time.
Permanent loss of the river mouth crossing would be a different matter. Jerry didn’t think we had strength enough to hold it permanently. I thought we had to take the lesser risk, not accept the incalculable one. I was smart enough not to say anything to the general about it but could see that it was on his mind. The presence of even a small enemy force on our side of the river now gave him great concern.
This was the only thoroughly unsuccessful operation of the entire Guadalcanal campaign. Central cause of failure was abandonment of mission. We had planned this operation carefully to find out what was going on in the area west of the perimeter, an area overlooked due to our preoccupation with the climactic activity on the other flank, including the battles of Tenaru, Tasimboko, and Edson’s Ridge.
Native scouts were never able to operate in the area under scrutiny with the same freedom they enjoyed elsewhere. Our primary source of information came from the occasional letters and reports to Clemens from local inhabitants. One such letter, outdated but confirmatory of our own views, described the Japanese in the area as survivors raiding native gardens to keep from starving, malarial, and living in small groups in the jungle. We had no hard evidence to indicate that fresh forces had been landed. We were shaking hands with our answer when Puller made his first contact on the slopes of Mambulo during the afternoon of 25 September. Kokumbona Vagabonds and stale Japanese don’t inflict thirty-two casualties on a Marine battalion.
Our reaction to these losses was an unconscious shift of emphasis from reconnaissance to attack. We began an utterly piecemeal series of reinforcements and attacks that descended to a sour nadir on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh. What began as a sound and sensible reconnaissance operation ended as an improvised, complex, jury-rigged attack for which we had no plan and had made no preparations.
In addition, we had made the same mistake we charged against Rear Adm. Kelly Turner during the Savo Island affair by failing to use all available assets. When we found ourselves stopped at the mouth of the river by machine-gun fire coming from an area unreachable by our artillery, we should have committed our half tracks. These highly mobile self-propelled vehicles could have destroyed or suppressed the fire of the offending enemy weapons by the close-range direct fire of their 75mm guns. In the course of an unplanned encounter we had just neglected to make use of them. Edson agreed.
I am the first to offer my own mea culpa. I should never have gone along with Edson’s and Puller’s idea of recommitting the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, in an improvised, off-the-cuff landing near Point Cruz. It was I, not they, who was in a position to exercise a cooler and more detached judgment. They were stung by their reverses and wanted to fight. My conditional acquiescence may well have swayed General Vandegrift’s judgment when he gave final approval. In this operation we were unlucky. We let ourselves drift aimlessly into action. Such solace as could be found lay solely in the fact that by timely action we were able to avoid greater losses.
The period immediately following this operation was one of relative quiet except for the continuing bombardment of Henderson Field by enemy aircraft, destroyers, and submarines, almost routine in their deadly sequence. At the command post, the D-3 section continued its round-the-clock routine of providing backup for the front-line sectors—a full-time job for three officers, two sergeants, and two field phones.
The latter were the bane of my existence. In the beginning we were equipped with only the standard Marine Corps field telephone, a magneto-operated, hand-cranked device that Alexander Graham Bell must have created on one of his bad days. I am not mechanically gifted, and my efforts to operate this monstrosity provided the only light moments in the operations tent. Whenever I picked up the phone and grabbed the crank, all work in the section ceased. I would crank and twist and crank again on this fiendish invention, only to put my finger in the wrong place and get an electric shock of enormous voltage. This was the high point of the day for my compatriots, who I suspect deeply regretted it when that diabolic device was replaced by a regular telephone system.
Our D-3 section operated twenty-four hours a day. We never secured for air raids or bombardments when the rest of the command post was routinely evacuated to get people out of the Henderson Field target area. During raids we sheltered in our flimsy homemade dugout, which provided more psychological support than physical shelter. We built up a thriving trade among the smaller units. We never refused a reasonable request. We never told anyone that they should call one of the other sections. We handled that ourselves. A man who needs help doesn’t need a lesson in staff functioning at two o’clock in the morning when he has run out of hand grenades. We acquired a decent reputation and much goodwill among the lowly, if not among the bird colonels. During t
he daily shootouts we shared the CP alone with Doctor Brown and with Butch, if he had something in the oven. With fourteen Japanese bombers circling overhead getting ready to drop, I have actually seen that man crawl out of his hole to retrieve a pan of biscuits from the oven and deposit them with tender protectiveness on the ground beneath his stove.
