Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (17 page)

Goettge’s loss was offset to a degree by the appearance of Martin Clemens, the coastwatcher, who joined the Marines and worked closely with Vandegrift’s intelligence people, setting up a radio post that gave Cactus
direct contact with Mason, Read, and other key observers. Clemens, joking with staff officers, admitted that he too had had just a few tins of food left when he appeared. The dangers were starkly demonstrated less than two weeks later. Clemens sent his trusted indigenous aide, Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza, to scout a suspected Japanese lookout post. The enemy caught Vouza with a small American flag he carried to identify himself. The Japanese tied Vouza to a tree and tortured him but got no information. Then they bayoneted Vouza and left him to die. The coastwatcher managed to free himself and regain U.S. lines. Vouza distinguished himself again later as a guide for the Marine Raider Battalion.

Vandegrift soon got his own Ultra radio section. Lieutenant Sanford B. Hunt ran the (captured Japanese) radio that kept Vandegrift in touch with SOPAC. He delivered what intel the theater command sent. A radio intelligence element arrived in mid-September with the convoy that brought the 7th Marine Regiment. This was a tiny two-man direction-finding unit that helped generate target information for the Cactus Air Force. A couple of weeks later they were augmented by a full mobile radio detachment led by Lieutenant Commander Daniel J. McCallum. The “cryppies” knew their unit as Station AL. Marines like Herb Merillat knew them more informally as the “Cactus Crystal Ball.” McCallum flew up from Espíritu Santo with four sailors on one of the daily flights. The C-47 could not carry all their gear, so they took half and left the rest to arrive a month later by ship. McCallum brought two special-keyboard typewriters that could print Japanese characters, several Hallicrafters radio receivers, and a Copek—the encryption device that provided secure communications within the Allied radio intelligence net. As a Japanese-language officer, McCallum could translate decrypted enemy messages. Naturally there were teething troubles. Chief Radioman James J. Perkins, who arrived with the direction-finding team, lost a receiver in the confusion of unloading the convoy under Japanese bombardment. Months later he found its shell on the beach—Marines had been using the thing as an oven.

With just one, later two, receivers or “posts,” the mobile radio unit had limited capacity, but it put Cactus on the circuit for traffic analysis and decrypts obtained elsewhere. Some cryppies groused that McCallum was not a technician and wondered why he was there. His shortcomings put much of the weight on Lieutenant Charles “Homer” Kisner. Commander
McCallum could use JN-25 codebooks, and, coached by Kisner, did his best. The commander passed his data to Marine Lieutenant Hunt, who continued to be Vandegrift’s Ultra liaison. Among their most important information was a daily list of radio fixes on Japanese ships, used to target air strikes. The Cactus Crystal Ball established itself in a tunnel dug into a hillock below Henderson Field.

Though the JNAF concentrated on Henderson Field, their bombing affected everyone. On August 16, bombs wounded five Marines of Corporal Garrett’s I Battery. On the twenty-fifth, enemy ordnance missed the air base but struck near Vandegrift’s nearby headquarters. One bomb left a fifteen-by-twenty-five-foot crater, sprayed the command post with shrapnel, and sent shards into the general’s own tent. Lieutenant Merillat, who had taken up residence under a coral outcropping, traded that for a slit trench when bombs showered him with bits of broken coral. As another 1st Division Marine said of a later U.S. invasion, coral comes high.

Beyond enemy action were the dangers of tropical disease, which were only magnified for men losing weight on half rations. In September, when the 1st Marine Division had incurred only about a thousand casualties, twice that many were laid up with malaria or dysentery. And that was
before
the rainy season brought tons more mosquitoes and widespread disease. Vandegrift’s whole command went on a preventive course of antimalarials (quinine, but mostly atabrine) that month. A rumor quickly arose that atabrine caused impotence, and Marines resisted taking it. Even having medics stand in chow lines to make Marines quaff the pills before receiving food proved none too successful, judging from medical casualties. More than 8,500 of Vandegrift’s Marines were felled by malaria, some more than once, nearly three-quarters of them in the period from mid-September to December. When the 7th Marines arrived, it had the only battalions anywhere near full strength.

