reach the house next day. Beaching his raft, he found that he had stumbled on an abandoned copra plantation. There were outbuildings. But he saw no sign of life or food. Then he heard the cackling of a hen.
He staggered toward a rotting henhouse. He found an aged hen nesting inside. He poked her with a stick. She clucked in outrage and scampered away—exposing twelve beautiful white eggs to the starving eyes of Bill Coffeen. He broke them open and gulped them down. He found some little tropical limes and squeezed the tart juice into his mouth.
He felt certain that he would live and he refloated his boat and made it to the plantation house in another day. He lay on the floor that night and prayed to God for the strength to keep him going.
In the morning he was paddling again, keeping carefully close to the shoreline. At dusk four days later a storm broke over The Slot and swept his raft out to the open sea.
Night fell. Black water swept over Coffeen’s burning flesh, and it was then that he began to scream.
It was mid-May. The campaign in North Africa had ended in victory. The new-style landing boats that had brought the soldiers ashore at Casablanca and Oran were now coming to the Pacific in great numbers.
The old wooden Higgins boats from which the Marines were accustomed to leap into boiling surf were now discarded. Replacing them were the new LCVP’s (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) which the Marines would simply call “landing boats.” They were 36 feet long, could move at nine knots and could carry 36 Marines or a three-ton vehicle or 8,000 pounds of cargo. They had ramps which were lowered at the moment of impact with the beach, enabling the Marines to run ashore and make one of those ladylike “dry landings” for which they were forever ribbing the dogfaces. Many months later, when the Marines saw the famous pictures of General MacArthur wading ashore on his return to the Philippines, they hooted in wild derision, for they knew nobody need wade with a landing boat around.
There was also the landing boat’s big sister, the LCM (Landing Craft, Medium) which would always be called that. It was 50 feet long and 14 feet wide, and could carry a Sherman tank or 30 tons of cargo or 69 men. The LCM’s were ideal for small forays. They mounted a pair of 50-caliber machine guns and the ramp could be lowered just enough to allow the Sherman’s cannon to fire. Roaring inland, with this armament blazing, the LCM’s were a terrifying sight for enemy riflemen to behold and they could provide excellent supporting fire for those Marines swarming down the ramp.
And the old amtrack was coming into its own. The Marines had had the LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked) at Guadalcanal and called it the Alligator. Excellent though it was for crossing swamps or sailing up navigable jungle rivers, it had been erratic in salt water. The tracks corroded and became stuck. Now there was an improved amtrack coming out to the Pacific, and soon there would be amtracks with ramps to the rear, amtrack tanks—or amtanks—and even amtracks mounting flame-throwers which could spew tongues of liquid fire a hundred feet long.
There were bigger boats, such as the bargelike LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) which was 122 by 32 feet and could carry four Shermans or 150 tons of cargo. There was also the LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry), a sleek, swift little ocean-going troop-carrier. The diesel-powered LCI’s were 148 feet long and could hit 16 knots and cruise for 8,000 miles. They had quarters for nine officers and 196 men, with cargo capacity of 32 tons. When the boat beached, twin ramps to either side of the bow could be lowered for the Marines to run ashore. The LCI’s were eventually converted into rocket ships, for which purpose they were admirably suited, and the Marines were not sorry to see them go. They were hot, airless and crowded, with the most rudimentary provision for washing and eating, and they were far from stable.
The LST (Landing Ship, Tank) was stable. Many Marines said that LST stood for Large Stationary Target, for these pin-headed monsters were indeed slow and indeed large. The LST was 328 feet long and could carry 2,100 tons. Her most unusual feature was the enormous high bow composed of two huge doors which swung open the moment the shallow-draft LST’s ran up on the beach, or which could be opened at sea to allow amtracks to roll down a ramp into the water. Through these great yawning jaws ran, rode and rolled all the men and munitions of Mars. To sit in the cavernous belly of an LST on the morning of battle was to be sailing to war within the Lincoln Tunnel—trucks, jeeps, tanks, field guns, ambulances, amtracks, everything wheeled or tracked was lined up nose- to-end behind hundreds of combat-loaded Marines crouching forward for the moment when the doors swung open to reveal the forts of the enemy.
