_A bloody encounter on 14 November at the junction of the Numa-Numa and
Piva Trails: Marine infantrymen had been stopped by well dug-in and
camouflaged enemy troops. Five Marine tanks rushed up and attacked on a
250-yard front through the jungle._]
Other developments came at this juncture in the campaign. As noted,
the 37th Infantry Division was fed into the perimeter. At the top of
the command echelon Major General Roy S. Geiger relieved Vandegrift
as Commanding General, IMAC, on 9 November and took charge of Marine
and Army units in the campaign from an advanced command post on
Bougainville.
The Seabees and Marine engineers were hard at work now. Operating
dangerously 1,500 yards ahead of the front lines, guarded by a strong
combat patrol, they managed to cut two 5,000-foot survey lanes east to
west across the front of the perimeter.
[Sidebar (page 16):] War Dogs
[Illustration]
In an interview with Captain Wilcie O’Bannon long after the war,
Captain John Monks, Jr., gained an insight into one of the least known
aspects of Marine tactics. It was an added asset that the official
Marine history called “invaluable”: war dogs. O’Bannon, the first
patrol leader to have them, related:
One dog was a German Shepherd female, the other was a Doberman
male, and they had three men with them. The third man handled
the dogs all the time in the platoon area prior to our going on
patrol--petting the dogs, talking to them, and being nice to them.
The other two handlers--one would go to the head of the column and
one would go to the rear with the female messenger dog.... If the
dog in front received enemy fire and got away, he could either
come back to me or circle to the back of the column. If I needed
to send a message I would write it, give it to the handler, and
he would pin it on the dog’s collar. He would clap his hands and
say, “Report,” and the dog would be off like a gunshot to go to the
third man in the rear who had handled him before the patrol.
The war dogs proved very versatile. They ran telephone wire, detected
ambushes, smelled out enemy patrols, and even a few machine gun nests.
The dog got GI chow, slept on nice mats and straw, and in mud-filled
foxholes. First Lieutenant Clyde Henderson with one of the dog platoons
recalled how the speed and intelligence of dogs was crucial in light
of the abominable communications in the jungle, where sometimes
communications equipment was not much better than yelling.
Under such circumstances, a German Shepherd named “Caesar” made the
difference between life and death for at least one company. With all
wires cut and no communication, Caesar got through repeatedly to the
battalion command post and returned to the lines. One Japanese rifle
wound didn’t stop him, but a second had Caesar returned to the rear
on a stretcher. A memorable letter from Commandant Thomas B. Holcomb
described how Caesar another time had saved the life of a Marine
when the dog attacked a Japanese about to throw a hand grenade. The
Commandant also cited in letters four other dogs for their actions on
Bougainville.
Sergeant William O. McDaniel, in the 9th Marines, remembered, “One
night, one of the dogs growled and Slim Livesay, a squad leader from
Montana, shot and hit a Jap right between the eyes. We found the Jap
the next morning, three feet in front of the hole.”
One Marine said that what Marines liked most was the security dogs gave
at night and the rare chance to sleep in peace. No enemy would slip
through the lines with a dog on guard.
There were 52 men and 36 dogs in the K-9 company on Bougainville.
_The Coconut Grove Battle_
On D plus 10, 11 November, a new operation order was issued. “Continue
the attack with the 3d Marine Division on the right (east) and the 37th
Infantry Division on the left (west).” An Army-Marine artillery group
was assembled under IMAC control to provide massed fire, and Marine
air would be on call for close support.
The first objective in the renewed push was to seize control of the
critical junction of the Numa-Numa Trail and the East-West trail. On 13
November a company of the 21st Marines led off the advance at 0800. At
1100 it was ambushed by a “sizeable” enemy force concealed in a coconut
palm grove near the trail junction. The Japanese had won the race to
the crossroads, and the situation for the lead Marine company soon
became critical. The 2d Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Eustace
R. Smoak, sent up his executive officer, Major Glenn Fissell, with 12th
Marines’ artillery observers. They reported the situation as all bad.
Then Major Fissell was killed. Disdaining flank security, Smoak moved
closer to the fight and fed in reinforcing companies. (By now a lateral
road across the front of the perimeter had been built.)
The next day tanks were brought up and artillery registered around the
battalion. Smoak also called in 18 torpedo bombers. The reorganized
riflemen lunged forward again in a renewed attack. The tanks proved an
ineffective disaster, causing chaos at one point by firing on fellow
Marines on their flank and running over several of their own men.
Nevertheless, the Japanese positions were overrun by the end of the
day, with the enemy survivors driven off into a swamp. The Marines now
commanded the junction of the two vital trails. As a result, the entire
beachhead was able to spring forward 1,000 to 1,500 yards, reaching
Inland Defense Line D, 5,000 yards from the beach.
[Illustration:
Photo courtesy of Cyril J. O’Brien.