CHAPTER 10
Buildup to Armageddon
On 30 September we received a visit from Admiral Nimitz. He came to see for himself what life was like at the end of the line. The weather was miserable, but the occasion was pleasant for all of us.
I was called into the general’s diggings to brief the admiral on our dispositions, using an aerial mosaic of Lunga Point mounted on a large piece of plywood. After the presentation, I moved to get out of the small enclosure with my unwieldy load but was unable to get through.
As I stood there, Admiral Nimitz asked General Vandegrift to state his views on the Turner relationship. General Vandegrift was extremely circumspect. He spoke slowly, carefully limiting his views to the single statement that without consulting him or the commandant of the Marine Corps, or the secretary of the navy, Turner had organized men belonging to the 1st Marine Division into a totally unauthorized Raider Battalion instead of returning them to Guadalcanal.
Admiral Nimitz seemed relieved and changed the subject. Someone came in, and I got out. I admired the general’s good judgment in avoiding the debatable matter of command relationships—to this day a murky area. He had quietly pinned Kelly Turner’s shoulders to the mat beyond dispute by relying solely on the unarguable fact that the admiral had ignored the laws governing the U.S. Navy.
Since the beginning of the month it had been obvious that the Japanese were being reinforced nightly, building up large forces west of the Matanikau. And we had information that much larger forces of men and ships were being assembled at Rabaul. Tanks and heavy equipment were sighted near Kokumbona. There was quite discernible ship movement during the hours of darkness, and signs of great activity along the Tassafaronga beaches were evident.
A prompt response was necessary. The general decided that we should take the offensive at the Matanikau with whatever forces we could muster, even at the risk of being caught off base by a landing at Lunga while our best forces were engaged outside the perimeter.
The third Matanikau operation was carefully planned. It employed six infantry battalions supported fully by artillery and General Geiger’s Cactus Air Force.
On 7 October, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines (Bowen), moved out astride the government track. The battalion made contact at midmorning with a significant enemy force already several hundred yards east of the Matanikau River. The advance guard developed its assault and pushed the enemy slowly to the west in an attack continuing until after nightfall.
The 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, moved to the left of the engaged battalion and reached the river without opposition. Meanwhile, the Whaling Group, Lt. Col. Robert G. Hunt’s 3d Battalion, 2d Marines, and the Scout Sniper Detachment turned south, crossing upriver at the Nippon bridge, followed by 7th Marines (less 3d Battalion). They reached bivouac areas by nightfall.
Plans for the next day called for the 5th Marines to make a diversionary attack at the mouth of the river. Concurrently, our inland forces would envelop the hostile right flank, attacking successively to the north along the two ridges immediately paralleling the river’s left bank: Whaling’s Group on the right, 7th Marines on the left.
The resistance encountered by 5th Marines slowed the advance of all following units, making it difficult for them to execute movements at the time planned.
Unfortunately, the next day, 8 October, was one of continuous torrential downpour. Mud in the valley and wet slippery grass on the steep coral ridges slowed the advance of our enveloping force to a snail’s pace. It became evident that they could not reach their jumpoff position before late afternoon. The attack had to be postponed.
At daylight, 9 October, the attack was launched under favorable weather conditions. The Whaling Group advanced rapidly. Brushing aside light resistance, they seized the western approach to the vital river mouth crossing. Hanneken’s 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, on Whaling’s left, also encountered little opposition and reached the Point Cruz area. Obviously, the enemy had taken advantage of our enforced delay and pulled back out of the trap.
The general sent for me, saying he had received information and Ultra messages confirming reports that a massive make-or-break effort was being launched from Rabaul. It would be necessary to discontinue our ongoing melee with the Japanese at the river and come home. He concluded with this imperative: “I want you to keep at least a battalion down there at all times covering that sandbar at the mouth of the river.”
Now I knew we had come to the Solomons to stay.
I issued telephonic orders for a daylight withdrawal, covered by a reconnaissance in force by Puller in the direction of Kokumbona. This was a conventional maneuver, since we believed we were not under enemy pressure at any point. Col. Amor L. Sims, commanding 7th Marines, had difficulty in reaching Puller, whose battalion of the 7th Marines was on the extreme left flank. Puller had just encountered a large enemy force moving in for a counterattack and was working it over in great shape when he got Sims’s order. He had failed to inform Sims of his situation, a habit common to all old Coconut Warriors, whose credo was “once you clear the camp, tell ’em nothing.” Whaling and Hanneken always followed the same pattern. The practice invariably led to serious misunderstandings. Edson and Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson never engaged in this dubious tactic. Carlson reported in detail every six hours.
Nevertheless, Puller did a fine job of pulverizing the Japanese counterattacking force, trapped in a wooded ravine on his flank, using mortars while at the same time calling in artillery fire to cover his exposed front, held immobile along its zone of advance. As many as 600 Japanese may have been killed in this single minor encounter. Our losses were minimal.
By coincidence, the Japanese had planned to initiate a large scale attack on Henderson Field on 8 October, the day we picked for launching our attack. Had we not been delayed twenty-four hours by bad weather, the enemy would have found himself blocked at the river by the 5th Marines with Whaling, Hanneken, and Puller in perfect position for immediate envelopment of his right flank. In this situation the enemy would have been totally destroyed. We were always unlucky down there.
All this and more became evident a day or two later, when a map and operation order were taken from the body of a Captain Watanabe, killed while reconnoitering our lines. It confirmed our worst fears. The Japanese intended to seize the river mouth, enabling them to move tanks and artillery to assault our positions west of the Lunga River and pour devastating close-range artillery fire on Henderson Field, totally interdicting its use. From that point on there were no further differences of opinion as to what constituted our “clear and present danger.” This was particularly helpful to me in my position as chief of operations (D-3).
The Japanese order had an odd side effect on General Vandegrift, whose acute sense of military honor, decorum, and courtesy in dealing with foreign officers had, no doubt, been enhanced by his experiences as commander of our legation guard in Peking. When one of us spoke out too “realistically” about the Japanese, he was slightly offended. The general never used the term “Japs.” It was always politely “the Japanese.” Edson, in particular, annoyed him by his persistent use of the cognomen “Nips.” However, General Vandegrift’s attitude visibly changed after he read General Hyakutake’s detailed instructions for the manner of treating Vandegrift as a prisoner, particularly the item about making him remove his shoes before being led into the conqueror’s presence.
Our withdrawal to the Lunga Perimeter was completed without enemy interference. They were apparently too stunned by our sudden attack to retaliate. The 5th Marines (less 1st Battalion) had been on the line of the river since 7 October and was left in place until relieved by the McKelvy Group, a temporary task grou
ping consisting of 3d Battalion, 7th Marines (Williams), and 3d Battalion, 1st Marines (McKelvy), under the command of the latter as senior battalion commander. McKelvy’s battalion was assigned the task of holding the vital vehicle crossing of the sandbar at the mouth of the stream. Williams had the onerous task of establishing a tenuous defense of foot crossings up to and including the Nippon Bridge far upstream. Every effort was made to make the sandbar an untenable place for any Japanese venturing a crossing. The artillery was meticulously registered there and in depth along the government track as far as Kokumbona and beyond, with special attention being given to the defile east of Matanikau Village.
Most of our few antitank mines were put in place near the east end of the sandbar, where they could be covered by our fire. Banks of lights, salvaged from broken-down LVTs, were installed and protected by sandbag revetments. These lights brightly illuminated the field of fire extending across the river mouth and enabled our half tracks to deliver aimed 75mm antitank fire by night as well as by day. Enemy artillery was increasingly active but apparently could not reach this critical area and upset our careful preparations.
About this time we began receiving artillery fire within the Lunga Perimeter. Obviously, the Japanese had found a way to land medium artillery (150mm) across their beaches, for we were well out of light-artillery range. This fire was spasmodic, consisting of single rounds registered on the western end of Henderson Field’s main runway. We had a splendid view of the runway from the command post and also took all the “overs,” as we were totally unprotected on that side. The fire was little more than an annoyance and a source of argument as to whether there was one Pistol Pete or two. Adjustment of fire was probably exercised from some radio-equipped observation post on Mt. Austen. Their radios, like our own, were not too reliable.
When flights of friendly aircraft approached, it became standard practice for the 11th Marines to lay down suppressive fires on suspected Pistol Pete positions prior to and during the landing. The appearance of these medium weapons was ominous. We had none of our own for reply or counter-battery. They had been left behind in Wellington due to inadequate shipping.
No Bended Knee Page 16
