Just before he went under, Conger saw his Wildcat crash in the coconuts. Then he was going down deep, only to have his swift descent arrested by his rigging. He surfaced, treading water, slashing with a knife at the smothering shroud of the parachute. Twenty feet away another pilot floated gently down into the water.
He was Japanese.
A rescue boat sped toward Conger. It reached him and reduced speed. Conger was hauled aboard. Then the boat came about and headed for the Japanese pilot. Conger called to him to surrender. The Japanese pilot held his breath and sank out of sight. He came up beside the boat, kicked at it, and tried to shove himself away. Conger grabbed a boathook and snared the man by his jacket. The man struggled, snarling with hate. Conger leaned forward to boat him. The Japanese dug his hand under his armpit and whipped out a huge Mauser pistol. His malevolent eyes only inches from Conger’s startled ones, he pressed the pistol to his benefactor’s temple and pulled the trigger.
Click!
Conger tumbled backward, thinking: I’m dead! He was not, nor was his enemy who, failing to return death for life, attempted to take his own by placing the pistol to his own head, producing only a second exasperating click. Conger seized a water can and slammed it down on the man’s head. Unconscious, he was dragged into the boat and taken to Guadalcanal.
Where the two enemies became good friends.
———
Mitchell Paige’s men had found their peaches. Dugout Sunday’s sun had picked it out in the jungle beside the ridge. The moment the men had seen it glinting there, like a lost jewel, they whooped and went scrambling down to retrieve it. Men with American names—Leiphart, Stat, Pettyjohn, Gaston, Lock, McNabb, Swanek, Reilly, Totman, Kelly, Jonjeck, Grant, Payne, Hinson—they squatted on their haunches in the drying mud and ate with great relish the only food they would get that day.
Then they dove for their foxholes, for Admiral Kakuta’s Junyo had turned south again and her dive-bombers and Zeros were overhead.
To the east, almost exactly between Chesty Puller’s position on the left and Paige’s ridge on the right, Lucky and Juergens squatted on a ridgetop talking. They, too, heard the sound of motors—and almost too late.
A Zero came skimming down their ridge like a skier. They sprawled flat, bullets spurting dust around them. The Zero thundered over them and banked. Juergens dove into his dugout and dragged out his machine gun. He began setting it up, cursing. Lucky ran toward him. But the enemy fighter-plane was coming in to strafe again, and Juergens went sprawling again while Lucky whirled and ran for the edge of the ridge. The Zero pursued, roaring, spitting bullets, shedding tinkling cartridge cases. Lucky jumped and fell six feet, rolling down the hillside while the Zero went roaring out over the jungle roof. Then he scrambled back up the ridge and ran to squat beside Juergens.
Again, the Zero turned and made for the ridge.
“C’mon, you son of a bitch,” Juergens swore. “You won’t find it so easy this time.”3
In came the enemy plane, again spitting bullets, and the Marine gun was hammering its reply—and then a pair of Airacobras rose like genies from Henderson Field to the rear, catching the unsuspecting Zero full in their cannon sights and blasting him into a shower of debris.
One more of a total of twenty-six Japanese planes had fallen to Henderson’s fliers—while out beyond Florida Island Henderson’s bombers had caught Yura and were pounding her beneath the waves.
Before sunset the Japanese cruiser was a wreck. Naval and Marine dive-bombers had flown four attacks against her, Flying Fortresses had come up from Espiritu to multiply her wounds—and she was finally abandoned and sunk by her own destroyer, Yudachi. Destroyer Akizuke was also racked, and had to be beached on Santa Isabel Island. Her four sisters fled.
Dugout Sunday had seen the complete rout of the attempt to put the Koli Detachment ashore on eastern Guadalcanal.
It was not Sunday but Saturday in the United States. On the East Coast it was a sunny autumn afternoon. Football crowds flocked to the stadiums along sidewalks bordered by yellowing maples. In Washington the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in session. One of the first matters to be discussed was a message from the Commander-in-Chief. It said:
“My anxiety about the Southwest Pacific is to make sure that every possible weapon gets into that area to hold Guadalcanal, and that having held it in this crisis that munitions and planes and crews are on the way to take advantage of our success.”4
President Roosevelt had taken a direct hand. But he had taken it on the very day on which a vast concourse of ships and men had departed East Coast ports bound for North Africa.
