The Pacific (26 page)

Sid Phillips and Deacon hiked to the wreckage of a downed Zero. They "dug out part of the pilot's body." Deacon took the pilot's cigarette case. Sid found a coin in his pocket. It wasn't much of a haul, but it had been something to do other than waiting and watching. Mail call came that day. The return of a fairly regular mail service encouraged all of them to write home more. It was around this time that Sid wrote his friend Eugene Sledge back in Mobile. "Don't join anything," Sid advised him, "not even the Boy Scouts or the Salvation Army."

A working party went to the airfield and the beach and returned to the #4 gun squad with a load of chow, chocolate, and gossip. The navy boys at the field had boasted of sinking "three battlewagons, fourteen destroyers, two transports, six cruisers, two aircraft carriers and one aircraft tender." More mail was expected, more IJN ships were expected, and the First Marines were departing November 11. After reading his copies of the Mobile newspaper, Sid let the others read them. Everyone was in a good mood because they were going home soon.

MICHEEL RESPONDED TO THE CONSTANT TENSION BY EATING. "I MADE THE MESS hall every chance I could get because I was losing weight like mad. I had the trots. It's amazing I could make the flights and never have any problem, but the minute I get out of the airplane I had to run." He kept his strength up by eating, but the combination of physical and mental exhaustion dropped his weight to 127. He found himself hoping he'd get off Cactus soon and back on a carrier.

It was about this time that Dick Mills, who had gone down near Russell Island, returned. Mike took one look at his friend and realized Dick looked better than he did. "So I asked him how he gained so much weight. He said, 'I had chicken every day.' " Whatever concern Mike had had for him evaporated. Dick had obviously been well cared for. At the ops tent, Dick advised his friends that if they went down, not to kick off their boots as they had been told. They would need their boots to climb out of the rocky shoals. Dick said he had cut his feet. Having endured three weeks of constant strain on the Canal, Mike had lost about twenty pounds. He just could not take this advice too seriously. He started teasing Dick about his crash, telling everyone Dick had gone "cuckoo and . . . shot off all his prop."

Of all of the pressures Bombing Six faced, the enemy's artillery drove them crazy. It had become known as Pistol Pete, even though the IJA had several big 150mms. Pistol Pete could fire at them at all times, day and night. Although "he" dueled with the marine artillery and sought out troop concentrations, Pistol Pete obviously enjoyed shooting at planes during their most vulnerable moments, during takeoff and landing. The sporadic fire and excellent camouflage had so far prevented anyone from locating the gun, but a five-inch field piece was too big to be ignored.

One of the Bombing Six pilots came up with an idea. "Let's see if we can get that guy to shoot at us. We'll take a plane up there and circle over the top like you're looking for him, see if he'll shoot at you, and then we'll have the attack airplanes over here watching. As soon as he fires, they've got him spotted, they'll attack him." It was worth a try. Mike agreed to be the decoy. As he had done for some time, he took whichever rear seat gunner agreed to go. Airman Spires volunteered. When the other airplanes got in position, Mike started making passes over the general area, west of the Matanikau River. It worked. "Every time I'd come at him it was okay and then as soon as I'd turn away, POW! He'd let go. My rear gunner would say, 'He's shooting at us! He's shooting at us!' " Each time, Mike got on the radio to his friends and asked, "Did you see that?" and each time came the reply: "No . . . try it again." Mike had been circling up there almost an hour when he finally heard, "We've got him." Mike cleared out and the others bombed and strafed the area. When he landed, the rear seat gunner told him he quit. "I'm not flying anymore! You're making a guinea pig out of me!" As it turned out, Spires did not mean it. He flew again. As for Pistol Pete, he was out of commission for about five days.

Bombing Six had the watch one evening in early November when word came of another ship unloading in the Japanese area. The pilots and their leaders had had it with the Tokyo Express avoiding them by sneaking in at night and getting away before dawn. Dauntlesses had begun to attack the Tokyo Express at night by glide bombing--making an approach decidedly less steep than a dive--when possible. A few days before, on November 2, three Dauntlesses had taken off at dusk to chase three enemy destroyers, which the IJN used to bring in men and supplies because of their speed. None of the aircraft had returned.
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Ray Davis decided it looked possible on this night, and to prove it, he would make the first run.

As Mike checked out his Dauntless, preparing to make the second run, he looked into the dark sky above him. He had flown night missions before, one just a few days previously against a destroyer near Russell Island.
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He had had some training in night flying, and had flown through plenty of bad weather. These missions depended on visibility. With a bright moon over a clear sky, he could see the horizon. Even with good light, a pilot had to rely more on the plane's instruments than on his own perception. Relying upon the altimeter, the airspeed indicator, the compass, and a few other key instruments to stay on course took concentration, experience, and steady nerves.

Flying on a night like this, though, when there was no light, scared Mike. A black sky meant no horizon, and no horizon, Mike told himself, meant "you'd get vertigo real easy. You figure you're turning, the seat of your pants tells you you're turning and you look at your gauges and you're going straight ahead." Reconciling one's senses with one's gauges often led to panic, or worse, dizziness. Lieutenant Micheel eased the plane along the taxiway and out to the end of Henderson Field. He waited for Ray to return, his engine idling.

Landing at night on a carrier demanded great skill, but glide bombing at night--on a dark night--came close to impossible. Trying to drop a bomb "on top of a black object and pull off of a black object" caused vertigo in even the most experienced pilots. Executing such a maneuver at high speed, as the pilot coped with spinning dials, sweeping needles, and the powerful impulses of his own perception, just demanded too much. In the past, men had hung flares over the target and these had made it easier to hit it, but the flares also caused the pilot to lose his sight. A flare made pulling up and flying home an even bigger challenge.

