_Americal Division commander, MajGen Alexander M. Patch, Jr., watches
while his troops and supplies are staged on Guadalcanal’s beaches on 8
December, the day before he relieved Gen Vandegrift and his wornout 1st
Marine Division._]
The final regiment of the Americal Division, the 132d Infantry, landed
on 8 December as the 5th Marines was preparing to leave. The 2d Marine
Division’s regiments already on the island, the 2d, 8th, and part
of the 10th, knew that the 6th Marines was on its way to rejoin. It
seemed to many of the men of the 2d Marines, who had landed on D-Day, 7
August, that they, too, should be leaving. These took slim comfort in
the thought that they, by all rights, should be the first of the 2d to
depart the island whenever that hoped-for day came.
General Patch received a steady stream of ground reinforcements
and replacements in December. He was not ready yet to undertake a
full-scale offensive until the 25th Division and the rest of the 2d
Marine Division arrived, but he kept all frontline units active in
combat and reconnaissance patrols, particularly toward the western
flank.
The island commander’s air defense capabilities also grew
substantially. Cactus Air Force, organized into a fighter command and a
strike (bomber) command, now operated from a newly redesignated Marine
Corps Air Base. The Henderson Field complex included a new airstrip,
Fighter Two, which replaced Fighter One, which had severe drainage
problems. Brigadier General Louis Woods, who had taken over as senior
aviator when Geiger returned to Espiritu Santo, was relieved on 26
December by Brigadier General Francis P. Mulcahy, Commanding General,
2d Marine Aircraft Wing. New fighter and bomber squadrons from both the
1st and 2d Wings sent their flight echelons forward on a regular basis.
The Army added three fighter squadrons and a medium bomber squadron
of B-26s. The Royal New Zealand Air Force flew in a reconnaissance
squadron of Lockheed Hudsons. And the U.S. Navy sent forward a squadron
of Consolidated PBY Catalina patrol planes which had a much needed
night-flying capability.
The aerial buildup forced the Japanese to curtail all air attacks and
made daylight naval reinforcement attempts an event of the past. The
nighttime visits of the Tokyo Express destroyers now brought only
supplies encased in metal drums which were rolled over the ships’ sides
in hope they would float into shore. The men ashore desperately needed
everything that could be sent, even by this method, but most of the
drums never reached the beaches.
Still, however desperate the enemy situation was becoming, he was
prepared to fight. General Hyakutake continued to plan the seizure of
the airfield. General Hitoshi Immamura, commander of the _Eighth Area
Army_, arrived in Rabaul on 2 December with orders to continue the
offensive. He had 50,000 men to add to the embattled Japanese troops on
Guadalcanal.
Before these new enemy units could be employed, the Americans were
prepared to move out from the perimeter in their own offensive.
Conscious that the Mt. Austen area was a continuing threat to his
inland flank in any drive to the west, Patch committed the Americal’s
132d Infantry to the task of clearing the mountain’s wooded slopes
on 17 December. The Army regiment succeeded in isolating the major
Japanese force in the area by early January. The 1st Battalion, 2d
Marines, took up hill positions to the southeast of the 132d to
increase flank protection.
By this time, the 25th Infantry Division (Major General J. Lawton
Collins) had arrived and so had the 6th Marines (6 January) and the
rest of the 2d Division’s headquarters and support troops. Brigadier
General Alphonse De Carre, the Marine division’s assistant commander,
took charge of all Marine ground forces on the island. The 2d
Division’s commander, Major General John Marston, remained in New
Zealand because he was senior to General Patch.
With three divisions under his command, General Patch was designated
Commanding General, XIV Corps, on 2 January. His corps headquarters
numbered less than a score of officers and men, almost all taken from
the Americal’s staff. Brigadier General Edmund B. Sebree, who had
already led both Army and Marine units in attacks on the Japanese,
took command of the Americal Division. On 10 January, Patch gave the
signal to start the strongest American offensive yet in the Guadalcanal
campaign. The mission of the troops was simple and to the point:
“Attack and destroy the Japanese forces remaining on Guadalcanal.”
The initial objective of the corps’ attack was a line about 1,000 to
1,500 yards west of jump-off positions. These ran inland from Point
Cruz to the vicinity of Hill 66, about 3,000 yards from the beach.
In order to reach Hill 66, the 25th Infantry Division attacked first
with the 35th and 27th Infantry driving west and southwest across a
scrambled series of ridges. The going was rough and the dug-in enemy,
elements of two regiments of the _38th Division_, gave way reluctantly
and slowly. By the 13th, however, the American soldiers, aided by
Marines of the 1st Battalion, 2d Marines, had won through to positions
on the southern flank of the 2d Marine Division.
On 12 January, the Marines began their advance with the 8th Marines
along the shore and 2d Marines inland. At the base of Point Cruz, in
the 3d Battalion, 8th Marines’ sector, regimental weapons company
halftracks ran over seven enemy machine gun nests. The attack was
then held up by an extensive emplacement until the weapons company
commander, Captain Henry P. “Jim” Crowe, took charge of a half-dozen
Marine infantrymen taking cover from enemy fire with the classic
remarks: “You’ll never get a Purple Heart hiding in a fox hole. Follow
me!” The men did and they destroyed the emplacement.
[Illustration: U.S. Halftrack Mounting a 75mm Pack Howitzer and a
.50-Caliber Air-Cooled Machine Gun]
All along the front of the advancing assault companies the going was
rough. The Japanese, remnants of the _Sendai Division_, were dug
into the sides of a series of cross compartments and their fire took
the Marines in the flank as they advanced. Progress was slow despite
massive artillery support and naval gunfire from four destroyers
offshore. In two days of heavy fighting, flamethrowers were employed
for the first time and tanks were brought into play. The 2d Marines
was now relieved and the 6th Marines moved into the attack along the
coast while the 8th Marines took up the advance inland. Naval gunfire
support, spotted by naval officers ashore, improved measurably. On the
15th, the Americans, both Army and Marine, reached the initial corps
objective. In the Marine attack zone, 600 Japanese were dead.
[Illustration: FINAL PHASE