Even though Roosevelt requested the Joint Chiefs to canvass the entire armaments situation over the weekend, even though Admiral King might be pleased that the White House was now so concerned over Guadalcanal, all of the Joint Chiefs realized that there was at that moment very little to be spared for the South Pacific.
And by nightfall there would be one valuable ship less.
President Coolidge was sliding into Segond Channel at Espiritu Santo. The big Army transport carried the 172nd Infantry Regiment of the 43rd Division. Her civilian skipper kept her straight on course toward a minefield. Patrol craft signaled desperately, shore blinkers winked wildly—but Coolidge sailed on.
Then she blundered into two mines and began to sink. She went down slowly; all but two men were rescued. But the 172nd’s guns and gear were gone, together with the ship that was to have taken them to Guadalcanal.
Admiral Nagumo’s turnaround and run north had widened the gap between his fleet and Admiral Kinkaid’s carriers. By midday of Dugout Sunday Hornet and Enterprise were west of the Santa Cruz Islands and about 360 miles southeast of Nagumo.
Kinkaid was uncertain of the enemy’s position. A Catalina had detected Nagumo’s ships at noon, moving southeast again, but had lost them in a squall. Rather than await the enemy’s pleasure, Kinkaid decided to launch both searching and striking flights from Enterprise.
They found nothing. When planes of the strike returned after dark, the first one crashed on the flight deck and six others were lost in the water.
It was a bad beginning.
Masao Maruyama did not think that a poor start necessarily presaged a bad finish.
At Centipede-Shaped Ridge that afternoon he called for a “final death-defying night attack.” He was committing the 16th Infantry, led by Colonel Hitoshi Hiroyasu, to replace the slaughtered 29th. Both his wings were in place. Colonel Shoji on the right was at last in position. On the left, Major General Nasu was prepared to lead the charge, just as Colonel Furumiya had done the night before.
General Maruyama was sorrowful over the loss of Furumiya. It had been because of him that he had ordered his second and third attacks. Commander of the proud Sendai, Maruyama could not turn his back on an officer who had carried a Rising Sun banner into enemy lines.5 Even today he had sent out search parties for the colonel. They had not found him, and Maruyama reluctantly concluded that Furumiya was dead.
He was not.
Colonel Furumiya, Captain Suzuki, and seven others had survived the Americans’ systematic slaughter of the Seventh Company. Throughout Dugout Sunday they lay in the undergrowth within enemy lines, their bodies draped with leaves and vines. American patrols passed them but did not see them.
Like Colonel Ichiki before him, Colonel Furumiya thought of burning his colors and committing ceremonial suicide before the smoke. But the smoke might attract attention and bring the Americans to capture the colors before they were completely destroyed. To lose the regimental flag was unthinkable. Although the 29th Infantry may have been zemmetsu so far as its officers and men were concerned, it lived while its flag remained unviolated. To lose that flag was to lose the 29th’s honor. Annihilation in battle was a thousand times more preferable to such disgrace. This was why, according to many historians, the great General Maresuke Nogi committed suicide after the Emperor Meiji had died: he was expressing his apology for having lost his batta
lion colors during the Satsuma Rebellion. No, the flag, the very esprit de corps of the Japanese Army, could not be risked.
So Colonel Furumiya thought of escape instead. He sent Lieutenant Ono and two soldiers to look for a way out. They did not return, and Warrant Officer Kobayashi went to look for them. He, too, vanished.
Peering from his thorny hideout, Furumiya watched the Americans digging in. He made notes on their defenses, observing that their machine-gun positions were about fifty yards apart and that no one seemed to be manning them. From this he concluded that the guns were fired by remote control.
Colonel Furumiya also observed that the enemy seemed to be cheerful. Some of them even sang as they worked.
We have a weapon that nobody loves,
They say that our gun’s a disgrace,
You crank up 200, and 200 more—
And it lands in the very same place.
Oh, there’s many a gunner who’s blowing his top,
Observers are all going mad.
But our love it has lasted
This pig-iron bastard
Is the best gun this world ever had.