Ray's plane landed at the far end of the great runway. It rolled toward Mike, not turning onto the taxiway, until he stopped within a few feet. Ray's gunner jumped out and ran over and jumped up on Mike's wing and yelled over the idling engine, "Skipper says cancel the flight. Don't go." A wave of relief hit Mike. His guardian angel had landed on his shoulder. The two airplanes taxied back to their hardstands. Walking back to the operations tent, Ray said he had flown over the target at five thousand feet, yet "it was so dark you couldn't see the ship from the air. . . ." He concluded "it wasn't worth risking aviators. . . ." No one back at the tent questioned the decision.

ALONG WITH THEIR COMMANDING VIEW OF MUCH OF THE BATTLE, SID AND HIS friends heard all about it. The movements of units, the body count, and the number of rounds expended--a great deal of it rumor, they knew all too well. The army over in Sector Three had killed enemy troops by the thousands and had not only pulled German Lugers and Samurai swords off the bodies, but the doggies were supposedly holding fencing duels with the Japanese sabers. The marines' shortwave radio had picked up enemy transmissions and it had been deduced that the enemy planes that had flown in so low a week earlier had been sent to land on the empire's new airport--Henderson Field. The news was met with hoots and catcalls of "Too bad, Tojo." Transcripts of the interrogation of four Japanese POWs were circulating, though. These prisoners stated that they "wanted to quit the war and especially fighting the 'bloodthirsty' marines." Out in the harbor, the #4 gun squad could see increasing numbers of U.S. ships. On November 2, working parties unloaded seven 155mm guns, known as Long Toms; the word was the Long Toms could fire a shell ten miles.

All of the ships arriving off Lunga Point also meant that the Eighth and the Twenty-second marines were landing soon. "Rumors are we leave Sun or Mon for Tulagi--have a chemical bath--shots--New Zealand." They waited for the next big push by the enemy, who continued to send air strikes. Attempts by the Tokyo Express to reinforce its troops were now often turned back. So many Japanese ships had been sunk, Deacon joked, that Prime Minister Tojo needed "a diving bell to inspect his navy now." For the enemy troops already on the island, "Our planes run those japs crazy over on the other point, strafing and bombing." On November 7, a number of new squadrons landed at the field, including not just more Wildcats and dive-bombers, but also B-17s. The word was Guadalcanal would soon become the United States' biggest B- 17 base in the Pacific. When the radio broadcast from San Francisco announced the plans for relieving the 1st Marine Division off of Guadalcanal, it sounded to the jaded marines of the #4 gun squad "too good to be true." Another marine told them he had heard that Admiral Nimitz had been relieved of duty. Sid's squad didn't know what to believe.

THE ORDER TO MOVE OUT CAME IN THE LATE AFTERNOON ON NOVEMBER 3. THE 2/7 had encountered a large number of enemy a few miles east of the perimeter. Sergeant Basilone distributed ammo and rations, his men grabbed their gear and heavy machine guns, and they walked down from Bloody Ridge.
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Instead of waiting inside the perimeter for an attack, the 1/7 would help the 2/7 take the offensive.
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More than a dozen Higgins boats met the marines at Lunga Point just after six p.m. They motored eastward, toward Koli Point. The shore ran along to their right, monotonously dark. Hours passed. The officers obviously were having trouble locating the landing spot. They saw lights onshore but could not tell if it was the enemy or the 2/7. Chesty and his other officers knew they had to get out of the boats before they ran into an enemy sub or even one of the navy's torpedo boats. All the landing craft went back to Lunga Point to get reorganized. The officers radioed the 2/7 and agreed upon a light signal to give one another. The 1/7 motored back to Koli Point. Around midnight, the landing craft dumped the 1/7 on the beach near a river. After posting the guards, everyone slept on the beach.
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The landing made for an inauspicious start to what Manila later called the Seventh Marines' "jap hunt."
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The 1/7 and 2/7, joined by battalions of the army, spent almost three weeks chasing the enemy through the swamps and across the rivers east of Koli Point. It began with destroying the abandoned weapons and equipment they found and progressed into brief, intense firefights. They chased the IJA so far east that they walked off the maps they carried. Not having a map didn't bother Chesty in the least, so it didn't bother his men. In one of the latter skirmishes, the shrapnel from the shell of an enemy field cannon cut into the indefatigable Colonel Puller, who had been up near the front as usual, and he allowed himself to be evacuated after the crisis had passed. It was not a severe wound and it did not affect the outcome. The U.S. forces slowly boxed in the enemy force. The marine artillery, miles away inside the perimeter, ignited a firestorm inside the box. Most of the enemy escaped due to the difficulties imposed by the terrain and--according to the marines--the inefficiency of the army units.

It had taken as much brute strength as bravery to make the operation a success and the marines could be happy to have destroyed the threat. A number of days passed, though, while they waited to return to the perimeter; days spent "eating cold rations out of a box," as Manila described it, dampened their spirits.
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Although the recent foray had not caused many casualties in the 1/7, only 75 percent of its original men walked back up to Bloody Ridge upon their return to the perimeter. The battalion had begun to lose a lot of men to jungle diseases, like malaria, including the skipper of Charlie Company. Each man still standing had lost a great deal of weight since his arrival.