There was a refrain, beginning with the uncomplimentary and unjust sobriquet “Dugout Doug.” The Marines knew that General Douglas MacArthur was a brave man, but this did not deter them from singing their derision of the Army Dogfaces who had still not arrived on Guadalcanal. The Marines had given up hope—not of victory, but of help-and had turned to mocking the Doggies.
So they were astonished, almost resentful, to find on the morning of October 13 that the Doggies had actually come to Tulagi. The Army’s 164th Infantry Regiment had arrived from Noumea, just in time for a fiery baptism which not even the Marines had experienced.
For the thirteenth was also the day on which Australian coastwatchers in Bougainville were fleeing Japanese patrols and keeping radio silence. There were no advance warnings of the three Japanese aerial formations that struck so savagely at the island. At noon, 24 twin-engined bombers and escorting Zeros flew over Henderson Field before the Marine Wildcats could climb to intercepting stations. They let loose a rain of bombs and incendiary bullets that set stores of aviation gasoline blazing. Two hours later 15 more bombers pounced, multiplying destruction. Captain Joe Foss shot down one of the escorting Zeroes—his first—took a bullet in the oil pump of his engine and came rocketing down from 22,000 feet to a dead-stick landing while a trio of Zeros rode his tail. But the rest of the attackers escaped. And then the third Japanese formation struck, bombing the coconut groves where the 164th was bivouacked.
The Doggies had been blooded.
It was dusk and Sergeant Butch Morgan was preparing the evening meal for General Vandegrift. He was frying meat on a Japanese safe that had been upended and made into a griddle.
Pistol Pete spoke.
His first shell screamed over Division Headquarters and struck the airfield with a crash. Sergeant Morgan grabbed his helmet and raced for his air-raid hole. Another shell screeched overhead. Sergeant Morgan held his helmet down tight and ducked.
Alexander Vandegrift looked up in surprise. He glanced thoughtfully overhead.
“That wasn’t a bomb,” he called. “That’s artillery.”
Sergeant Butch Morgan was embarrassed. He glanced about him, shamefaced, hoping that no boot had seen his flight—for Sergeant Morgan was an Old Salt who had fought in France and knew something of artillery.
“Aw, hell,” he muttered, taking off his helmet. “I mean, only artillery…”
If it was “only artillery” it was the first with enough authority to reach the airfield. And now Pistol Pete was pumping them out, ripping up the big strip with a thoroughness that would make night flight impossible, shifting to hammer the perimeter, swinging to Kukum to blow up naval stores—and finally falling among the men of the 164th with such rending red terror that a sergeant crawled about begging his men to shoot him.
And then the same terror came upon all the island.
Red flares shot up from the jungle, Pistol Pete roared and roared, enemy aircraft circled overhead—drifting in and out of the crisscrossing searchlight beams that sought them, eluding the flak and dropping bombs—and men stumbled into foxholes, climbed out of them, ran back to them, bracing in expectation of they knew not what.
At half-past one in the morning Louie the Louse planted a green flare over the airfield and the Night of the Battleships began.
Mighty Haruna and Kongo had steamed down from Rabaul. Cruisers and destroyers came with them, some to join the airfield bombardment, others to protect seven transports loaded with General Maruyama’s remaining troops.
They slid into the bay, screened by cruiser
Star shells rose, horrible and bright, scarlet with the fat red beauty of Hell, exploding like giant ferris wheels to shower the night with streamers of light. And then, the 14-inchers of the battleships, the eight-inchers of
Pah-boom,
Men in their holes could hear the soft hollow thumping of the salvos to seaward, see the flashes shimmering outside the gun ports, and then the great airy boxcars rumbling overhead, wailing and straining—
American troops had never before been exposed to such cannonading and would never be so again. Even the great naval shellings that would one day fall upon the Japanese would not be comparable, for the Japanese would be in coral caves or huge pillboxes of ferro-concrete, while these Americans crouched in dirt holes, within shelters of mud and logs.
Henderson Field’s bombers were blown to bits, set afire, crushed beneath collapsed revetments. Shelters shivered, sighed and came apart. Foxholes buried their occupants. Men were killed—41 of them, among them many pilots—and many, many more men were wounded. But the over-all effect upon men’s souls was devastating.
In that cataclysm, when every shell seemed to explode with the pent-up flame and fury of a full thunderstorm, some men might glance at their buddies and see in horror how their features had dissolved in a nerveless idiot mask. Men whimpered aloud. Others burst into sobs and rushed from the pits rather than betray their weakness, if such it was, before comrades. There were Marines who put their weapons to their heads. Men prayed with lips moving silently across the backs of others against whom they lay huddled, prayed in confusion — mentally murmuring Grace or a childhood refrain as though it were the Lord’s Prayer—prayed for the strength to stay where they were, to suppress that nameless thing fluttering within them.
The bombardment lasted an hour and twenty minutes, and then
The bombers remained until dawn.
And at dawn Pistol Pete resumed action.
But the Marines and soldiers came above ground anyway. There had been no attack, and who would fear a six-incher after having felt the lash of 14-inch naval rifles?
They were dull-eyed and dazed, but they were already pluming themselves on having “really had it rough,” already forgetting the fierce vows of the night in the profane oaths with which they asked God to take a look at the size of those 14-inch base plates and enormous shell fragments that were displayed to them by day.
The airfield was a shambles. The main strip was unusable. Of 38 bombers, only four survived the shelling. But these four went roaring skyward from Fighter Strip One to strike at the Japanese transports which had put Maruyama’s troops ashore during the night. They sank one, and flew back to an airfield where Marine engineers and Seabees were already hauling fill to the big strip. Bulldozers were butting earth into yawning shell-craters and anxious squadron commanders were conferring with repair officers on the chances of getting airborne.
“What’s left, Lieutenant?”
“You’d need a magnifying glass to find it, Colonel.”
“Well, start using one then. How about Number 117?”
“Her? Oh, she’s great—wasn’t even scratched. Except that she needs an engine change. Other than that, all she needs is both elevators, both stabilizers, the right auxiliary gas tank, right and center section flaps, right aileron, windshield, rudder, both wheels and the brake assembly. But she’s still in one piece, sir, and I guess we can
