Bill Paull: Guadalcanal November 1942 - February 1943

It was hard to believe that Tulagi and Guadalcanal are only twenty miles apart. It was easy to figure out why the officials of the Lever Company had set up their headquarters on Tulagi. The big island felt hotter and swarmed with mosquitoes. There is a narrow strip of coconut plantations on the coast; the rest of the island is steep mountains, covered with dense jungle. We camped in a level area between two sluggish, muddy rivers. The island stank and I never got used to the smell. I felt that the stench reached into my bones. It took months in New Zealand with cool weather, cold milk, fresh fruit, and friendly civilians before I felt clean and human again.

Every night , a lone bomber from Rabaul, or some other Jap base nearby, made a run over Henderson Field and dropped a few bombs. Since our position was near the field, we got clobbered with the near misses. We dubbed the nightly visitor Washing Machine Charlie. I guess that high droning sound reminded someone of his mother's Maytag. Charlie usually managed to dump a couple of bombs on the field, but the SeaBees could always patch up the damage and keep a runway operating. Charlie's real damage was psychological. He kept us on edge as we jumped into our holes two or three times every night. After a week or so, we just ignored him. We'd wake up to that high, scary, drone and decide to take our chances in our fox holes.

G Battery became the artillery support for an Army regiment that was assaulting Mt. Austin. Sam Dallas and I were attached to one of the infantry companies of the 164th Army Regiment as forward observers. I developed love and respect for those "dog-faces." Marines like to feel superior, but those doggies had as much determination and guts as we did. Sam and I had a built-in advantage since we had been in the islands for almost four months and were regarded with respect as grizzled veterans. I know that we capitalized on this and told outrageous stories of our heroic deeds.

I have hazy memories of that long, slow hike up to a ridge overlooking a Japanese strong point. The advance up the slope was painful and the column was stopped whenever a Jap sniper fired. When there was a concentration of enemy troops ahead, the lieutenant would ask us to call for artillery fire. This was scary for me... I hadn't been trained for this kind of warfare. Our field exercises back in California taught us how to register our guns on targets that we could see... to direct artillery fire up, down, left, right, and observe the impacts. In Guadalcanal's dense jungle, none of this applied. Our guns were registered on a checkpoint far in advance of our position so we could call fire back toward us in increments of fifty yards. It is spooky when you see and feel artillery shells exploding in the trees only a few yards away and know that you are responsible. Anyway, our shells were ineffective. They were fused to explode at the first resistance which meant that they blasted all the tree tops but didn't do much damage to the snipers and troops below. Among my memories of bad things is the smell of burnt powder and shredded vegetation.

We finally reached the ridge and dug in. At night we could hear the Japs shouting, "Maline, you die!" They had snipers placed on their side of the slope so it was instant suicide to stick your head up to take a peek. We had two army radiomen assigned to us to send our commands back to the gun batteries. Sam and I used their TBY as a screen when we had to make a firing adjustment. I guess we hoped that Japs would hit the radio and put it out of commission. We reasoned that if that happened, we'd be declared unnecessary personnel and sent back down the mountain. This ploy didn't succeed, but after three hairy, scary nights on the ridge Sam and I were relieved by a couple of Army observers and ordered to report back to G Battery.

We started back down the trail accompanied by two stretcher bearers carrying a wounded soldier. We were almost out of the jungle when snipers opened up on us. Sam was hit and rolled down a steep bank into a little stream. The stretcher bearers ran off the trail with their burden but they weren't able to save the soldier. I jumped behind a fallen log and found myself alongside a decaying Jap corpse. This was a peak of terror and horror. I was lying alongside a stinking mass of putrefaction and too afraid to move. I thought Sam was dead. I could see that the wounded soldier had been killed and I assumed the other two soldiers were dead too. Then my mind went on automatic pilot. I remained aware of what was happening, but I felt a cool detachment. I seemed to be merely an interested observer. This ability to tune out fear and panic and still do my job served me well throughout the Tarawa, Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima landings. Every time I was in a dangerous, stressful situation, I was able to switch into automatic drive and function without panic. I came to be regarded as a fearless warrior, and I was willing to accept the label. Eventually, I even conned myself into believing that I was the super, splendid, ideal Marine that my peers perceived me to be. But I had a secret. I knew that no matter how terrible the situation might be, I'd emerge unscathed. It was some other guy that looked just like me that was exposed to all those dangers. I'd still be OK when the show ended and the credits rolled by on the movie screen. This ability even earned me a field commission two years later on Iwo Jima.

Eventually an army patrol came down the trail and cleared out the four snipers that had us pinned down. The two soldiers were unhurt. Sam was hit in the side but he could walk, so we stuck with the patrol until we made it out of the jungle. Sam was bandaged and sent out to a hospital ship and I never saw him again. I hope he recovered and made it back to Arkansas.

Soon after arriving back at G Battery, I was sent with Andy to set up a forward observation post at the top of a rocky ridge. We dug in just below the crest. The Japs were dug in on the reverse slope. Our job was to send fire commands back to the gun positions and try to blast the Nips out of their positions. This was a pretty tricky exercise. By their very nature, howitzers are more like mortars than cannons. High velocity artillery and naval guns pack a terrible punch but they have a flat trajectory. We could elevate the muzzles of our 75's so that the shells would climb high, then fall back to earth in a steep dive. This enabled us to hit targets sheltered behind a mountain... but there's a trade-off. This high trajectory shooting is much less accurate. The gun muzzles had to be elevated enough so that the shells would clear the top of the ridge, then raised further and further to make the shells fall back toward us, creeping up the reverse slope. This required careful observations on our part and scrupulous accuracy by our gunners at the battery. Even with identical settings, artillery rounds never hit the same place. Many variables account for this: air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, powder temperature, temperature of the gun barrel, and just a mere fraction of weight difference of the projectiles. This didn't cause much of a problem for us during the day. We could observe where the shells were landing and make adjustments. Darkness brought on the excitement... when the gun conducted "harassing fire"... intermittent firing to keep the enemy awake and uneasy. This ploy may not have worked on the Japs, but it sure kept me in a turmoil. As the air and powder temperatures cooled, the range would gradually shorten up and the shells were whizzing by over our heads closer and closer. We were tormenting more Japs that way, but I didn't appreciate the possibility that our own battery might blast us off the mountain. It never happened, of course, but there were times when I felt I could reach up and caress a projectile as it whispered over our heads.