The Marines hated their LST’s with a flippant fierce hatred. Very few men enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in the bunks provided for them below. Most of them slept on deck, usually on field cots placed underneath LCT’s lashed to the deck on blocks so they could be launched over the side on D-Day. Being nine-knot cows, LST’s had to leave for combat earliest, for they took the longest, and this meant that the chances of their being bombed, torpedoed or shelled were more prolonged, and that their food supply would inevitably give out, along with the fresh water, forcing the troops to live off the rations in their packs and to wash in salt water.
No, the LST’s were not popular, any more than had been the M-1, or Garand, semiautomatic rifle when it was first issued. The Marines had fought with the bolt-action, five-shot Springfield rifle on Guadalcanal. This was the famous ‘03 which had made the United States Marines the sharpest shooters in the world. They hated to exchange it for the less-accurate M-1, even though the Garand fired an eight-round clip as fast as a man could pull the trigger. Burning powder gases operated the M-1’s loading mechanism, thus providing the greater firepower, to which the Marines reluctantly yielded.
But at least they had gotten rid of the Reising gun, that slovenly substitute for a Thompson submachine gun which they had taken onto Guadalcanal. The Reising gun was useless, and the Marines swore that the only Japanese hurt by them were those hit by the ones being thrown away. In the Reising’s place came the tommy gun, firing 20- or 30-round clips. For officers and machine-gunners and other Marines assigned to crew-served weapons there was the new M-1 carbine. It was light, firing a clip of 15 30-caliber bullets at semiautomatic. It provided firepower, but it wasn’t tough enough to withstand the corrosion of the jungle. It would break down when fired too long, and then anyone who carried a carbine would search frantically for a rifle-still the best gun to have around when things were getting sticky.
There was also the bazooka, that long-tubed rocket-launcher which a man rested on his shoulder and fired like a rifle, and there was the flame-thrower. Both were new and untried.
They would soon be tested, however, as would all those other weapons and ships now flowing to the three Marine divisions training in the Antipodes and to the Raider battalions on Noumea in mid-May of 1943.
It was May 15 and Bill Coffeen had the foolish notion that someone was cradling him like a baby.
He opened his eyes. He was being carried. He was in the arms of a husky Melanesian and he was being lifted from his raft.
“You allasame ‘Merrican?” the man asked, “or you allasame Jap?”
“I’m American,” Coffeen gasped.
The Melanesian’s white teeth flashed in his dark face.
“’Merrican good fella,” he said, and gathered Coffeen in his powerful arms and took him to a village inland from the beach. Coffeen was puzzled at first over how the Melanesian could mistake a tall Westerner for a short Japanese. But then he understood. He had shrunk to a hank of bone and shriveled skin, his flesh was like burnished copper, his head was a mop almost as fuzzy as his rescuer’s, but plastered down with dried salt, as was the heavy beard covering half his face.
At the village, Coffeen ate. He was saved. Next day his infected foot was lanced, the ulcers covering his body were bathed in an antiseptic—and then Coffeen fell ill with malaria.
There were now four airfields on Guadalcanal and Fleet Admiral Mineichi Koga was determined to succeed where his predecessor, Yamamoto, had failed. He was going to destroy Guadalcanal air power.
In mid-May he shifted his aerial strength from Truk to Rabaul and in early June the Zekes and Vals and Bettys swept south again.
On June 7, 112 of them collided with American and New Zealand planes high above the Russell Islands in one of the Solomons campaign’s biggest dogfights. At 22,000 feet, Lieutenant Sam Logan’s Corsair was turned into a torch by the 20-millimeter cannon of a Zeke.
Logan bailed out. His parachute opened and he began to float seaward.
The Zeke returned. Its pilot made pass after pass at the helpless Logan, and then, failing to hit him, drove at
