The Pacific (18 page)

The stupidity of the attack was self-evident. Without feint or forethought, heedless of the cost, the crack troops of the Imperial Japanese Army had rushed forward. The IJA had not known that an islander had tipped off the marines, but one of the Japanese soldiers had fired a flare before their first attack.
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Their bodies got ground into a meaty red pulp when the marines' Stuart tanks drove over the sand spit in the late afternoon as part of a pincer movement. A battalion of infantry had crossed the river well to the right and was advancing north to the ocean, flushing the remainder toward the Stuarts. Shooting the enemy across the Tenaru lost the heat of combat; it came to have the precision of the rifle range. Colonel Cates, CO of the First Marines, walked over to shake hands with the #4 gun squad and tell them they had laid down a perfect barrage. The cooks brought up hot coffee and C rations. Sid got into line. The marine next to him observed that "Marines would have to stand in line to get into hell."

The members of #4 gun who had fought as riflemen arrived with tales of killing enemy soldiers at close range. They also told of how the squad had lost their sergeant, Karp. A Japanese colonel had sliced his face open with his sword, then opened his chest and stomach, then ran him through. The colonel had wounded another marine before someone shot him. Dusk came. The mortar squad began filling sandbags and preparing to spend the night at their new position. The storytelling continued throughout H Company. Lucky Leckie, one of the machine gunners, said his friend Chuckler had seen lights across the river and had been the first to shout, "Who goes there?"
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After the firing started, Lucky and Chuckler had had to move their weapon several times to keep from being hit. At the point where the river met the sea, Hell's Point, as the sand spit was being called, machine gunner Johnny Rivers had held fast. It was said he killed one hundred of the emperor's troops after he died. His dead fingers had frozen on the trigger.

Stories like Johnny Rivers's, who had been called Chief because of his Indian heritage, formed the core of the men's understanding of the Battle of Hell's Point.
^m
The next day, everyone started looting the bodies, trying not to breathe through their noses, with the knowledge that the First Marines had done it. They had stood up to the vaunted Japanese army. Inside the packs they found hand grenades, American money, and lots of condoms. Estimates of the enemy dead ran from 750 to more than 1,000. Fourteen had been taken prisoner, although not by How Company marines, adding to the 300 in the stockade. Sid found USMC emblems, snapshots of marines with their girlfriends, and a wooden cigarette case with the word "Guam" printed on it; these men had looted the marine barracks on Guam.
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The Japanese had been equipped with ten heavy machine guns, many more light machine guns, grenade throwers, and a few flamethrowers. The latter had not been used. The tally for his company's losses ran to four killed in action and eight wounded. His battalion lost thirty-four killed and seventy-five wounded. Occasional shots still rang out through the day. Some came from enemy snipers. Others came from marines finding and killing wounded enemy soldiers.

Across the river, bulldozers dug pits for mass graves. An orderly column of Korean and Japanese POWs marched passed Sid's mortar squad on their way to the pits to help bury their comrades. One of the MPs guarding the work detail called out as if on parade ground, "In cadence count!"

"Roosevelt good man, Tojo eat shit!" yelled his charges. Sid fell over with laughter, in love with the magical power of humor. The men of the #4 gun squad felt a deep pride in their role in the victory. The stovepipe boys had proven themselves and their weapon. Sid and the squad collected the photos of the marines and their girlfriends taken from the dead bodies and burned them. In his evening service, Deacon prayed, "Oh God, that our own men never fall into the same trap as these japs."

ON AUGUST 22 THE THREE CARRIERS AND THEIR TASK FORCES HEADED NORTH to the Solomon Islands. The infamous Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, had sent down a great fleet to wipe out the U.S. forces on Guadalcanal.
Saratoga, Enterprise
, and
Wasp
sailed throughout the night to meet it even as an enemy scout plane betrayed their location.
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The next morning they had taken station about seventy miles to the north and east of Guadalcanal when word came of enemy transport ships steaming down the channel formed by the twin lines of Solomon Islands to Guadalcanal. The Big E, as the task force's duty carrier, provided the search planes while the pilots on the other carriers stood ready. Ensign Micheel was among twenty-three scouts that took off at first light, trying to find the bad guys first. With each pilot on a separate leg, they covered 180 degrees of the ocean. Mike saw nothing and returned a few hours later. Two scouts reported submarines. Later that afternoon another Dauntless patrol found a sub and claimed hits. All three enemy subs had been headed south at high speed toward them, so the assumption was they represented the vanguard of Yamamoto's surface fleet.
⁶²

