out your planes.”
Geiger said, “If we can’t use the planes back in the hills, we’ll fly them out. But whatever happens, I’m staying with you.”17
Vandegrift nodded appreciatively, and then, the siren wailed and the cry arose: “Condition Red!”
Forty-two enemy airplanes were winging down from the north. To meet them Cactus Air Force sent eleven Marine and twenty-one Navy fighters thundering skyward. Sixteen enemy planes were knocked down at a loss of one American ensign killed in a dead-stick landing. But some of the bombers got through. Once more Marines on the Ridge dove without hesitation into their holes, again sticks of 500-pound bombs and strings of daisy-cutter fragmentation bombs walked the Ridge—killing, maiming, stunning.
Now the men of Red Mike Edson drove themselves to complete their fortifications. Spools of wire stripped from less-threatened positions were brought up and hastily strung. Extra grenades and belted machine-gun ammunition were put into the pits. To the rear, batteries of 105-mm howitzers had been moved to new positions to give Edson close support. Artillery fire plans had been drawn and maps gridded. An artillery observer was stationed in Edson’s command post on the southern snout. Communication wire ran backward to a fire direction center and Vandegrift’s headquarters.
The general’s slender reserve, the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, moved into supporting positions. Its officers scouted approach routes which they might have to follow in darkness.
Every gun, every Marine on Guadalcanal was now committed. It was now up to the Raiders on the Ridge. The enemy was coming that night, Vandegrift was certain. Clemens’s scouts had come in with reports of three thousand men moving toward assembly points on the Lunga’s east bank.
Darkness came quickly as it does in the tropics. In swiftly dying sunlight homing birds lost the brilliance of their plumage. Above the Ridge the skies were clouding over. Soon that long knobby peninsula was blending into the black of the jungle flowing around it. It was silent. The last spade had clinked on coral, the last command had been shouted. Marines in their holes closed and reopened their eyes to accustom them to darkness. They listened for the regular sounds of men among the irregular sounds of nature. Sometimes their mouths twitched to hear an iguana bark or the
It began to rain.
General Kawaguchi’s iron confidence was rusting in the rain forest. The jungle had scattered his detachments. He was not ready to attack, and yet he must. Rabaul was counting on it. He would like another day to prepare, but he could not ask for it, even if he had dared, because the Americans had destroyed his radio at Tasimboko. Helpless, he put his available forces along the Lunga opposite the Marine right flank and awaited the naval bombardment that was to precede his attack.
Louie the Louse droned overhead.
Around nine o’clock he dropped a flare.
A half hour later a cruiser and three destroyers shelled the Ridge. Some of their projectiles crashed around the Marine positions, some fell short, but most of them exploded harmlessly in jungle west of the Lunga.
Edson’s men tightened their grip on their weapons.
The shelling ceased twenty minutes after it began, a rocket rose from the jungle, machine-gun and rifle fire broke out like a sputtering string of firecrackers, and the Kawaguchis came pouring out of the black.
“Marine you die!” they shrieked. “Marine you da—eee!”
They drove the Raiders back. They sliced off a platoon on the far right flank, cut communications wire and went slipping farther down the Lunga to attempt an encirclement.
On the left the Japanese struck the parachutists half a dozen times, punched holes in their front and broke them up. And then they milled wildly about, unable to capitalize on the impetus of their blows, and before dawn Edson was able to pull back his left flank and re-form it.
But General Kawaguchi had no such control. His troops battled beyond his reach. Their attacks became purposeless and fragmented. On the right where they had gained the greatest success, they lost their way once they had departed the straight going of the riverbank. They thrashed and fell in the underbrush. Their jabbing bayonets met empty air or dug up earth. Meanwhile, Marine mortars flashed among them and Marine artillery whistled down into pre-plotted areas and found Japanese flesh there as anticipated.
Gradually, the American platoon that had been cut off fought its way back to the right slope of the Ridge.
At dawn the Japanese melted back into the jungle.
The Marines rose up and counterattacked to regain lost ground.
Bloody Ridge had held.
That morning, Red Mike Edson called a conference of staff officers and company commanders. They sat around him in a semicircle, drinking coffee and smoking. Red Mike sat on a log, his legs crossed, spooning cold hash from an open can. He chewed slowly as he talked.
“They were testing,” he said. “Just testing. They’ll be back. But maybe not as many of them.” He smiled. “Or maybe more.” He paused, his jaws chewing. “I want all positions improved, all wire lines paralleled, a hot meal for the men. Today: dig, wire up tight, get some sleep. We’ll all need it.” His officers rose. “The Nip will be back,” Red Mike said. “I want to surprise him.”18
Major Kenneth Bailey was among the officers who set to work preparing Edson’s surprise: a pullback from the previous night’s positions. Bailey had been wounded at Tulagi and sent to a hospital in New Caledonia. Leaving without permission and before his wound was fully healed, he had hitchhiked an airplane ride back to Guadalcanal in time for the battle.
Edson’s pullback served to tighten and contract his lines. It improved the field of fire for automatic weapons, and it confronted the Japanese with a hundred yards of open ground over which they must move to close with the Marines.
Many of those Marines had the look of sleepwalkers by afternoon of this September 13. They stumbled along the Ridge, lifting their feet high like men in chains. Seventy-two near-sleepless hours—hours of shock and sweat and pain beneath the enemy’s bombs and shells, in the face of his bullets—had numbed them. They had expected to be relieved by Vandegrift’s reserve, but intermittent aerial attacks had kept that battalion under cover.
Three separate air raids struck at Henderson Field that day. But there were now ample fighters on hand to meet them. Wildcats had come in from carriers
But Rabaul got more.
On September 12 the 26th Air Flotilla which was to have relieved the riddled 25th came into the Guadalcanal battle as reinforcement instead, and 140 aircraft were added to those already based at Rabaul and Bougainville.
Next day many of them were on the runways, propellers turning, while pilots sat in ready huts awaiting word to fly south. Loaded troop transports stood by with idling engines. All was in readiness for the surrender ceremonies.
But there was no word from General Kawaguchi.
Neither General Hyakutake nor Admiral Tsukahara had been able to communicate with Kawaguchi since the enemy landing at Tasimboko. He had, of course, sent them his message of September 11 in which he notified them of his intention to take possession of the airfield the night of September 12–13. Since then, nothing…
Tsukahara sent four scout planes south. They came back with bullet holes suggesting that the Americans were still in possession of Henderson. Rabaul’s top commanders postponed the fly-down for the surrender ceremony one day. The customary attacks were renewed on Henderson, but it was considered unsafe to attack the Ridge. Instead, it was decided to strike the enemy force which had landed at Tasimboko to “sandwich”
