HERE, MAY I back up for a few minutes, back from New Georgia to those rather passive pre- New Georgia actions which began on Guadalcanal. Our first taste of combat . . . a kind of appetizer
. . . had come after we had left the Fijis for mop- up action in Guadalcanal. The Marines had done their messy job of winning that island, and our mission was to find and kill the few remaining Japanese stragglers. The days on patrol were easy, but the bombing every moonfilled night was scary. Here’s an account of a bombing raid:
We were awakened about three o’clock this morning by the chilling sound of the siren. We don’t sit up in our cots because our instincts are well- disciplined. Flat in bed, our bodies are below the level of the ground. We live in holes. Sitting up, our heads would extend above the earth’s surface and we would become vulnerable to the Japanese favorite aerial treat, the one hundred pound daisy cutter which slices off a blade of grass at its root for fifty yards around the impact area.
The searchlights easily spot the enemy bombers, just two of them, and they are caught in half a dozen criss- crosses. The off- beat motors are unmistakable. Mitsubishis. Thrub Dub. Thrub Dub. Thrub Dub. Washing Machine Charlies. The ack- ack starts and the pom- pom- pom of the forty millimeters plays a duet with the crash- bang of the 90’s. The 50- calibre machine guns pop away harmlessly. Their tracers fall far short of the target, up there about 3,000 feet. The Japanese at first circle around warily until the lights catch them. Then they cease their waltzing. We can just make out the opening of the bomb- bay doors, and the ack- ack music is suddenly drowned out by the tremendous whooshwhoosh as bombs fall diagonally over our heads and beyond. Inaccurate as usual. Harmless as usual. The earth shakes again and again as the bombs, in a string, hit the ground a second apart. The planes start out to sea; the ack- ack dies down reluctantly; the searchlights stretch and stretch until they can no longer follow the movement of the fleeing enemy. We go back to sleep.
This was either our fiftieth raid or our hundredth. Too many to cause much excitement anyway. Many of us sleep right through the bombings. Since we live underground and since we have enough overhead protection (two layers of sandbags) to protect us against falling ack- ack, we feel relatively secure. Some of us jump a bit when the first anti- aircraft gun explodes nearby, and when we hear the whoosh- whoosh of the falling bombs, we have that fleeting suspicion that this one has our serial number inscribed thereon. We are pleasantly amazed, however, at our casual acceptance of this suspicion. When the bombers turn tail and scoot for Rabaul, we go to sleep easily. That is, unless the Spam we had for supper conspires with our digestive juices to keep us up.
One year ago, it was a different story. We’ll never forget our first raid, a bombing attack which completely shattered our nervous system even if it shattered nothing else except a Lever Brothers Coconut grove. That raid left us queasy for days. We had gone into Guadalcanal just after the Army and Marines had settled the Henderson Field issue. It was ours to keep for good. The lone Japanese recourse was the airplane and until we arrived at the Canal Washing Machine Charley had come over every night.
We unload off the transports into the Higgins boats and hit the Beach at Kokombona, Guadalcanal, about four o’clock in the afternoon. De- limbed coconut trees, rusty ammunition, and a few stinking, half- buried bodies are all around. We are sobered up by the smell. The CO points out a cleared area 200 yards inland and instructs us to dig in for the night. We need no pep talk. This is the real thing. This is not a simulated situation or a maneuver problem. Tojo is coming over about midnight. So we think, and we dig well and deep. Of course, we do not get a raid.
Two whole weeks pass without even a ‘‘ condition red. ’’ We move from one camp site to another and our bomb shelters become progressively shallower. We get very smug. Here at the right time, the men laughingly say. A gentleman’s war. Japanese air force knocked out. We finally get our permanent camp and we erect pyramidal tents and pitch our cots. We scratch out a little earth as a pretense for a bomb shelter and devote our main energy toward the construction of a luxurious, open air log- seat movie theatre about a quarter of a mile from our ‘‘ home. ’’
We go to the picture show this Wednesday night. It begins at 7: 30 and the moon is starting to come out full again. Good. We don’t need to lug our flashlights and precious batteries with us. There are five hundred soldiers altogether at the show, half our own battalion and the other half a black port outfit.
The feature attraction is ‘‘ Take a Letter’’ starring Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray, and we are beginning to enjoy MacMurray’s predicament as the male secretary when it happens.