In the afternoon a scout reported finding an enemy flattop and her escorts.
Saratoga
launched her bombing, scouting, and torpedo squadrons against the light carrier
Ryujo
. The Sara's planes found nothing and bad weather forced them to land at Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal. Word came later that the enemy carriers were still well north of them. With that reversal,
Wasp
and her escorts sailed south out of the combat zone to refuel. Her departure left the Sara and the Big E on the front line.

THE 2/1 REMAINED AT HELL'S POINT BECAUSE ITS REGIMENTAL COMMANDER expected another attack either from across the Tenaru or on the beach near it. Sid and Deacon lived near the carcasses. The two 81mm mortar crews had been given a lot of credit for the slaughter; the obscenity of it was inescapable and soon became chilling. One corpse made them both laugh: he "was ripped wide open from his loins up to his chin and his chest laid open and his ribs broken back like a chicken, no entrails, heart, lungs or anything laying in him. He looked like a gutted possum. . . ." The radio that night carried a program from San Francisco celebrating their victory. Visions of their families hearing the news brought a moment of joy. A heavy rain fell. No one in the squad could relax enough to sleep. The prolonged tension had given them all diarrhea.

The worry that more of the enemy were coming became specific in the morning with news that four IJN transports, four destroyers, and two cruisers were sailing toward them. Sid's squad bolstered themselves with eggs, bacon, and good coffee. They watched planes from the two squadrons based on Henderson Field fly in and out. Before lunch, the First Marines buried their dead. They sang "Rock of Ages" and "America." The trumpeter played taps. Afterward they dug more holes in the ground--new positions for themselves. Word came that the navy had sent some ships, submarines, and some planes to protect them. At four p.m. Lieutenant Benson called the 81mm to alert. The #4 gun squad received fifty rounds of HE and twenty rounds of the light. The Imperial Japanese Navy would arrive in force at four a.m. Warned that this was the big one, the squad expected another sleepless night. Around them, men test- fired their weapons to set ranges and calibrations. Even the nonbelievers in the squad, Deacon noticed, joined in the nightly prayer. Ready at last, Sid's squad "lay in wait for action now. So beware Mr. jap for the U.S. Marines."

THE CLOUDY MORNING OF AUGUST 24 WIDENED INTO A BEAUTIFUL CLEAR DAY. Micheel and twenty-two other dive-bombers took off at six thirty a.m. to find the IJN fleet fanning out over the ocean in every direction but to their southeast, which the PBYs from Efate and Espiritu Santos covered. Mike's search pattern, flown through dark clouds, took him well over four hours to complete. He saw lots and lots of ocean, its waves large enough to help him navigate. When he came back aboard, there was news of an enemy carrier sighting and of IJN submarines near his task force. Yamamoto knew their location. His dive- bombers were on the way. All available Dauntlesses were prepared for another search to the north and east of their position. The two carriers churned southward, getting a good wind over the flight deck. After takeoff, the twenty-three planes swung north and fanned out.

Mike's dogleg search took almost five hours to complete. He had not been given an exact spot for Point Option; he had simply been told to expect
Enterprise
to steam due north, on a heading of 000 degrees (True), advancing about ten kilometers for each hour of flight.
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His navigation proved adequate. He saw the
Saratoga
's massive square frame break the skyline first, steaming along about fifteen miles from his carrier. He approached the task forces from a particular heading, in order to identify himself as a friendly plane. Black puffs exploded near his plane, jarring him. The AA gunners on the Sara were shooting at him. He broke away quickly, checking to make sure his IFF system was on; the signal it transmitted identified him as a friendly. He came around again to the correct bearing. The Sara's gunners cut loose on him. "So I went back out and came in the place we weren't supposed to come in. Nobody shot at me!"

