Although we were not on Guadalcanal for more than a couple of months, even today it is difficult for me to talk or think about. Those weeks were our introduction to hell. Many of us found within ourselves primitive feelings and emotions that we never knew were there. The severe, gut-wrenching fear produced a response within us to eliminate it by whatever means possible, even to rushing headlong into certain disaster. Personally, I never again in my lifetime experienced those emotions or even the knowledge that I was capable of harboring them, after I returned to the States.
Now we were on our way back to Wellington (NZ), each with his own thoughts. Conversations were conducted in hushed tones and there was little horseplay. Even the card games were played in subdued silence. I thought back to the first encounter we had with the Japs when I had joined K Company and we found ourselves in trouble.
After it was over and quieted down, we decided to check out the area. We crawled down into this slight ravine and saw three Jap bodies. We checked them out and they were dead so, against all orders, a couple of men began to search the bodies. One of them who had been with us since before we went to Iceland, Joaquin Watson, found a body flag on one of them and asked me if I wanted it. I replied, "It's yours. You keep it." He insisted that I take it and, although I was a little squeamish about that, I accepted it.
Sometime later (two or three weeks) we were sitting around our tent with Father O'Neill and his assistant when a light colonel whom I didn't know came into the tent and said he was going back to the States the next day as an instructor, and if we wanted to send an uncensored letter with him he would mail it in San Francisco. I asked him if I could send the flag back to my father, who had been a Marine circa 1901~1907, and that I knew he would appreciate getting it. If I kept the flag with me, he might never get it — for a variety of reasons. The colonel said if I could find an envelope to hold it he'd take it. I found a large envelope somewhere, addressed it and gave it to the chaplain, who later gave it to the colonel and we forgot about it.
About that time, K Company was moving up along Guadalcanal's coast and resistance was very fierce. One day Joaquin had his head a little high and he took a sniper's bullet dead center in the front of his helmet. The force was enough to knock him over, but the bullet didn't penetrate the liner. Instead it veered off to the left and made about four passes around the inside of his helmet before dropping out and burning his neck. He was deaf for some time, but so happy to be alive he couldn't contain himself. He swore he was going to keep that helmet. After our return to NZ, I never saw him again and don't know his fate. Now we had truly fulfilled a part of the hymn in our travels:
In the snow of far-off northern landsAnd in sunny tropic scenes;You will find us always on the job,The United States Marines.Our thought processes while on the Canal, if there were any, really went something like, "I am here because these dirty, little yellow bastards want to take something of ours from us that is precious, and destroy it. We are not going to let that happen no matter what it takes."
We never saw the Jap as part of our world. We held him in disdain and contempt. We knew he could never defeat us — such was a certainty within us. It was probably a mistake for us to think that way because we had been and were facing a superior enemy who was well trained and whose only objective was to kill us. He was a master at infiltration and he had forgotten more about concealment than we had ever learned. He was fanatic in his desire to struggle to the last ounce of strength within him.
If our enemy had a failing it was in obeying the officers who frequently were not his fighting equal. Probably the best example of that was the blind following of the Japanese general, whose name I do not remember, across Guadalcanal and through the jungle to effect a surprise attack on the Marines defending Henderson Field. This guy knew little or nothing about jungle fighting (he had made his reputation in China) and lost nearly 80 percent of his command to starvation and disease before they broke out of the jungle, and the rest were ineffective in battle. The general killed himself when his plan failed. That was another basic difference between us.
Originally no one knew anything about Guadalcanal — even General Vandegrift upon receiving orders to make the landing had to ask where Guadalcanal was. They found where it was and also that it was one the wettest places on earth. It rained (heavy tropical rain) every day. If it didn't rain during the day it rained at night. The place was covered by jungle growth so heavy that from the ground looking straight up at noon the sun was invisible. The heat was oppressive; it bore down on us like a blanket soaked in warm water. The humidity, with all that moisture and the tropical sun, hung above 80 percent all the time.
We could never get enough water, but we were limited to two full canteens daily. The hot, stinking jungle was full of decaying vegetation. Clothes were wringing wet from sweat and boots disintegrated in a matter of days. With all that rain the island was a muddy mess. Where water got trapped and could not run off, a lake would form. Usually we were walking around in wet sticky mud up to our knees. The trucks had a hell of a time because the wheels made ruts so deep in the soft mud that the axles got hung up on the high center of the road and the wheels would just spin. We forgot about trying to keep clean.
The natives that we saw were mainly around the cemetery area. They would lend a hand if needed and were very friendly, but we didn't see many of them. They wore whatever seemed to be available and it was odd to see them wear parts of uniforms with a skirt kind of affair and no shoes. (An excellent book about them, and especially Jacob Vouza, is Don Richter's Where the Sun Stood Still.)
Neither Japanese nor Americans were impervious to diseases, the thirst caused by the heat and humidity, the strength-draining conditions of the island, or its many hostile creatures that walked, swam, slithered and flew, many of them carrying diseases that could be fatal. More men died from these factors than were killed in battle. We all had some kind of sore that broke out all over the body and seemed to bore into the skin and make an itchy, scaly crust. We called it "jungle rot." It took many years for the skin rot to disappear.
