Robert Leckie - Strong Men Armed

Proof of the last line was to be given shortly. At eleven o’clock that night the men of the Sendai Division came padding up the narrow jungle trails into assembly areas south of Puller’s lines. Officers began to whip them into frenzy. Soon they were chanting, “U. S. Marine you going die tonight, U. S. Marine you going die tonight.”

Marine mortars began falling among them. Shells flashed along the trails. The Japanese charged and the mortars stayed with them, whittling this heaviest of all Guadalcanal charges before it reached the wire. Soon the howitzers to the rear were booming.

And the Sendai Division still charged.

Colonel Oka’s men had at last made a direct attack.

They struck heaviest at the ridge nose held by Sergeant Paige and his men. At two in the morning, Paige again heard low mumbling. It was much closer than the night before. The Japanese were floundering about in the bushes with less than Oriental stealth. Paige passed the word:

“Use grenades. Don’t let ‘em spot the guns. Fire only when you have to.”

They pulled pins and threw. They grasped grenades in both hands and tore out the pins with their teeth and rolled the yellow pineapple bombs down the slopes.

Oka’s men came bowling up at them.

“Fire!” Paige bellowed, but he needn’t have, nor could he have been heard above that sudden eruption of sound and light. All of his guns were hammering, spitting orange flame a foot beyond the flash-hiders. But the enemy was swarming in. It was hand to hand. Paige could see little Leiphart down on one knee, wounded, trying to fight off three charging shapes. Paige shot down two of them with his rifle. The third bayoneted Leiphart, killed him, and Paige killed his killer. Pettyjohn was shouting that his gun was out of action. Gaston was battling a Japanese officer, blocking with his rifle while the officer swung a saber, kicking wildly after the rifle had been cut to pieces. Now part of Gaston’s leg was gone. He kicked again. His foot slammed up under the officer’s chin and broke his neck. Now it was fighting without memory of a blow struck, a shot fired, a wound received; now it was mindless, instinctive, reflexive; the shapes struggling on the slopes, the voices hurling wordless atavistic battle shouts, “Aaa-yeee!”; the voices crying, “Kill! Kill!” and “Bonnn-zahee!”; the voices hoarse with death, shrill with pain—and beneath it all ran the cracking booming chorus of the guns.

Then the attackers flowed back down the hill and vanished. The first wave had been shattered.

Paige knew they would come again, and ran quickly to Pettyjohn’s disabled gun. He worked to dislodge a ruptured cartridge. He pried it free, slipped in a fresh belt of ammunition—and hot pain seared his hand. A Japanese light machine-gunner had fired a burst into the gun and wrecked it. With that burst came the second wave.

Oka’s men flowed upward in a yelling mass. Grant, Payne and Hinson held out on the left, although they were all wounded. In Paige’s center, Lock, Swanek and McNabb were hit and carried to the rear by corpsmen. The Japanese moved into the gap in the center. Paige ran to his right, hunting for men to counterattack the Japanese, for another gun to put back in the center. He found the machine gun manned by Kelly and Totman. They were protected by a squad of riflemen. Paige ordered the machine-gunners to break down their gun, told the riflemen to fix bayonets, and then, with the cry “Follow me!” he led them back to drive the enemy out of the center. Paige set the gun up. He fired it until dawn, while Kelly and Totman fed it ammunition. At dawn, Sergeant Paige saw another of his platoon’s machine guns standing unattended on the forward nose of the ridge. There were short men in khaki and mushroom helmets crawling toward it. Paige got up and ran forward….

To the left of Paige’s position, where the second wave of Oka’s men had made a penetration, the fight had gone badly for F Company of the Second Battalion, Seventh. Oka’s men had forced F Company back and captured a ridge on the extreme left of the Second Battalion’s line. They put 150 men in position. They set up two heavy machine guns. They began raking the Marines from the flank.

In that early-morning light in which Sergeant Paige had spotted the machine gun, Major Odell (Tex) Conoley could see vapor rising from the Japanese machine guns as the hot steel condensed the jungle water on the barrels. Conoley realized that the Japanese now had a strong penetration which could be built up for a breakthrough. He was the battalion executive officer, and only a few of the men around him were riflemen. But there were also at hand a few bandsmen serving as litter-bearers, a trio of wiremen, a couple of runners and three or four messmen who had brought up hot food the night before and had stayed. There were 17 in all. Tex Conoley formed this bobtail band and charged.

They went in hurling grenades. They knocked out the machine guns before the Japanese could fire at them and they came in with such sudden force that they routed the startled defenders of the ridge crest. And then the mortarmen shortened range to draw a curtain of steel across the forward slope of the ridge while Conoley consolidated and received reinforcements.

Daylight of October 26 lighted the destruction of the Japanese 2nd or Sendai Division.

The assault against Puller’s lines had gone on all night, but it had produced not a single penetration. It ended at dawn with Japanese losses in proportion to the fury of their charge. It was the most savage assault, it became the most stunning defeat.

The Sendai could not fight again as a unit on Guadalcanal.

Sergeant Paige got to the gun first….

He dove for the trigger, got it, squeezed it—and killed the crawling Japanese. A rain of enemy fire came down on Paige. Bullets spattered off the ridge shale, spurting, squealing away in richochet. Paige kept firing. Three men ran to him with ammunition belts—Stat, Reilly and Jonjeck. Stat went down with a bullet in the belly. Reilly reached the gun, took a bullet in the groin, and went down kicking—nearly knocking Paige off balance. Jonjeck came in with a belt and a bullet in the shoulder. As he stooped to feed the gun, Paige saw a piece of flesh go flying off Jonjeck’s neck.

“Get the hell back!” Paige yelled.

Jonjeck refused. Paige hit him on the jaw. Jonjeck obeyed.

It was full light now, and Paige was scurrying back and forth, moving his gun to avoid the inevitable rain of grenades greeting each burst. In the tall grass below the ridge some 30 Japanese sprang erect. One of them put field glasses to his eyes. He signaled a charge.

Paige triggered a long searing, sweeping burst and the Japanese vanished from sight like puppets pulled on a string. Then Sergeant Mitchell Paige charged himself. He called to his riflemen. He slung two belts of ammunition crisscross over his shoulders. He unclamped the gun, yanked it from its cradle and cradled the burning-hot water jacket across his left arm.

“Let’s go!” he yelled.

Straight downhill they charged, screaming their rebel yells —“Ya-hoo! Yaaaa-hoo!”—firing from the hip as they went, obliterating all before them while Paige aimed a disemboweling burst at the enemy officer who had popped up out of the grass. And then they were in the jungle and it was strangely quiet.

It was the hush that comes upon the end of battle, as eerie as that long white snakelike blister that ran from the fingertips to the forearm of Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Paige.