The overzealousness of the antiaircraft batteries became more understandable when he entered the Big E's landing pattern. Air ops radioed him that the ship had been hit. Plumes of smoke rose from her. More than twenty aircraft were flying circles around her, waiting. Mike found a place in the circle and waited while the crew repaired the Big E's flight deck. Once again, he found himself running out of fuel. It gave him the nagging worry he called "puckering."
Enterprise
began receiving her planes at last, though. Weary after nine hours of total flight time, he made his fiftieth carrier landing and let the plane handlers take it from him. Walking the flight deck he noticed a patch of metal boiler plating covering a large section. He walked over to where another bomb had hit, on the starboard side of the stern. The bomb had exploded next to a five-inch antiaircraft gun, setting off the gun's ammunition as well. Mike looked "in that turret and those guys were cooked right at the turret, right at their positions, just fried like an egg or like a piece of toast."

With the ship damaged and the probability of more attacks high, Mike's job was to get out of the way. Bombing Six sat in the ready room and waited. Two sailors sat up front, each with a ship's phone. One man heard reports from the air operations office. The other sailor's phone connected him to damage control. The latter had a lot of information to relay about the ship's condition. The rudder had jammed, he told them soon after Mike walked in. "We are sailing in a circle." A great shudder, felt throughout the ship, followed. The engines had been thrown into reverse in order to prevent
Enterprise
from ramming one of her escorts.
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The sailor with the phone also yelled things like, "Hey, they've got a fire down in compartment such and such" or "They're patching the deck at frame something or the other." Mike did not pay attention to the details. The repairs were out of his hands.

News about the missions of the other pilots, however, did get his interest. Davis and his wingman had taken the most likely sector to find the enemy, 340 to 350 degrees True. They had found them all right and set up for a perfect strike on the flattop: the sun at their backs and the wind in their faces. The carrier turned so hard to starboard, though, she had spun through a 60-degree arc by the time Davis's five-hundred-pound bomb exploded, five feet off the starboard side aft. His wingman's bomb had detonated another fifteen feet away. Two other comrades had made dives that day, diving on a large cruiser. They had also come up just shy of the mark. All four pilots described blasts of AA fire, "like silver dimes" coming up "in bunches" until they exploded in red and black.
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Davis had radioed the coordinates to the Big E twice; one had never been received, the other had arrived too late to do any good.

The loss of his transmissions must have seemed unremarkable, if unfortunate, amid the deluge of stories and information about this day. Special guest Ensign Behr had a wild story. A Sara pilot, he had landed on
Enterprise
because of a foul-up on Sara's deck. He and his strike had found the IJN carriers, too, and dove. The Zeros had chased him most of the way back, so he had no clear idea of his success, but someone's bomb had smacked it good. For the moment he attached to Bombing Six. His plane, shot through with bullet holes, had been pushed over the side. Two of Mike's other squadron mates told an even crazier story, though. They had returned from their search to find enemy dive-bombers attacking their ship and both pilots and their gunners had cut loose on them. The Aichi-type 99 dive-bombers had flown off without obvious signs of damage.

Mike had not seen the enemy planes. He would not have mentioned being shot at by the Sara's gunners, since apparently the AA gunners had shot at a lot of pilots. As the men talked, the sailor on the phone to air ops yelled that radar had picked up another flight of attackers. The Wildcats from
Saratoga
would have to handle them.
Enterprise
could not conduct flight operations; two of her elevators were out. The upshot of it all was that Yamamoto's ships had not been stopped. Most probably they were still sailing south, preparing to attack again the next day.

The Big E, meantime, had her rudder straightened, if not fully repaired. The fires still burned. She sailed south at a stately pace, listing three degrees, flanked by
Saratoga
and an array of destroyers, cruisers, and the battleship
North Carolina
. Eventually Mike started to hear about his carrier.

About thirty enemy planes had attacked
Enterprise,
their dives every bit as steep, every bit as determined, as any Dauntless. Twenty bombs exploded near her, sending geysers of water over her deck, bending her painfully at the waistline. Two of the attackers, set afire by AA guns, had attempted to crash into her. These had been driven off. Three bombs detonated on or inside of the ship. The damage-control teams, who had patched the deck so Mike could land, and who had straightened the rudder, had hours more of dangerous work. In asbestos suits and armed with hoses of water and foamite, they fought to extinguish fires in several decks, to stop leaking, and to assess the damage to two of the giant elevators used to move airplanes. The medical teams coped with dozens dead and dozens more wounded.