Then there was the malaria-bearing Anopheles mosquito and the dengue fever-bearing Aedes mosquito, which combined to keep hands and arms busy swatting them until fatigue set in. Many of the men said, "To hell with it," and just let the bugs bite. The land crabs made everyone jumpy. They were 6~8 inches across and walked sideways. They generally came out at night and enjoyed snuggling up to warm bodies in foxholes. It was rare, but it did happen that some men actually shot themselves in the foot while trying to kill a land crab.
The iguanas were harmless, but they too would cuddle up with men in foxholes or wherever they felt comfortable; they liked to get under our clothes and walk along a warm body. They were 3~6 inches long or more and, as I recall, ugly as sin with spiny backs. We did catch some, though, and cooked them as a source of much-needed protein.
Guadalcanal is located approximately 10 degrees below the equator, so it has nearly equal days and nights — sunrise at about 0600 and sunset about 1800 hours. When I was a kid in high school, I had read Kipling's stories about India and the Far East. I think that was where I'd first read, "It's always darkest before the dawn."
One night we had a "Condition Black" (invasion). We were camped near the beach at the time, so we set up a series of watches around our area. Most of us never got a wink of sleep due to apprehension. About 0500 all the usual jungle noises stopped and everything was very quite. We keep listening and looking toward the beach while slowly our depth of vision became shorter and shorter until we could not see our hands if they were touching our noses. It was black like that every morning for 30~45 minutes before sunrise. It made a believer out of me. What everyone thought was an invasion fleet turned out to be an evacuation effort that took 12,000 Japanese off the island in eight days — without our knowing it.
For those of us handling the dead and wounded, getting to them was primary. Bodies would bloat to two or three times their size in a matter of two hours. All sorts of crawling creatures would invade the body: ants, flies and, of course, maggots. I had trouble keeping the bed of my truck clean even with the heavy rains, because the rain did not wash them out, it just soaked them. We were supposed to bury bloated bodies where we found them, but we seldom did. We would take them back to the cemetery and a couple of us would tip the stretcher until the body rolled off.
Most of the time it would fall apart as it hit the sides or the bottom of the grave and sometimes an arm or a leg might hang up on an edge or a side of the grave. Then we would have to get a long pole and dislodge it.
The Army sergeant in charge of the cemetery would get angry with us every time we brought in a body in that condition. He had a fire going constantly and we would carry the maggot-loaded stretchers over to the fire and toss them on it. But we felt these men were our buddies and our heroes and, by God, we were going to give them the best we could.
The hardest time I had was when we buried Dick Watson, but we did the best we could. The sickly sweet stench of death was unbearable unless we made up our minds to ignore it. We did, by again finding within ourselves something that we never knew we possessed.
Soon we moved forward from our base at the Matanikau and found a place in a grove of palm trees that seemed ideal for the aid station plus it had a beautiful beach about 75 yards away. The main road ran along the beach about 20 feet up from the water. We pitched our tent between the road and the beach, about 10 feet from the water.
Now for the first time I could wash out the bed of my truck. Whenever we had the opportunity I would back the truck axle-deep in the water and toss buckets of salt water in on those ugly maggots. They didn't like salt water and it wasn't long until that truck bed was as shiny as a new nickel.
Our choice of sites was bad, however, because we were open to attack from the air, and it came regularly. We used to bring the wounded in by boat, and one afternoon I was helping unload a boat of about 20 men when we heard this motor screaming and shots being fired.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw this Zero just getting into its glide pattern, bullets were splattering into the water and the pilot was coming right at us. My first thought was of the men, then I rejected that because they were low in the boat and relatively protected. I spotted the machinegun mounted on the after part of the boat and rushed for it, but I knew I couldn't get there in time to be of any use. I stopped and faced the plane. I could see the pilot, the gun flashes and the bullets hitting the water. I had one thought — "This is it."
I guess somebody was watching over us that day because, just before the bullets got to the point where they were going to tear us apart, the pilot had to pull up or risk crashing into the trees. All this took only a few seconds.
Japan's Navy was head and shoulders above our Navy in the early days of WWII. Many good accounts have been written about the naval battles of the southern Solomons, most of which went to Japan by a knockout. The one thing that surprised us more than any other was this — When their situation was hopeless the Japanese soldier would still look for some way to kill his enemy, and failing, would take his own life. In our Western culture such a course was completely unacceptable.
Before we left New Zealand for Guadalcanal, we had heard some of these things and had some idea of what to expect. Nevertheless, we were still going into battle where there were many unknowns. Perhaps that's why when the chaplains held separate communion services in the warehouses on the docks just before we sailed, not even the most brazen of the old-timers was absent. It took Chaplain Tollefsen more than three hours to complete the communion service.
Just before we left New Zealand, I had been promoted to sergeant with an organizational warrant. That was a special warrant used where a particular job or specialty called for a certain grade, even though the platoon, company, battalion or regiment had its full compliment of authorized ratings. When a man with an organizational rank left the organization, he reverted to his old rank. I got my chevrons sewn on and had my picture taken as I sat at a sharp angle so the stripes would show.
