Guadalcanal- I enter my War!

Into The War, Jan 1,1943
It was on this day, after almost 11 months of Marine Corps life, that I joined the war. We had come up from New Zealand on the USS President Hayes. The Hayes was one of “the Unholy Four” of converted luxury liners that were now taking Marines to the Solomon Islands. The other three ships were the President Adams, the President Jackson and the Crescent City.
These ships had come a long way from the luxury ships that once they were. They were all steel, cold and hot as the weather changed. The troop quarters were, of course, below decks. It was very crowded, with bunks, which were 3 to 5 deep and folded up during the time when they were not occupied. The smell bothered us all. It contributed to seasickness. I spent as much time as I could above decks in the fresh air.
I think I was still a private at this time. I was assigned to “B” Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment of the 2nd Marine Division. The 6th was a proud old outfit, having fought with such honor during the 1st World War that the French nation gave them the fourragere, the braided thong worn over the shoulder, as a token of their bravery and commitment in that war. We were not wearing the fourrageres now. Our clothing was the herringbone green or blue fatigue, which I always preferred over the camouflaged gear that has become the standard.
The 1st Marine Division, with our Second Marine Regiment, had made the first attack landing of the war on August 6, 1942. At this time, I was on the USS Matsonia on my way to New Zealand. We evidently were not needed on Guadalcanal as yet and were kept in reserve and training at Camp Paekakiriki near Wellington. Another reason for us to be there was to protect New Zealand against an attack from the Japanese.
We were superbly trained, well equipped for that time. We were given new shoes before we went in. I carried a Springfield 1903 thirty-caliber rifle in which I had tremendous confidence. It was extremely accurate, very durable. It worked well even when the weather was wet and dirty.
We landed down landing nets into Higgins boats and came into the beach with no opposition. We bivouacked that first night at a place called Kukum, near Lunga Point. Our commanding officer for the 6th Marines was Colonel Gilder D. Jackson. Brigadier General Alphonse de Carre, the assistant division commander, commanded the 2nd Division. The ranking division commander was Major General John Marston, but he had to stay back in New Zealand because he was senior to General Patch, the Army general who designated to command all troops during the rest of the Guadalcanal campaign.
There were few conveniences. When we first came in, in reserve, we made our homes under tent flies stretched between coconut trees. We all dug foxholes just outside these covers. There were some mosquito nets that we got hold of in the next few days, but I didn’t get one that first night. We actually had cots to sleep on and we were a little out of the mud.
We had not gotten to sleep before we heard the drone of a big airplane. Looking up for it I spotted it. It was a big Japanese bomber flying insolently along about three thousand feet high. It began dropping some bombs. I could hear the “whe, whe, whe” of the dropping bomb and then the big explosion very nearby. It was unbelievably loud. The next morning I saw the crater, about 30 feet across and 12 feet deep about 75 yards from my cot. We learned the plane was “Washing Machine Charley”. Our antiaircraft guns couldn’t reach him. He came almost every night.
We stayed in this reserve status for about a week. We washed our clothing in the Lunga River. We were warned about malaria, dengue, and elephantiasis. We were issued Atabrine, which didn’t really prevent malaria, but it kept it under control. It turned our skins and the whites of our eyes yellow. It didn’t taste good at all and some of us didn’t take it religiously. Those people suffered before long. I took it as I was supposed to and it kept me from some of the suffering. There were galleys set up in the coconut trees and we had hot meals of oatmeal, Spam, wieners, beans and canned vegetables. Doesn’t sound like too rough duty, does it really? It would get worse.
On about the 13th of January, we replaced the 2nd and 8th regiments. A sight I will never forget was as we were going up to the front; we stood aside as those battle-weary Marines walked back. We took off our helmets to them. There was no taunting or humor of any sort. They had done their full duty. They had seen their comrades killed and wounded. They were tired, sick, ragged and weary. They were glad to see us in our decent clothing and shoes. We were going to take their places and they were pleased to let us. We, in our turn, were pleased to replace these poor guys.
Our Battalion Commander was Major Russell Lloyd. I think 1st Lieutenant Charles Krueger commanded “B” Company. Krueger made it through Guadalcanal, Tarawa and was killed on Saipan. “B” Company replaced its unit. We were on the backside of a small hill. In less than fifteen minutes I saw my first man severely wounded. Charles Cook who was a private was about three feet from me when I heard a “whack”. I looked and his lower jaw disappeared. There was an immediate cry for “Corpsman”! One of our bravest of the brave naval pharmacist’s mates took over with him. I last saw him being helped toward the rear. I never knew if he lived, but I would be surprised if he did. I was told that a “sniper” shot him. Some fellows over to my right saw him in a tree and shot him out of it. A sniper seemed to me to be a foolish person, tying himself up in a tree and killing as many Americans as he could, but he was almost certain to pay for it with his life. These “snipers” were to cause me troubles for the next 3 and a half years!
