If Admiral Robert Ghormley back in Noumea had seen the Chief Executive’s cable he probably would have been astounded at its optimism—for Admiral Ghormley had already gotten off pessimistic dispatches to Nimitz and King—and if Admiral Yamamoto to the north in Truk had seen it, he would have dismissed it as typical of American soft-soap salesmen.
That American toe, as Yamamoto confidently expected, was about to be squashed flat by Operation Ka.
CHAPTER NINE
KA, the first syllable of the Japanese word for Guadalcanal, was the code name for the joint Army-Navy plan to recapture that island. Colonel Ichiki’s force—the 900 already on Guadalcanal and the remaining 1500 still steaming down The Slot—represented the Army’s contribution. It was to be supported by much the greater part of Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet.
Since August 7, the admiral had been gathering ships from all over Greater East Asia. Within about a dozen days—or at least by the time Captain Brush’s Marines had met and destroyed the Ichiki patrol—there were three aircraft carriers gathered around Truk,[6] supported by three battleships, five cruisers, eight destroyers, one seaplane carrier, and numerous auxiliary ships. To this could be added Admiral Tsukahara’s Rabaul force composed of one hundred planes of the Eleventh Air Fleet and four cruisers and five destroyers of Admiral Mikawa’s Eighth Fleet.
Combined Fleet’s carrier aircraft were to clear Solomons waters of all American surface ships.
Eleventh Air Fleet’s planes were to hammer Marine positions on Guadalcanal by day.
Mikawa’s ships—the Tokyo Express—were to batter the Marines by night.
All of this was in support of 2400 troops: it was a whale backing up a weasel. But it was typically Japanese, and it reflected, once again, the Army’s unshakable conviction that there could not be more than a few thousand Americans on Guadalcanal, and the Navy’s fixed determination to lure out and destroy the American fleet.
Moreover, General Hyakutake had given Colonel Ichiki orders which permitted him to attack immediately, without waiting for
To the south of Guadalcanal a flying whale was fighting a flying elephant.
A huge four-engined Kawanishi flying boat homeward bound for the Shortlands after scouting American waters had blundered into a Flying Fortress returning to Espiritu Santo after scouting Japanese waters.
Captain Walter Lucas brought his more-maneuverable Fort up under the Kawanishi’s belly. The American’s guns began stuttering. The Japanese began to weave from side to side to bring the American within range of his 20-mm tail cannon. Captain Lucas whipped his big plane broadside to the lumbering Kawanishi’s tail. Sergeant Vernon Nelson in the Fort’s waist triggered a killing stream of bullets into the enemy tail gun.
Lucas cut in sharper. The big Kawanishi weaved away. Now on this side, now on that side, these great groaning mastodons of the sky fought each other. They turned and twisted for twenty-five minutes, until, at last, the Kawanishi broke off to flee and the Fort bored in to kill.
Nelson and Sergeant Chester Malizeski shot out three of the Kawanishi’s engines, and the whale went down for a water landing near an island. Lucas pursued. He brought his winged elephant in low over the taxiing whale, and Sergeant Edward Spetch, another gunner who had so far failed to fire a shot, caught the enemy full in his sights, pressed the trigger and watched him blow up and burn.
It was August 20, a date to remember for men accustomed to the dull routine of aerial reconnaissance.
American reconnaissance—plus reports from Australian coastwatchers—had warned Admiral Ghormley of the impending Ka Operation. Ghormley ordered Vice-Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to protect the Solomon sea lanes with the three-carrier force he had withdrawn from Guadalcanal. A fourth carrier,
Admiral King was preparing for a showdown battle at Guadalcanal. He was deliberately pushing in the blue chips. Like all of the other high commanders, King was aware that in mid-August of 1942 the entire war had come to crisis. Everywhere—in Russia, in North Africa, in the North Atlantic, in the Pacific—the enemy was on the verge of triumphant breakthrough. Stalin was clamoring for more supplies, so was Britain’s General Montgomery in Egypt, the Bolero build-up was still going forward, and Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed to massive Allied landings in North Africa. What claim could Guadalcanal advance among such lofty preferences and priorities? Alone among the high commanders, Admiral Ernest King considered Guadalcanal paramount and urgent.
On Guadalcanal the Marines holding the Tenaru line had also sensed that a critical time had come. From the first light of August 20, the Second Battalion, First, under Lieutenant Colonel Al Pollock had been busy fortifying the west bank of the river.
Actually, the Tenaru[7] was not a river but a backwater. It flowed sluggishly north to the sea, but was barred from entering it by a broad sandspit. The sandspit was like a bridge across the river and was thus the focal weak point. Here Pollock concentrated most of his machine guns and rifles and a 37-mm antitank gun dug in behind a single strand of barbed wire strung across the sandspit. Pollock also had 81-mm mortars, of course, and the guns of the Eleventh Marines behind them.
Next, Pollock decided to extend his right flank. He ordered a group of riflemen to take up positions south along the river, and he pulled machine guns off the beach to support them.
Among the riflemen was Phil Chaffee and among the gunners were Lucky and Lew Juergens and their comrades Bud Conley and Bill Smith. Grumbling, they broke down their guns. Juergens spread-eagled that heavy iron instrument of torture known as the tripod across his back and Lucky hefted the gun on his shoulder. The others grasped the water cans and ammunition boxes and moved out.
They passed the sandspit and saw that outposts had been stationed at its eastern end. Men were carefully sandbagging the antitank gun. There were piles of cylinders heaped behind the gun’s wheels.
“Canister,” Lucky explained. “The canisters are made of wax and filled with steel balls. When they’re fired the wax melts and the shots spray all over the place. It’s like a shotgun, only with ball-bearings instead of bee- bees.”
“Goddlemighty damn, Lucky,” Smith snorted. “A feller could git kilt in this war.”1
They laughed and trudged along the river bank. A hundred yards to the south they came to a machine-gun dugout. Johnny Rivers and Al Schmid had their gun outside the dugout and were oiling it. There was a shamrock painted on the gun’s water jacket for Schmid and the word Chief for Johnny. Schmid got up and limped toward them.
“Hey, Smitty,” Juergens called, “what’n hell’s wrong with you?”
“The rot,” Schmid said sourly. “The doc says I got blood poisoning from it. He says I gotta go in the hospital tomorrow if I don’t want to lose my leg.”2
They shook their heads in commiseration and toiled on. Almost everyone on the island had “Guadalcanal rot,” a fungus infection resulting from humidity and the habit of sleeping in shoes and socks, fully clad, which the visits of the Tokyo Express had induced. Most of them had dysentery, too, and a few were already down with malaria.
Passing a bend about 150 yards upstream from Schmid and Rivers, the men came to the gunsite chosen by Gunny Blalock. They put down the guns. Although they had two of them, there was time to dig only one emplacement. Sweat poured from their bodies as they dug. It made sodden ropes of their belts. Mosquitoes and ants bit like fire and flies landed on their festering fungus sores to feed on pus and increase infection. From the coconut groves to their left they could hear axes ringing. But there was no time to cut logs to roof their own dugout. They would do that tomorrow. Behind them shadows were lengthening and the sun was sinking beyond the groves