It happens fast but I can recall every detail. First, the siren wails. Someone moans: ‘‘ Condition Red. ’’ Ros Russell hurriedly departs from the screen. One second later we hear a strange sound in the sky, this thrub- dub, like a broken down washing machine. It’s unlike the sweet purr of our own B17’s and P38’s. The searchlights shoot upward and the beam catches this silver bird overhead, directly over our heads it seems. This is it. Someone mutters: ‘‘ Breaks our virginity. ’’ Then we watch bomb bay doors open and we notice little ‘‘ sticks of wood’’ fall from those bays.
I estimate that two seconds elapse from the siren to the falling bombs. We had been frozen for those two seconds, but the sight of the ‘‘ sticks of wood’’ coming earthward thawed us out in a helluva hurry. We tear away from the theatre area, scanning for ruts, open latrines, mudholes.
I am an officer and I should do something to ease the pandemonium. I remember that responsibility only after I dive into the relative security of a blessed watery ditch. Then, ashamed, I pray that my commanding officer, a rough and vitriolic captain, hasn’t witnessed my cowardice. Not for long, however, as I look underneath me and there he is, quivering and perspiring.
The bombs hit the ground just as we dive into the ditch, perhaps three seconds after we started to run. They land a few miles away. We should have known that when a bomber is directly overhead its cargo of death can’t hit you. We are embarrassed, and when the all- clear sounds, we walk back to our seats with our eyes on the ground. The show resumes. Fifteen minutes later we get another condition red. This time, a little less confusion, a little longer to find holes, a tiny bit more courage; and the skipper and I regain face a bit as we shepherd the men into their ruts before walking hurriedly into our own.
For two weeks, the bombers come over four and five times a night. We get no sleep. We are either in our foxholes while the bombs are dropping, en route to our beds when condition green is given, or lying in bed in- between worrying about how fast we can put on our shoes and scoot to our holes when the inevitable wail of the siren warns us of approaching danger. We desperately fear the Japanese sneaker who might come in over the mountains undetected and blast us to damnation while we are dreaming of Hedy Lamarr and Mary Smith. Each time we hear those bombs whoosh- whooshing we feel certain that this is the one which has our number etched in its nose.
At the end of these two weeks, the officers and men of our regiment are semi- neurotics. No bombs have actually crashed within one mile of our bivouac area, but that doesn’t help our mental state. We keep assuming that the law of averages will start working and we will get our share soon. We officers are disgusted with our reactions and we try to discover some solution to the jitters which have infected us and thus doubly infected our men. At last, each of us evokes a palliative. I convince myself that while I’m in my hole, nothing can hurt me except a direct hit. If the hit is direct, then I’ll never know what happened anyway, so why worry? Furthermore, I’m not fighting the war by myself. This is a big island and there are thousands of men and foxholes on this strip of land. Chances are about one in a million in my favor. The jitters are licked, cold!
Outside of the intense fright which I had experienced back then, I sensed deeply two other emotions. The first was that of intense hatred, hatred of the plane above me which forced me to cringe and grovel like less- than- a- man. Hatred of the little sonofbitches flying that plane who had the audacity to zoom over an American Army camp with murder and contempt in their hearts. Hatred of the whole Japanese military machine from Tojo down to his buck privates. I wanted to see our night fighter knock down those intruders more than I have wanted anything else in the world. One thrilling night we witnessed the black P38 swoop down upon a bomber which had been enmeshed in the lights. The lights flickered off and we could see the tracers from our avenging angel rake the silver bird from propeller to tail. We leaned out of our holes, ecstatically entranced. The minute the bomber exploded in air and the big ball of fire came floating gently down into the sea, every man on the island was out of his hole, screaming violently in fiendish glee. The cheering reverberated for miles and each of us would have kissed that kid pilot, our guardian, our protector. I felt the same sensation a couple of centuries ago when I saw Ernie Lombardi win a ball game in the last of the ninth with a heroic home run.
The second emotion was effusive admiration for the little people of London, Malta and Chungking. Here we were, hardened soldiers, quivering cravenly under the pin pricks of a couple of cheap Japanese bombers. There they were, women and children, stubbornly bearing the brunt of the most powerful, until then, air attacks in history. We were ready to hit anyone who sloughed off the bombing of London as a commonplace and unheroic event. Ridiculing those English civilians for their courage was the same as spitting in our eyes.
Right now, during these sporadic, ineffective raids, many of our ‘‘ damn fools’’ get out in the open and watch the ack- ack and the nightfighters and the Washing Machine Charlies as if they were looking up at a baseball game. The rest of us average guys remain in our bunks, secure and self- confident, mentally thumbing our nose at the thrub- dubs. When the inevitable whooshwhoosh comes, we still get that fleeting suspicion: ‘‘ Here’s the one with my name on it. ’’ But, what the hell’s the difference?