In just a few minutes, while small arms fire was going on around us, I saw Sergeant Benedict and someone with one of our men. I took one look at his face and gagged. I almost vomited and I never looked at him again. They said that one of our own 60 mm mortars had been shooting over him and had fallen short and got him. It was a white phosphorus shell and it just burned his face beyond recognition. They walked him to the rear. We all just knew that he was going to die, but I heard, much later, that he had lived through it and had been sent back to the States.

We did not try to take the hill that night, but spent our night in foxholes, covered when necessary with ponchos. We had watches set up so everyone could get a little sleep. We got a drenching rain. It cleared away. We got a visit from “Washing Machine Charley”. We got our first taste of incoming artillery fire. We found out later “Pistol Pete”, a 108 millimeter artillery piece was shooting at us from about six miles away. Incoming artillery has a sound like no other.
We got through this first night and started up to take the hill. As I found so many times during my war, the Japanese had pulled out during the night and we just walked up the hill. As I was moving forward I saw two Marines who had been dead for several days. I realized other people had taken this hill and then had to pull back. Marines are very concerned that fallen comrades be given proper burial and that their identities are found so that their families can be notified. I was surprised to see members of the Second Marine Division Band were the ones who came up with stretchers and took these unfortunate men back. Later I would see the crosses, row on row, in the cemetery before I left the island.
When we began getting up and out of our holes the next morning, it was like there was no war going on. I heard someone saying, “Chow Call”. Then we saw our regular cooks who had served us in New Zealand and even back at Camp Elliot bringing up what appeared to be aluminum containers with hot oatmeal, some chipped beef in gravy and lots of hot coffee.
In a great display of ignorance, they set up in a clearing about an acre in size and our company formed a chow line ready for breakfast. I was about ten men from the food when we heard the roar of a fighter plane and a Japanese Zero came over the trees and flew right toward us in the clearing. He was only about 100 feet high. I could see the pilot plainly. He seemed to be very surprised to see us out in the open. He made a quick turn upward and to his right and circled. He came back with machine guns blazing. He put several bullets in the oatmeal, but he hit no Marines. We were all deep in the woods by then. He made only the one pass and headed back across the water toward Tulagi. We pulled the wonderful breakfast into the jungle with us and enjoyed it.
There didn’t seem to be any great hurry. We were told to clean our rifles and the rest of our gear and get ready to move out. There didn’t seem to be any Japanese right in front of us, but the jungle was pretty frightening. The main trees were 30 to 100 feet high and the underbrush was very difficult to get through. We had been issued machetes and they came in handy. We could hear the birds and jungle animals ahead of us. The birds were mostly of brilliant colors and a lot of them resembled parrots. When I heard the birds, it was no trouble at all for me to believe that they were Japanese signaling to each other. I think most of us expected an attack at any moment. We were not disappointed.
All of a sudden the whole area was filled with gunfire. I could hear incoming bullets zipping over my head. I couldn’t see any enemy, but I guess there were some of them out there. Our guys, I found, would shoot at almost anything in front of them. Some of them shot at coconuts. I was sent, along with Kenneth “Red” McGaughy, another private like me, back to the battalion command post to string a telephone line from there back up to “B” Company. When we got back there, (about ¼ mile), the colonel asked Red what was going on ahead. Red told him he thought the Marines were shooting at coconuts. We got the two DR-8 rolls of light wire and, carrying one roll and unrolling the other, we began walking up a road back toward our company. We were almost back when we met Lorne Berger and three more men carrying a litter with a platoon sergeant whose name I once knew well, lying in it. He was in pain, but was gritty. One of the carriers told me to relieve one of them and let him go with McGaughy on to the Company. I found that the sergeant was wounded in the thigh and we would just carry him to the battalion aid station and he would get all right. We were within 50 yards of the aid station when Berger said, “He’s dead.” He was. The first Marine I saw die on Guadalcanal died from being shot in the leg. The Good Lord only knows what happened. An interesting sight for me was to see the Seabees had built a very good road up to the battalion CP. This was jungle we had struggled over just three hours before. We went back to the Company where I got sent back again with a message for the Colonel. When I got back again, we were moving forward and I found my place in my rifle squad. We went through days of this; moving forward; people getting killed and wounded. During this time I only saw very few Japanese. One of these was a sniper who was hanging out of a palm tree. He had been spotted and shot.
I now had to wrestle with the idea that I probably had killed other human beings. I was not completely sure. I knew that I had looked at the Japanese across my gunsight and pulled the trigger and saw them fall. But at the same time that I was firing, other people were firing at the same enemies. Also there was the fact that we didn’t know if the people really died or were just wounded. It may seem that I didn’t take it seriously enough. I was too busy to dwell on it. I have thought about it in the years since much more than I did at the time. I was not a Christian during my war, but I did a lot of praying!