It was thus that Marine mortarmen sang of their stovepipes, those harmless-looking tubes that shoot straight up and down and kill men, and it was thus that Chesty Puller’s mortarmen were singing while they stacked up piles of shamrock-shaped triple shell casings.
Mortar shells were the only supplies which Puller had been able to get to his lines on Dugout Sunday. All of the aerial fighting, naval shelling, and the constant pounding of Pistol Pete had made movement difficult. Nevertheless, Puller was better prepared than on the previous night, having been able to shorten his front while the 3rd Battalion, 164th Infantry, took over the leftward sector he had held. On the soldiers’ left were their comrades of the 2nd Battalion, 164th.
Puller was confident, and he and his headquarters troops could hoot and jeer in derision at the English voice over Radio Tokyo which was announcing their defeat and impending demise. The fact that it was now the football season in America was not lost on the commentator, who simulated a sportscaster’s staccato, and said:
“The score stands—U.S. Navy, 0; Japan, 21—with the Japanese deep in American territory, ten yards to go. Coach Roosevelt passes up and down chain-smoking cigarettes. A pass is knocked down. America calls time out and Ghormley is pulled from the game. The Rising Sun cheers loudly for Coach Tojo. Roosevelt sends in Halsey to call signals. Another pass is called, but the ball is fumbled on the one-yard line, and the heavy favorites, the U.S., are in a bad way as the gun signals the end of the first half.”6
And then it was dark: Colonel Furumiya lay in the bushes waiting for the attack that would rescue them, the American soldiers and Marines braced behind their guns, and the Sendai came flowing out of the jungle in the heaviest of all Guadalcanal’s charges.
“U.S. Marine you going die tonight,” they chanted, “U.S. Marine you going die tonight.”
They were greeted by the customary volleys of obscenity, particularly from American soldiers, against whom the charge was breaking with equal fury, and who were enraged that the enemy should, just like the Stateside newspapers, give all the credit to the Marines.
So the Sendai charged, and American mortars fell among them, artillery shells flashed in the assembly areas, bullets riddled them—and they were cut in two before they reached the wire. It was not a charge, this frenzied rush to destruction, it was a mere death-swarming. They flowed into American steel like moths into flame. Without artillery preparation of their own and without adequate maps or knowledge of the enemy’s position, with arrogant confidence in the superiority of “spiritual power” over firepower and a vaingloriously suicidal determination to look upon death before defeat, Maruyama and his officers sent the Emperor’s best division into a holocaust.
General Nasu was killed, Colonel Hiroyasu was killed, four battalion commanders fell, half of the Sendai’s officers perished, and another thousand men were destroyed.
And still the Sendai Division charged.
Colonel Oka was at last attacking.
His men struck hard at the ridge held by Sergeant Paige’s section.
The Japanese came screeching up the hillside full into Paige’s guns spitting orange flame a foot beyond their flash-hiders. Short shapes fell, but more came swarming in. It was hand-to-hand. Paige saw little Leiphart down on one knee fighting off three attackers. Paige shot two of them. The third killed Leiphart with a bayonet, but Paige killed the killer. Pettyjohn’s gun was knocked out. Gaston fought a Japanese officer, parrying saber swings with his rifle, until the rifle was hacked to pieces. Then Gaston kicked at the blade. Unaware that part of his leg was cut away, he kicked high—and caught the officer under the chin and broke his neck.
All over the ridge the short shapes and the tall shapes flowed, merged, struggled, parted, sank to the ground or rolled down the slopes. Everywhere were the American voices crying, “Killl! Killl!” the gurgling whoops of the Japanese shouting, “Bonnn—za—ee!” or screaming “Marine you die!”
Then the short shapes flowed back down the ridge, and Mitchell Paige ran to fix Pettyjohn’s disabled gun. He pried out a ruptured cartridge and slipped in a fresh belt of ammunition, just as a burst from a Japanese machine gun seared his hand.
Yelling again, the short shapes came bowling up the hill once more. They could not force the left, where Grant, Payne, and Hinson still held out, though all were wounded. In Paige’s center they hit Lock, Swanek, and McNabb. They moved through the gap. Paige dashed to his right to find a gun to stop them. He found Kelly and Totman beside their gun, protected by a squad of riflemen. He ordered the riflemen to fix bayonets, and led them on a charge that drove the Japanese back. Then he set up the gun in the center and fired it until dawn.