_“Marine Drive” constructed by the 53d Naval Construction Battalion
enabled casualties to be sent to medical facilities in the rear and
supplies to be brought forward easily._]
One important result of this advance was that the two main airstrips
could now be built. The airfields would be the work of the Seabees.
The 25th, 53d, and 71st Naval Construction Battalions (“Seabees”) had
landed on D-Day with the assault waves of the 3d Marine Division--to
get ready at once to build roads, airfields, and camp areas. (They
had a fighter strip operating at Torokina by December). Always
close to Marines, the Seabees earned their merit in the eyes of the
Leathernecks. Often Marines had to clear the way with fire so a Seabee
could do his work. Many would recall the bold Seabee bulldozer driver
covering a sputtering machine gun nest with his blade. Marines on the
Piva Trail later saw another determined bulldozer operator filling in
holes in the tarmac of his burgeoning bomber strip as fast as Japanese
artillery could tear it up. Any Marine who returned from the dismal
swamps toward the beach would retain the wonderment of the “Marine
Drive.” It was a two-lane asphalt highway, complete with wide shoulders
and drainage ditches. It lay across jungle so dense that the tired men
had had to hack their way through it only a week or so before.
Meanwhile, back on the beach, the U.S. Navy had been busy pouring
in supplies and men. By D plus 12 it had landed more than 23,000
cargo tons and nearly 34,000 men. Marine fighters overhead provided
continuous cover from Japanese air attacks. The Marine 3d Defense
Battalion was set up with long-range radar and its antiaircraft guns to
give further protection. (This battalion also had long-range 155mm guns
that pounded Japanese attacks against the perimeter.)
By now, the 37th Infantry Division on the left was on firm ground,
facing scattered opposition, and able to make substantial advances. It
was very different for the 3d Marine Division on the right. Lagoons
and swamps were everywhere. The riflemen were in isolated, individual
positions, little islands of men perched in what they sarcastically
called “dry swamps,” This meant the water and/or slimy mud was only
shoe-top deep, rather than up to their knees or waists, as it was all
around them. This nightmare kind of terrain, combined with heavy,
daily, drenching rains, precluded digging foxholes. So their machine
guns had to be lashed to tree trunks, while the men huddled miserably
in the water and mud. They carried little in their packs, except that
a variety of pills was essential to stay in fighting shape in their
oppressive, bug-infested environment: salt tablets, sulfa powder,
aspirin, iodine, vitamins, atabrine tablets (for supressing malaria),
and insect repellent.
Colonel Frazer West, who at Bougainville commanded a company in the 9th
Marines, was interviewed by Monks 45 years later. He still remembered
painfully what constantly living in the slimy, swamp water did to the
Marines: “With almost no change of clothing, sand rubbing against the
skin, stifling heat, and constant immersion in water, jungle rot was a
pervasive problem. Men got it on their scalps, under their arms, in
their genital areas, just all over. It was a miserable, affliction,
and in combat there was very little that could be done to alleviate
it. The only thing you could do was with the jungle ulcers. I’d get
the corpsman to light a match on a razor blade, split the ulcer open,
and squeeze sulfanilamide powder in it. I must have had at one time
30 jungle ulcers on me. This was fairly typical.” Corpsmen painted
many Marines with skin infections with tincture of merthiolate or a
potassium permanganate solution so that they looked like the Picts of
long ago who went into battle with their bodies daubed with blue woad.
The Marines who had survived the first two weeks of the campaign were
by now battlewise. They intuitively carried out their platoon tactics
in jungle fighting whether in offense or defense. They understood their
enemy’s tactics. And all signs indicated that they were winning.
[Sidebar (page 18):] Navajo Code Talkers
[Illustration]
Marines who heard the urgent combat messages said Navajo sounded
sometimes like gurgling water. Whatever the sound, the ancient
tongue of an ancient warrior clan confused the Japanese. The Navajo
codetalkers were busily engaged on Bougainville, and had already proved
their worth on Guadalcanal. The Japanese could never fathom a language
committed to sounds.
Originally there were many skeptics who disdained the use of the
Navajo language as infeasible. Technical Sergeant Philip Johnston, who
originally recommended the use of Navajo talkers as a means of safe
voice transmissions in combat, convinced a hardheaded colonel by a
two-minute Navajo dispatch. Encoding and decoding, the colonel then
admitted, would have engaged his team well over an hour.
When the chips were down, time was short, and the message was urgent,
Navajos saved the day. Only Indians could talk directly into the radio
“mike” without concern for security. They would read the message in
English, absorb it mentally, then deliver the words in their native
tongue--direct, uncoded, and quickly. You couldn’t fault the Japanese,
even other Navajos who weren’t codetalkers, couldn’t understand the
codetalkers’ transmissions because they were in a code within the
Navajo language.
[Sidebar (page 19):] ‘Corpsman!’