We crossed what they said was the Manikou River. It was about fifteen feet wide and about 3 feet deep.
After a few days of this, I had another vivid experience. We were just in the enfilade of a hill, (the side away from the enemy), and found that the Japanese were in hordes just over the next hill about a quarter of a mile away. Captain Durfee had me go with him out on our front line. Our troops were laying out white pieces of cloth just in front that could be seen from the air. It turned out that the captain wanted me to see what was going on and then he sent me back to Battalion. There I was taken in a jeep back to Henderson Field which was about two miles further on back on a good road that the Seabees had made out of shells, coral, rocks and beach sand. I was to ride in the front seat of a Douglas SBD dive-bomber and show the pilot where our front lines were. This was quite an adventure for me. The stupid pilot didn’t just tend to business. He got us up in the air and headed back east across Henderson Field. Then he began some acrobatics intended to scare the daylights out of me. I was pretty scared, but I soon realized what he was doing, so I didn’t let on. I thought, “This guy isn’t going to kill himself, so I won’t let him get the best of me.” He settled down to business and we did our job. When I got back to the field, I had to walk the two miles back to my outfit, but before I got half-way there, it seemed every plane on the island was ahead of our lines and giving the Japanese a real strafing and bombing.
While I was walking back I came across a small creek and found that the 37 MM guns which were pulled by several men were having a tough time getting across. I saw Major Amey helping to push them across and up the bank. A small truck came up loaded with mosquito nets and bedding. Amey ordered them to unload them in the ditch so people could get across. I was helping him push. I guess I looked a little surprised that he would have the gear put in the ditch. He said, “ I read that in World War One, that they unloaded a truck filled with typewriters in a ditch like this.” Amey was one of the finest officers I ever knew and was a battalion commander when he was killed on Okinawa.
Soon after this, Lieutenant Calhoun, who was one of the guys who were with me all the way, was asked to patrol ahead of our lines. There were only about nine of us, not a whole platoon. He led the way, cutting through the jungle, hearing the birds, all of us, I guess, pretty scared. We went about a mile without seeing any Japanese. We came out to the beach where we could look back and see our Battalion CP. We could also see a whole mob of brown-shirted Japanese between our company and us. We were cut off. The Japanese didn’t know were there. They settled down and began setting up camp. We were very quiet! They built fires. We could see fires back in our area a few miles back, but we couldn’t light one. We stayed there more than two days. We ran out of food, but we found a Japanese dump where they had left a lot of canned fish heads and rice. We stayed quiet. On about the third night, a private named Burton and a corporal named Guynes came across the short way across the water. They had swum most of the way. They told us that the Japanese between us had been taken off during the night before in a boat or a submarine. We all walked back the mile and a half to “B” Company. We didn’t get any medals for our little campaign. In fact, I heard that Lt. Calkins got a chewing out. It was hard to be a hero in those days.
We got to where it was no trouble to recognize the sounds of enemy gunfire. Their machine guns fired faster than ours and made a more tinny sound. It was easy to recognize the sound of our fifty caliber machine guns or a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). Their little old mortars would just make a “plop”. They had what were called “knee mortars”. Ours would have broken our legs if we tried to fire them with the base on our knees. Another odd thing was that they all wore canvas shoes. There was no such thought given for us to have to wear canvas shoes in the jungle. They were slit like a mitten and the big toe was separated from the rest of the foot.
As the war began, the Marine Corps developed some elite units. The Rangers and the Paratroop Battalion were put into action very early. Later they were disbanded and their members joined other units. One of the Raiders became a lifelong friend when he was transferred to our mortar platoon. (Dyer) .
For the rest of our time, we were under the command of General Patch of the army. We fought alongside the army.
For the first and last time I saw mules being used. The army used them to pull their 37 mm guns. The Marines used Marines.
We relieved them. They relieved us. We pushed the Japanese back to the end of the island. They never surrendered. They were successful in safely taking off a lot of their troops to fight against us in other battles further north.
A personal change came about when a call came for volunteers to join the communication platoon in the telephone section to help string wire as our communication lines lengthened. We put up wire on the coconut trees. I learned to climb telephone poles climbing coconut trees on Guadalcanal. We were promised electronic school when we finished this battle. I thought it was a chance to learn something. I already knew how to shoot and get shot at. I transferred. I was promoted to Private First Class. Rank came very slow and was always well earned in the Corps.
We gradually lost our battle with the mosquitoes and most of us contracted more than one of the jungle diseases. On February 19, we left the Guadalcanal for the army to garrison and my company, (HQ-1-6 now) again got on the Crescent City for the trip back to New Zealand.