During their voyage to the Solomons, General Kawaguchi marveled to a Japanese journalist that, unlike themselves, forced to sneak into Guadalcanal, the Americans had everything. That image of plenty belied the shoestring experience of Marines, but it was a lurid fantasy for Japanese. In mid-August, Japanese naval infantrymen were approaching Marine lines at night to search for food. Others surrendered just for something to eat. Japanese soldiers had the same problems on Guadalcanal, magnified. They had
no antimalarials. They called the ’Canal “Starvation Island.” It was a wonder Japan’s soldiers could fight. But they did. For many men of both sides, Guadalcanal was an emotion not an island, a trial rather than a battle.

BLOODY RIDGE AND AFTER

General Vandegrift was desperate for troops. Reinforcements seemed remote—in fact, Ghormley and MacArthur were just then fighting over the destination of the 7th Marine Regiment—yet to be given to SOPAC and sent to the ’Canal. Vandegrift could not defend a full perimeter plus his long beachfront, much less provide reserves. The only men he could draw upon were on Tulagi. Early in September he did that, ordering the 1st Marine Raider Battalion and 1st Parachute Battalion over to the big island. Colonel Merritt A. “Red Mike” Edson, commanding the Raiders, was ready. A pioneer in Marine special warfare, Red Mike had teamed up with another legendary Marine, Evans Carlson, to create the Raiders. Now Edson led the 1st Battalion and it seemed marooned on Tulagi, where fighting had been savage during the invasion, but nothing had happened since.

Itching for action, Colonel Edson sent two companies to Savo Island to look for Japanese but found none. That had a sad postscript, because destroyer-transports
Little
and
Gregory
, which carried the Raiders, were trapped by a returning Tokyo Express and blown to bits in the early morning of September 5. Commander Kikkawa Kiyoshi of the
Yudachi
impressed his cohorts: landing fresh troops, bombarding Henderson,
and
sinking the American vessels. More metal to line the seabed of Ironbottom Sound. It could have been worse—the original idea had been to keep the Raiders on board that night.

Meanwhile Edson suggested that on their way to Cactus, his Raiders should strike the Japanese rear. Vandegrift’s staff readily agreed. The landing took place at Tasimboko on September 8, and it hit General Kawaguchi’s depot. Coincidentally, just as the four-ship Raider flotilla approached, an American convoy appeared in the distance, a pair of cargo vessels with a strong escort of a cruiser and four destroyers. The Japanese feared an invasion and fled. Furious, Kawaguchi ordered them back. He could not help, because his main force was deep into the jungle on its way to assault Henderson. There was a sharp firefight at Tasimboko, ending with the Japanese driven into the bush again. Marines disabled the artillery they found, destroyed supplies, appropriated more, and returned with a haul of maps and documents that convinced Vandegrift a major attack impended.

At the time General Vandegrift was moving division headquarters to a location he thought safer, overlooked by a ridge. Colonel Edson brought in the captured maps and, together with Colonel Gerald C. Thomas, the 1st Marines operations officer, announced they had figured out where the Japanese would strike. Vandegrift thought Red Mike respectfully disapproving when he came to the punch line: “The ridge you insist on putting your new CP behind.” But the general quickly bought that analysis and arranged counters. Edson would take an amalgam of his 1st Raiders plus the 1st Parachute Battalion to defend the ridge. Marine artillery zeroed in on the position. Del Valle moved a battalion to beef up the fire support. Vandegrift deployed his reserves to interpose between the ridge and Henderson Field and alerted another battalion to intervene if necessary. The Marines waited.

The Tokyo Express hit again that night. Admiral Ghormley, alert to the enemy, recalled the latest convoy before it had emptied. Japanese bombing continued also. Seabees were putting finishing touches to Fighter 1, but it was yet to become active. The Cactus Air Force lost twelve-plane ace Captain Marion Carl on September 10. SOPAC warned that day of an Imperial Navy task force that might reach the area in a couple of days. Henderson was like a pot of honey attracting bees. Surveying the damage, Vandegrift called in Jerry Thomas and asked him, without telling anyone else, to craft a plan for last-ditch guerrilla resistance from the interior. If it came to that, the Marine leader wanted to be ready.

General Kawaguchi had his own problems. With the uncertain supply line up The Slot, Kawaguchi had to reduce the rice ration for his soldiers by two-thirds. The Tasimboko raid cut his radio relay to Rabaul. Hacking through the jungle, progress remained slow, unpredictable. Captain Inui Genjirou led the 8th Antitank Company, originally part of the Ikki Detachment. Inui’s men had already learned to slice open coconuts, supplementing meager rations with their milk and meat. So far, at least, the men did not seem to have weakened from the harsh regimen. Partway to his assembly area, General Kawaguchi dropped off the remaining Ikki Detachment troops for one prong of his attack. But Japanese knowledge of the battlefield remained so sketchy that Kawaguchi did not even know that his planned
line of advance went right over a ridge. And he had no contact with Colonel Oka. The general sent a search party ahead to contact the 124th Regiment commander and tell Oka of his plans. Those men, practically emaciated, found the colonel only the very morning of the attack. It had not been a good start.

The outcome matched the run-up. Shouting their battle cries of “Banzai!” the Japanese assaulted the ridge, and the other prongs of Kawaguchi’s offensive hit as well. It was raining. A cruiser and three destroyers, for once, shot at targets other than Henderson Field. In another departure from custom, the Imperial Navy warships used searchlights to illuminate the beach. Louie the Louse lit the night with parachute flares. All for naught. Red Mike had prepared his men well. Sergeant Frank Guidone of the Raiders’ C Company on the right flank, saw almost no Japanese reach the crest, though some broke past where his unit tied in with A Company. Marines lost a little ground, but slowly and exacting a great price. The Oka and Ikki prongs were complete failures. Admirals Richmond Kelly Turner, the amphibious boss, and John S. McCain, Commander Air Solomons, who both happened to be visiting Cactus, stayed through the night, witnessing this delicate moment. At the new headquarters, Herb Merillat ran out of his tent and hit the ground amid the downpour.

Kawaguchi repeated his attack the next night. The battlefield became known as “Bloody Ridge.” Some called it “Edson’s Ridge.” The fighting was much like World War I, with the difference that the Japanese, great infiltrators, managed to insert little packets of soldiers inside Marine lines. By daylight Edson used Raiders and parachutists to roust out the enemy, and in darkness Kawaguchi sent them back. On the second night, fighting raged barely a quarter mile from Vandegrift’s headquarters. A couple of Marine artillery rounds, falling short, plastered the command post. Edson sent back word that many Japanese were filtering through. Vandegrift committed his reserve battalion, but Red Mike, increasingly confident he could hold, did. His troops sustained 263 casualties, including 49 dead and 10 missing. From prisoners and documents the Marines calculated that the Japanese had employed 6,230 troops and suffered more than 700 killed and missing and more than 500 wounded.

As the various Imperial Navy sea and air activities suggest, Combined Fleet had coordinated closely on the Kawaguchi offensive. The Fleet had made a specific agreement on operations with 17th Army a week ahead of time, and chief of staff Ugaki had flown to Rabaul on September 10 to supervise. But Tokyo’s major effort collapsed. The
Kido Butai
left Truk to cruise east of the Solomons. The morning after Kawaguchi struck, scout planes flew to check Henderson Field and one tried to land. Finding forty American fighters on the ground there, the pilot gave up. Later, information that Cactus fighters intercepted Japanese bombers made it certain. In the face of conflicting reports, Ugaki had hoped for Henderson’s fall. Now he felt dejected. The Eleventh Air Fleet morning search on September 13 discovered a U.S. task force, but
Kido Butai
was 600 miles away. Nagumo wanted to attack. The Americans stayed beyond striking distance. By the fourteenth Admiral Ugaki concluded that the Kawaguchi offensive had miscarried. In almost two weeks at sea, Nagumo accomplished nothing.