Kawaguchi.
Twenty-six Bettys and a dozen escorting Zeros thundered south. They came in low over Florida Island and pounced on Kawaguchi’s rear echelon. In one moment these Japanese were dancing for joy to see the sun flashing off the red balls on their comrades’ wings, in the next they were being blown flat or apart or were dragging themselves to the beaches to stop the slaughter by spreading their own red-balled flags out on the sand. The Zeros only strafed them where they lay, and one day Martin Clemens’s scouts would bring these bullet-pierced and blood-caked flags into the perimeter as souvenirs.
Out at sea Combined Fleet’s scout planes had also reported the Americans in possession of the airfield, thereby contradicting Rabaul’s message claiming that it had been captured.
Admiral Yamamoto was as annoyed as the commanders in Rabaul. Where was Kawaguchi?
He was grinding his teeth in the jungle and preparing a fresh attack.
At one time during last night’s abortive assault General Kawaguchi found himself alone but for his adjutant, his orderly and a few soldiers. The assault had been that haphazard.
Moreover neither Colonel Oka in the west nor the Ishitari Battalion in the east had attacked as scheduled.
But tonight, Kawaguchi thought grimly, they would. He had seen to that, contacting both commanders. Moreover, he had been able to get some kind of order into his own force, still well over 2500 men. Once again he would strike with two reinforced battalions until a hole had been ripped open for Colonel Watanabe’s elite. It was unfortunate that his artillery had been lost at Tasimboko and that the Americans had captured the Ishitari guns supposed to batter the Ridge; nevertheless, Japanese spiritual power should still suffice to overwhelm these contemptible Americans.
Of whom, unknown to General Kawaguchi, there were only 400.
“Gas attack!”
A cloud of vapor drifted over the Marine right, and the too-precise voice came again:
“Gas attack!”
But there was no gas, only smoke, an attempt to mask that 100-yard approach, and a trick to shake American nerves.
But the Marines held to their holes, watching the jungle while flares made a ghoulish day of the night. And then the jungle spewed out short, squat shapes.
Two thousand men, launching two major attacks, they came sprinting toward the Marines in waves. They came on to a rising, shrieking chant:
“You’ll eat shit first, you bastards!” a BAR-man screamed, and the Ridge erupted with the mad wail of battle.19
Japanese fell, but still they came on. Platoon after platoon, company after company, flowed from the jungle and went bowlegging it through the flickering green light. They bent back the Marine lines like a horseshoe. But they could not break them. Marines fought back individually. Pfc. Jimmy Corzine saw four Japanese setting up a machine gun on a knob. He rushed them. He bayoneted the gunner, and swung the gun around to spray the enemy with his own death. Then Corzine was killed.
On the right the Japanese were once again chopping up the Americans into small groups. Captain John Sweeney’s company was cut up into small pockets of resistance. His own right flank was gone and he was down to sixty men, and on the left a mortar barrage and another Japanese charge was splintering Torgerson’s parachutists.
Torgerson rallied his faltering men. He went among them and taunted them. He held roll call on the Ridge and challenged each man to go forward by name. They went. They fought back with machine guns. But the Japanese singled out the automatic weapons and lobbed grenades down on them. Sergeant Keith Perkins crept over the Ridge searching for ammunition for his two machine guns. One by one, his gunners were struck down. Perkins jumped on his last gun and was also killed.
Now there was another iron tongue baying over Guadalcanal.
Even as the Raiders were resisting that first fierce charge, Louie the Louse flew over Henderson Field. He cut his motors, coasted, dropped his flare, and seven destroyers in Iron Bottom Bay began shelling the field. They fired for an hour, their voices thrumming like a bass viol beneath the clatter and screaming of the Ridge, the jabbering of the Japanese and the coarse cursing of the Marines.
Then the Japanese ships fell silent. They had heard firing south of the airfield. They waited for the flare from General Kawaguchi signaling its capture. Then they heard firing from the east.
The Ishitari Battalion was attacking the Third Battalion, First Marines. They had crossed the Tenaru River upstream and emerged into a broad field of kunai grass. They formed and charged. Halfway across they ran into barbed wire and the massed fire of Marine guns. American 75-mm howitzers rained shells among them. They broke and fled. They re-formed east of the field for a stronger attack, and came again.
Once more they hit the wire and were torn apart. But some of them got through. Captain Robert Putnam rang up Lieutenant Colonel William McKelvy, to report:
“Some Japs just got inside my barbed wire.” There was a pause, and then Putnam concluded: “There were twenty-seven of them.”20
Squat dark shapes were running low toward the Ridge when Red Mike Edson’s telephone jangled. A voice said cautiously:
“What name do you identify with Silent?”
“Lew,” Edson whispered.
“That is correct,” Captain Lew Walt said, and began his report. Another voice broke in:
“Our situation here, Colonel Edson, is excellent. Thank you, sir.”21
Edson swore softly. It was the enemy. They had cut the wire and Captain Sweeney on the right was still cut off. How to reach him? Red Mike seized an iron-lunged corporal and sent him forward. The man cupped his hands to his lips and bellowed:
“Red Mike says it’s okay to pull back!”22
Out in the wild spitting blackness of the right flank Sweeney’s isolated remnant fought back to the contracted Marine line.
For Red Mike Edson was shortening his position. The battle had come to crux and he was taunting his men to win it. He lay within ten yards of his foremost machine gun. He lay with his arm curled about his telephone and shielding his face against fragments whizzing from the blasts that lifted him up and slammed him to the ground. He saw men drifting toward the rear and he ran at them. He seized them and spun them around and pointed his finger at the enemy and snarled: “The only thing they have that you don’t is guts!”23
Major Bailey also darted at retreating Marines. He had been running back and forth from the Ridge to the rear for grenades and ammunition. He crawled over the bullet-swept Ridge to bring them to Marine foxholes. He caught at the arms of dazed men and slapped them, screaming: “You! Do
It was the cry of old Dan Daly echoing across the decades from Belleau Wood, and it made another generation of young Americans ashamed of what they were about to do. They turned and went back.
They fought on while Colonel Edson lay on his belly bringing his own artillery in closer and closer to the charging enemy. A corporal named Watson who would be Lieutenant Watson in the morning spotted the enemy for him. He marked the Japanese rocket signals and directed redoubled fire to break up the enemy’s massing points.
“Closer,” Edson whispered. “Closer.”25
The Ridge shook and flashed. A terrible steel rain fell among Marines and Japanese alike. Terrified enemy soldiers dove into Marine foxholes to escape death above ground. Marines knifed them and pitched them out again. The night was hideous with the screams of the stricken, for artillery does not kill cleanly: it tears men’s organs with
