Strong Men Armed

Haruyoshi Hyakutate and most of the 13,000 men remaining in his 17th Army. On the afternoon of February 9, 1943, at a village west of the Tenamba River, a patrol of soldiers from the 132nd Infantry joined with another patrol from the 161st Infantry. They had reached the island’s west coast and found no enemy.

Guadalcanal was secured.

But not until October 27, 1947, did the last of those most tenacious Japanese soldiers surrender. He came out of his cave, his hair long and matted, his uniform in tatters, a broken Australian bayonet stuck in his belt, a shovel in one hand, a water bottle in the other. His feet were bound in rags and wire, and as he approached a member of the British constabulary, he bowed deeply from the waist.

He inquired about the war and about the Americans, those ferocious Marines whom Tokyo Rose always called “the butchers of Guadalcanal.” He was told that they had sailed away nearly five years ago.

And gone charging on to westward.

II. All Their Blood

Song for a Pilot

Who plows the sky, said a wise man,
Shows himself a fool;
But he went out to plow it—
Taught in a different school.

Who sows the wind, says Scripture,
Must reap and reap again;
But he went out to sow the wind—
And reaped the bitter grain.

He took his death like charity,
Like nothing understood;
He freshened all the oldest words
With all his blood.

—Captain Richard G. Hubler

1

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree.
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
“You’ll come a waltzin’ Matilda with me.”

It was a great tune to march to, a rollicking one to bellow at top voice while rolling merrily home through the quiet broad streets of Melbourne—that spacious airy Australian city where the First Marine Division had begun to recuperate from Guadalcanal.

The Marines arrived in Melbourne in early January, 1943, and were at once clasped to the hearts of its people. They were looked upon as the saviors of Australia, for they had preserved the country’s lifeline to America. They were treated as saviors, in spite of their being men of another nation as well as mere human beings inclined to take advantage of the savior status. But there seemed to be nothing that these Marines could do to outrage their hosts, and gradually, after the Marines’ inevitably exuberant response to the delights of civilization became contained, there developed between host city and guest army a friendship so warm and understanding as to be unique.

Australian soldiers or “Diggers” who might have been miffed, at first, to find the pubs closing early a few times weekly because the Yankee Marines had again drunk the town dry, also found that they were perpetually welcome at the wet canteens or “slop-chutes” of the Marine camps. Complaints that the Americans’ voracious appetite for steak-and-eggs was making beef hard to come by were tempered by the realization that the Yanks were generous with their coveted cigarettes and that they frequently arrived at Australian homes bringing a pound of precious butter. Soon the Aussies were saying “okay” for “good-o” and their movie theaters played “The Marines’ Hymn” as often as “God Save the King,” while over in the Marine camps—where the band often played “Waltzin’ Matilda” on ceremonial parade—the Yanks called their friends “cobber” and spoke of riding a “tram” to keep a date with some “shiela.” Before the division departed Melbourne there was many a Yankee ring on an Australian finger, and during the nine months of that truly remarkable rest the Marines thought less and less of the alternating hell of fear and fire which they had left behind them, remembering it only when a comrade looked up from a Melbourne newspaper account of the war in North Africa or New Guinea and exclaimed:

“I wonder what it’s like back on the ‘Canal?”

Back on the ‘Canal in that early January of 1943 the war had lost its spectacular quality. Over at Tulagi there was a sign which, in letters two feet high, proclaimed Bull Halsey’s battle creed: KILL JAPS, KILL JAPS, KILL MORE JAPS. But most of the killing would have to be done farther north, for Hyakutate’s men had already pulled back preparatory to their evacuation and Japanese naval strength no longer ventured south.

The coastwatchers who occupied the lonely high peaks of Guadalcanal were being called in. Among them was the erstwhile planter K. D. Hay, a veteran of World War One and easily the fattest man in the South Pacific. Yet he had hung on to his station at the mountain mining camp known as Gold Ridge. But now, in January, he was coming down, bringing with him the aged nun who was the sole survivor of a Japanese mission massacre and whom Hay had cared for. Melanesian bearers brought the nun down. Hay made his own panting descent. By the time he had reached the coastal road he was near collapse. He sent word to the Americans requesting a jeep. He explained that he was “knocked up,” innocently unaware that the Australian slang for being exhausted was also American slang for being pregnant.

A puzzled U. S. Army officer drove up the road. He saw Hay. He saw his belly. He clapped his hand to his forehead and swore:

“My God, it’s true!”

In mid-January Japanese aerial attacks on Henderson Field began to increase, giving Captain Joe Foss his chance to break Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s record.

Foss was back on Guadalcanal. He had recovered from the malaria which had stricken him November 24, the day after he had shot down his twenty-third plane. He had been evacuated to Sydney, but now he was back with