As daylight came creeping over the jungle roof to his left, he saw one of his platoon’s machine guns standing unattended on the forward nose of the ridge. Three men in mushroom helmets were crawling toward it. Paige rose and ran forward.…
It had been a warm night at sea.
Aboard flag carrier Shokaku all seemed calm, until the silence was shattered by the ringing of alarms and voices crying “Air raid! Air raid!”
One of Admiral Nagumo’s staff officers dashed for the bridge. He saw two Catalinas come gliding down toward Zuikaku about three miles astern. Four plumes of water rose into the air to starboard of Zuikaku. The officer held his breath. Then the plumes flowed back into the sea and Zuikaku sailed on unruffled.
The officer tumbled down the ladder and raced into Admiral Nagumo’s cabin to report. Admiral Kusaka was there. Both admirals looked at each other, to say with one voice: “Let’s turn around.”7
On the bridge of his destroyer Amatsukaze—the ship whose men made such cruel sport with rats and falcons—Commander Tameichi Hara saw Shokaku blink the signal: “All ships turn 180 degrees to starboard!”
Nagumo’s carriers were swinging north again, fearing a concentrated air raid which never came. But this second turnaround would work to their advantage. With dawn of October 26 they would not be where Admiral Kinkaid expected them to be.
With that dawn of October 26, while Sergeant Mitchell Paige raced the enemy for a machine gun, an enemy force in company strength captured a vital ridge between Paige and Puller. They set up machine guns on it and began raking the Marine flank.
Major Odell (Tex) Conoley could see vapor rising from the enemy guns as the jungle water on the barrels was condensed by hot steel. Conoley saw that the enemy’s penetration could be expanded to a breakthrough. He rounded up a party of bandsmen who were serving as litter-bearers, a trio of wiremen, two runners, and three or four cooks, and charged.
There were seventeen of them in all, but they went up hurling grenades and they drove the Japanese off the ridge. Then Conoley called for mortars to lay a curtain of steel between him and the enemy while he consolidated his position, and awaited reinforcements.
They arrived to be greeted by
a strutting cook who boasted of having brained an enemy officer.
“What’dja do?” a rifleman jeered. “Hit him with one of yer own pancakes?”
… Mitchell Paige reached the gun first.
He dove for it, squeezed the trigger, and killed the crawling Japanese.
A storm of bullets fell on Paige, kicking up spurts of dust. Paige fired back. Stat, Reilly, and Jonjeck ran to him with belts of ammunition. Stat fell with a bullet in his belly. Reilly went down kicking, almost knocking Paige off his gun, and Jonjeck came in with a belt and a bullet in his shoulder. Jonjeck bent to feed the belt into the gun, and Paige saw a piece of flesh go flying off his neck.
“Get the hell back!” Paige yelled.
Jonjeck shook his head. Paige hit him in the jaw, and Jonjeck left.
Paige moved the gun back and forth to avoid enemy grenades. He saw about thirty men rise in the tall grass below him. One of them put binoculars to his eyes and waved his hand for a charge.
Paige fired a long burst.
The enemy vanished.
Paige called to his riflemen. He slung two belts of ammunition across his shoulders, unclamped his gun, cradled the searing-hot water jacket in his arm, and went down the ridge yelling, “Let’s go!”
“Ya-hoo!” the Marines yelled. “Yaaaa-ho!”
And they went racing down the hill after the dispersing enemy. The officer with the glasses popped up out of the grass and Paige disemboweled him with a burst, and then he and his Marines had burst into the jungle.
It was silent and empty.
The enemy was gone. The battle of Henderson Field was over. General Maruyama had already ordered a full retreat. Colonel Shoji was taking the remnant of the Sendai right wing to the east, Maruyama was leading the reeling left wing to the west. Marine bulldozers were already clanking toward the front to gouge out mass graves in which to inter the reeking carcasses of 2500 dead, Colonel Furumiya and his companions lay despairing in the bush, and Mitchell Paige and his men were trudging slowly back to the ridge.