of coconuts across the river, when, suddenly, directly overhead they heard the sound of airplane motors.
They scattered.
Then someone shouted: “They’re
It was true. The airplanes had red-white-and-blue stars painted on their wings and fuselages. Slew McCain had delivered. In the last hours of sunlight little
Two of the planes deliberately circled Henderson Field and Vandegrift’s perimeter for all of their comrades of the foot Marines to see, and the men ran whooping and cheering along the ridges and river banks and beaches, punching each other joyfully and hurling bloodthirsty threats into the no-man’s-land occupied by the invisible foe.
Across the Tenaru, Mr. Ishimoto heard the motors and paused momentarily in his interrogation of Sergeant Major Vouza.
Vouza had gone on his patrol carrying a miniature American flag given to him as a souvenir. On the twentieth he became uneasy about it. He hid it beneath his lap-lap and made for the village of Volonavua, where he intended to hide it, and he blundered into a company of Japanese.
They seized him and brought him before Colonel Ichiki. Ishimoto was there. He watched while the Japanese tore off Vouza’s lap-lap and he smiled evilly when the little rolled flag tumbled to the ground. Speaking in pidgin, Ishimoto began his interrogation.
But Vouza refused to answer. He remained silent and defiant. The Japanese hustled Vouza to a tree. They bound him with straw ropes. They battered him with the butts of their rifles. They jabbed him with bayonets. Groaning, blood pouring from his wounds, Vouza sagged against the ropes. At last came the
At dusk, the Japanese departed. They moved into position for the attack. Although Colonel Ichiki had discovered that there were more Americans on Guadalcanal than he had been led to believe, he was still confident that he could push through them and capture the airfield.
Vouza was not dead. He awoke in darkness. His chest was sticky with blood. He could feel the cut beside his tongue where the enemy steel had entered. Yet, he was alive. He must warn the Americans. He began biting the ropes that bound him. He felt himself weakening from pain and loss of blood. He chewed on. Finally, the ropes parted. Vouza slumped to the ground and began crawling west.
It was dark along the Tenaru. Only the faint light of stars glinted on the river’s black surface.
In the center of the line Al Schmid lay on his blanket with mosquitoes droning in his ears and his leg throbbing with pain. He wondered if he would have to leave his buddies. One of them had promised to “cook it” out of him, saying: “When we get up I’ll get some salt water and heat it up in the pot, and you put your foot in there when it’s boiling hot. That’ll draw the goddam lump down.”3 Now, Schmid felt waves of heat pass through his body. Then he felt cold and began to shiver. Did he have malaria, too?
Farther to the right Lucky and Juergens sat on sentry duty outside the unfinished gunpit—a gaping black square in the dark night—peering at the river between them and the coconut grove. From far to their left came the gentle murmur of the sea. Suddenly a strange rippling V appeared to their right moving downstream. Two greenish orbs were at its center. It was a crocodile, and a Marine on their right whooped and fired at it. It dove and disappeared.
“Goddam, Lew,” Lucky whispered, glancing uneasily at the coconuts, “I could stand a cigarette.”
“They’d spot it, Lucky. Anyway, those Jap butts taste like they’re half tobacco and half horseshit.”
“You ask me, Lew, they’re a hundred per cent horseshit.”4
Suddenly there were lights swinging and bumping across the river. The two Marines were astounded.
“Who goes there?” Juergens bellowed.
The lights bumped on.
“Who goes there? Answer, or I’ll let you have it!”5
The lights went out.
Now all of the men on the right flank were excited and awake. They crowded about the gunpit, speculating, searching the darkness with straining eyes.
Sometimes Vouza was able to walk and make better time. He lurched along the trail, yet sure of every step; for Vouza had been born on Guadalcanal and knew the trails as they can only be known by a man who has spent his boyhood on them. At other times, though, Vouza was so weak he had to crawl. When this happened he wanted to weep. He was sure that he was dying and he wanted to live only long enough to warn the Americans of the impending attack.
Just before midnight, perhaps a half mile from the Tenaru, Vouza blundered into Marine outposts.
“Me Vouza,” he called. “Me Sergeant Major Vouza.”
Warily, they let him approach. He began to blurt out his tale, and they carried him to Colonel Pollock’s command post.
By the time Vouza reached Pollock, the battalion’s outposts had detected enemy to their front. They exchanged rifle fire. Pollock gave them permission to withdraw and turned to deal with the bleeding, gasping native who had come to warn him.
“How many Japs?” Pollock asked sharply.
“Maybe two hundred-fifty, maybe five hundred,” Vouza gasped.6
Round numbers were enough for Pollock, and he wheeled to call Regiment to send down Martin Clemens, for whom the dying man kept calling, and at that moment a flare rose from the river bank and the Ichiki charge began.
Colonel Ichiki had gathered his nine hundred men in the woods east of the sandspit. He was going to hurl about five hundred of them across the sandspit. After they had broken through, he would pour more of his men through the gap. At some time around half past one in the morning of August 21,7 the Ichiki shock troops began gathering in the shallows. Their mortars fell on Marine lines. Nambu light machine guns spoke with a snapping sound. Heavier automatics chugged. And then, silhouetted against the sea by the eerie swaying light of a flare, the Ichikis charged.
They came sprinting and howling and firing their rifles, and the Marines were ready for them. Like a train of powder, the American lines flashed alight. Machine guns spat long lines of curving tracers. Grenades exploded in orange balls. Rifles cracked and their muzzles winked white like fireflies. Mortar shells plopped smoothly from their tubes, rising silent and unseen until they had climbed the night sky and fallen among the enemy with flashing yellow crashes that shook the earth. Everywhere were tongues and streaks and sparks, orange and white, red and yellow, and the night was herself a slashed and crisscrossed thing. Everywhere also was the counterpointing of the guns, the wail of battle, the mad orchestration of death—and running through it all like a dreadful fugue came the regular
In the center Al Schmid had rolled out of his sleep and come crawling into the gunpit. Johnny Rivers was already at the trigger, his helmet on. Corporal Lee Diamond burst inside. He began pushing sandbags away from the gun so that they could fire it into the water if the enemy tried to swim. Rivers saw a dark, bobbing mass on the opposite shore. It looked like cows coming down to the river to drink. “Fire!” Diamond yelled, and Rivers’ gun began to stutter and shake. With screams and movement, the crowd broke up.
To the right Lucky and Juergens had seized their unemplaced gun and were triggering short bursts at the sound of movement in the coconuts. They moved the gun up and down the riverbank to give the impression of massed weapons, to confuse the enemy whose tracers came gliding out of the black toward them.
Down at the sandspit the barrel of the antitank gun glowed red in the dark. It cut swathes in the ranks of the enemy still pouring to the attack; squad after squad, platoon after platoon, running low with outthrust bayonets, gurgling
