Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [65]
The commander who carried Ichiki’s men to the island was a destroyerman who would become famous for running Japan’s fast resupply and reinforcement missions by cover of night, soon to be referred to as the “Tokyo Express”: Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka. He had studied the difficult novelties of amphibious operations. Without either surprise or a strong softening-up by naval or air bombardment, he “foresaw grave difficulties in my task and knew that we would suffer heavy losses.” He deemed his orders to bring down the Ichiki detachment “utterly unreasonable.” But he was underappreciating the extent of the Japanese command of the night. Under cover of darkness, Tanaka arrived with six destroyers off Taivu Point and put Ichiki ashore with nine hundred men.
Once assigned to seize Midway Island, Ichiki’s 28th Regiment was a veteran outfit whose experience and success would work against them now. As a company commander serving in China, Ichiki had helped instigate the infamous Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937, a clash between Japanese and Chinese troops that some historians would identify as the first hostility of World War II. His intelligence service had warned him that frontal attacks on Guadalcanal might be costly. But Ichiki’s reputation preceded him, and that reputation, and the recklessness it inspired, would lead to his fall. Some called it “victory disease.” Ichiki expected a quick victory. As he advanced boldly on the Marine positions, he regarded them as easy marks.
Vandegrift knew enemy reinforcements had landed after one of his patrols routed an enemy probe and recovered their documents and diaries. Where their main strength lay no one knew, but the appearance of Japanese first-teamers was an alarming sign. Until Colonel Ichiki’s arrival, the marines had contended in most instances with poorly equipped labor battalions, or “termites” as they called them. Now experienced Japanese assault troops were out there somewhere. It worked on men’s nerves.
The night had a hundred ways to provoke a sentry to a startled fusillade: the rustling of lizards and crabs through the undergrowth; the birds whose calls sounded like wood blocks smacking together. Vandegrift’s largely unseasoned men had to cure themselves of the impulse to promiscuous firing. To keep their positions concealed, they learned the rigors of field discipline: discipline with their triggers, with their mess equipment, with their sanitation and patrol doctrine. They cultivated the patience to remain still and silent until the need came to uncork a sudden, lethal attack.
Late in the night of August 20, near a tidal lagoon that Martin Clemens and his scouts had christened Alligator Creek, Marine sentries heard movements, a buildup of some kind. Soon thereafter, in the first dark hours of the following day, a green flare burst overhead, then, spilling out of the brush and across the sandbar in Alligator Creek, came an assault force of two hundred Imperial Army shock troops.
Vandegrift’s riflemen were ready. Supported by well-placed anti-tank guns firing exploding canister rounds, and with carefully drawn lines of interlocking fire, Colonel Pollock’s 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, stopped Ichiki cold. The Japanese assault faltered then collapsed as artillery and mortar fire ripped into them. Admiral Tanaka likened the attack on the fortified position to “a housefly’s attacking a giant tortoise.” A counterattack by Colonel Clifton B. Cates’s 1st Regiment reserve began the rout. Lieutenant Colonel Lenard B. Cresswell’s 1st Battalion led the destruction of the trapped Japanese unit. Enveloped near the mouth of the lagoon, Ichiki’s men died by