Less than one percent of battle casualties on Bougainville died
of wounds after being brought to a field hospital, and during 50
operations conducted as the battle of the Koromokina raged and bullets
whipped through surgeons’ tents, not a patient was lost.
[Illustration: Painting by Kerr Eby in the Marine Corps Art Collection]
Those facts reflect the skill and dedication of the corpsmen, surgeons,
and litter bearers who performed in an environment of enormous
difficultly. Throughout the fight for the perimeter, the field
hospitals were shelled and shaken by bomb blasts, even while surgical
operations were being conducted.
Every day there was rain and mud and surgeons practiced their craft
with mud to their shoe laces. Corpsmen were shot as they treated the
wounded right at the battle scene; others were shot as the Japanese
ignored the International Red Cross emblem for ambulances and aid
stations.
Bougainville was the first time in combat for the corpsmen assigned
to the 3d Marine Division. Two surgeons were with each battalion
and, as in all other battles, a corpsman was with each platoon. Aid
stations were as close as 30-50 yards behind the lines. The men from
the division band were the litter bearers, always on the biting edge of
combat.
Many young Marines were not aware until combat just how close they
would be to these corpsmen who wore the Marine uniform, and who would
undergo every hardship and trial of the man on the line. The corpsman’s
job required no commands; he was simply always there to patch up the
wounded Marine enough to have him survive and get to a field hospital.
Naval officers seldom had command over the corpsman. He was responsible
directly to the platoon, company, and battalion to which he was
assigned.
Ashore on D-Day with the invading troops, Pharmacist’s Mate Second
Class Andrew Bernard later remembered setting up his 3d Marines
regimental aid station, just inland in the muck off the beach beside
the “C” Medical Field Hospital. Later, as action intensified, Bernard
saw 15 to 20 wounded Marines waiting at the hospital for care, and
commented, “this was when I noticed Dr. Duncan Shepherd.... The flaps
of the hospital tent went open, and there was Dr. Shepherd operating
away, so calm, so brave, so courageous--as though he was back in the
Mayo Clinic, where he had trained.”
On 7 December, the Japanese attacked around the Koromokina. The
official history of the 3d Marine Division described the scene:
The division hospital, situated near the beach, was subjected to
daily air raids, and twice to artillery shelling.... Company E of
the 3d Medical Battalion, which was the division hospital under
Commander R. R. Callaway, USN, proved that delicate work could be
carried on even in combat. During the battle the field hospital was
attacked, bullets ripped through the protecting tent, seriously
wounding a pharmacist’s mate.
[Illustration: Painting by Franklin Boggs in _Men Without Guns_
(Philadelphia:/The Blakiston Company, 1945)]
Hellzapoppin Ridge was the most intense and miserable of the battles
for the corpsmen of Bougainville, according to Pharmacist’s Mate First
Class Carroll Garnett. He and three other corpsmen were assigned to the
forward aid station located at the top of that bloody ridge. The two
battalion surgeons were considered indispensable and discouraged from
taking undue risks. Regardless, Assistant Battalion Surgeon Lieutenant
Edmond A. Utkewicz, USNR, insisted on joining the corpsmen at the
forward station and remained there throughout the entire battle. The
doctor and his four assistants were often in the open, exposed to fire,
and showered with the dust thrown up by mortar explosions.
The corpsmen’s routine was: stop the bleeding, apply sulfa powder and
battle dressing, shoot syrette of morphine, and administer plasma.
The regular aid station was located at the bottom of the ridge where
the battalion surgeon, Lieutenant Commander Horace L. Wolf, USNR,
checked the wounded again, before sending them off in an ambulance, if
available, to a better equipped station or a field hospital.
Corpsmen (and Marines) were in deadly peril atop the ridge. Corpsman
John A. Wetteland described volunteers bringing in a wounded paramarine
who was still breathing when he and the medical team were hit anew by
a shell. One corpsman was killed, another badly wounded, and Wetteland
was badly mauled by mortar fragments, though he tried, he said, “to
bandage myself.”
Dr. Wolf later painted a grim picture of the taut circumstances under
which the medics worked:
Several of my brave corpsmen were killed in this action. The
regimental band musicians were the litter bearers. I still remember
the terrible odor of our dead in the tropical heat. The smell
pinched one’s nostrils and clung to clothing.... During combat in
the swamps, about all one could do to try to purify water to drink
was to put two drops of iodine solution in a canteen. Night was the
worst, when we could not evacuate our sick and wounded. But, if one
could get a ride to the airstrip on the jeep ambulance to put the
sick and wounded on evacuation planes, one could see a female (Navy
or Army nurses) for the first time in many months.
_Piva Forks Battle_
The lull after the Coconut Grove fight did not last long. On 18
November, the usual flurry of patrols soon brought back information
that the Japanese had set up a road block on both the Numa-Numa
Trail and the East-West Trail.
[Illustration: