On January 2 the Marines attacked Suicide Creek.
The newly arrived Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, was on the right or west with the Third Battalion, Seventh, on the left.
They came up cautiously to the creek’s steep banks. Scouts waded across. It was difficult going, for though the creek was but 20 to 30 feet wide and from two to three feet deep and sluggish, its floor was covered with slippery stones. There were also fallen trees which the scouts had to clamber over, but they got across. They slipped into the jungle and soon they were back, waving the main bodies on.
The first platoons crossed and the Japanese struck.
Machine-gun fire swept the Marines from every direction. Marines pitched to the ground or threw themselves down to return fire blindly. It was as though they had been attacked by a battalion of ghosts. They had no notion where their enemy was. They could only hear the bullets whining about them, smacking into trees, cutting leaves, digging up spurts in the mud, sinking into flesh. One platoon was pinned down. A young rifleman was blinded by powder burns. He blundered about, calling, “I can’t see—I can’t see.” Corporal Larry Oliveria grabbed him by the arm. Together, they withdrew. Oliveria paused every few feet to fire, then hefted his rifle and pulled the blinded boy all the way back across the creek as the youth mumbled in a stupor, “I can’t see—I can’t see.”
Some of these platoons crossed Suicide Creek four times, only to be hurled back four times. One platoon came down again to the water’s edge. A big husky rifleman stepped into the water. A bullet smacked loudly into his belly.
“Them dirty bastards!” the stricken man mumbled in amazement, and sank into the water dead.
There were wounded Marines stumbling through the water, rolling down the banks, fighting the current that swept them downstream. Men ran out to seize them and pull them to safety and were shot down themselves. Still the fight raged on, a battle incredibly unreal for there was still no sign of the enemy.
At dusk the Japanese very nearly turned the repulse into a rout. About 50 of them followed the retreating Marines across the creek. They crept up the sheltering high banks near an emplacement of four machine guns. The gunners had started to dig their own foxholes. Their guns were untended. If the Japanese could get to them, they could swing them on the Marines and strike a serious counterblow at the entire attack.
They ran for them in a silent rush. They were 30 yards from the digging Marines before someone spotted them and shouted:
“Japs!”
Captain Andrew Haldane and Lieutenant Andrew Chisick heard the shout as they spoke to a group of riflemen. They whirled and raced away to intercept.
It was going to be close. Not even the Marines around the guns had much time to lunge for the weapons they had put aside. Some of them had begun to scatter, but many more had joined Haldane and Chisick. A Japanese soldier was first to the guns. He slid into sitting position to fire one of them, and a Marine bayoneted him through his chest. Then the tall men in green closed with the short ones in brown. Some of the Japanese fell. The remainder broke free and ran back across the creek. But now the Marines had their weapons and they cut down 20 of the enemy before the skirmish was over.
They got the guns emplaced as darkness fell. They braced for a nocturnal counterattack. Just before dawn they heard firing to their left, where Lieutenant Abe was attacking Target Hill.
Lieutenant Abe, like so many Japanese soldiers, prepared to go into battle wearing all that he possessed. He pulled on his extra pair of trousers. He put his third shirt over his second shirt and slipped his arms into his raincoat. He stuffed his pack with all his goods and food, and also every document concerning Target Hill which had come his way, and onto the back of this he strapped his rolled overcoat. He hoisted this onto his shoulders. He slung his field glasses over this, buckled on his pistol, seized his sword and his entrenching tool—and called for mortar fire.
The first Japanese mortar shell struck the nose of a ridge held by Captain Marshall Moore’s Company A of the First Battalion, Seventh. It instantly killed Gunnery Sergeant Theon Deckrow, but a machine-gunner and a dozen other Marines stayed in line. Soon they detected the sound of digging beneath the mortar barrage. They guessed that the Japanese were cutting steps into the hillside. They waited. The mortar barrage grew in intensity. By five o’clock the Japanese had begun to throw in artillery and 20-millimeter machine cannon, but they missed target and the Marines on the plateau still waited.
At a quarter of six, the red flare rose and the charge began. The machine-gunner who had stayed at his post after Deckrow’s death ran 20 belts of machine-gun ammunition through his gun. That was 5,000 bullets from a single weapon, and there were others firing, as well as mortars exploding among the Japanese coming up the hill. Lieutenant Abe was quickly killed, Warrant Officer Yamaguchi was shot to death, and that Major Mukai who commanded the attacking battalion was driven back into the jungle after Captain Moore heard him screaming orders and brought fire down around him.
What report Major Mukai made to Colonel Katayama is unknown, but the colonel sent this message to Major General Matsuda:
By the desperate struggle of the officers and men of the Regiment, Target Hill had been captured and the enemy were forced to the water’s edge. But, owing to the enemy counterattack with superior forces, we have relinquished it again with much regret.
Of course Target Hill had not been “relinquished,” nor had the Marine lines been bent, let alone broken. Close to 200 Japanese were killed or wounded during a two-hour run at the wire, at the expense of three Marines killed and 10 wounded. Target Hill had been so one-sided that Division refused to believe that it had been a well- planned attack with the intention of turning Shepherd’s seaward flank. That belief would continue until intelligence officers examined Lieutenant Abe’s well-clad body and someone thought to look into Warrant Officer Yamaguchi’s pocket.
But even as intelligence officers arrived on the battlefield—angrily shooing the souvenir-hunters away—the clamor of battle had shifted back to Suicide Creek.
Dawn at Suicide Creek burst from the Japanese mortars. Before the Marines could leap erect to continue the attack on the morning of January 3, the shells were flashing and roaring among them. One young rifleman was decapitated by the direct blast of an exploding shell. Men going forward looked at that sitting headless figure with just the neck from which dog-tags dangled and wondered who it might have been.
They went across Suicide Creek, small unit by small unit, sometimes finding and knocking out an enemy gun, but always being thrown back again.
One Marine lay behind a log, firing. “It don’t do no good,” he muttered, his face ashen. “I got three of ‘em, but it don’t do no good.”
Platoon Sergeant Casimir Polakowski shouted at him angrily: “What the hell you bitchin’ about? You get paid for it, don’t you?”
The shocked Marine managed a weak grin and continued to fire. Polakowski arose to take his platoon across the creek to rescue another one trapped over there. He saw three of his men killed in rapid succession, returned, ran to rescue a wounded Marine being shot at by a sniper—and was shot in the back.
Lieutenant Elisha Atkins led his platoon of heavy machine-gunners across the water. The enemy gunners allowed half of them to cross, and then the converging fire of six automatic weapons made a screaming, bleeding hell of the others. Some men lay in the water, not daring to move, not even daring to rescue others who lay across trees in full view of the enemy, who called helplessly, over and over, whose blood flowed into the faces of those who dared not move to help them.
Across the bank Lieutenant Atkins lay in a tangle of vines. He had been hit three times and was losing blood fast. Pfc. Luther Raschke found him. He cut him free and tried to drag him back across the creek, but “Tommy Harvard,” as the men called Atkins, refused to go.
“Go on,” he gasped. “Keep the line moving. Get the men out.”
Raschke and Corporal Alexander Caldwell obeyed. They got back in time to hear that the engineers of the Seventeenth Marines had laid a corduroy road of logs through the swamp which Major Takabe considered impassable.
